Light Blogging…
Those of you who know me personally will understand that today’s events will likely occupy a significant amount of my time. Expect slow blogging for a few.
One More Reason to Raise the Minimum Wage Nationally
In order to save a measly $2.10 an hour, a McDonalds in Oregon is outsourcing drive through order taking to North Dakota.
The restaurant on Highway 395 has outsourced one of the most important jobs at the drive-through window — order taking.When a customer drives through, they’ll be patched through to Grand Forks, North Dakota to place the order. Why? Because the minimum wage in North Dakota is $5.15, compared to Oregon’s $7.25.
Of course, ridiculous situations like this can be avoided all together by simply increasing the minimum wage nationally like John Kerry and other Democrats have proposed. Oh yeah…I forgot…apparently since Kerry lost by a whopping 3 points everything the 56 million people who voted for him supported gets tossed out the window.
Hat tip to Fark.
What the Rest of the World Watched on Inauguration Day
Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by the National Catholic Reporter
by Joan Chittister
Dublin, on U.S. Inauguration Day, didn’t seem to notice. Oh, they played a few clips that night of the American president saying, “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.”
But that was not their lead story.
The picture on the front page of The Irish Times was a large four-color picture of a small Iraqi girl. Her little body was a coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark night. Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were blood-spattered. The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back seat.
A series of pictures of the incident played on the inside page, as well. A 12-year-old brother, wounded in the fray, falls face down out of the car when the car door opens, the pictures show. In another, a soldier decked out in battle gear, holds a large automatic weapon on the four children, all potential enemies, all possible suicide bombers, apparently, as they cling traumatized to one another in the back seat and the child on the ground goes on screaming in her parent’s blood.
No promise of “freedom” rings in the cutline on this picture. No joy of liberty underlies the terror on these faces here.
Opening the Flood "Gates"
First there was Armstrong Williams.
Then Maggie Gallagher.
and now Michael McManus.
Wow, looks like we have a full blown “gate” on our hands.
Hat Tip to DJHLIGHTS.
Seeking Progressive Cartoonist…
Regular “Comments” readers will know that nearly every Friday since April we have published a new cartoon by Tom Burns. Unfortunately, Tom has not put out any new pieces since mid December and our attempts to contact him have gone unanswered. While I hope that all is well with him it is looking increasingly as though it is time for us to seek a new Friday cartoonist.
Therefore, any progressive cartoonists interested in publishing your work here please forward me a request including sample art to goose3five(at)gmail(dot)com. In the meantime, I will put up whatever I can find.
Oath by Rehnquist by Tony Peyser
Never Forget.
My fellow human beings,
Three score years ago, as the war that almost ended civilization wound down to an end, the Army of Russia opened the gates to a place that opened the eyes and the heart of anyone with a shred of humanity: Auschwitz was liberated.
The ghastly images of the dead and near dead. The stories they told of more than a million souls oh-so-methodically murdered. The evil acts of individuals and the equally evil complicity of countless other individuals, in the name of their state and race. From that day forward, it became necessary to speak and think of the unspeakable and the unthinkable, if we beings who purport to be human wish to save our soul.
“How,” many ask, “could people do something so horrible to other people? To so many other people?” That, unfortunately, is all too easy to answer: a question for politicians and engineers, those skilled in manipulating people and things.
I believe the better question is, as it usually is, in affairs oh-so-human, “Why?”
As much as that query skewers the human psyche, people wrestle with many reasons — some even squirm around inexcusable “excuses” — sociological and psychological. And it may well be that no species, human or otherwise, may be able to see itself with enough detached clarity to answer such a fundamental question about its own nature. But to keep from going quite mad — with the nagging fear that we might one day become the victims of such horrors ourselves or, perhaps worse yet, the perpetrators of such psychopathy — all of good conscience have struggled with the why of it all, in the sixty years since the barbed-wire gates were flung open.
To me, dear friends, the explanation for such extraordinary evil is rooted in very ordinary instincts…and, thus, is most cautionary. People hate others and do them harm — from the smallest slight to these most horrific atrocities — because of selfishness.
I speak not simply of greed — wanting for myself that which is not rightly mine (and, indeed, the Nazis and their collaborators stole untold material goods from their Jewish and other victims) — but more generally of the state of mind of an individual (or state of government of a country) that is hostile or, perhaps even more damning, indifferent to the fate or welfare of anyone else.
Serving such selfishness, in the extreme, one is absolutely intolerant of anyone in any way “different” — racially, religiously, politically, in any definable way different — from one’s self. The self is served; all others, be damned. The “Final Solution”, from such a point of view, is not so much the extermination of those who are different (although that, of course, “must” be done) as it is the ultimate preservation — for now and forever — of the self and only the self (or, at most, those most like oneself).
And as long as there is ego, there will always be such danger, of selfishness ad absurdum.
But the remedy is not to swing to the other extreme: Extreme selflessness is also as dangerous. Indeed, the fascism that brought Jewry in Europe and civilization in the world to the brink of extinction could not have existed without the selfless self-discipline of the masses, at the command of the dictator, the raving embodiment of the cult of self.
No, the answer, as in most of life, lies in a balance: As the One I worship once said, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” (Truth be told, many far wiser than yours truly — from Christ to Confucius — have stated this Golden Rule, in one form or another, down through the ages)
We can learn from history; we must learn from history. That is why your humble servant, The Scarecrow, but a phantom from the time of your Revolution, hath returned in yet another incarnation, to submit context and lessons from the past as you consider the serious issues of your day: I appeal to your intelligence and humanity; I never mean to insult them.
Thank God you live in a far better time than that which gave the world such places as Auschwitz. But never forget that the embers of evil that, fanned by fanaticism, grew into the Holocaust will ever lie smoldering, never quite extinguished, wherever the self holds others in contempt. Never forget that the perfect grace of our imperfect race is love.
Your obedient servant,
Another Right Wing Propagandist Uncovered
Anyone who thinks the Armstrong Williams Payola incident was isolated had better take another sip of that Kool-Aid or read on. The Washington Post is reporting today that syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher was paid $21,500 by the Department of Health and Human Services to pimp a $300 million marriage initiative for the administration. When asked whether this violated journalistic ethics Gallager said,
“Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?” Gallagher said yesterday. “I don’t know. You tell me.” She said she would have “been happy to tell anyone who called me” about the contract but that “frankly, it never occurred to me” to disclose it.
Ok Maggie, I will tell you…YES.
Hat tip to Oliver.
(Ignore this line, it is a test - Politics)
End-Timers & Neo-Cons
Hat tip to Eric Alterman.
End-Timers & Neo-Cons
The End of Conservatives
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts; January 19, 2005
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during 1981-82 (Reagan). He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.
I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.
America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country’s population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals “end times” and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.
The evening before Thanksgiving Rush Limbaugh was on C-Span TV explaining that these glorious developments would have been impossible if talk radio and the conservative movement had not combined to break the power of the liberal media.
In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor Richard Lowry and former editor John O’Sullivan celebrate Bush’s reelection triumph over “a hostile press corps.” “Try as they might,” crowed O’Sullivan, “they couldn’t put Kerry over the top.” There was a time when I could rant about the “liberal media” with the best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over the precise location of the “liberal media.”
Is There a Doctor in The House?!
My fellow Friends of Liberty,
As the Democratic Party, now severely but not mortally wounded, considers whom to select as its new Chair — the face, voice, and conscience of the Party in the turbulent days, months, and years ahead — your obedient, The Scarecrow, doth beg ye to remember…remember back to winter last…and the winter before that…
Verily, a year is a lifetime in politics.
Two years ago, in the winter of 2003, ye Democrats were reeling from your disastrous defeats in the fall of 2002. And what a fall it was. Despite categorical predictions and historical precedents, ye lost seats in the House to the party of a President mid-term. Most damning of all were polls in which a majority of Americans condemned your party and policies as “losers”. “Losers”!
There was a wealth of reasons, and no dearth of scapegoats, for your fall from grace, as the party that had presided over eight long years of relative peace and unprecedented prosperity, to political pariahs, just two years later. The public had rallied behind the President who led ye through the horrors of the Eleventh of September, 2001. He framed the election as a referendum on security; and regardless of the ambivalence of the public towards his march to war in Iraq, whenever security is the issue the GOP wins. The Democratic leadership failed to voice a strong and clear message of its own, on practically any issue. Your party had been divided and conquered by the President’s setting the agenda; on votes for his tax cuts or war powers, far too many lawmakers broke ranks with your party for dissent on either issue to serve as a rallying cry.
The GOP controlled all three branches of the federal government and the terms of the national debate.
Forgive your humble servant for speaking so bluntly, but your party was a “loser”. And thus your nation, too.
Then, in the winter of your discontent, there arose a son, not of York, but of New England: As bright, hot, and unrelenting as the summer sun was former Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean MD.
The feisty physician shocked both Democratic and Republican establishments, by condemning the “complicity” of the parties, particularly in the “unprovoked war” on Iraq but also in everything from taxation to healthcare. Still “politically incorrect” to be branded “liberals”, ye “progressives” had a champion!
Millions of Americans, particularly the youngest or the best educated, who had felt their intelligence insulted by the powers that be, now felt empowered by the things that might be. These true believers heeded the call of this secular evangelist and — particularly through this fantastic new medium of the Internet — poured tens of millions of dollars into his Presidential campaign, and turned out by the millions in small “meet-ups” nationwide.
The Democratic Party, all but dead, had arisen, fiery and formidable — a phoenix in reverse.
The months went on. The deaths went on, even after a “Mission Accomplished”. The jobs went overseas, even as a “recovery” continued. The credibility of the Administration (allegedly elected for its integrity) went out the window, as no weapons of mass destruction were found and hundreds of billions of your taxpayers’ dollars were lost (in a quagmire overseas, tax cuts for the rich, and “reform” of the Medicare). As the party in power enjoyed less favor, the “mad doctor” from Vermont made more sense to more people…including some politicians within the establishment he continued to rail against.
By the end of 2003, there were more Democrats running for President than I wager most of ye voters can remember, their campaigns happily roasting the incumbent over the fires of discontent ignited by the firebrand from Vermont, their means often flattering by imitation (no candidate caught dead without “blog” or meet-up).
Then something extraordinary happened. The President delivered on a promise he made: Your troops pulled out the Ace in the hole.
History was rewritten — removing the Butcher of Baghdad, not his boasted weapons of your mass destruction, became the justification a posteriori for war — and the campaign of the doctor who had prescribed just peace was destined to become just history.
Often “over the top”, his rhetoric had been excused if not esteemed as straightforward and bold, forgivable in excess for the righteousness of its cause. Most, however, now considered his outspokenness recklessness, a liability for achieving an even greater cause, now seemingly within reach: The winning of “the middle”, once scorned but now courted, to wipe that damned smirk off the face of the “winner” who had made ye — and your cherished beliefs — such miserable “losers”.
The candidates perceived or verily farthest to the Left and the Right failed first; those deemed most “electable” (most “Kennedyesque”, in heroism, name, charisma, or hair) gained quickly the favor of record numbers of voters in primaries and caucuses nationwide.
As your obedient has noted, time and again, the ultimate results of the election would be subject to serious question; but there remains one fact beyond dispute: The Democratic Party was verily revived from its near-death experience by a doctor named Dean.
Something for ye to consider, if ye wish to put an end to these bitter winters of your discontent.
Your obedient servant,
Polling on Social Security Reform
During the recent election cycle there was quite a flap over an ad MoveOn.org ran in the New York Times claiming that the Gallup organization’s polls leaned in favor of Republicans. While it ended up unclear as to whether those charges were proven true or not one thing was for sure, Gallup was one of many organizations polling the American public on their opinions regarding the Presidential race. If you did not like their results you could compare them to a multitude of other polls.
Today we are in the middle of a contest nearly as heated as that election yet very little attention is being paid to it by pollsters, until now. The President’s push for Social Security reform is in full swing so it would seem only fitting that the first organization to conduct a poll of the American public’s attitudes toward reform would be Gallup. From January 1-16, 2005 Gallup conducted telephone interviews with a randomly selected U.S. sample of 801 adult investors, aged 18 and older, with at least $10,000 of investable assets. The result is a report entitled, “Will Investors Support Social Security Reform?”
I have not yet seen this poll used by a major news organization but it won’t be long before it is considering the results. But do not expect Drudge, The Washington Times, Rush, or Fox to repeat any of the following statistics.
- Today, 87% of investors think reducing benefits for all Social Security recipients is a bad idea, up from 82% in December 1997.
- Seventy percent of investors think gradually extending to 70 the minimum age at which recipients can receive Social Security benefits is a bad idea, compared with 73% who held this position seven years ago.
- Fewer of today’s investors think the Social Security system needs major changes or a complete overhaul.
- More of today’s non-retired investors think they’ll get most or all of their Social Security benefits, and more expect Social Security to be a major or minor source of their retirement income.
- Today’s investors overwhelmingly oppose reducing Social Security benefits and extending the retirement age. And although the percentage of investors in favor of raising Social Security taxes has increased since 1997, this proposal is still rejected by a 2-to-1 margin today.
None of these results bode well for Dubya’s grand privitization plan. If Gallup has any bias it certainly did not show in these results. Now let’s see how the right tries to spin it.
The 34 Scandals of George W. Bush
A couple of weeks ago Salon put out a piece entitled The 34 Scandals of George W. Bush. Since Salon is a subscriber only service and I am not yet willing to pay for it (read I am cheap) I had to wait for TruthOut to republish it. Now that I have read it I can say with confidence that any one of these scandals during the independent counsel era would have sunk Dubbya. Here is a taste of just a few:
Memogate: The Senate Computer TheftThe scandal: From 2001 to 2003, Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee illicitly accessed nearly 5,000 computer files containing confidential Democratic strategy memos about President Bush’s judicial nominees. The GOP used the memos to shape their own plans and leaked some to the media.
The problem: The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act states it is illegal to obtain confidential information from a government computer.
The outcome: Unresolved. The Justice Department has assigned a prosecutor to the case. The staff member at the heart of the matter, Manuel Miranda, has attempted to brazen it out, filing suit in September 2004 against the DOJ to end the investigation. “A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,” Miranda complained. Some jokes just write themselves.
—–
Dark Matter: The Energy Task Force
The scandal: A lawsuit has claimed it is illegal for Dick Cheney to keep the composition of his 2001 energy-policy task force secret. What’s the big deal? The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer has suggested an explosive aspect of the story, citing a National Security Council memo from February 2001, which “directed the N.S.C. staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the ‘melding’ of … ‘operational policies towards rogue states,’ such as Iraq, and ‘actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.’” In short, the task force’s activities could shed light on the administration’s pre-9/11 Iraq aims.
The problem: The Federal Advisory Committee Act says the government must disclose the work of groups that include non-federal employees; the suit claims energy industry executives were effectively task force members. Oh, and the Bush administration has portrayed the Iraq war as a response to 9/11, not something it was already considering.
The outcome: Unresolved. In June 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to an appellate court.
—–
The Pentagon-Israel Spy Case
The scandal: A Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, may have passed classified United States documents about Iran to Israel, possibly via the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Washington lobbying group.
The problem: To do so could be espionage or could constitute the mishandling of classified documents.
The outcome: A grand jury is investigating. In December 2004, the FBI searched AIPAC’s offices. A Senate committee has also been investigating the apparently unauthorized activities of the Near East and South Asia Affairs group in the Pentagon, where Franklin works.
Thank You
I just want thank the Pittsburgh Steelers for an excellent season. You made me a believer and now have turned one 3 year old little girl into a Steeler fan for life!
DNC Chair…
Scarecrow has been talking as of late about the importance of putting a strong leader in place at the DNC. It is my belief that the best person for that role just completed an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Governor Howard Dean.
In a word, Justice.
My fellow Friends of Liberty,
I thank all of thee for the splendid commentaries ye hast made on my previous post. Allow me then to follow through a wee bit further…
Whether ye appeal to the Middle, on issues of labor, or to the Left, on issues of civil rights, the common denominator is Justice — the fair and equitable distribution of opportunity, responsibility, and ultimately power.
The candidate for the Chair of the Democratic National Committee — being considered as even we speak — who focuses most on Justice, particularly in the contexts aforementioned, is precisely who ye need; that is the one central (I believe ye call it “bumper sticker”) theme that can unite your Party and an electoral majority.
“The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.” –John Locke
Your obedient servant,
To the Left AND the Middle!
My fellow Friends of Liberty,
Your obedient, The Scarecrow, hears the calls sent up to Heaven and down to Hades in desperation from Americans across the political spectrum — from the wealthy, extremely overworked executive employed at a major corporation to the poor, extremely overworked single mother employed (for now) elsewhere.
As the National Committee of the Democratic Party presently considers a new Chair, the Party considers a new direction: Shall ye move to the Left or the Middle? My friends, yours truly most heartily contends that — like the choice between security or liberty — this is a false choice, more the reflection of the shrill rhetoric of your opponents than a sober consideration of your own positions.
In the humble opinion of your humble servant, the Democratic Party must move to the Left AND the Middle, in order to save its soul and save your nation.
First, to the Left. The Democratic Party must never abandon its support of progressive programs assisting the lives and protecting the rights of racial minorities, homosexuals, and women (including those seeking abortions). The Democratic Party must never abandon its progressive positions on Social Security, unemployment insurance, unionism, taxation, education, nature, or health care. And the Democratic Party must never abandon its progressive opposition to unjust, unwise, illegal war.
But — and please bear with your loyal servant for but a moment — just as ye must not betray your political idealism ye must face political reality: Most voters in America are not, in fact, minorities (by definition), homosexuals, women seeking abortions, retired, unemployed, union members, extremely rich or extremely poor, students, naturalists, seriously ill, or serving overseas in war.
Nevertheless, most Americans — including racial minorities, homosexuals, women (seeking abortions or not), working people (rich and poor, union and nonunion, and those when once they were at work), parents, naturalists, the ill, and families of the military — are working themselves to death; and their families are being torn apart to just keep an unbelievably expensive roof over their heads; the bill-collectors and doctors at bay; and their jobs from being downsized, outsourced, or otherwise threatened by employers or other would-be employees — workers across the nation and around the world are being divided and conquered by big business run amok, ultimately impoverishing all (for the workers are the consumers).
As most of ye know all too well, that is life “in the Middle” — day after usually-more-than-eight-hour day — regardless of whether any of one’s other political instincts are to the Left or the Right.
If the Democratic Party abandons the Middle, ye will lose most elections; if the Democratic Party abandons the Left, ye will lose your soul…and become the Republican Party.
Please pardon my forwardness, in sharing my impressions; but I cannot in good conscience stay silent and ignore the cries I hear in the still of the night from millions of households across your great land.
Your obedient servant,
Hello!
Just a quick hello from a new writer. I live in a red state therefore I’m happy to find myself in Comments From the Left Field. Thank you Goose for giving many of us a place where we can find comfort and reliable information in a time when our country’s leaders are leaving us in despair. Last week in my home state of Georgia, a sense of hope was ignited when a U.S. District Judge ruled Cobb County School Board’s decision to apply evolution disclaimer’s on high school biology textbooks as unconstitutional. Once again, the fundamentalists of the south did their best to embarass we inner-city progressives with their radical conservative agendas - but for now, they have been defeated by the wisdom of common sense judiciary. In fact, the judicial branch is currently the only place in government where many of us can find reasoned thinking in this Bush-driven era of insane ideology, though the Bushies are fiercely working to change that as well. There is no doubt that the President and his ‘clan’ will view the Cobb County ruling as “judicial activism” neglecting the extreme activist behavior of the Cobb school board itself. I’m wondering what the conservative retaliation forces have in store for us; perhaps a proposed constitutional amendment requiring evolution disclaimers on all U.S. high school textbooks? I wouldn’t doubt it at this stage! Farewell for now - I look forward to the opportunity to share thoughts and stand up to the true “evil-doers”…
Free Speech Zones
Yesterday I posted a picture that was captured from a webcam on 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue. The picture, as you can see below, shows a protester holding up an over the top sign from behind a fence. In the post I stated that it looked as though the protestor was in a “Free Speech Zone,” one of those nice little pens used so frequently by our President to shield him from reality.
One of the contributors over at The Asylum, a conservative blog I link to and read frequently, decided to call me out on this post. What I find interesting is that he has decided take a position supporting these “Free Speech Zones” that is oddly reminiscent of the position that created the Sedition Act of 1918 (under a Democratic administration mind you) outlawing political dissent as treason. It is basically the same old slippery slope political argument the right uses with everything else, “we had to pen up the protestors because they could hurt someone…those crazy anarchists.” Quote…
You can tell it is a liberal protest because of the violence and vulgarity.
Feel the tolerance.
I think this is a discussion worth having so I urge you to head over to the thread and nicely provide your 2 cents.