Month: October 2013

Civil Rights And Mississippi

I know that I do bad mouth my state of Mississippi from time to time….but the politics just makes it too easy.  But recently the state approved the building of a Civil Rights Museum….cool right?

From an article written in AJE…….Mississippi to build nation’s first civil rights museum…….

JACKSON, Miss. – It’s an unremarkable plot of land, nestled between the state’s archives, fairgrounds and Capitol building, but history will be made there Thursday when state officials and civil rights leaders gather to break ground for the country’s first state-funded civil rights museum.

Built in conjunction with a new state history museum erected on the same site, both are scheduled to open in 2017 in time for the state’s bicentennial. The two museums will be built “side-by-side” as the locals say, and will be connected to one another by a common entryway, sharing classroom space, an auditorium and resources.

With its violent history of hate crimes and staunch resistance to the civil rights movement, it might surprise some that Mississippi would be the first state to fund the building of a civil rights museum, signaling the beginning of a major change in race relations in one of the most historically segregated states in the country.

The project will cost Mississippi close to $90 million and gives the state an opportunity to start an open discussion, albeit a painful one, about the atrocities that took place there during the civil rights movement, such as the assassination of Medgar Evers in June 1963 or the murders of three civil rights workers a year later, which led to an investigation the FBI called “Mississippi Burning.”

It’s also an opportunity for the poorest state in the nation to join the growing boom in heritage tourism and to attract visitors from around the world.

Now comes a statement from a previous governor…….

“This is going to make a powerful statement I think, not only to the state but to the country,” said William Winter, a Democrat and governor from 1980 to 1984. “That in Mississippi, we now understand the importance of the participation of both races of black folks and white folks working together, to build a state, and out of that come the mutual respect and understanding of our common humanity at the same time that we understand the differences of the history that go into our respective backgrounds.”

Okay here I go…..black folk and white folk?  Who the Hell talks like that?  Not since the 50’s anyway.  I am sorry….they mean well but I think it reeks of racist undertones to me…..Does anyone else see it?  This in a state that still looks down on blacks as some not all that equal…..to be fair not ALl but a lot of the older Mississippians are still living in 1950.

I live of the Coast and I joke about the rest of the state….I say once you get 30 miles inland they should erect a sign that says…”Welcome now set your clock back 150 years”!

Your thoughts please……

Syria Is Still There

In these days of scandal after scandal….we Americans just do not have the time to worry about those of a month ago…….we have been way too busy worrying about defunding some law…..but while you were sitting around in your Aqua Man shorts eating Cheetos the world kept turning.

If you recall awhile back we had our shorts in a twist because of the chemical weapons used by that bastard Assad…..(pause here for reflection or to use Google)……..

Part of my daily routine is to read newspapers from around the world……mostly from the Middle East….and few days ago I came across this story……

Translated From Arabic

The OPCW said on Wednesday that its inspectors had checked 11 out of 20 sites identified by Damascus and destroyed chemical weapons equipment at six sites.

Inspectors are making “good progress” in making chemical sites inoperable, he said, although “a few” sites remain inaccessible for security reasons.

The organisation, which last week was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the United Nations currently have about 60 experts working in Syria to eradicate chemical weapons, around a month after the OPCW accepted President Bashar al-Assad’s application to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, in a bid to stave off a possible Western military strike.

So far Syria has won rare praise for its cooperation with the inspectors, but the UN has stressed that key deadlines in the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons should be met.

This included verifying Syria’s disclosed chemical weapons, identifying key equipment, destroying production facilities and starting the destruction of Category 3 chemical weapons by November 1.

Syria has come to its senses and is on board with the destruction of the CWs…..I keep waiting for the US news to report on this…..and so far I have been disappointed.

So far the reports, not all but most, that work in a war are not very good at their jobs……and this is especially true by those working in the Middle East……

(Newser) – Journalists have given us the wrong impression about four Middle East wars since 9/11—but how did they blow it so badly? In the London Review of Books, Patrick Cockburn looks at how the media fumbled the ball in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. In each case, he argues, reporters portrayed Western involvement as humanitarian and over-emphasized its military successes. “More than most armed struggles, the conflicts have been propaganda wars in which newspaper, television and radio journalists played a central role,” he writes. But why?

  • “Irregular or guerrilla wars are always intensely political,” he writes, requiring reporters to take secondary sources with a grain of salt and confirm facts on the ground. Great example: We thought the Iraqi army was crushed in 2003 by US airstrikes, but a closer look at their tanks showed that they had been abandoned long before those airstrikes arrived. The Iraqi army “had simply disbanded and gone home.”
  • The media oversimplified the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when they “dovetailed with political propaganda” that demonized Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. “The crippling inadequacies of the opposition were ignored.”
  • Reporters soaked up the revolutionary spirit that prevailed during the Arab Spring, believing that cell phones and Facebook had swept aside ancient Middle East antagonisms. No such luck, apparently.
  • But Cockburn defends journalists against the criticism that they just hide out in hotels: “A more substantive charge is that they write too much about firefights and skirmishes, the fireworks of war, while neglecting the broader picture that might determine the outcome.”

Click for Cockburn’s full piece.

I try to do my part to make reporting more accurate on the situation in the Middle East….most of the information the average American has is mostly false!

You Are Fracking Kidding Me?

We hear so much these days about the oil extraction technique, Fracking, is a common term…….Depending on what news outlet you are a fan of…..we NEVER get both sides of the controversy at the same time….instead we get one side or the other and NO one actually works off the same data to make their points….instead they pay some think tank to come up with a position that supports whichever side you fall down on……

To make an informed decision on whether to support or oppose the issue we need info…..

(Newser) – For as big a role as fracking plays in US energy production, the national conversation about it is sadly lacking, writes Gretchen Goldman at LiveScience. For that, blame the companies involved in the hunt for natural gas—along with inept government agencies, writes Goldman, an environmental engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Companies have “fended off citizens with silence,” she writes. “They say little about the technological practices they use, including information about the chemicals they inject into the earth and the wastewater that comes back.”

Meanwhile, state and federal agencies “have been asleep at the switch,” unable to keep up with industry advances and proper regulations. All this is not to say that fracking is evil—some communities might be perfectly willing to accept higher risks for the payoff. But the point is that the entire debate needs to get better so people can make informed choices, writes Goldman. “Science is like a trusty flashlight in these contentious debates,” she writes. “Let’s let it illuminate our path, no matter which road we take.” Click for her full column, or for a “toolkit” of information for citizens from the UCS.

To me it sounds like a great way to separate the oil from the sand……but it also sounds like there are more problems with the system that solutions for our oil consumption.  Until we have a meeting of both sides and hear both sides using the same data…there is NO way that an informed opinioon can be made….all we are doing is regurgitating talking points and slogans…..not the truth.

Is The Republic Disintegrating?

I will be in and out of the blog…my 93 year old father is in the hospital…..so if you miss me I will be checking in whenever I get the chance…….thanx.

The world is coming down around our throats……the government shutdown, the Congressional dysfunction and the talk radio crowd….all these parts of the equation are falling into place….into place for the government to fail and fall…….there is so much that could happen and none of it will be good……

To be truthful as an old aging hippie radical I could get into all this….the problem is that if and when the government goes down in flames it will open a door that could very well never be closed…..the door to the other side….the dark side.  Now it will depend on where you are on the political spectrum on whether this is a good thing or not…….

The signs are there and Howard Fineman of the HufPo has listed them……

1. The Tea Party

In radical reaction to the Wall Street bailout of 2008, the stimulus of 2009 and Obamacare in 2010, the tea party aims to defund and delegitimize the federal government. Crippling the legislative machinery is a means, but also an end in itself.

2. Slow Growth

The tea party has a point — up to a point. Politicians flagrantly overspend on wars and social programs simultaneously because the U.S. economy had always risen fast enough to keep us afloat. That era is now over. We have to make painful choices, but aren’t willing to confront them frankly.

3. Obamacare

The U.S. was the only major industrial country without national heath care, and even though Obamacare relies on the typical American mix of private sector profit and government regulation, it remains a bone in the throat of American politics. No entitlement program ever passed with so little bipartisan support (though Social Security was close). President Barack Obama assumed that a favorable Supreme Court ruling and his own reelection in 2012 would settle the issue. He was wrong. Whether he could have done anything else to soothe the tea party fear and anger is doubtful, but he didn’t really try.

4. Scorecards

The AFL-CIO invented a rating system for “pro-labor” voting records; Christian conservatives adopted it. But anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint amped up the volume. Republican members of Congress live in mortal fear of a bad rating and vote accordingly.

5. Two Cultures

Americans used to inhabit a world of shared social mores, even if millions of people were coerced into accepting them. Now voters now live in two barely overlapping moral worlds: Secular Metropolitan America and Biblical Traditional America. And that separation is enhanced by the isolating force of modern media. Americans can spend most of their waking hours enveloped in one journalistic gestalt or another, staring at one cable show/website version of reality or the other. It makes political differences harder to bridge.

6. Congressional Ignorance

For a host of reasons — the collapse of Congress’ committee system, the frantic pace of media coverage, the increasing complexity of legislation, the rise of massive, catch-all “continuing resolutions,” the time spent on raising campaign cash — for all of those reasons and others, a shocking number of lawmakers have no idea what they are debating, denouncing or voting on. “An amazing percentage of people here are intellectually lazy or distracted or ignorant or all three,” one senator told me, anonymously.

7. Gargantuan Money

As Democratic strategist James Carville once said, money is not only the “milk of politics, it is the powdered milk and even the evaporated milk.” But not since the Gilded Age has fantastically rich money been able to exert such single-minded and focused control. The U.S. Supreme Court is hell-bent on expanding that power. The result so far has been to unchain the militantly anti-government right, led by the billionaire likes of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. They have neither the patience for nor a belief in the “regular order” of Congress or its half-a-loaf legislative agreements. They are used to spending cash to enforce their unconditional way.

8. No Big Tents

Political parties have collapsed as a means of whipping up consent. They don’t control the money; fat cats do. They don’t control the agenda; ideological interest groups do. All they have left is their reassuring absolutes: no new taxes for Republicans; defend Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare for Democrats. The more ideologically monochromatic the parties have become, the less able they are to engineer pragmatic legislative deals. As political scholars Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann put it, we now have all-or-nothing parliamentary-style “tribal” parties in a delicately balanced separation-of-powers system.

9. My District Is My Castle

Gerrymandering is nothing new. The name and the practice date to the early 19th century. But a combination of technology and federal civil rights laws has produced an unusually large number of “safe” congressional districts, both red and blue. Democrats obtained more high-percentage “minority” districts; Republicans used control of state legislatures to draw more white conservative ones. The situation suited both parties, if not the country. The result: tea party Republicans can issue demands with impunity, and “moderate” Republicans risk a challenge from the right if they’re seen as collaborators.

10. The End Of ‘Regular Order’

The old legislative machinery of Congress has been largely destroyed, which means that every major bill is an existential crisis and every crisis a possible meltdown. Budget reforms of the 1970s, meant to smooth the flow of financial decisions, gummed up the works instead. The committee system lies in ruins, robbed of patronage, earmarks, privacy and seniority – that is, the discipline and grease that enabled deal-making. Everything is rolled into one life-or-death struggle.

11. They Either Don’t Know Or Hate Each Other

Congress mirrors our socially divided culture. Members have little contact with those in the other party. They are too busy raising money, feeding their favorite media beasts or plotting partisan strategy. The “schmooze factor” can be overrated, but deep personal relationships do help, as MSNBC host and former Hill staffer Chris Matthews documents in his new book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked. Today it’s just the opposite: Members of one party campaign against their “colleagues” in the other, even showing up in person in that colleague’s home state or district. Check out the relationship between Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell.

12. Misjudging Obama

Much of the “mainstream media” has dismissed the president as a weak negotiator, and many Democrats were upset at his deals to extend the Bush tax cuts in 2010, to install the sequestration mechanism in 2011 and not to enact more sweeping tax hikes in 2012. But that chatter led Republicans to underestimate Obama’s resolve and to assume they could force concessions on the one item he held most dear: Obamacare. It was a disastrous tactical choice. The public has doubts about the health care program — doubts reinforced by the sloppy rollout of the insurance exchanges. But the public also doesn’t want to use the government shutdown or debt ceiling fight to send health care messages.

13. The New Iowa

There once was a hiatus between presidential campaigns. And there used to be a tradition that new senators didn’t start running for president the moment they arrived in Washington. No more. The insatiable demands of fundraising, organizing and media attention are one reason. Then-Sen. Obama’s example in 2005 is another. No wonder Sen. Ted Cruz, who arrived only months ago, is leading the Republican rebellion as way to run for president. He couldn’t care less if he ever passes a bill in Congress. In fact, his whole campaign is premised on not passing things.

14. Apocalypse America

Win-win is a cool idea — for social media and much of business life. But America’s public and entertainment culture wants a narrative of total victory, crushing blows, winner-take-all contests and paranoid, apocalyptic sagas. White House aides talk about “breaking the will” of the tea party, and they glory in each new poll that shows the GOP’s public approval is plummeting toward single digits. (Yet how can you celebrate a prostrate GOP if the worldwide economy is in shambles?) We live in a time when ultimate fighting trumps boxing; football trumps baseball; talent contests trump variety shows; “The Walking Dead” is the new “Friends.” No wonder Washington is the way it is. The biters are everywhere.

15. You’re Not My President

It’s hard to know when in the modern era Americans stopped believing that whoever was president was president of all the people. It may have started with Lyndon Johnson, whose ascension after the assassination of John F. Kennedy was bitterly resented by the Kennedy crowd. Many voters came to see Richard Nixon as an illegal usurper. In 1992, many Republicans refused to accept the legitimacy of Bill Clinton’s election, an attitude that led ultimately to his impeachment. But there is nothing in recent decades to match the visceral fear and hatred that a minority of Americans express for Barack Obama, whom they see as an alien, dictatorial force. There is no denying there is an element of race and xenophobia to it. To be sure, Obama’s most passionate foes wouldn’t like any big-city, liberal, Harvard-trained constitutional lawyer. But the fact that this one is black and has an unusual-for-America name just adds to the alienation. Obama’s fans flocked to him because of his biography. But the flip side of hagiography is demonization, and that is where his enemies are now. To say the least, that makes doing a deal with him difficult

We Americans can save our beloved Republic…..but not by sitting on our hands and ignoring the problems with the hope they will go away….they will NOT!  Or we could do nothing and let the disintegration continue……it is your choice….all I ask is that you choose wisely!

Where Have All The Burkeans Gone?

Long time passing,

Gone to museums everyone.

Now that I got the ’60’s outta my mind let’s move on……….

I miss my conservative counterparts—–as I am an old fart and enjoy the lively liberal vs conservative debate……but today everyone wants to be in the ‘middle’……. the exchanges that I was trained for in my political philosophy days are long gone.

I am talking about the conservatism of Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism……..Burkeans believe in personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, individual liberty, traditional American values and a strong national defense.  Believe the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals.  Conservative policies generally emphasize empowerment of the individual to solve problems……….society is not merely a loose collection of individuals but a living organism comprising closely connected, interdependent members. Conservatives thus favor institutions and practices that have evolved gradually and are manifestations of continuity and stability. Government’s responsibility is to be the servant, not the master, of existing ways of life.

In short, conservatism endeavors to preserve the existing institutions, principles and policies…….we could debate a lot of things but NOTHING about the Tea Party assumes that it has these characteristics in mind.

I miss real conservatives because the debate has degraded into insults and lies…..the days of collecting facts and then arguing over the interpretation has gone by way of the do-do bird.  Today the debate is in the form of 3 minute interviews or 30 second sound bites filled with lies and misinformation.

The loud mouths of today believe in a much different bunch of characteristics that they falsely call conservatism….these are…….

Privatization of public enterprises

Deregulation of the economy

Massive tax cuts

“Monetarists” solutions to keep inflation in check even with the chance of increasing unemployment

Strict control of organized labor

Reduction in public expenditures especially social spending

Down sizing government

Expansion of international markets

Remove controls on the flow of global financial markets

These are the things that the Tea Party try to argue as conservatism…..it is NOT!  It is neo-liberalism!  Pretend all you want but a neo-liberal agenda is NOT conservative, in the true sense of the philosophy.

This is why I say there are NO conservatives left in the GOP……what few pretend to be conservative will bow to the loudest mouth in the party…..sadly in today’s political world that is the neo-liberalism of the Tea Party.

Sadly, I feel that the days of a true conserv vs lib debate is gone….long gone and may never return until sanity returns to politics.