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Is this Really the Most Important Election in a Generation?

October 19th, 2012 | Posted by Rich in Blog | Featured - ()

by Rich Abete

 

Every four years, the political analysts and pundits predictably proclaim, “This election is the most important election in a generation,” or some such hyperbole. While I’m not certain if that statement is generally true this time around, the damage that a Republican administration could plausibly inflict upon this nation (and especially its women) if President Obama loses this election is breathtaking.  Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan must be stopped.

On the domestic front, we need look no further than the last two Republican House Budgets that came directly from Mr. Ryan, as he is the House Budget Committee Chair and the author. Based upon the analysis of Robert Reich, in my previous post,Is the GOP Morally Bankrupt?, I noted, “Mr. Ryan’s budget, which would be the law of the land if the GOP controlled the Senate and the White House, is a surprisingly diaphanous attempt at upward wealth redistribution and class warfare. It should be required reading for any civic-minded American and be treated as a cautionary tale when pulling the lever in November.” Mr. Romney has endorsed the Ryan Budget on several occasions, which, according to Mr. Reich, dramatically cuts programs and eliminates tax credits and deductions essential to the poor, seniors, the working poor and middle income families in favor of a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. In addition, Mr. Romney promises to reduce the deficit. So, essentially, a Romney/Ryan Administration would implement an austerity program similar to the recently catastrophic European example; but here’s the cherry on top: instead of reducing the deficit with the savings from draconian spending cuts to vital programs and the elimination of tax credits and deductions upon which the middle class depends, they would kick much of the proceeds upward to the wealthy where it may just sit in off-shore accounts accruing interest (if they follow the example of their hapless reverse-Robin Hood leader) vs. being pumped into the economy. To be fair, many wealthy folks would actually welcome a more progressive and equitable tax regime in this country.

When it comes to our personal freedom as individuals, women should be particularly alarmed at the prospect of a Romney/Ryan administration. Neither man generally supports issues that are important to women, including issues of equality and the personal right to make choices regarding her own reproductive health. Mr. Romney is opposed to making contraception accessible by requiring health insurance to cover all or part of the cost of various forms of birth control. Incidentally, birth control reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore the number of abortions (DUH!). Some forms of contraception even reduce the transmission of disease… How ‘bout that!? During Tuesday night’s debate, Mr. Romney said he would leave it up to the discretion of the employer to determine whether or not contraception would be covered via that employer’s insurance plan. It’s interesting how the folks on the Right are always warning that one day, liberals will devise panels of bureaucrats to “ration your health care, but they apparently have no qualms in allowing employers to do that very thing, even with something as personal as family planning. On the issue of abortion, Mr. Romney magnanimously makes an exception for the victims of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life may be compromised by giving birth. While Mr. Ryan is now bound to the positions of his counterpart and boss, his previous record on women’s rights is abysmal. Most recently, he co-sponsored legislation with the now infamous misogynist, congressional Republican and senatorial candidate Todd Akin, that would re-define rape more narrowly, making it harder to convict rapists in certain circumstances. Of course, one of the more troubling features of a potential Romney/Ryan Administration would be their inevitable ability to place one, and perhaps two, right-wing extremists (a.k.a., mainstream Republicans) on the Supreme Court in place of retiring liberals. If they are elected, the delicate balance on the already right-leaning court would change emphatically, both in character and the manner in which they hand down decisions. The votes would surely be there to overturn it, so there is no reason to believe that Roe wouldn’t be fair game. To believe otherwise would be naïve.

Regarding foreign policy, Mr. Romney has shown himself to be uniquely inept. From his statement that getting bin Laden was not a priority or “worth moving heaven and Earth for,” to jumping the gun on the Libyan consulate attack by immediately holding a press conference to score some cheap political points by criticizing the Administration when he had yet to obtain the facts, or when he criticized the Brits on their organizational acumen during the Olympics (while he was in Britain!) which by most accounts was a wild success, he has shown a singularly acute ability to say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time. This assertion was proven spot-on in Monday night’s Presidential debate when Mr. Romney was fact-checked in real time by the moderator regarding his statement that the President did not characterize the attacks on the Libyan consulate as terrorism until two weeks after they had taken place. But even more problematic is his incessant drum beating and bluster regarding Iran. His myopic overtures seem more than a little dangerous, and could ultimately lead to yet another ill-advised ground war in the Middle East if he is our next Commander-in-Chief.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan must be stopped.  Get out and vote in November!

 

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The Land of Hypocrisy: The SBC Accuses Democrats of Cheapening Religion

January 20th, 2012 | Posted by Rich in Blog | HOTW - ()

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and some Democratic leaders have reported that the Party will be making a concerted effort to reach out to religious voters in 2012. Assistant Democratic Leader, Representative James E. Clyburn (D-SC) informed the Washington Post in 2011, “As we organize going forward to next year, there will be significant efforts on our part to reconnect the fundamentals of our policies to the [religious] teachings that we all learned, be it in the Old Testament or the New Testament.” And DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz recently stated, “The Democrats’ values and core agenda, and President Obama’s accomplishments, are reflective of the tenets and teachings and lessons of my faith as a Jewish woman… [and] no, there aren’t things that are informed by my faith than are different from the values and ideals of the Democratic Party.” Well, it’s about friggin’ time, isn’t it!?  The entire premise behind JWAD is a similar notion: Jesus’ teachings are replete with liberal ideology and therefore liberal/progressive policy reflects most of the important biblical concepts. In addition, conservative right-wing ideology is incongruent with Jesus’ teachings. Once this is realized or admitted, it therefore becomes easy to say, “See? This (the Bible) is one reason why universal healthcare is important”, or, “And this supports our position that food stamps are important and the right thing to do.” Democrats of faith should not shy away from the fact that their faith informs their ideology and should say as much (like Mr. Clyburn and Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

As inevitable as the sun rises in the morning, however, at least one right-wing Christian leader would have to express the most outrageous hypocrisy imaginable when hearing of the Democrat’s plan.  Richard Land, the Director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics (my emphasis) & Religious Liberty Commission had this to say: “Whenever you employ religion to justify your own positions, which may or may not be biblical, it cheapens and desacrilizes religion.”  Whew!  OK, where to begin?  I’ll start with this: a great deal of this man’s efforts, as well as the efforts of the SBC, are spent “employing religion to justify [their] own positions” and promoting the Republican Party. The irony in that is, when he and the SBC do it, they use an often unrecognizable interpretation of scripture, or, just the sheer influence that they command among the right-wing religious community, to coerce voters to support right-wing positions and to vote for Republican candidates. When they do it, it does cheapen religion.

If the Democrats stick to identifying commonalities between Democratic policies and the wonderfully liberal teachings of Jesus, then they can do it without “cheapening” religion or blurring the line between church and state. As long as they refrain from some of the more egregious and hateful acts commonly coming from right wing Christians, especially in the South, they’ll be OK.  For instance, a Republican congregant will likely always feel safe in any northeastern church and not have to worry about expulsion. Not so in the South for liberal Christians (see: Where do Hate and Intolerance Lead?  http://jesuswasademocrat.org/2011/10/where-do-hate-and-intolerance-lead/). Likewise, a gay member of a northeastern Protestant church wouldn’t likely have to endure a harangue about his certain damnation because of the misrepresentation, or, to be fair, the misinterpretation, of scripture (http://jesuswasademocrat.org/forum/homosexuality/bad-translation-homosexuals-will-not-enter-heaven-its-rapists/), whereas the same would not be true in a Southern Baptist church.  And folks in blue states certainly aren’t told to which political party they must show their loyalty in the voting booth, but in red state America, it is made clear from the pulpit which lever to pull to gain God’s approbation.

Democrats have historically forgone the huge potential constituency of religious voters for several reasons, the most obvious being the desire to keep the line between faith and government clearly drawn.  But to acknowledge that some of the inspiration for policies that address the pubic welfare, or matters of war and peace, for instance, is derived from one’s faith is hardly breaching the wall. And for the Democrats to identify scripture that supports progressive positions is as easy as opening one of the gospels. If the idea is to win elections for the purpose of enacting a more broadly moralistic agenda, then it seems like the right thing to do.

 

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Andrew Sullivan: How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

January 18th, 2012 | Posted by Rich in Blog | Featured - ()

Andrew Sullivan’s post originally appeared in Newsweek/Daily Beast on January 16, 2012.  It is posted again herein today as we believe it to be a  sorely needed and welcome defense of our hard working, albeit, beleaguered, President.   Our thanks to Mr. Sullivan.

JWAD   

You hear it everywhere. Democrats are disappointed in the president. Independents have soured even more. Republicans have worked themselves up into an apocalyptic fervor. And, yes, this is not exactly unusual.

A president in the last year of his first term will always get attacked mercilessly by his partisan opponents, and also, often, by the feistier members of his base. And when unemployment is at remarkably high levels, and with the national debt setting records, the criticism will—and should be—even fiercer. But this time, with this president, something different has happened. It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong.

A caveat: I write this as an unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on. I did so not as a liberal, but as a conservative-minded independent appalled by the Bush administration’s record of war, debt, spending, and torture. I did not expect, or want, a messiah. I have one already, thank you very much. And there have been many times when I have disagreed with decisions Obama has made—to drop the Bowles-Simpson debt commission, to ignore the war crimes of the recent past, and to launch a war in Libya without Congress’s sanction, to cite three. But given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb. Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama’s long game—and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008.

The right’s core case is that Obama has governed as a radical leftist attempting a “fundamental transformation” of the American way of life. Mitt Romney accuses the president of making the recession worse, of wanting to turn America into a European welfare state, of not believing in opportunity or free enterprise, of having no understanding of the real economy, and of apologizing for America and appeasing our enemies. According to Romney, Obama is a mortal threat to “the soul” of America and an empty suit who couldn’t run a business, let alone a country.  (more…)

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President Newt? Really?

November 27th, 2011 | Posted by Rich in Blog | HOTW - ()

As my regular readers will know from previous posts, I try to avoid picking low-hanging fruit.  But Newt stirs up such passion in us lefties that I find him, well, irresistible!  Those of us that were attentive adults during the roaring nineties find his candidacy for the highest office in the land implausible to say the least, and downright outrageous to be a little more expressive.

For starters, the truth is the guy just isn’t very likable.  David Corn nailed it in his recent Mother Jones post when he queried, Can Newt Be the First Openly Mean President?  My first instinct when I read the question, besides belly-laughing out loud, was to yell, “Hell no!”  I may be woefully underestimating the guy, and even more woefully overestimating the electorate, but as I recently heard an MSNBC pundit put it, “Newt has more baggage than a 747!”  That would seem to disqualify him from winning a general election.  Of course, anything can happen in the wild world of Republican primary politics and he just might get the nomination, despite how ridiculous that sounds to some of us.    

 To revisit one item in the crowded cargo hold of Newt’s plane, he fell from grace in 1999 when resigning from Congress and his role as House Speaker as his rank hypocrisy came back and bit a big chunk out of his corpulent ass.  As many may recall, while trying to run President Clinton out of town on high-speed rail for lying about marital infidelity, good old Newt was cheating on wife number two and lying about it.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that prior to that, he infamously served wife number one with divorce papers when she was in the hospital recovering from uterine cancer, so he could continue copulating with number two in good conscience (and, get this: he would subsequently blame his insensitivity and infidelity on “working too hard” and patriotism!).  And all this from a guy who ran on a far-right, Family Values, Christian conservative platform and has frequently spoken publicly about his faith.

Although I could fill up this entire blog with instances of Newt’s championship-caliber hypocrisy, I have to reach back no further in history then to last week’s news to dig up another juicy example of it.  It was recently revealed that Newt pocketed between $1.6-1.8 million in consulting fees from the publicly financed mortgage behemoth, Freddie Mac.  You may be familiar with Freddie Mac and its competitor Fannie Mae, as they both have been long-time Republican punching bags.  Although Newt has creatively provided a different answer on every occasion that he has been asked precisely what the nature of his work was with the organization, it appears that despite his insistence to the contrary, he was hired for his influence upon and access to lawmakers in Washington (i.e., to lobby them) to gain legislative advantage.  Newt’s access and influence were particularly acute, as he had only just resigned from his four-year stint as Speaker of the House months earlier and still had strong ties to House Republicans.

Aside from the revolving door aspect to this tale that allows members of congress to leave public office and immediately sell their access to former colleagues on the hill to K Street lobbying firms, there is plenty more that doesn’t pass the smell test.  I suppose the worst of it is Newt’s incessant bashing of Democratic lawmakers and President Obama for their support of Freddie Mac while having “consulted” for the organization for the better part of the decade in which questionable lending practices that he now criticizes took place.

It should also be noted that Newt has been on the hard-right side of most every issue, including gay rights, the death penalty, social programs and more recently, climate change, none of which seem consistent with the values that Jesus taught and demonstrated. Although a one time believer in empirical science, Newt has abandoned his once reasonable view on global warming to join the chorus of religious Conservative voices that believe man’s divinely acquired “dominion over the earth and its creatures” provides man and corporations (just a group of people anyway, right?) license to destroy it.  If there was ever a position that seemed in conflict with one’s faith, the allowed devastation of God’s handiwork would fit the bill. But that’s another post…

hy·poc·ri·sy [hi-pok-ruh-see] 1. A pretense of having beliefs or principles, etc., that one doesn’t genuinely possess.

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