"Wrap it up in Iraq"

Wrap it up in Iraq is the title of an editorial in today's Toledo Blade.  Interesting title. The sham war, the Bush Folly. We Americans will be plagued for decades for this war not unlike the fate of the German citizens over the two world wars.  

When ideologues get into office all judgement and rationality are left at the doorstep as we Americans easily witnessed with this Bush Administration.

The painful memories [and the pain of injuries to our military] will last a long time.  The question that is most important as we look back on the fiasco is this: Has the American electorate learned an  lesson on the the importance of carefully vetting their choice for the highest office in the land?  The jury is still out on that one.

Ohio's Blackwell Still Doesn't Get it

George W. Bush owes his 2nd term largely to Ohio's evangelical Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.  Voters in Ohio 'rewarded' him two years later by electing his rival as governor. Too bad they weren't as keen in '04, but the voters rectified their gross error in judgement in '08.

Mr. Blackwell, however, continues to do his dirty work for the GOP. He penned an OpEd for the Washington Times today which says, "Now, after two disastrous election cycles, it is clear the Republican Party must refocus again. A reenergized GOP must make Republican principles appealing both to its base and also to the changing face of America. If the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan wants to return to power, it must become the party of the 21st century"

The party of Lincoln. Is that so?  Our 16th president must roll over in his proverbial grave each time he hears a christocrat refer to him.  And TR as well?  The man who fought to preserve the environment and railed against Big Business?  At least Blackwell got the Reagan reference correct.  That bloated Reagan deficit that he created pales in comparison with the Bush whopper!

Yet here is the most humorous part of the Blackwell tome:  "On these and many other issues, the Republican Party embraces what the majority of Americans believe, and the Democratic Party opposes those same positions." 

Yes, he said that.  He, like other christocrats, live in the 'I believe' world of their own creation. Why would anyone doubt that the majority of Americans support Republican issues?

Let's see:  Obama won 365 to 173 electoral votes, 53% to 46%, 67,000,000 to 58,000,000.  Democrats took 8 Senate seats from the GOP and more than 20 House seats.

Looks like Blackwell was right:  America favors the Republican Party.

QUICK: Pass the Disinfectant!

I did it.  I knew that I should have worn protective clothing and gloves, but I went in unprotected.  It was the Joe the Plumber message board. Yes, the Samuel Wurtzelbacker Sell-A-Book website.  By the way, have you pre-ordered yet?  It comes out on December 1.  Hurry!

It was dark in there and musty-smelling as if the windows hasn't been opened in quite a while, like a cottage that has sat vacant for months. Earlier I reported on this blog that I had visited his website [book selling site] and that the 'free' forum button took me to the 'pay' forum.  It cost $19.95/year for the Freedom Membership [autographed copy of book included] but yesterday the 'free' area was open and I walked in.

Have you ever wondered what Right-Wing Talk Radio would look like in printed form? There it was.  All of the reactionary-right topics and dittoheads had gathered there to rant their gripes.  Joe's 'breech of privacy' [Joe's Battle to Seek Justice in the State of Ohio] thread was one of the more hot topics there.   Joe's feelings on Israel thread was, suspiciously 'closed.'  Gun Rights, of course, drew many comments. Voter Registration and Fraud drew the usual ACORN commentary and there was even a thread on Rahm Emanuel asking if he is the 'right man' for the job.

I've washed my fingers several times already, but I can't seem to get them fully clean.  Any suggestions?

Unitarian minister recalls night in 1965 that changed history

The Blade featured Rev. Clark Olsen, civil rights leader, who returned to the Toledo area to give a talk this Sunday on Civil Rights at the First Unitarian Chruch.  The Blade says:

He had gone to Selma, Ala., on March 9, 1965, after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked U.S. clergy to join a voting rights demonstration. While African-Americans had a right to vote, election officials in some areas made it difficult - or impossible - for most of them to register.

In an emotional talk yesterday morning to about 200 students at his alma mater, Ottawa Hills High School, Mr. Clark choked back tears at times as he described how he and two fellow Unitarian ministers were attacked by three "white rowdies" from Selma who were angry at outsiders supporting African-Americans' right to register to vote.

One of the ministers, the Rev. James Reeb, 38, of Boston, died from injuries suffered in the attack, and his death led to nationwide protests and ultimately the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It was a night of terror, intimidation, and hatred, Mr. Olsen said yesterday at the high school and during an earlier interview with The Blade. On Sunday, he will speak at First Unitarian Church of Toledo.

What is interesting to me, personally, is the fact that I lived through this time.  In fact, I almost went to Selma with a group of college friends, but our transportation fell through and the trip and the experience faded away.  Yet I recall those days, that ugliness as if it were yesterday.  The scenes on TV - images of blacks being harassed, beaten, sprayed with water canons and bitten by police dogs-  are etched into my memory forever.  I was outraged that fellow humans would be treated that way just for the color of their skin.  Perhaps that experience itself set me on the course that I have followed all of my lifetime- to fight for the rights of the downtrodden, the weak, and the defenseless.

The Obama campaign mantra, 'Yes we can!' means a great deal more to black Americans than to white. They lived this racial bigotry all of their lives; they suffered the racial slurs and the closed doors and all of the other injustices that bigoted Americans threw at them.  'Yes we can!' has become an affirmation of equal justice under the law and a dream [now a reality] that a black man in America can open any door he chooses to go through.

The Lessons of Niccolo Machiavelli

The Lessons of Niccolo Machiavelli

By Engineer of Knowledge

 

This article is another installment as part of my mission to keep informing the new young voters, educating them with the truth, exposing stupid arguments and countering the blatant lies that the extreme conservative political right wing put out on a daily bases.  Please pass this article to the young voters who have come of age.

Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, who was born and lived in 15^th century Florence Italy, has been given credit as the father of modern political theory.  Machiavelli’s most famous quote that is stated most often is, “Absolute power will corrupt absolutely.”

Although Machiavelli had written many books in his lifetime, it is noted that his book, “The Prince” which has the warning within the main theme that, “All means may be resorted to for the establishment and preservation of authority; the end justifies the means, and that the worst and most treacherous acts of the ruler are justified by the wickedness and treachery of the governed.”

For too long Americans have been willing to excuse and embrace ignorance, paranoia, poor performance or anti-social behavior in the name of political conservatism.

By using Machiavelli’s own words I will give the current examples of what he was referring to.

1.      “All Means May Be Resorted To For The Establishment And Preservation Of Authority” when properly registered voters were purged from the Florida’s rolls in 2000 to reduce those who would not vote as you desired.  This fact was even praised and accolades were presented to the person responsible of accomplishing this.  Let’s address the examples of inaccurate voting machines that would change a person’s vote right before their eyes and yet these machines recorded vote numbers casted were accepted as being accurate in 2004.  There were examples of candidates voting for themselves but noted that their vote was registered as being cast for their opponent.  Yet those who rose up to protest this fraud and were quickly labeled as trouble makers by those who viewed themselves as being righteous and pious because it continued their status quo of corruption in the name of Conservative Religious Values.  The hypocrisy of the act of preaching a certain belief of religious truth and way of life, but in fact not holding these same virtues for oneself was so blatant.

2.      “The End Justifies The Means” aspect with regards to the religious context, it became OK to lie or commit crimes so long as it furthered their agenda.  Truth be damned.

3.      The Worst And Most Treacherous Acts Of The Ruler Are Justified By The Wickedness And Treachery Of  The Governed” where the example that too many in this country could not concern themselves or chose to ignore the abuses, accept the lies and the crimes committed over the eight years of this outgoing administration.  Those that had misdirected reasoning’s of their ignorance and apathy because of it being wrapped up in “Conservative Religious Values.”

 

Now in conclusion the good news in all of this is that power that is obtained by these means has no longevity.  The population masses will finally recognize the corruption, abuses, and lies.  This is when the majority will rise up to throw off the shackles of this oppression.  To the benefit of those who had mislead and lied to obtain rule by this means for the last 14 years since 1994, this latest timely overthrow by those of clear minds was by our democratic means instead of a violent overthrow.

The President

The President

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: November 3, 2008
Source: Nyt...November 3, 2008

This opinion by Paul Krugman in the NYT today
hits the nail right on the head. We have made
essentially the same points here before, but
this is a succinct writing about the Republican
Party. To be sure the Republican Party is not
going away as was predicted previously with Hoover
and the great depression and Nixon and the
Watergate. I would not like that scenario as
neoconservative theological Republican Party would
go underground. It's better to have them out in
the open as a minority party. It lets us know
where they are. Regardless of who wins the
election, this should become one of our missions,
that is, to lessen the influence of this group in
U.S. politics. Krugman gives a good summary of
what problems this "rump" Party can foment.
Hopefully there will be some type of party transformation
in which the Republican Party becomes a minority people,
and the Democratic Party along with a growing viable
Independent Party will develop.


Paul Krugman,The Republican Rump

»Most of the post-election discussion will presumably be about what the Democrats should and will do with their mandate. But let me ask a different question that will also be important for the nation’s future: What will defeat do to the Republicans?

You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

Why will the G.O.P. become more, not less, extreme? For one thing, projections suggest that this election will drive many of the remaining Republican moderates out of Congress, while leaving the hard right in place.

For example, Larry Sabato, the election forecaster, predicts that seven Senate seats currently held by Republicans will go Democratic on Tuesday. According to the liberal-conservative rankings of the political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, five of the soon-to-be-gone senators are more moderate than the median Republican senator — so the rump, the G.O.P. caucus that remains, will have shifted further to the right. The same thing seems set to happen in the House.

Also, the Republican base already seems to be gearing up to regard defeat not as a verdict on conservative policies, but as the result of an evil conspiracy. A recent Democracy Corps poll found that Republicans, by a margin of more than two to one, believe that Mr. McCain is losing “because the mainstream media is biased” rather than “because Americans are tired of George Bush.”

And Mr. McCain has laid the groundwork for feverish claims that the election was stolen, declaring that the community activist group Acorn — which, as Factcheck.org points out, has never “been found guilty of, or even charged with” causing fraudulent votes to be cast — “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” Needless to say, the potential voters Acorn tries to register are disproportionately “other folks,” as Mr. Chambliss might put it.

Anyway, the Republican base, egged on by the McCain-Palin campaign, thinks that elections should reflect the views of “real Americans” — and most of the people reading this column probably don’t qualify.

Thus, in the face of polls suggesting that Mr. Obama will win Virginia, a top McCain aide declared that the “real Virginia” — the southern part of the state, excluding the Washington, D.C., suburbs — favors Mr. McCain. A majority of Americans now live in big metropolitan areas, but while visiting a small town in North Carolina, Ms. Palin described it as “what I call the real America,” one of the “pro-America” parts of the nation. The real America, it seems, is small-town, mainly southern and, above all, white.

I’m not saying that the G.O.P. is about to become irrelevant. Republicans will still be in a position to block some Democratic initiatives, especially if the Democrats fail to achieve a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

And that blocking ability will ensure that the G.O.P. continues to receive plenty of corporate dollars: this year the U.S. Chamber of Congress has poured money into the campaigns of Senate Republicans like Minnesota’s Norm Coleman, precisely in the hope of denying Democrats a majority large enough to pass pro-labor legislation.

But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on November 3, 2008, on page A31 of the New York edition.