By Don Klein
Two major court actions occurred on the same day and uniquely both were the right calls. It is almost enough to reestablish the faith we once had in the American judicial system before it was nearly fatally damaged in the muffed O.J. Simpson murder case.
The uplifting two cases were unrelated but the results of both were deserved and correct. The first was the Bernie Madoff sentencing in New York federal court. There was speculation that with all his money and influence there was a chance that the disgraced Wall Street bilker would get off with a slap on the wrist and a few years imprisonment.
Not so this time. Madoff’s 150 year term would be tantamount to life behind bars if he was born last year, let alone 71 years ago. He will die in prison and it seems no one will mourn his passing. His sons have disassociated themselves from him for months, his brother is nowhere to be seen and his wife said he is not the man she knew during their more than 50 gilded years of nuptial togetherness.
No one stood up to say a good word about Madoff when the judge invited comments before sentencing. You could almost feel sorry for the poor bloke – with not a friend in the world to speak up for him – if he were not such a scoundrel. Even his lawyer begged Federal District Judge Denny Chin for a 12 year sentence.
It is estimated by authorities that $170 billion passed through Madoff’s hands during his reign as a money manipulator. Much of that amount went into payoffs, a necessary ingredient of a Ponzi scheme. In other words he paid old investors with the cash that came in from new clients. The authorities reportedly have traced between $1 and $2 billion of the loot. However some $13 billion has been identified as "lost" money. No one knows what happened to it.
The only remaining question is where is the $13 billion? Did Madoff make off with it? It is still unaccounted for. Madoff’s personal assets do not calculate for any portion of the missing loot.
So where is the money? Some of Madoff’s victims claim the money is hidden in secret offshore accounts. What good will that do Madoff while sitting in prison for the rest of his life? The hope is that federal investigators will solve the riddle of the missing booty given more time working the books. It could take about a year or two. But that is only possible if you believe the feds are that smart. I am not sure they are. So they may never solve the mystery.
The other quirky aspect to the case is the battle that is now forming between the various victims all vying to get a piece of the confiscated Madoff assets. It seems a small proportion of the victims are showing their own special brand of greed in trying to get as much of the confiscated funds as they can for themselves even at the expense of other Madoff victims. These people are certainly victims, but they act like jackals fighting over the spoils of a kill. They got burned looking for a special market advantage in the first place and now are determined to muscle others to the side while they grab theirs.
Many of the other victims are just pathetic sufferers. They range from the hardworking little guys who scraped and saved to put away a nest egg for their later years to giant charities and universities who should have known better. Madoff’s clients were a cross-section of Americana.
The remaining questions are where were was the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was supposed to protect investors from such frauds? They were not just asleep at the switch, they apparently weren’t even on the job. They were warned several times that the Madoff figures didn’t make sense, but did nothing.
The SEC’s failure in this case plus the stock market crash has permanently damaged the image of the stock market in the eyes of many. It will take generations before the market will regain the trust of most of its middle class investors. Some will hide their money in fire-proof vaults instead of going to Wall Street in the future.
Speaking of fire brings us to the second happy achievement of the day. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New Haven firefighters who claimed to be victims of reverse discrimination. They passed the test for promotion but was denied the step-up because no blacks passed the test and the city feared this would bring a suit from the black firefighters charging discrimination. Instead the city decided to discriminate against those who passed the test, who happened to be white.
The disturbing aspect of the court’s 5-4 ruling was the vote breakdown with the four conservative justices in favor of the plaintiffs and the four liberals against and the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy voting with the conservatives. To me it was a simple case of justice, yet to the liberals it became an ideological contest.
I thought the inscription on the facade over the entrance to the Supreme Court building, "Equal Justice Under Law" meant strict impartiality and no other ingredient.
Justice was on the side of the firemen who passed the test and the liberals should uphold that value. I believe if the case was reversed and the only candidates to pass the test were blacks and they were not appointed for the same reasons the whites were not, the court liberals would have found that ripe for overturning.
On the whole the courts did the ideal of American justice proud this past week and we should all be happy. It doesn’t happen that often.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Hold the champagne on health care
By Don Klein
Just about everyone in the country is looking forward to universal health care being enacted by Congress before the end of this year. There will be surprises in store for all. I wouldn’t pop the champagne corks just yet. In fact when the bill is finally enacted we might not want to celebrate at all.
As expected the problem is that many Democrats want a law that will protect the millions who cannot afford health insurance without too much concern for the cost to the taxpayer and the Republicans want a watered down version of the same thing, but on the cheap with particular emphasis on protecting the profits of big business.
It’s the same old sequence. Give the "Party of No" a half hour to think about it and they will come up dozens of reasons not to support a social program for the benefit of ordinary citizens. It is the same party that submissively passed one deficit-laced budgets again and again during the Bush era with no concern for the damage it would do to future generations. Now, suddenly, they are obsessed with frugality.
Wouldn’t you think that nearly 50 millions Americans without health insurance was reason enough to work for a solution? But the Republicans seem never willing to spend for the benefit of the needy unless that can filter the funding through the coffers of big industry for their profit.
Everyone favors industry making a profit. That's not the problem. But should that profit take precedence over the health of the nation? There seems to be enough in Congress, including renegade Democrats, who believe it should because they depend on gifts from big business to fund their reelection drives.
That is the pity of the American political system. The big money guys have taken over the government that used to be for the people. It is the fallacy of most Republicans -- and some Democrats -- that business cannot survive in this country without feasting at the public trough.
President Obama’s initial health plan now making its way through Congress is headed for a stonewall. GOP leaders in the House and Senate claim the bill as is will gather not a single Republican vote. There is no way to know if that is true, but if it is, the bill will undergo massive surgery before it comes out in the end as law. Recall the old saying about Congress: A camel is a horse designed by committee?
No one wants the health care reform "horse" to end up looking like a "camel." Most people do not want Congressional nitpickers debating whether health care should have one hump or two. More importantly, we don’t want it to end up blown out of size looking like a pregnant elephant. The public deserves a horse, a slick equine that performs resolutely.
We’ve had enough distortions foisted on the public by Congressional manipulation in the past. Just look at the Medicare drug plan offered the public a few years back.
"The Medicare drug benefit was a camel of a program. It mated a liberal proposition — expanding a government entitlement — with a conservative solution — having private insurers dispense the coverage and forbidding the government to negotiate drug prices," said Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop, "The result was a complicated benefit that cost taxpayers a lot more than it had to."
Why, you might ask, are members of Congress deaf to the opinions of the Americans in support of universal health coverage as exemplified in poll after poll, and in particular, a government plan that competes with private insurance? Powerful Senate Democrats pretend not to hear and are squirming in the opulent executive chairs offering phony alternatives.
Why do they insist that the country can’t afford public health care and insist such a measure would not pass Congress when they haven’t even started the debate or listened to enlightened testimony? They say they only want to help secure Republican votes for the camel which will displace Obama’s horse.
"Indeed, many of the most intransigent Democrats don't bother to make actual arguments to support their position. Nor do they seem to worry that Democratic voters and the party's main constituencies overwhelmingly support the public option and universal coverage." columnist Joe Conason contends.
"Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has simply stated... that she refuses to support a public option. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has tried to fashion a plan that will entice Republicans, warns that the public option is a step toward single-payer health care ..."
They ignore the Obama point that we’ve been told of how efficient American private insurers are that he doesn’t believe anything government does will effect their business. They’ll just have to compete instead of collude on prices. Further, he asks the nay sayers why worry since they are forever claiming that government cannot do anything well.
Conason points out that "Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., feebly protests that her state's mismanagement by a Republican governor must stall the progress of the rest of the country. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., says he has a better plan involving regional cooperatives, which would be unable to effectively compete with the insurance behemoths or bargain with pharmaceutical giants."
Obama would be right to conclude that with Democrat supporters like these who needs enemies. Consider Sen. Landrieu, who represents one of the poorest states with a working classes badly in need of health coverage. She has received nearly $1.7 million from medical interests including insurance companies and drug firms, according to the Center of Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
You can be sure that the cabal of medical interests will step up their financial involvement in senatorial contributions as the health care debate intensifies. Will political donors take precedence over constituents? They have in the past, so put away the champagne bottles. That’s the shame of Congress.
Just about everyone in the country is looking forward to universal health care being enacted by Congress before the end of this year. There will be surprises in store for all. I wouldn’t pop the champagne corks just yet. In fact when the bill is finally enacted we might not want to celebrate at all.
As expected the problem is that many Democrats want a law that will protect the millions who cannot afford health insurance without too much concern for the cost to the taxpayer and the Republicans want a watered down version of the same thing, but on the cheap with particular emphasis on protecting the profits of big business.
It’s the same old sequence. Give the "Party of No" a half hour to think about it and they will come up dozens of reasons not to support a social program for the benefit of ordinary citizens. It is the same party that submissively passed one deficit-laced budgets again and again during the Bush era with no concern for the damage it would do to future generations. Now, suddenly, they are obsessed with frugality.
Wouldn’t you think that nearly 50 millions Americans without health insurance was reason enough to work for a solution? But the Republicans seem never willing to spend for the benefit of the needy unless that can filter the funding through the coffers of big industry for their profit.
Everyone favors industry making a profit. That's not the problem. But should that profit take precedence over the health of the nation? There seems to be enough in Congress, including renegade Democrats, who believe it should because they depend on gifts from big business to fund their reelection drives.
That is the pity of the American political system. The big money guys have taken over the government that used to be for the people. It is the fallacy of most Republicans -- and some Democrats -- that business cannot survive in this country without feasting at the public trough.
President Obama’s initial health plan now making its way through Congress is headed for a stonewall. GOP leaders in the House and Senate claim the bill as is will gather not a single Republican vote. There is no way to know if that is true, but if it is, the bill will undergo massive surgery before it comes out in the end as law. Recall the old saying about Congress: A camel is a horse designed by committee?
No one wants the health care reform "horse" to end up looking like a "camel." Most people do not want Congressional nitpickers debating whether health care should have one hump or two. More importantly, we don’t want it to end up blown out of size looking like a pregnant elephant. The public deserves a horse, a slick equine that performs resolutely.
We’ve had enough distortions foisted on the public by Congressional manipulation in the past. Just look at the Medicare drug plan offered the public a few years back.
"The Medicare drug benefit was a camel of a program. It mated a liberal proposition — expanding a government entitlement — with a conservative solution — having private insurers dispense the coverage and forbidding the government to negotiate drug prices," said Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop, "The result was a complicated benefit that cost taxpayers a lot more than it had to."
Why, you might ask, are members of Congress deaf to the opinions of the Americans in support of universal health coverage as exemplified in poll after poll, and in particular, a government plan that competes with private insurance? Powerful Senate Democrats pretend not to hear and are squirming in the opulent executive chairs offering phony alternatives.
Why do they insist that the country can’t afford public health care and insist such a measure would not pass Congress when they haven’t even started the debate or listened to enlightened testimony? They say they only want to help secure Republican votes for the camel which will displace Obama’s horse.
"Indeed, many of the most intransigent Democrats don't bother to make actual arguments to support their position. Nor do they seem to worry that Democratic voters and the party's main constituencies overwhelmingly support the public option and universal coverage." columnist Joe Conason contends.
"Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has simply stated... that she refuses to support a public option. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has tried to fashion a plan that will entice Republicans, warns that the public option is a step toward single-payer health care ..."
They ignore the Obama point that we’ve been told of how efficient American private insurers are that he doesn’t believe anything government does will effect their business. They’ll just have to compete instead of collude on prices. Further, he asks the nay sayers why worry since they are forever claiming that government cannot do anything well.
Conason points out that "Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., feebly protests that her state's mismanagement by a Republican governor must stall the progress of the rest of the country. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., says he has a better plan involving regional cooperatives, which would be unable to effectively compete with the insurance behemoths or bargain with pharmaceutical giants."
Obama would be right to conclude that with Democrat supporters like these who needs enemies. Consider Sen. Landrieu, who represents one of the poorest states with a working classes badly in need of health coverage. She has received nearly $1.7 million from medical interests including insurance companies and drug firms, according to the Center of Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
You can be sure that the cabal of medical interests will step up their financial involvement in senatorial contributions as the health care debate intensifies. Will political donors take precedence over constituents? They have in the past, so put away the champagne bottles. That’s the shame of Congress.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Bipartisanship is not dead
By Don Klein
In a story about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's return after a five day disappearance, Jim Rutenberg, of The New York Times Washington Bureau, referred to problems the Republican Party has been having lately with scandals and how that could effect the party's presidential prospects in 2012. He wrote:
"Then Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a fiscal conservative seen by many Republicans as an attractive standard-bearer for the next presidential campaign, went missing. Worse, he returned." How true.
We all thought he was hiking along the Appalachian trail and was out of touch when the governor fessed up and admitted he was in Argentina meeting with his paramour. In a mia culpa moment he finally told the world the truth.
For anyone who watched the painful public confession of infidelity as the seemingly confused and disraught Sanford came clean about his adultery and his effort to conceal his behavior with lies about his whereabouts, there had to be a feeling of sympathy for the poor man. But the instinct for compassion goes only so far and should be resisted in this case. After all, the man dug his own hole. He is not the victim.
I resist making moral judgments about people, especially about those whom I have no personal relationship. I really don't think it is anyone's business who is having sex with whom as long as it is consensual. Even if it is a tragic case that could end a marriage or a long standing interpersonal connection, it is not for me, or anyone else, to judge.
On the other hand I believe it is critical that public officials should be held to high standards of behavior, that they should not lie to their constituencies and above all never be hypocritical. Unfortunately it seems when a trusted public figure becomes a philanderer all these negative aspects come into play. First there are the lies to coverup the act. Then there is the public confession and plea for understanding. Worst of all when we look back over their record we usually find flagrant hypocracy.
That's the only level upon which to judge a public official who has strayed from the straight and narrow. It is not the sex or the spousal betrayal with which the public should concern itself. Those are personal matters. The public's only consideration should be focused on the elected official's lies and hypocracy -- and if pertinent, the commission of a crime.
When Gov. Sanford was a congressman way back in the late 1990s he chastised President Clinton for his adultery and demanded that Clinton resign because he had violated his "marriage oath." Shouldn't those demands now be applicable to Sanford himself? As long as Sanford remains in office it proves that his demand for Clinton's resignation was no more than a political stunt that even he did not believe in. Sanford deserves no sympathy from me despite his pathetic display of remorse. He should resign for lying and being a hypocrite.
I couldn't help drawing the similarity to Sen. John Ensign, who demanded that fellow Republican Sen. Larry Craig resign after he was charged with an illegal sex act in an airport men's room. After Ensign confessed recently to an extra-marital affair with a former staff member who incredibly was the wife of another former staff member, he did not resign. It seems not all sex acts are equally disapproved by Ensign. More likely it's a case of whose bull is being gored. He, too, should resign because who can ever trust a reprobate who profanes subordinates.
To this day Republicans still regurgitate the sorrowful Chappaquiddick incident whenever they want to besmirch Sen. Ted Kennedy for political reasons even though the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne, asleep in the back seat of the Kennedy car as it plunged into the tidal channel waters, occurred 40 years ago.
The Republicans who latch onto every Democratic official's scandal as unforgivable, never seem to have the same family value ardor when a member of their own party goes astray. To this day they proudly admire and give prominence to former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the hypocrite who took the high ground during the Clinton impeachment while dallying adulterously with a female member of his staff.
Not so with misbehaving Democrats other than Clinton. They have not been able to recover. Former senator and party presidential candidate John Edwards, and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, had extra-marital relations and have disappeared from the political scene, for now anyway.
President Bush promised Americans a government of high moral values after the scandalous Clinton impeachment year of 1998-1999, but he took the country into a even worse scandal, a war that has plagued the country now for almost a decade and promises not to be solved for years to come. Who did more harm to the country -- a White House back room sex fling which had no effect on government programs or the death of some 4,500 American GIs and thousands more permanently injured in an unprovoked and unnecessary war?
Given the truculent GOP opposition to anything that President Obama proposes -- and their speed in criticizing the president for not being more bellicose on the Iran issue -- you would think there is little bipartisanship in Washington. Well that's not entirely true. It all depends on where you look. When it comes to sex scandals and other wrongdoings, there is plenty to go around on both sides of the aisle.
That's where Washington is truly bipartisan.
In a story about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's return after a five day disappearance, Jim Rutenberg, of The New York Times Washington Bureau, referred to problems the Republican Party has been having lately with scandals and how that could effect the party's presidential prospects in 2012. He wrote:
"Then Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a fiscal conservative seen by many Republicans as an attractive standard-bearer for the next presidential campaign, went missing. Worse, he returned." How true.
We all thought he was hiking along the Appalachian trail and was out of touch when the governor fessed up and admitted he was in Argentina meeting with his paramour. In a mia culpa moment he finally told the world the truth.
For anyone who watched the painful public confession of infidelity as the seemingly confused and disraught Sanford came clean about his adultery and his effort to conceal his behavior with lies about his whereabouts, there had to be a feeling of sympathy for the poor man. But the instinct for compassion goes only so far and should be resisted in this case. After all, the man dug his own hole. He is not the victim.
I resist making moral judgments about people, especially about those whom I have no personal relationship. I really don't think it is anyone's business who is having sex with whom as long as it is consensual. Even if it is a tragic case that could end a marriage or a long standing interpersonal connection, it is not for me, or anyone else, to judge.
On the other hand I believe it is critical that public officials should be held to high standards of behavior, that they should not lie to their constituencies and above all never be hypocritical. Unfortunately it seems when a trusted public figure becomes a philanderer all these negative aspects come into play. First there are the lies to coverup the act. Then there is the public confession and plea for understanding. Worst of all when we look back over their record we usually find flagrant hypocracy.
That's the only level upon which to judge a public official who has strayed from the straight and narrow. It is not the sex or the spousal betrayal with which the public should concern itself. Those are personal matters. The public's only consideration should be focused on the elected official's lies and hypocracy -- and if pertinent, the commission of a crime.
When Gov. Sanford was a congressman way back in the late 1990s he chastised President Clinton for his adultery and demanded that Clinton resign because he had violated his "marriage oath." Shouldn't those demands now be applicable to Sanford himself? As long as Sanford remains in office it proves that his demand for Clinton's resignation was no more than a political stunt that even he did not believe in. Sanford deserves no sympathy from me despite his pathetic display of remorse. He should resign for lying and being a hypocrite.
I couldn't help drawing the similarity to Sen. John Ensign, who demanded that fellow Republican Sen. Larry Craig resign after he was charged with an illegal sex act in an airport men's room. After Ensign confessed recently to an extra-marital affair with a former staff member who incredibly was the wife of another former staff member, he did not resign. It seems not all sex acts are equally disapproved by Ensign. More likely it's a case of whose bull is being gored. He, too, should resign because who can ever trust a reprobate who profanes subordinates.
To this day Republicans still regurgitate the sorrowful Chappaquiddick incident whenever they want to besmirch Sen. Ted Kennedy for political reasons even though the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne, asleep in the back seat of the Kennedy car as it plunged into the tidal channel waters, occurred 40 years ago.
The Republicans who latch onto every Democratic official's scandal as unforgivable, never seem to have the same family value ardor when a member of their own party goes astray. To this day they proudly admire and give prominence to former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the hypocrite who took the high ground during the Clinton impeachment while dallying adulterously with a female member of his staff.
Not so with misbehaving Democrats other than Clinton. They have not been able to recover. Former senator and party presidential candidate John Edwards, and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, had extra-marital relations and have disappeared from the political scene, for now anyway.
President Bush promised Americans a government of high moral values after the scandalous Clinton impeachment year of 1998-1999, but he took the country into a even worse scandal, a war that has plagued the country now for almost a decade and promises not to be solved for years to come. Who did more harm to the country -- a White House back room sex fling which had no effect on government programs or the death of some 4,500 American GIs and thousands more permanently injured in an unprovoked and unnecessary war?
Given the truculent GOP opposition to anything that President Obama proposes -- and their speed in criticizing the president for not being more bellicose on the Iran issue -- you would think there is little bipartisanship in Washington. Well that's not entirely true. It all depends on where you look. When it comes to sex scandals and other wrongdoings, there is plenty to go around on both sides of the aisle.
That's where Washington is truly bipartisan.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Abortion's not the issue, violence is
By Don Klein
"Tiller the baby killer." Repeat that epithet several dozens of times a year on one of the most listened national television programs. "Tiller the baby killer." Isn’t that enough to incite some people with lopsided and untempered emotions to violence. That’s what Bill O’Reilly has done.
Yet if you ask O’Reilly he will insist that "It’s not my fault" that some kook took a gun, sought out Dr. George Tiller, a well-known abortion doctor, and shot him dead while he served as a usher in a Wichita, Kansas, church.
O’Reilly is not alone as a rabble rouser in this case. Other anti-abortion proponents called Dr. Tiller, a mass murderer on a par with the infamous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele, of Holocaust infamy. The brutal invective combined with the inflammable, but totally inaccurate, term "baby killer" is one of the most ugly aspects of the so-called pro-life movement.
After Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, labeled Dr. Tiller a "mass murderer," he said, "We in the pro-life movement must not shrink from our duty to continue to use words that are highly charged..." Yes highly charged words that set off those who are fanatical about abortion. It is a way to attempt to frighten medical professionals from performing legal services.
Have any of these trouble-makers bothered to check the fact that abortions are legal in the United States? So the charge of murder or killer just doesn’t wash. Secondly, there are no baby victims. According to law -- and the dictionary -- a baby is a young child or an infant. Abortion, again according to law and the dictionary, is the expulsion of a fetus from a pregnant woman, not a baby.
These assassins don’t care about the law. They make their own law. They decide who is the victim, the perpetrator, and like a moonshiner protecting his illegal booze puts to death "offenders" as they view them. These are people who flaunt the law and embrace their ideals and beliefs above all others, including the government. They need to be hunted down like rampaging vipers and defanged.
There are reasonable people who believe that life begins at conception and therefore a fetus is a baby, but that is a personal belief not the law. And yet many of these same people are reasonable and accept that abortion should be a matter of choice for the woman involved. Abortion is a matter, they say, between the woman, her doctor and God, not government.
But how effective do you think a battle cry focused on "fetus expulsionists" or "fetus killers" would have on the emotions of the unstable. It just wouldn’t work, hence "baby killer" and "mass murderer" is used. This is incitement. A lure to appeal to the neanderthal’s that prowl out streets looking for a cause to exploit.
The death of Dr. Tiller is not a part of the continuing debate over abortions in this country. It is a matter of clear and direct exhortation to terror. The pro-life crowd enjoys motivating the gangs to picket medical clinics that provide abortions, they love to shout invectives at the poor women who enter the facilities.
They have been known to throw bombs and commit arson and shoot clinic workers. They do all of this in the name of God. They believe that God will reward them for their cowardly behavior. They are humorless, dismal, dogmatic and criminally bent on using violence to prove their point and usually end up with the opposite result by making heroic martyrs of those they hate.
Abortion is not the issue. Hatred and violence is.
The man arrested in the murder of Dr. Tiller had a record of being a malcontent for decades. Besides abortions, he hates government. He obviously was moved by the idiotic motto of Ronald Reagan and the GOP that concluded government "was the problem, not the solution." There are people today who still chirp that inanity as they cash their Social Security checks.
Then of course, provocateurs like O’Reilly, Terry, and others of that ilk throw gasoline on the embers smoldering in the brains of these violent people by branding the professionals who perform a legal service with inflammatory language.
There is no question that abortion is a legitimate political issue in the United States. There is plenty of opportunity for serious and calm discussion by opposing parties. We witnessed a very composed example recently when President Obama discussed the subject during the Notre Dame University commencement.
But that was at the university level where debate and serious discussions prevail. We don’t get that kind of talk from those who relish the idea of terrorizing people who do not agree with them. O’Reilly’s language is shameful. So is Terry’s. But they will never change, because they play to the lowest common denominator and engage people like street fighters.
For years medical workers providing abortion have been harassed, shot at, killed and their work places have be wracked by bombs and deliberate fires. Why? Because those on the lowest level of reason know they cannot win the battle to ban abortion legally so they will terrorized those workers in hopes of having a country which legally allows abortion, but has no one willing to perform them.
These pathetic creatures think they are doing God’s work but in reality they are dangerous simpletons doing the work of cowardly vipers who stand in the background and call compassionate medical workers incendiary and dehumanizing words. They are the real criminals in the case and should stand trial with the actual assassin.
"Tiller the baby killer." Repeat that epithet several dozens of times a year on one of the most listened national television programs. "Tiller the baby killer." Isn’t that enough to incite some people with lopsided and untempered emotions to violence. That’s what Bill O’Reilly has done.
Yet if you ask O’Reilly he will insist that "It’s not my fault" that some kook took a gun, sought out Dr. George Tiller, a well-known abortion doctor, and shot him dead while he served as a usher in a Wichita, Kansas, church.
O’Reilly is not alone as a rabble rouser in this case. Other anti-abortion proponents called Dr. Tiller, a mass murderer on a par with the infamous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele, of Holocaust infamy. The brutal invective combined with the inflammable, but totally inaccurate, term "baby killer" is one of the most ugly aspects of the so-called pro-life movement.
After Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, labeled Dr. Tiller a "mass murderer," he said, "We in the pro-life movement must not shrink from our duty to continue to use words that are highly charged..." Yes highly charged words that set off those who are fanatical about abortion. It is a way to attempt to frighten medical professionals from performing legal services.
Have any of these trouble-makers bothered to check the fact that abortions are legal in the United States? So the charge of murder or killer just doesn’t wash. Secondly, there are no baby victims. According to law -- and the dictionary -- a baby is a young child or an infant. Abortion, again according to law and the dictionary, is the expulsion of a fetus from a pregnant woman, not a baby.
These assassins don’t care about the law. They make their own law. They decide who is the victim, the perpetrator, and like a moonshiner protecting his illegal booze puts to death "offenders" as they view them. These are people who flaunt the law and embrace their ideals and beliefs above all others, including the government. They need to be hunted down like rampaging vipers and defanged.
There are reasonable people who believe that life begins at conception and therefore a fetus is a baby, but that is a personal belief not the law. And yet many of these same people are reasonable and accept that abortion should be a matter of choice for the woman involved. Abortion is a matter, they say, between the woman, her doctor and God, not government.
But how effective do you think a battle cry focused on "fetus expulsionists" or "fetus killers" would have on the emotions of the unstable. It just wouldn’t work, hence "baby killer" and "mass murderer" is used. This is incitement. A lure to appeal to the neanderthal’s that prowl out streets looking for a cause to exploit.
The death of Dr. Tiller is not a part of the continuing debate over abortions in this country. It is a matter of clear and direct exhortation to terror. The pro-life crowd enjoys motivating the gangs to picket medical clinics that provide abortions, they love to shout invectives at the poor women who enter the facilities.
They have been known to throw bombs and commit arson and shoot clinic workers. They do all of this in the name of God. They believe that God will reward them for their cowardly behavior. They are humorless, dismal, dogmatic and criminally bent on using violence to prove their point and usually end up with the opposite result by making heroic martyrs of those they hate.
Abortion is not the issue. Hatred and violence is.
The man arrested in the murder of Dr. Tiller had a record of being a malcontent for decades. Besides abortions, he hates government. He obviously was moved by the idiotic motto of Ronald Reagan and the GOP that concluded government "was the problem, not the solution." There are people today who still chirp that inanity as they cash their Social Security checks.
Then of course, provocateurs like O’Reilly, Terry, and others of that ilk throw gasoline on the embers smoldering in the brains of these violent people by branding the professionals who perform a legal service with inflammatory language.
There is no question that abortion is a legitimate political issue in the United States. There is plenty of opportunity for serious and calm discussion by opposing parties. We witnessed a very composed example recently when President Obama discussed the subject during the Notre Dame University commencement.
But that was at the university level where debate and serious discussions prevail. We don’t get that kind of talk from those who relish the idea of terrorizing people who do not agree with them. O’Reilly’s language is shameful. So is Terry’s. But they will never change, because they play to the lowest common denominator and engage people like street fighters.
For years medical workers providing abortion have been harassed, shot at, killed and their work places have be wracked by bombs and deliberate fires. Why? Because those on the lowest level of reason know they cannot win the battle to ban abortion legally so they will terrorized those workers in hopes of having a country which legally allows abortion, but has no one willing to perform them.
These pathetic creatures think they are doing God’s work but in reality they are dangerous simpletons doing the work of cowardly vipers who stand in the background and call compassionate medical workers incendiary and dehumanizing words. They are the real criminals in the case and should stand trial with the actual assassin.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sotomayor need not be a GOP dilemma
By Don Klein
I look forward to the confirmation hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee when they evaluate the qualifications of federal appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a nominee to the Supreme Court. Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, among others, are trying to make it a showdown between strict constitutional constructionists and what they like to deride as activist justices, or even worse, liberal jurists.
What is significant is that neither Rush nor Newt are elected officials and those who are, like the Republicans members of the Senate committee, and eventually all Republican members of the Senate, have to go back eventually to the voters and ask to be reelected. None of them have spoken out against her in significant ways so far.
If they reject her, how will they explain their action to voters?
How will anyone be able to vote against Sotomayor for this important position and not be accused of gender prejudice? How will you explain to the millions of new Hispanic voters in the country – and that number keeps growing – that you tried to stop the first Latina ever to be nominated to the highest court in the land?
The backlash could be brutal and lasting. Minorities don’t easily forget personal slights.
The simple rule in politics is that it is best not to make enemies of large voting blocs, especially if they are, like Latino-Americans, the largest growing ethnic group in the nation. If the Republicans sink Obama’s selection of Sotomayor, the party could become a permanent minority party.
But that wouldn’t bother Limbaugh. He is a broadcaster who thrives on throwing bric-a-bracs at politicians and he has a much wider variety of targets when the Democrats are in power. We can dismiss Gingrich as a colossal hypocrite. While he was publicly reprimanding Bill Clinton for having an affair while president, Gingrich was canoodling with a young staff member in his office. Why anyone listens to him is beyond comprehension.
There are other reasons not to torpedo the Sotomayor appointment. If opponents pick out of context her words that can be twisted to sound like she has preferences of one sort or another, they can just look back at the treatment given Samuel Alito and John Roberts when they faced confirmation. The Democrats held their noses and voted for the nominees because they were the choices of the then president.
That is what politics is all about. That is why many people worked so hard for Obama’s success in 2008. They felt certain a Supreme Court nomination would occur in the coming presidential term and they wanted a progressive member of the court, not another Antonin Scalia. Choosing judges to serve on the federal bench is the responsibility of the president and virtually every nominee who did not withdraw on their own, has been approved.
My gosh, even Clarence Thomas, the numskull of the Supreme Court with all his negatives known ahead of time, was approved by the Senate, to its eternal ignominy.
If Republican conservative activist justices like Roberts, Alito and Scalia can make the grade, so can one outspokenly progressive justice like Sotomayor. The courts need balance to keep it from shaming the country again as it did in its ruling on the 2000 national election dispute.
At this time I don’t know enough about Sotomayor to make a sensible assessment on her nomination. I know little about her. She has not testified on Capitol Hill and that is the important part of the procedure. We should all listen carefully to what she says and make a determination afterwards. There are questions I would love to ask her if I could.
1. Being a Catholic, does she feel abortion is infanticide and should be banned?
2. On the subject of religion, she would become the sixth Catholic justice on the current court. Given that fact, would her official decisions be based on religious beliefs or will she evaluate issues without consideration of church doctrine?
3. I would like her to explain her position on affirmative action, especially how it influenced her decision in the infamous New Haven firefighters case.
Why conservatives are so worked about her is strange indeed. Her ascent to the court will not alter the current balance. She will be replacing Associate Justice David Souter, another progressive. As far as court decisions are concerned there will be little difference from now so why should Republicans be lathered up over her? It’s the next appointment, if replacing a conservative, that will really count.
In the end, it is no great revelation that Sotomayor is a liberal. Almost anyone who was brought up in the Bronx, especially the South Bronx, would lean towards liberal politics. It is almost the same for someone like Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who grew up in Long Beach, Indiana, being a conservative.
So if she is rejected on those grounds, an unlikely possibility to be sure, the president will simply appoint another liberal candidate. There will be no Thomases, Alitos or Scalias from this president. So my advice to her Senate opponents is to brace yourself, suck in your chest, and vote "Yeah" when your name is called because you cannot stop the steam roller of progress set in motion last election when conservatives were soundly rejected by voters and are currently leaderless in the Senate.
And there are benefits to doing so. You will not anger the largest growing voter bloc in the nation, you will show the world that Rush and Newt do not run your party and you will start on the road to recovering the dignity and class Republicans once had, but threw away when they embraced the Bush-Cheney regime.
I look forward to the confirmation hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee when they evaluate the qualifications of federal appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a nominee to the Supreme Court. Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, among others, are trying to make it a showdown between strict constitutional constructionists and what they like to deride as activist justices, or even worse, liberal jurists.
What is significant is that neither Rush nor Newt are elected officials and those who are, like the Republicans members of the Senate committee, and eventually all Republican members of the Senate, have to go back eventually to the voters and ask to be reelected. None of them have spoken out against her in significant ways so far.
If they reject her, how will they explain their action to voters?
How will anyone be able to vote against Sotomayor for this important position and not be accused of gender prejudice? How will you explain to the millions of new Hispanic voters in the country – and that number keeps growing – that you tried to stop the first Latina ever to be nominated to the highest court in the land?
The backlash could be brutal and lasting. Minorities don’t easily forget personal slights.
The simple rule in politics is that it is best not to make enemies of large voting blocs, especially if they are, like Latino-Americans, the largest growing ethnic group in the nation. If the Republicans sink Obama’s selection of Sotomayor, the party could become a permanent minority party.
But that wouldn’t bother Limbaugh. He is a broadcaster who thrives on throwing bric-a-bracs at politicians and he has a much wider variety of targets when the Democrats are in power. We can dismiss Gingrich as a colossal hypocrite. While he was publicly reprimanding Bill Clinton for having an affair while president, Gingrich was canoodling with a young staff member in his office. Why anyone listens to him is beyond comprehension.
There are other reasons not to torpedo the Sotomayor appointment. If opponents pick out of context her words that can be twisted to sound like she has preferences of one sort or another, they can just look back at the treatment given Samuel Alito and John Roberts when they faced confirmation. The Democrats held their noses and voted for the nominees because they were the choices of the then president.
That is what politics is all about. That is why many people worked so hard for Obama’s success in 2008. They felt certain a Supreme Court nomination would occur in the coming presidential term and they wanted a progressive member of the court, not another Antonin Scalia. Choosing judges to serve on the federal bench is the responsibility of the president and virtually every nominee who did not withdraw on their own, has been approved.
My gosh, even Clarence Thomas, the numskull of the Supreme Court with all his negatives known ahead of time, was approved by the Senate, to its eternal ignominy.
If Republican conservative activist justices like Roberts, Alito and Scalia can make the grade, so can one outspokenly progressive justice like Sotomayor. The courts need balance to keep it from shaming the country again as it did in its ruling on the 2000 national election dispute.
At this time I don’t know enough about Sotomayor to make a sensible assessment on her nomination. I know little about her. She has not testified on Capitol Hill and that is the important part of the procedure. We should all listen carefully to what she says and make a determination afterwards. There are questions I would love to ask her if I could.
1. Being a Catholic, does she feel abortion is infanticide and should be banned?
2. On the subject of religion, she would become the sixth Catholic justice on the current court. Given that fact, would her official decisions be based on religious beliefs or will she evaluate issues without consideration of church doctrine?
3. I would like her to explain her position on affirmative action, especially how it influenced her decision in the infamous New Haven firefighters case.
Why conservatives are so worked about her is strange indeed. Her ascent to the court will not alter the current balance. She will be replacing Associate Justice David Souter, another progressive. As far as court decisions are concerned there will be little difference from now so why should Republicans be lathered up over her? It’s the next appointment, if replacing a conservative, that will really count.
In the end, it is no great revelation that Sotomayor is a liberal. Almost anyone who was brought up in the Bronx, especially the South Bronx, would lean towards liberal politics. It is almost the same for someone like Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who grew up in Long Beach, Indiana, being a conservative.
So if she is rejected on those grounds, an unlikely possibility to be sure, the president will simply appoint another liberal candidate. There will be no Thomases, Alitos or Scalias from this president. So my advice to her Senate opponents is to brace yourself, suck in your chest, and vote "Yeah" when your name is called because you cannot stop the steam roller of progress set in motion last election when conservatives were soundly rejected by voters and are currently leaderless in the Senate.
And there are benefits to doing so. You will not anger the largest growing voter bloc in the nation, you will show the world that Rush and Newt do not run your party and you will start on the road to recovering the dignity and class Republicans once had, but threw away when they embraced the Bush-Cheney regime.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
A bridge in Brooklyn for sale
By Don Klein
So you expected a vast change in direction for the country after the November election sweep by the Democrats who won not just the presidency, but the House of Representatives and the Senate? I suppose recent actions in Washington has brought you back to earth.
Although I lean towards the Democrats in general because I feel in most cases they are more concerned with the welfare of the public rather than guaranteeing unbridled profits of huge corporations who the Republicans usually support, I am often disappointed in the behavior of Democrats at crucial moments in history.
I recall with dismay the fact that all but one of the Senate Democrats in October 2002, including such stalwarts and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, voted in favor of the Bush legislation which authorized the inexcusable war in Iraq. Although they all insisted since that they were misled by the powers of the day, they really voted in favor of the war because they feared being stigmatized as soft on terror at the next election.
It seems being reelected is a more important priority for spineless politicians than doing what is right for the people. The Democrats are too anemic too often for my taste. They share a portion of the blame with the Republicans for the many deaths of US troops and foreign civilians in the Iraq conflict.
Today, when it is safe to oppose the war because the overwhelming majority of voters have turned against the conflict, these intrepid Democrats are all on the right side of the issue. They deserve no praise for their stance. Fortunately, this hypocracy does not include President Obama, who was against the war from the beginning. But he did not hold federal office at the time the relevant vote was taken.
You would have thought the fat-cat Democrats would have learned something from that ill-fated issue. But no, they are back at their wishy-washy ways again. While on the one hand they introduced legislation in Congress to require registration of guns and rifles, when it came down to voting on a unrelated matter they again went astray. They voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the credit card bill which allows loaded firearms to be carried on national parks property.
And we simple citizens thought the Democrats, with a strong majority in the Congress, could stop such underhanded and malicious legislative maneuvering. But this is a National Rifle Association issue and most senators lack the courage of a ladybug when it comes to thwarting the will of well organized and financially sound political action groups. I call it cowardice, but no one in Washington seems to care.
Then we come to the matter of closing the Guantanamo prison camp, a promise made by the Democratic Party’s own president before he was elected. Here is another case of categoric cowardice. Opponents of the plan circulated the ridiculous concept that more than 200 dangerous captives would be brought to US shores among the American populace if the Cuban base was closed.
The proponents of keeping the prison camp open and continuing the Bush policy of questionable legal detention of alleged terrorists were using the same fear tactic that Bush and Cheney had employed so effectively since 9/11. It was built on the basis that anything was justified in protecting Americans from another attack, even violation of the US Constitution. In order to keep Guantanamo open they had to destroy any hopeful Obama plan to close the camp.
They sold the idea of terrorists on American soil as a threat to every civilian in the country. But the fact is that these terrorists would never be set free in the US. The plan was to house them in maximum security federal prisons, from which no one has ever escaped, and try them in American courts. These facts obviously didn’t matter when timid Democratic senators voted overwhelmingly to deny the administration the funds needed to close Guantanamo.
Again the Democrats were craven at the thought of being painted weak on terror and endangering Americans by bringing these prisoners to US prisons. Gutlessness took over once again.
Worse, such shallow commitment to doing what is right when weighed against getting reelected will endanger everything that the Democrats hoped to do in Congress this term.
Before the year is over Obama hopes to pass a universal health care bill. It would not be unreasonable to think that such needed legislation might be jeopardized if Republican opponents can find an issue that would be construed by some as antithetical to the country’s welfare. They already did as much back in the Clinton years when they killed off a health care bill with a television campaign of misstatements and twisted facts.
This is what we all have to fear. If weak-kneed Democrats cannot stand on the decent principle of banning guns in national parks and funding the closing of Guantanamo, what can we expect from them on important and expensive matters like universal health care, establishing controls over business, carrying on the war in Afghanistan and delivering a greener country to us all?
Or even worse. How strongly will they support an Obama supreme court nominee if the GOP defines him to the public unflatteringly as nothing but a socialist tool?
If you are guileless enough to believe just because the Democrats hold a majority in both houses of Congress that every thing Obama promised during the campaign will come to fruition, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d be happy to sell to you.
So you expected a vast change in direction for the country after the November election sweep by the Democrats who won not just the presidency, but the House of Representatives and the Senate? I suppose recent actions in Washington has brought you back to earth.
Although I lean towards the Democrats in general because I feel in most cases they are more concerned with the welfare of the public rather than guaranteeing unbridled profits of huge corporations who the Republicans usually support, I am often disappointed in the behavior of Democrats at crucial moments in history.
I recall with dismay the fact that all but one of the Senate Democrats in October 2002, including such stalwarts and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, voted in favor of the Bush legislation which authorized the inexcusable war in Iraq. Although they all insisted since that they were misled by the powers of the day, they really voted in favor of the war because they feared being stigmatized as soft on terror at the next election.
It seems being reelected is a more important priority for spineless politicians than doing what is right for the people. The Democrats are too anemic too often for my taste. They share a portion of the blame with the Republicans for the many deaths of US troops and foreign civilians in the Iraq conflict.
Today, when it is safe to oppose the war because the overwhelming majority of voters have turned against the conflict, these intrepid Democrats are all on the right side of the issue. They deserve no praise for their stance. Fortunately, this hypocracy does not include President Obama, who was against the war from the beginning. But he did not hold federal office at the time the relevant vote was taken.
You would have thought the fat-cat Democrats would have learned something from that ill-fated issue. But no, they are back at their wishy-washy ways again. While on the one hand they introduced legislation in Congress to require registration of guns and rifles, when it came down to voting on a unrelated matter they again went astray. They voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the credit card bill which allows loaded firearms to be carried on national parks property.
And we simple citizens thought the Democrats, with a strong majority in the Congress, could stop such underhanded and malicious legislative maneuvering. But this is a National Rifle Association issue and most senators lack the courage of a ladybug when it comes to thwarting the will of well organized and financially sound political action groups. I call it cowardice, but no one in Washington seems to care.
Then we come to the matter of closing the Guantanamo prison camp, a promise made by the Democratic Party’s own president before he was elected. Here is another case of categoric cowardice. Opponents of the plan circulated the ridiculous concept that more than 200 dangerous captives would be brought to US shores among the American populace if the Cuban base was closed.
The proponents of keeping the prison camp open and continuing the Bush policy of questionable legal detention of alleged terrorists were using the same fear tactic that Bush and Cheney had employed so effectively since 9/11. It was built on the basis that anything was justified in protecting Americans from another attack, even violation of the US Constitution. In order to keep Guantanamo open they had to destroy any hopeful Obama plan to close the camp.
They sold the idea of terrorists on American soil as a threat to every civilian in the country. But the fact is that these terrorists would never be set free in the US. The plan was to house them in maximum security federal prisons, from which no one has ever escaped, and try them in American courts. These facts obviously didn’t matter when timid Democratic senators voted overwhelmingly to deny the administration the funds needed to close Guantanamo.
Again the Democrats were craven at the thought of being painted weak on terror and endangering Americans by bringing these prisoners to US prisons. Gutlessness took over once again.
Worse, such shallow commitment to doing what is right when weighed against getting reelected will endanger everything that the Democrats hoped to do in Congress this term.
Before the year is over Obama hopes to pass a universal health care bill. It would not be unreasonable to think that such needed legislation might be jeopardized if Republican opponents can find an issue that would be construed by some as antithetical to the country’s welfare. They already did as much back in the Clinton years when they killed off a health care bill with a television campaign of misstatements and twisted facts.
This is what we all have to fear. If weak-kneed Democrats cannot stand on the decent principle of banning guns in national parks and funding the closing of Guantanamo, what can we expect from them on important and expensive matters like universal health care, establishing controls over business, carrying on the war in Afghanistan and delivering a greener country to us all?
Or even worse. How strongly will they support an Obama supreme court nominee if the GOP defines him to the public unflatteringly as nothing but a socialist tool?
If you are guileless enough to believe just because the Democrats hold a majority in both houses of Congress that every thing Obama promised during the campaign will come to fruition, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d be happy to sell to you.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Falling on her face
By Don Klein
These are gloomy times. The economy is in the toilet. Banks are on the ropes and General Motors is tottering. Too many have lost their jobs and are unable to latch on to new ones. Unemployment is higher than it has been in decades. Retirement savings have disappeared. The war in Afghanistan is heating up and we are still taking casualties in Iraq.
But wait, not all is despair. There is someone doing her best to break through the negatives and cheer us up. Why should we be depressed? All is not lost. We are being entertained by the class clown, the wicked wench of the mid-west, Michele Bachmann.
She provides one laugh after another. Just what we need in bad times. She is equivalent to the Three Stooges during the Great Depression providing slapstick humor. She is better than them, she falls on her face – figuratively – all by herself, she needs no partners.
Ms. Bachmann, in case you didn’t know it, is a second term Republican congresswoman from Minnesota who was elected in 2006, the year the GOP lost control of Congress. Recently she came up with a discovery, a "unique coincidence" she called it. How come, she wondered out loud, the last time there was a threat of Swine Flu the president was a Democrat, just like today.
"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the Swine Flu broke out then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence," she announced to the world.
The loopy lady from Minnesota was trying to make partisan points and didn’t realize her flu observation wouldn’t have been "interesting" even if it were true. The fact is the last Swine Flu scare occurred during Republican President Gerald Ford’s term of office. The joke was on her but we all got a good laugh out of it.
What Bachmann needs to do is rent a clown’s baggy pants, stick a big red rubber ball on her nose, put on floppy 24-inch shoes and wear a wild yellow wig to really get the crowd warmed up. A little exaggerated clown’s make-up wouldn’t hurt either.
What makes Bachmann so funny (or more correctly, pathetic) is that she shouts out charges without checking the facts, then when proven incorrect, does not admit it. Such was the case when she accused Democratic congressman, Keith Ellison, a Muslim, of consorting with terrorists.
Referring to a group of imams arrested in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport some years ago, she explained, "The imams... were actually attending, ah, Congressman Keith Ellison’s victory celebration, when he won as a member of Congress."
Bachmann talked about terror-related accusations that had been made against the six imams, not mentioning that these allegations had since been disproved. The fact was that nervous airline passengers had apparently misinterpreted the imams’ praying as reminiscent of the 9/11 hijackers’ patterns. The imams were in Minnesota to attend a conference—not a victory party.
Ellison responded: "This is not true. I think it could even be psycho-talk."
A Bachmann spokesman defended her statement while admitting that "the details may be a little rough." A little batty would be a better description.
Bachmann is not always funny, in fact at times she is very cruel. She spoke on the House floor about the dangers of hate-crimes legislation. Protecting gay victims of crime, to her, means protecting pedophiles. A pedophile in Bachmann’s view is someone who is gay, or a transgender, or a cross-dresser. That is who hate crime laws protects, she contended.
It wasn’t the first time Bachmann equated gays with child molesters. In 2004, she told a talk-radio host that same-sex marriage is dangerous because "it is our children who are the prize for this community, they are specifically targeting our children."
We know of Bachmann’s total contempt for reality and her ability to solve many critical problems by branding those whom she politically disagrees with with unsubstantiated accusations. She is often outrageous, like the long-time polemic critic of liberals, Ann Coulter.
As H.L. Mencken, who chastised politicians for being rogues, vagabonds, frauds and scoundrels, once said about elected officials: "They never get there on merit alone...Sometimes, to be sure, it happens but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged."
Bachmann an enchantress? Hardly, she is more of a riddle. Her constituency intellectually underprivileged? Not at all. She comes from a state which traditionally sends brilliant people onto the national scene. Senators Hubert Humphrey, the father of civil rights in Congress, Walter Mondale, served as vice president to Jimmy Carter and later ran for president, and Paul Wellstone, a progressive of considerable stature, are good example of Minnesotans who earned great marks nationally.
What has happened to Minnesota after all these years that now we are treated to the buffoon-like behavior of Bachmann? Could it be a post-Bush hangover or a wicked accident of fate? Is she a celestial angel in disguise sent to America to remind us of the dangers inherent in a political process that caters to nonsense? Is it a case of extremes, with Obama at the top and Bachmann at the bottom?
She is living proof that it is time that Americans stop sending kooks to Washington, but that is unlikely to change. As Menckin said: "One of the merits of democracy is quite obvious: it is probably the most charming form of government ever devised by man." In other words, style trumps content.
We often delude ourselves with images of crusading knights on white chargers doing God’s work in Washington only to end up with just another version of the Michele Bachmanns of the world.
These are gloomy times. The economy is in the toilet. Banks are on the ropes and General Motors is tottering. Too many have lost their jobs and are unable to latch on to new ones. Unemployment is higher than it has been in decades. Retirement savings have disappeared. The war in Afghanistan is heating up and we are still taking casualties in Iraq.
But wait, not all is despair. There is someone doing her best to break through the negatives and cheer us up. Why should we be depressed? All is not lost. We are being entertained by the class clown, the wicked wench of the mid-west, Michele Bachmann.
She provides one laugh after another. Just what we need in bad times. She is equivalent to the Three Stooges during the Great Depression providing slapstick humor. She is better than them, she falls on her face – figuratively – all by herself, she needs no partners.
Ms. Bachmann, in case you didn’t know it, is a second term Republican congresswoman from Minnesota who was elected in 2006, the year the GOP lost control of Congress. Recently she came up with a discovery, a "unique coincidence" she called it. How come, she wondered out loud, the last time there was a threat of Swine Flu the president was a Democrat, just like today.
"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the Swine Flu broke out then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence," she announced to the world.
The loopy lady from Minnesota was trying to make partisan points and didn’t realize her flu observation wouldn’t have been "interesting" even if it were true. The fact is the last Swine Flu scare occurred during Republican President Gerald Ford’s term of office. The joke was on her but we all got a good laugh out of it.
What Bachmann needs to do is rent a clown’s baggy pants, stick a big red rubber ball on her nose, put on floppy 24-inch shoes and wear a wild yellow wig to really get the crowd warmed up. A little exaggerated clown’s make-up wouldn’t hurt either.
What makes Bachmann so funny (or more correctly, pathetic) is that she shouts out charges without checking the facts, then when proven incorrect, does not admit it. Such was the case when she accused Democratic congressman, Keith Ellison, a Muslim, of consorting with terrorists.
Referring to a group of imams arrested in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport some years ago, she explained, "The imams... were actually attending, ah, Congressman Keith Ellison’s victory celebration, when he won as a member of Congress."
Bachmann talked about terror-related accusations that had been made against the six imams, not mentioning that these allegations had since been disproved. The fact was that nervous airline passengers had apparently misinterpreted the imams’ praying as reminiscent of the 9/11 hijackers’ patterns. The imams were in Minnesota to attend a conference—not a victory party.
Ellison responded: "This is not true. I think it could even be psycho-talk."
A Bachmann spokesman defended her statement while admitting that "the details may be a little rough." A little batty would be a better description.
Bachmann is not always funny, in fact at times she is very cruel. She spoke on the House floor about the dangers of hate-crimes legislation. Protecting gay victims of crime, to her, means protecting pedophiles. A pedophile in Bachmann’s view is someone who is gay, or a transgender, or a cross-dresser. That is who hate crime laws protects, she contended.
It wasn’t the first time Bachmann equated gays with child molesters. In 2004, she told a talk-radio host that same-sex marriage is dangerous because "it is our children who are the prize for this community, they are specifically targeting our children."
We know of Bachmann’s total contempt for reality and her ability to solve many critical problems by branding those whom she politically disagrees with with unsubstantiated accusations. She is often outrageous, like the long-time polemic critic of liberals, Ann Coulter.
As H.L. Mencken, who chastised politicians for being rogues, vagabonds, frauds and scoundrels, once said about elected officials: "They never get there on merit alone...Sometimes, to be sure, it happens but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged."
Bachmann an enchantress? Hardly, she is more of a riddle. Her constituency intellectually underprivileged? Not at all. She comes from a state which traditionally sends brilliant people onto the national scene. Senators Hubert Humphrey, the father of civil rights in Congress, Walter Mondale, served as vice president to Jimmy Carter and later ran for president, and Paul Wellstone, a progressive of considerable stature, are good example of Minnesotans who earned great marks nationally.
What has happened to Minnesota after all these years that now we are treated to the buffoon-like behavior of Bachmann? Could it be a post-Bush hangover or a wicked accident of fate? Is she a celestial angel in disguise sent to America to remind us of the dangers inherent in a political process that caters to nonsense? Is it a case of extremes, with Obama at the top and Bachmann at the bottom?
She is living proof that it is time that Americans stop sending kooks to Washington, but that is unlikely to change. As Menckin said: "One of the merits of democracy is quite obvious: it is probably the most charming form of government ever devised by man." In other words, style trumps content.
We often delude ourselves with images of crusading knights on white chargers doing God’s work in Washington only to end up with just another version of the Michele Bachmanns of the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
