This is from my major site and where most of my stuff is published.
Day: June 22, 2008
Democrats Are Cowards!
In an across-the-board capitulation to the Bush White House, the House of Representatives voted at the end of this week to approve another $162 billion to fund the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while also passing legislation that legalizes the administration’s domestic spying program.
Bush credited “bipartisan cooperation” for a war-funding vote that would give “our troops the funds they need to prevail without tying the hands of our commanders in the field or imposing artificial timetables for withdrawal.” The surveillance law, he added, would “help our intelligence professionals learn our enemies’ plans for new attacks.”
The congressional Democrats have given the administration more funds than it requested for the two wars—paying in advance for most of fiscal 2009—in order to avoid another vote on war funding in October, on the eve of the national elections. Their aim is to get the issue “off the table” now so that they can better posture as opponents of the war and appeal to mass antiwar sentiments at the height of the election contest.
In a pathetic and hypocritical speech from the floor of Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared: “Let us hope that this is the last time there will ever be another dollar spent without restraints, without conditions, without direction. Why should we trust the same judgment that got us here in the first place in this war?”
The Democratic-led Congress has passed this legislation to pay for another year of war and to eviscerate constitutional rights less than five months before an election in which they intend to make two-faced appeals to the massive popular hostility towards the Bush administration.
What the actions this week on Capitol Hill make clear, however, is that the election of a Democratic administration headed by Barack Obama in the fall will by no means spell an end to the reactionary policies pursued by Washington over the previous eight years.
They are cowards! Not a person of principle left in politics! And they wonder why their popularity is at 23%. They have done little that they were sent to Washington to do–they give everything lip service, but none have the conviction to end the crap of the Bush years. And it does not look like the next 8 years or so will be any better. You have my sympathy!
Republican BS On Energy
In a piece written by H. Rosenfeld, he states the following:
Remedies for soaring gasoline prices proposed by President Bush and Sen. John McCain, who the GOP prays succeeds him, would increase America’s capacity to produce more energy from its own resources.
What those remedies would not do is reduce the cost of gas anytime soon or much ever. The President’s demand that Congress immediately lift its bans on exploring for oil and natural gas off-shore and on federal lands wouldn’t be productive for at least seven years, more likely 10. The impact on world prices, and on the cost of a gallon of gas in America, would be minimal. That’s because the U.S. controls, at most, only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves.
Nowhere in the Bush or McCain proposals is there so much as a hint that all of the added oil and gas would be retained exclusively for American consumption, which presently accounts for a quarter of the world’s production. That’s because it wouldn’t. Instead America’s mammoth oil companies would continue to seek the highest returns, meaning the growing markets in Asia especially.
The 200 mile off-shore exploration requires the use of drill ships outfitted with the gear to exploit oil fields located deep in ocean beds. The makers of the these ships are furiously building, but the world competition for their product is severe. That adds to the time lag between finding a field and exploiting it commercially.
For his part, McCain came out in another speech for the building of 45 nuclear power plants in the U.S. by 2030, and another 55 some unspecified time down the road. At present, the 104 nuclear reactors still on line produce about 20 percent of the country’s electricity. Bush also routinely invokes nuclear power as an energy shortage antidote.
Their reasoning is why not step up nuclear’s role because it does not add to the global warming as fossil fuels do.
What McCain did not discuss was the practicality of doing so. The federal government over the years has dedicated billions of dollars in subsidies to the nuclear industry. But that would be chicken feed to what it would cost to erect new plants today. It could well be so much that any gains would be overtaken by their costs. Besides, McCain has no plan to add to nuclear subsidies, pretty much undermining his supposedly bold idea.
Dealing with the challenge of the energy crisis requires more than political tomfoolery that the Republican President and the Republican candidate have so far mustered. The solution rests in the nearer future much more on government supported conservation. On their own, Americans are beginning to drive less. They should be enabled to do so in more efficient vehicles and encouraged to otherwise modify the profligate ways energy is consumed in this country. That actually would bring costs down.
May I suggest that the voter take the time to read about the issues and vote from knowledge. They have been voting for BS for too many years and that is why we are in this pickle now. Lies and pandering have done nothing to improve the lives of working Americans.
The Times, They Are A Changing?
Promises of a change, a new way of politics in Washington and the straight talk express are both coming off their tracks. The more there is a call for change, the more things will stay the same. Reality is that these a two guys who want to be the president and will use all techniques they have at there disposal to achieve the one thing they desire.
Recently the American people gave the Democrats a chance to do the change we all were looking for, but instead the American people got the same lame bunch of politicians, using the same lame technique of bitch, offer and cave.
The Congress has an approval rating of 23%, but we can explain it as a transition period until the next president is sworn in. To that I yell BS, it is the same technique regardless of the circumstance. They talk a good clean talk while on the stump for votes, but once sworn in, it does not take long to revert back to the same lame actions.
There is an old saying about war, “the first casualty is truth” and now thanks to Joan Vennochi of boston.com we have another truism, ” As they are swiftly finding out, principle is the first casualty in the war to be president”.
Why Democrats Lose
This is an interesting turn that is covered in George Lakoff’s new book, “The Political Mind”.
Lakoff blames “neoliberals” and their “Old Enlightenment” mentality for the Democratic Party’s weakness. They think they can win elections by citing facts and offering programs that serve voters’ interests. When they lose, they conclude that they need to move farther to the right, where the voters are.
This is all wrong, Lakoff explains. Neuroscience shows that pure facts are a myth and that self-interest is a conservative idea. In a “New Enlightenment,” progressives will exploit these discoveries. They’ll present frames instead of raw facts. They’ll train the public to think less about self-interest and more about serving others. It’s not the platform that needs to be changed. It’s the voters.
The basis of Lakoff’s theory is simple: the mind is the brain. Any connection that forms between your thoughts also forms between your neurons. As you internalize a metaphor, a circuit in your brain “physically constitutes the metaphor.” This parallel development continues as mental complexity increases. “Narratives are brain structures,” he proposes.
The general idea makes sense: brain and mind are dual aspects of the same thing. But Lakoff seems to forget that the language of mental construction is itself a metaphor. He describes how synapses are strengthened, neurons “wire together,” “neural binding” fuses “permanent circuits” and a worldview solidifies through “long-term bindings to the core.” With these elaborations, he mechanizes the brain-mind relationship. The brain’s structure and dynamics don’t just embody thought, he says; they physically constrain it.
To Lakoff, this explains why conservatives win elections. They manipulate us more effectively. They’ve been “preparing the seedbed of our brains with their high-level general principles so that when ‘tax relief’ was planted, their framing could take root and sprout.” And “as a result, progressive messages don’t take root.”
And there is the key to wining elections–manipulation!