Welcome to Katalusis for progressive views on politics, religion, environmental issues,
and popular culture. (Photo of the Mississippi River
from the University Club in St. Paul, MN.)
A Minnesotan, I celebrate this morning the re-elections of Gov. Dayton and Sen. Franken. And with the Republican sweep of Congress, I feel sad for the country.
Tom Edsall at the NY Times offers the big picture on the morning after:
Democrats
counting on favorable demographic trends to carry their party to
victory in 2016 should consider three significant developments reflected
in the outcome of Tuesday’s elections.
The first is that the Republican establishment, at least for the moment, has wrested control back from the Tea Party wing. This will make it more difficult for Democrats to portray their opponents as dangerous extremists.
The
second, and more important, development was the success of Republican
candidates in defusing accusations that their party is conducting a “war
on women.” The effectiveness of Republican tactics on this front is
sure to influence strategy in two years, threatening to undermine a line
of attack that has generated a gender gap and has been crucial to past
Democratic victories.
The
third was the powerful showing of Republican gubernatorial candidates
in two Midwestern states important to Democrats in presidential
elections: Wisconsin and Michigan.
Well, if you didn't notice in the 08 primary that the media favored unflattering photos of Hillary and gravitas-enhancing photos of Barack, you missed out on a key force in the tidal wave that swept the inexperienced, youthful male senator to the nomination.
Ani at The New Agenda sees the same "visual vilification" of Hillary happening today before she has even announced her candidacy in 2016 - in other words the RNC is running scared along with a few on the extreme left. That would be the lefties still dissing Hillary while suffering from Obama's emergence as a centrist and continuing to fantasize about Dennis Kucinich, etc.
Here's Ani:
In the media’s obsession with all things Hillary, no sooner do NBC and
CNN announce biopics on the former Secretary of State and presumably,
once and future presidential candidate, than the RNC denounces those
films as biased infomercials. Clinton has nothing to do with
pushing these projects, of course, but since Republicans are terrified
of running against someone with her bona fides and popularity, we can
cue the “visual vilification.” Check out the photographs of Mrs.
Clinton and RNC Chair, Reince Priebus, in the FOX News’ article, Republicans open pre-emptive strikes on Clinton, undecided yet formidable in 2016:
As noted elsewhere on this blog, I’m scheduled for knee
replacement surgery tomorrow morning and may not be able to post for a few
weeks. Yep. That’s right. Surgery on election day, but I’m ahead of the game; I
voted absentee the other day.
The final presidential debate left me no choice but to vote
third party. In the concluding minutes of the debate, Gov. Romney enthusiastically
voiced his support of the Obama Administration’s use of drones and presumably the president’s kill list, which he continues to develop. I
could not in good conscience vote for either of these men.
And keep in mind, if you will, that Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton early on urged Obama to cut back on the use of
force and develop a more comprehensive approach to fighting terrorism.
So much for the myth of Obama as peacemaker and Hillary as
warmonger that Obama loyalists continue to perpetuate despite the growing
evidence to the contrary.
I was born and raised in northwestern Ohio, and I'm not surprised that conservatism, both religious and political, still prevails in the city of Defiance, located in Defiance County. Rosalind S. Helderman's article in yesterday's Washington Post, headlined GM is alive in Defiance, Ohio, but Obama’s hopes here may not be, caught my eye:
In DEFIANCE, Ohio — For more than 50 years, the economic fate of this tiny town in northwest Ohio has been inextricably linked to the health of General Motors, its largest employer.
And so when two local lawyers put up a billboard in the
cornfield across from Defiance’s GM plant with a picture of the GM logo
above the word “alive” and a photo of Osama bin Laden above the word
“dead,” you might have expected nods of approval.
Instead, in this deeply conservative corner of the state not far from
the Indiana border, the billboard — and two others posted in town —
have proved highly controversial.
For Democrats, this may be the town President Obama helped save with the auto bailout. But, in a twist, Defiance and places like it could end up saving Mitt Romney in all-important Ohio.
That’s because Obama won Ohio four years ago in part by peeling off
support in Republican-leaning parts of the state such as Defiance. Now,
Romney is making a play to get those voters back, hoping that, here on
the brightening side of the recession, the election is not all about the
economy, and that juiced GOP turnout might swing a state that no
Republican president has ever lost.
Many of us remember Detective Joe Friday’s insistence on the
facts in the 1950s tv series, Dragnet. Today’s websites devoted to
fact-checking unavoidably remind us of that earnest detective. But the facts
being checked are not criminal (we hope), but rather political, during yet
another heated presidential campaign in which the truth is too often a casualty.
The Nation’s Ari Melber discusses the impact of fact-checking
on the Obama and Romney campaigns:
A tabulation of recent rulings from PolitiFact, a prominent
but increasingly controversial website devoted to fact-checking candidates'
claims, found that “statements by Mitt Romney and other Republicans” were rated
false “twice as often as statements by President Obama and other Democrats.”
That's a lot more false statements by Republicans, which makes it harder to
cling to the false equivalency that “both sides do it.”
Or maybe not.
A snap poll of conservative reactions shows that the study of Politifact,
from George Mason's Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), proves the
conservative theory that the fact-checkers are out to get Republicans.
“This discrepancy is not because the Romney campaign is egregiously
truth-challenged,” explainsThe Weekly Standard, “but because the
'fact checking' enterprise is more often than not partisan.” When you're done
attacking the messenger, go for the refs! That approach may be welcomed by
CMPA, however, which has played up its past studies as proof that life is hard
for the GOP. (Press release headlines include “GOP
Candidates Were Big Joke to TV Comics in 2011,” “TV News Coverage Helped
Sink Santorum…”, and, for good measure, “Arab Media
Boost Obama.” Oh that Arab Media—it just loves American presidents.)
In the end, it's true that your view of the findings depends on your view of
Politifact, though, because if you think they generally get it right, then
cumulative data like this is still bad for the right:
Writing for Esquire, author Tom Junod raises some difficult questions in his article titled, The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama. Junod’s words are especially troubling as my mindfulness meditation group is currently reading and discussing Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Calming the Fearful Mind: a Zen response to terrorism, which I recommend to all people who are sincerely interested in peacemaking.” Nhat Hanh warns:
The military doesn’t know where terrorism is. They cannot locate terrorism-it is in the heart. The more military force you use, the more terrorists you create, in your own country and in other countries as well.
But back to The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama:
Sure, we as a nation have always killed people. A lot of people. But no president has ever waged war by killing enemies one by one, targeting them individually for execution, wherever they are. The Obama administration has taken pains to tell us, over and over again, that they are careful, scrupulous of our laws, and determined to avoid the loss of collateral, innocent lives. They're careful because when it comes to waging war on individuals, the distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one. Especially when, on occasion, the individuals we target are Americans and when, in one instance, the collateral damage was an American boy.
Gallup’s headline for its recent poll of military veterans is misleading. Not all veterans - only male veterans - support Romney 58% to 34%.
As a veteran of the U.S. Air Force (WAF), I was annoyed at having to read down a couple of paragraphs in Gallup’s report to find that women veterans support Obama 47 to 42.
Full disclosure: I served in the military for primarily one reason: I came from a poor family and hoped to attend college on the GI bill.
Perhaps we should remind ourselves on Memorial Day that it is usually the poor who fight our wars.
It was peacetime when I served, and I tuned out the “kill or be killed” indoctrination in basic. And I later took advantage of the education benefits to earn a BA degree.
Conventional wisdom has it that military personnel and veterans of the armed forces typically cultivate a macho culture. In that light, it’s puzzling that such a large percentage of the guys pick Romney over Obama, neither of whom has served in the armed forces.
Surely, the Obama Administration has been more ruthless than the Bush Administration in its prosecution of war, incessant drone attacks - irregardless of civilian deaths - and take no prisoners strategy in dealing with terrorists.
On the other hand, although Obama’s attitude toward women can be condescending at times, he is more progressive on matters affecting women’s rights than Romney and company. Even so, women vets in this poll don’t give him much of a lead.
Our mild winter and early spring this year in Minnesota is nice in some ways, but it does trigger fears about global warming. This timely email from the Alaska Wilderness League merits the attention of all conscientious people, no matter where you pitch your tent on the Planet Earth.
Tomorrow will mark 23 years since the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s beautiful and wild Prince William Sound. This spill is considered one of the most devastating in history, with disastrous effects on wildlife and humans. Tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil still linger there today.
Nobody wants a repeat of the Exxon Valdez, but right now, Shell Oil’s drill ships are on their way to America’s Arctic Ocean to begin the most aggressive offshore Arctic drilling program in history. The remote Arctic Ocean, with its volatile weather and towering sea ice, is home to polar bears, walrus, whales and birds. It’s a beautiful but dangerous place – and if a spill should occur, the reality is that Shell has no viable plan to clean it up.
Please call President Obama today at (202) 456-1414 and ask him to protect America’s Arctic Ocean by stopping Shell’s risky drilling plans.
Shell is pushing to drill in our Arctic waters with no viable plan to clean up an oil spill in the Arctic’s extreme conditions, and with limited information about the Arctic’s marine environment. The fact is there is no proven way to clean an oil spill in sea ice. And even if Shell could clean up the oil, the Arctic Ocean is so remote – the nearest Coast Guard station is 1,000 miles away – that a quick response would be impossible.
Now, more than two decades after the Exxon Valdez disaster, the American people want real change when it comes to offshore drilling – not just business as usual. Right now, President Obama is considering whether or not he will stop Shell’s risky drilling plans. If he fails to act now, he could be left with the next major oil spill disaster on his hands – and the destruction of one of our planet’s most vital ecosystems.
Please call President Obama today at (202) 456-1414 and ask him to protect America’s Arctic Ocean.
Politico’s Josh Gerstein asks a question that should trouble all Americans, but especially those who feverishly supported candidate Obama in 2008 as he railed against his predecessor’s “failed policies of the past.” Gerstein wants to know, “What if Bush had done that?” And he notes in passing how the media shapes public opinion to support its pre-established narrative – it’s good to have that reality publicly acknowledged.
Gerstein writes (emphasis mine):
President Barack Obama has forged a surprising consensus on opposite ends of the political spectrum: They wonder how on earth he gets away with it.
A series of recent moves — from aggressively filling his reelection war chest to green-lighting shoot-to-kill orders against an American terror suspect overseas — would have triggered a massive backlash if George W. Bush had tried them, say former Bush administration officials and a few on the political left. Even Obama’s love for the links draws only gentle ribbing rather than the denunciations that helped drive Bush to give up the game for the balance of his presidency.
The muted public response has fueled frustration – and more than a little envy.
“A little bit of consistency from the media would be appreciated — and from the left-wing groups,” said Mark Corallo, director of public affairs at the Justice Department from 2002-05. “I don’t see anybody standing up. … Where is the outrage?”
Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, an icon of what the Obama White House famously dubbed “the professional left,” also sees a strange lack of interest toward some of Obama’s policies. Among them: his administration’s claim that the Constitution allows executive use of armed drones to kill U.S. citizens abroad deemed to be terrorist operatives.
“Virtually all the Democrats who were apoplectic about Bush and were constantly complaining about him ‘trampling on our values’ over eavesdropping and detention have been silent about assassination, even though it’s so much more severe,” Greenwald said. “It isn’t that Obama is necessarily any worse on civil liberties than Bush. The point is he’s able to get away with so much more.”
A White House spokesman declined to comment for this story. But Obama aides have noted that he takes plenty of heat for other policies — such as expanding entitlements or phasing out traditional light bulbs — that were far less controversial when Bush did them. Obama’s recent decision on contraception and religious employers triggered a political firestorm, but a similar policy in place throughout the Bush administration barely registered on the political radar.
Some differences in coverage flow from a simple truth: Stories that feed an established media narrative about a political figure get more attention than those that cut against it. And the press tends to blow up stories when partisans attack one another. Some of Obama’s practices, particularly in the war on terror, are supported by Republicans — even as they cringe at the unanimity.
Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson in 2009. Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com.
A couple of days ago, LadyBoomerNYC posted her support of the recently formed Justice Party’s candidate for president, Rocky Anderson.
According to his wiki page, Anderson is a well-qualified challenger in opposition to Obama and whoever emerges as the nominee from the messy GOP primary.
Coincidentally, a Washington Post-ABC poll reported today (Friday) that more than two-thirds of Americans would consider voting for a third-party candidate.
LBNYC said:
Perhaps there is a choice. Say what? …and we don’t have to vote for the worst of two evils. (Sorry Obama fans, if there are any of you left.)
Rocky Anderson for President! He’s running on the newly formed Justice Party ticket and telling it like it is: “I consider this a second party.” “We need a new paradigm where people are committed to representing the public interest.”
The Boomer’s post includes this video of Anderson’s appearance on Democracy Now:
The latest tentative debt deal, substantively shaped by Tea Party demands, confirms the premise of a national rightward shift offered by the Christian Science Monitor’s Liz Marlantes – her opinion piece is a must-read for those who care about the direction our nation is taking:
Washington
For a generation, he has been considered a model of conservatism in Washington – at moments, perhaps, the model. Over the course of his 34-year career, US Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah has clashed with Big Labor. He has championed right-wing judicial nominees. He has consistently opposed federal gun control measures and backed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He has sponsored or cosponsored a balanced budget amendment – which would require Congress to spend no more than it collects in revenues – no fewer than 17 times. In 2010, the American Conservative Union gave him a perfect 100 ranking.
Yet today Mr. Hatch faces formidable opposition – for not being conservative enough. Activists on the right are attacking him for his vote for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the financial-market bailout initiative, and his willingness to work with Democrats like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. They complain that he has voted to raise the debt ceiling 16 times. It's looking increasingly as if Hatch will face a Republican primary challenger next year – and could very well lose.
In some respects, this is simply a case of a senator who's spent more than three decades in Washington butting up against a public mood that is intensely antiestablishment and – particularly on the right – opposed to compromise. Like most longtime public servants, Hatch has cast a number of difficult votes over the years, and he has at times reached across the aisle in order to get things done.
But Hatch's troubles also say something about the way in which the nation's political needle has been moving. Over the past four decades – and more sharply over just the past few years – the geopolitical center of America has shifted rightward. It hasn't happened on all fronts – certainly, there are some areas where the country has clearly moved to the left, such as views on gay rights. But on a host of other issues, from guns to the role of government, the center of debate has edged closer to the conservative position, while activists on the right have moved even further out on the political spectrum.
Now that the dust has begun to settle from Friday night’s dash to the finish line to reach ashort-term budget agreement, President Obama is set to lay out a long-term spending plan this week.
From the AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama and Congress are shifting from short-term budget concerns to debates over the nation's long-term economic future, and everything - from Medicare and Medicaid cuts to tax hikes for the wealthy - is on the table.
In addition to calling for higher taxes for those earning more than $250,000 per year, the Wall Street Journal reports that the president has his sights on "changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy."
Much will be revealed at midweek, when the House and Senate are expected to vote on a budget for the remainder of this fiscal year and Obama unveils his plan to reduce the deficit, in part by scaling back the government's chief health programs for seniors and the poor. The House, too, may vote on Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's spending plan for next year as Democrats readied arguments that it proposed "Draconian" cuts to Americans who need help the most.
Hey, remember when Left-wing Dems joined forces with Karl Rove in 08 to declare Hillary Clinton too polarizing to be elected president? Well, she won the popular vote in the 08 primary despite the evil alliance between the Obama camp, the DNC, and the liberal media, and just yesterday, a March 30, 2011 Gallup poll ranked her above Obama, Biden, and Defense Secretary Gates.
Gallup’s Lydia Saad reports the following poll results for the woman once labeled as too polarizing:
Clinton enjoys extraordinary popularity among women, and particularly women 50 and older. She also receives support from a solid majority of independents and 40% of Republicans.
Underscoring that views of Clinton and Obama are not one and the same, Clinton is seen in a favorable light by 45% of those who separately say they disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president. Naturally, she is also viewed favorably by 89% of those who approve of Obama's job performance.
It's Christmas Eve and all through the House, not a creature is stirring, not even a representative, and nothing's happening in the Senate Chamber either.
But out in the media, it's the same old, same old. Don't those pundits, correspondents, reporters and what have you ever sleep? And you can be sure they're still keeping score on which politician is winning and which one is not, regardless of the legislation passed or possibly in the works for the next session.
I mean, what's more important: how much stuff was passed due to or in spite of Barack Obama or whether or not Americans are safer and better off than they were at his inauguration? The ranks of the unemployed might vote in the negative.
Ronald Brownstein over at the National Journal gives it a go this morning, calling the past congressional year One for the Books :
This month’s final flurry of legislative successes for President Obama and the Democratic Congress underscores the difficulty of rendering a single verdict on their tumultuous two years in power.
In November, Democrats forfeited control of the House after suffering the largest midterm losses for either party since 1938. They absorbed stinging defeats in the Senate as well. But before that, and to an utterly unexpected extent after that as well, Obama and congressional Democrats passed into law an enormous agenda. This Congress will enter the history books for the magnitude of both its political losses and its legislative victories.
Without acknowledging that he and his sexist colleagues in the liberal media joined forces to take down Hillary Clinton and elevate the unvetted and inexperienced Barack Obama to the presidency, Bob Herbert demands to know this morning in the NY Times, “Who is Barack Obama?”
Herbert writes:
Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.
Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.
Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it.
Mr. Obama’s campaign mantra was “change” and most of his supporters took that to mean that he would change the way business was done in Washington and that he would reverse the disastrous economic policies that favored mega-corporations and the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor.
After detailing the ways in which Mr. Obama has betrayed his most ardent supporters in his campaign for office, Herbert concludes:
Mr. Obama will deliver his State of the Union address Wednesday night. The word is that he will offer some small bore assistance to the middle class. But more important than the content of this speech will be whether the president really means what he says. Americans want to know what he stands for, where his line in the sand is, what he’ll really fight for, and where he wants to lead this nation.
They want to know who their president really is.
In the meantime, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just keeps on being the Hillary we've always known her to be, working her heart out in support of the rights of all people wherever in the world she finds herself.
And guess what? She couldn't care less what the media thinks about her.
In early December, Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the banking bailouts, posted an article online titled America Without a Middle Class. I was so impressed by her blunt assessment of our current economic situation that I emailed the link to a family member who agreed that Warren got it right.
Warren wrote:
The contrast with the big banks could not be sharper. While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.
And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families -- from people already working hard to make ends meet -- the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class.
Pundits talk about "populist rage" as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is "too big to fail." They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work.
Families are ready for change. According to polls, large majorities of Americans have welcomed the Obama Administration's proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The CFPA would be answerable to consumers -- not to banks and not to Wall Street. The agency would have the power to end tricks-and-traps pricing and to start leveling the playing field so that consumers have the tools they need to compare prices and manage their money. The response of the big banks has been to swing into action against the Agency, fighting with all their lobbying might to keep business-as-usual. They are pulling out all the stops to kill the agency before it is born. And if those practices crush millions more families, who cares -- so long as the profits stay high and the bonuses keep coming.
So it’s no wonder that President Obama summoned Warren to Washington the day after the Dems’ loss up in what used to be Kennedy country. Warren had already spelled out very clearly the outrage that swept Scott Brown to victory on Tuesday.
And not surprisingly, Ethan Porter, associate editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, is promoting Warren as a Democratic candidate for higher office in 2012. In a Boston Globe op-ed, Porter writes:
Warren has spent her career laying the groundwork for what might be called progressive populism. From her perch in Cambridge, she’s excoriated the unfair credit and lending practices that, in part, gave rise to the current crisis. She was the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which, if created, would regulate credit cards and mortgages in the same way home appliances are regulated now. (Full disclosure: Warren once wrote about the agency in the publication I help edit.) And well before the bubble broke in the summer of 2007, when America was still riding high on George W. Bush’s economy, Warren was speaking out against the incredible pressure the 21st century economy was putting on the middle class. She was derided as a Cassandra, but she was right.
In discussing the several major problems facing the nation with Obama supporters, I occasionally remind them that in these troubled times the country elected one of the most inexperienced candidates ever to run for president. Visibly upset, my friends usually rush to change the subject.
Come to think of it, I don’t recall the media dwelling much on Obama’s lack of experience during either the primary or the general election in 2008. Instead, euphoric media reps focused on the pied piper’s eloquence and charisma as he continued to draw large youthful crowds and incite the greed of Democratic party leaders with his fundraising ability.
So it’s kind of surprising this morning to come across this comment by Peter Baker in the NY Times (emphasis mine):
Mr. Obama is hardly the first president to run into trouble after the bunting and balloons have vanished, but his slipping support has fueled a narrative about a young and relatively inexperienced president who overinterpreted his mandate and overreached in his policies. His job approval rating has fallen to 56 percent from 62 percent since February in polls taken by The New York Times and CBS News. Other surveys register an even sharper drop.
Baker’s article raises some good questions and points to ponder as we await yet another major speech by our president scheduled this Wednesday. Baker writes:
WASHINGTON — President Obama returned to the White House from his summer break on Sunday determined to jump-start his struggling presidency by reasserting command of the health care debate and recalibrating expectations that some advisers believe got away from him.
With his honeymoon seemingly over and his White House on the defensive, Mr. Obama faces what friends and foes alike call a make-or-break moment in his young administration. Because he has elevated health care to such a singular priority, advisers said he must force through a credible plan or risk crippling his presidency.
“It goes without saying that a lot is riding now on his ability to re-energize the health care debate and bring it home to a successful conclusion,” said John D. Podesta, who ran Mr. Obama’s transition and still advises him on health care, energy and other issues. “Nothing will influence the perception of the presidency more than whether he can be successful in getting a health care bill through the Congress.”
Recognizing the stakes, Mr. Obama has worked on a strategy for autumn to regain the initiative. He talked on Thursday from Camp David with Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Harry M. Reid, the Senate majority leader. He spent part of Sunday working on this week’s speech to the nation and dispatched top surrogates to the talk shows to try to reframe the health care debate. And he has two meetings scheduled for Monday with his health policy and political advisers planned around a trip to Cincinnati to observe Labor Day.
As much as health care has consumed the president, other vexing issues await him in the fall. In the coming weeks, he will decide whether to order thousands more troops to Afghanistan and pursue new sanctions against Iran. He will host a meeting of the Group of 20 nations to spur the world economy and push forward with arms control negotiations with Russia.
Now, as he prepares for Wednesday’s address before a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama and his team are simultaneously trying to figure out how they got into this dilemma and how to get out of it. An administration that swept into office just seven months ago on a wave of hope and optimism has burned through good will and public patience in swift fashion and now finds itself under fire from both the left and the right.
The denigration of all women by the abuse of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary will continue to echo around the world in years to come, aided by the occasional reminder such as the photo that went viral in Dec. 2008 featuring a very drunk Jon Favreau groping a life-size cardboard cutout of the newly designated secretary of state.
As Obama’s head speechwriter, the youthful Favreau continues to serve as the voice of the leader of the free world; further evidence – in case you needed it - of our president’s lack of concern for the rights of women, gays, and other minorities besides his own when his election is not at stake.
For some odd reason, Favreau came to mind this morning as I read Anne Applebaum’s op-ed in the Washington Post titled “An Overlooked Force in Iran.” Maybe I was mentally comparing the image of Favreau sexually molesting our secretary of state with Applebaum’s description below of photographs of courageous Iranian women:
Women in sunglasses and headscarves, speaking through megaphones, brandishing cameras, carrying signs: When they first appeared, the photographs of the 2005 Tehran University women's rights protests were a powerful reminder of the true potential of Iranian women. The images were uplifting; they featured women of many ages; and they went on circulating long after the protests themselves died down. Now they have been replaced by a far more brutal and already infamous set of images: The photographs and video taken this past weekend of a young Iranian woman, allegedly shot by a government sniper, dying on the streets of Tehran.
I don't know whether the girl in the photographs is destined to become this revolution's symbolic martyr, as some are already predicting. I do know, however, that there is a connection between the violence in Iran over the past week and the women's rights movement that has slowly gained strength in Iran over the past several years.
Rubbing salt into the wounds of those of us still inwardly seething about the disgraceful treatment of Hillary Clinton in 2008 and the subsequent sexist attacks on Sara Palin, Appelbaum points out that our still Obama-jaded media can’t even be expected to accurately report the revolution in Iran:
In the United States, the most America-centric commentators have somberly attributed the strength of recent demonstrations to the election of Barack Obama. Others want to give credit to the democracy rhetoric of the Bush administration. Still others want to call this a "Twitter revolution" or a "Facebook revolution," as if zippy new technology alone had inspired the protests. But the truth is that the high turnout has been the result of many years of organizational work, carried out by small groups of civil rights activists and above all women's groups, working largely unnoticed and without much outside help.
Since 2006, the One Million Signatures Campaign has been circulating a petition, online and in print, that calls for an end to laws that discriminate against women and the enactment of laws that provide equal rights for women in marriage, equal rights to divorce, equal inheritance rights and equal testimony rights for men and women in court. Though based outside the country, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, founded by a pair of sisters, translates and publishes online fundamental human rights documents; it maintains an online database of the names of thousands of victims of the Islamic Republic as well. In the past decade, Iranian women have participated in student strikes as well as teachers' strikes, and in organizations of Bahai, Christian and other religious groups whose members are deemed "heretics" by the regime.
Applebaum reiterates:
Not Obama, not Bush and not Twitter, in other words, but years of work and effort lie behind the public display of defiance and, in particular, the number of women on the streets -- and their presence matters. Their presence could strike the deepest blow against the regime. For at the heart of the ideology of the Islamic Republic is its claim to divine inspiration: Its leadership is legitimate, as is its harsh repression of women, because God has decreed that it is so. The outright rejection of this creed by tens of thousands of women, not just over the past weekend but over the past decade, has to weaken the Islamic Republic's claim to invincibility, in Iran and across the Middle East. The regime's political elite knows this well: It is no accident that the two main challengers to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian presidential campaign promised to repeal some of the laws that discriminate against women, and it is no accident that the leading challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, used his wife, a political scientist and former university chancellor, in his campaign appearances and posters.
The Islamic Republic is not alone in its claim to divine inspiration. We recall that Dubya claimed guidance from above for eight years followed by Obama who has often been referred to as “the messiah.”
Appelbaum concludes:
The regime may succeed. Violence usually succeeds, at least in the short term, in intimidating people. In the long term, however, the links, structures, organizations and groups set up by Iranian women, not to mention the photographs of the past week, will continue to gnaw away at the Iranian regime's legitimacy -- and we should take note. I cannot count how many times I've been told in recent years that "women's issues" in the Islamic world are a secondary subject: Whether the discussion is of the Afghan constitution or the Saudi government, the standard line among most commentators has always been that other things -- stability, security, oil -- matter more. But regimes that repress the civil and human rights of half their population are inherently unstable. Sooner or later, there has to be a backlash. In Iran, we're watching one unfold.
Sad to say, here in America, our president has only recently told us that “women’s issues” and the rights of the LGBT community are secondary to all of the other important matters he has on his plate.
Come to think of it, the Obama regime has begun to appear a bit wobbly.
The solicitation I received today from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee offered the chance to win an opportunity to have my photo taken with Barack Obama. Opting to unsubscribe from the DSCC’s mailing list, I included a message giving my reasons why I left the Democratic Party a year ago and re-registered as non-affiliated. I listed the usual: sexism, misogyny, ageism, Rules Committee violations, rigged convention and in general, the party’s eager embrace of the tactics of left-wing extremists - whatever it took to nominate Obama.
I’d even become ashamed to describe myself as liberal or progressive, so I had only mixed feelings when I read Dana Milbank’s opening line in today’s Washington Sketch, “President Obama is just killing the progressive movement.”
Milbank reports:
For the past few years, liberal activists have gathered in Washington each spring for the Take Back America conference, where speaker after speaker -- Obama sometimes among them -- would give rollicking denunciations of the Bush administration before packed rooms of partisans.
But now that Obama has actually taken back America, the activists at this year's gathering feel a bit like the dog that finally caught up with the car. Organizers changed the name from Take Back America to America's Future Now, but that didn't prevent a sharp decline in participation.
At sparsely attended sessions this week at the Omni Shoreham, the progressive leaders debated whether they should shift their efforts to defending Obama, or fighting him when he strays from liberal doctrine. "It was easy taking back America," Robert Borosage, the conference organizer, told about 250 of the faithful at yesterday's closing luncheon. "Now we have to remake it. . . . That's the hard work."
Apparently so. Speakers at the closing session exhorted the liberals to take back America -- from Obama. "The president of the most powerful country in the world is doing all right, but there are a lot of people in this country who are not doing all right," writer Naomi Klein told the crowd. "Obama is making us stupid," she added. "Love can make you stupid."
Comparing last year’s energy at the conference to this year’s lethargy, Milbank writes:
Hickey estimates attendance dropped from 2,500 last year to 1,500 this year, and even that may overstate things. At yesterday morning's four concurrent "issue briefings," 585 chairs were set out. Only 213 of them were occupied, including just 15 for the session on global warming. "Radio row" was quiet, the "TV Terrace" was empty, and two people sat typing on "Blogger Boulevard."
"It's been much less busy this year," said a guy in the nearly empty exhibit hall who was handing out stickers from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force saying "Power is Sexy." Nobody was shopping at the book kiosk in the middle of the room, where the titles leaned toward the battles of the George W. Bush years: "The Constitution in Crisis . . . a Blueprint for Impeachment." "The Uprising." "Plunder and Blunder." "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule."
