The K.F. Stone Weekly

Forty-Five Pictures Might Be Worth Ten Million Votes

 Something quite a bit different this week .  . .

 With so much time, attention and ink being devoted to the retrograde lunacy and schoolyard caterwauling that is the Republican field, I thought it would be appropriate to devote a column -- in a few words and forty-five pictures -- to a class act: President Barack Obama.  It comes as no surprise that in the midst of debates and screaming headlines concerning such contrived "dog whistle" issues as contraception, transvaginal ultrasounds and personhood, we wonder "are there any adults left in the room?"  Actually there are.  And one of them is President Obama.  There is such a vast chasm in this country between those who can't find a single positive thing to say about our president and those who find him to be the embodiment of the American  Dream.  I must admit to being in the latter camp.

   And so, without further ado, a "Thank You" to the man and the family who reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

   (Deep thanks to my friend and student Al Blake for bringing the following to my attention . . . )

 

Thanks Mr. President

For

. . . the "room lightening" smile:

 

 

 

 

For

The mind that always thinks:

 

 

For preventing a second Great Depression:

For the humor:

 

 

 

 

For bringing the number of women on the Supreme Court to 3:

 

For making the White House the "People's" house:

 

For 1.1 million jobs created in 2010 alone, more than the entire 8 years of George W. Bush:

 

For the love of people:

 

 

 

For the love of family:

 

 

 

 

For the First Lady:

 

 

 

For Health Care Reform:

 

 

For leaving the past behind:

 

 

For the world having respect for America again:

 

 

 

 

 

For quietly and calmly dealing with crisis after crisis, after crisis, after crisis, even if not being responsible for any of them:

 

For being so "cool":

For being fierce - when need be:

 

 

 

 

For having the intellect to be curious:

 

 

For the capacity to know that you are, as we are, imperfect:

 

For having the sense to not let it destroy you:

 

For the capacity to be compassionate:

 

 

For being an inspiration to so many:

 

 

For saving the auto industry and at least 1.4 million jobs:

For loving our troops:

 

 

For undertanding the horrible price of war:

 

For bringing 100,000 men and women back from Iraq:

 

For facing the most difficult and loneliest job in the world with grace, dignity, honesty and guts in spite of so many "Haters":

For being, in spite of all the hate, pettiness, racism, corruption and immaturity around, the most progressive and 'for the people' president in decades:
 
And simply for this:

 

For Being....................

"MR. PRESIDENT"!

 

 

Is Rick Santorum Running for POTUS or POTMA?

  By now, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty must be kicking himself in the backside and feeling like Terry Malloy. Terry who?  Malloy -- the character Marlon

Brando in On the Waterfront. If you use your imagination, you can hear Pawlenty muttering:  "You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.  If only I'da stayed in the race, even I coulda been the Republican flavor of the month . . . instead of all those other guys . . . like Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich and now this guy Santorum . . . If only I'da known, I too coulda run for beatification insteda nomination . . ."

   Indeed, listening to the former Pennsylvania senator these past few weeks -- and going back over what he's said these past few years -- its difficult to tell if he's running for POTUS (President of the United States) or POTMA (Pope of the Middle Ages). Since he has emerged from the shadows, Santorum has been making one outrageous

statement after another -- on issues ranging from Global Warming and Evolution to Contraception, Gay Marriage and the Crusades.  Not only has he shown himself to be as rigidly far-right as any presidential candidate in memory; he has proven that his grasp of history is as tenuous as that of Sara Palin.   A sampling of some of Santorum's more ludicrous comments make the determination as to whether he is running for President or Pope truly a difficult endeavor:

 

• On Global Warming: “I believe the earth gets warmer and I also believe the earth gets cooler. And I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man, through the production of CO2 — which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas — is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all the other factors . . . [Global Warming is] just an excuse for more government control of your life, and I’ve never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative.” (Santorum on the Rush Limbaugh Show)

• On contraception: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.” (Santorum speaking in Minnesota 2/7/12)

• On homosexuality and gay marriage: “Let’s look at what’s going to be taught in our schools because now we have same sex couples being the same and their sexual activity being seen as equal and being affirmed by society as heterosexual couples and their activity. So what is going to be taught to our people in health class in our schools? What is going to be taught to our children about who in our stories, even to little children — what are married couples? What families look like in America? So, you are going to have in our curriculum spread throughout our curriculum worldview that is fundamentally different than what is taught in schools today? Is that not a consequence of gay marriage?”(Speaking in Iowa, Jan. 2012)

• On the teaching of Evolution: “What we should be teaching are the problems and holes and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution. And what we need to do is to present those fairly from a scientific point of view. And we should lay out areas in which the evidence supports evolution and the areas in the evidence that does not.” (On NPR's "Morning Edition," Aug. 4, 2005)

• On Health Care and World War II and the Normandy Invasion (!):“Almost 60,000 average Americans had the courage to go out and charge those beaches on Normandy, to drop out of airplanes who knows where, and take on the battle for freedom. Average Americans, the very Americans that our government now, and this president, does not trust to make a decision on your health care plan. Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan.” (June 6, 2011)

• On President Obama:“The president’s agenda is not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology. But no less a theology.” (2/18/12)

• On the Relationship Between Social Security and Abortion: “The Social Security system, in my opinion, is a flawed design, period. But having said that, the design would work a lot better if we had stable demographic trends. We don’t have enough workers to support the retirees . . . A third of the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion."(Radio Inteview in New Hampshire, Mar. 29, 2011)

• If Barack Obama is Reelected, Christians May Well be Beheaded: "When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.” (Speech in Plano, Texas, Feb. 9, 2012) and lastly,

• Satan is Attacking America: "If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States . . . . He didn’t have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America…" (Speech at Ave Maria University in 2008)
  

   The above quotations don't even come close to giving a full accounting of the Santorum catechism.  Suffice it to say that his views are so arch, so far off the beaten track as to make him un-electable.  And for that, all forward-thinking people can breathe a collective sigh of relief. 

   America has no need of a Pope -- especially a medieval one.

   Yes indeed, Tim Pawlenty is kicking himself in the rear . . .

©2012 Kurt F. Stone

 

 

 

An Essay With Something For Everyone to Dislike

   We begin with a handful of quotes on the subject of conservatives and conservatism:

• Alexis de Toqueville: “I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social
  

      Alexis de Tocqueville
  advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.” 
• Mark Twain: “Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.“
• Woodrow Wilson: "A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt."
• William F. Buckley, Jr.: “A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’.”
• William E. Gladstone: “Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.”
• Barry Goldwater: “Today’s so-called ‘conservatives’ don’t even know what the word means. They think I’ve turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It’s not a conservative issue at all.”
• P.J. O'Rourke: “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.”

 Now that we've got the conservative diastolic on the rise, let's move on to a handful of quotes about liberals and liberalism:

• Thomas Sowell: "Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face."
• Robert Frost: "A liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel."
• E.J. Dionne, Jr.: "Liberals and conservatives disagree over what are the most important sins. For conservatives, the sins that matter are personal irresponsibility, the flight from family life, sexual permissiveness, the failure of individuals to work hard. For liberals, the gravest sins are intolerance, a lack of generosity toward the needy, narrow-mindedness toward social and racial minorities.
• Charles Krauthammer: To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. 
• Ann Coulter: “Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy.”
• Yevgeny Yevtushenko: "Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?"
• Lenny Bruce: "The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."

  The above should raise the liberal systolic by a few points. 

  Now on to a statement that should get both sides riled:

  If, God forbid, America ever becomes a second-rate nation, it will undoubtedly be because the cupidinous morons on the right have been aided and abetted by the weak-kneed cowards on the left.  You read me correctly: the conservatives are morons; the liberals are cowards.  The former is scientifically verifiable; the latter, anecdotally conjectural. 

   Last month, Gordon Hodson, a widely respected Professor of Psychology at Brock University in Ontario (Canada) published a long-awaited study in the journal Psychological Science.  Entitled Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes, Professor Hodson's controversial study compared childhood intelligence with political views in adulthood across more than 15,000 people. Hodson and his colleagues came to the conclusion that " . . .  lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and [that] this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology." In other words, as summarized by the Daily Mail's Rob Waugh, "Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views . . . . Conservative politics work almost as a 'gateway' into prejudice against others . . . . People with low intelligence gravitate towards right-wing views because they make them feel safe."

   This by no means is meant to suggest that all conservatives are stupid.  Goodness knows, it certainly takes clever people to convince a fearful segment of the American public of such patent inanities as:

• Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
• Those who claim that climate change is man-made are elitist members of an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy.
• A tax break for the 1% is the only hope for the 99%.
• Any regulation that claims to prevent big banks and corporations from exploiting us, is in reality, an assault on working man and woman.
• The federal deficit results largely from the greed of the poor.
• The President of the United States is waging a war on religion.

   Writing about the new conservatives in the online journal Truthout, former longtime GOP congressional staffer Mike Longren noted, To be sure, the [Republican] party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots . . . .  But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman . . . Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy."

   Not to be outdone, former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum (who coined the phrase "Axis of Evil") wrote in a recent New York article:

 Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama, whatever his policy errors, is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.

   Creating and selling (if not fully believing) this right-wing reality takes a lot of craftiness, if not downright intelligence; it also takes a trainload of cash and a cadre of folks who have no problem taking advantage of millions upon millions of what Lofgren calls "low-information voters."  What the likes of the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friese and the other right-wing billionaires (among those possessing the trainloads of cash) have discovered is that there is no pool too shallow in which millions cannot and will not drown.

   But beyond the creating, the funding and the selling of this "alternate knowledge," there is the cowardice and downright complaisance of America's liberals and progressives.  As Thomas Frank notes in his latest book, Pity the Billionaire much of the blame rests with liberals and progressives, who suffer from what he calls "terminal niceness."  As the Guardian's George Monbiot describes it, the Democrats, ". . . fail  to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or . . . make an uncluttered case for social justice [and] regulation." Instead, he argues, they "triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate." 

   Indeed, the conceptual stupidities of conservatism are more than matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.  If ever the American political system is to right itself, the Right will have to stop feeding caustic misinformation to a haunted, fearful, low-information public, and the Left will have to overcome its reticence and shout     STOP!   

  Enough of this even-handedness!  Let us end with one last quote . . . from John Stewart Mill:

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

©2012 Kurt F. Stone

When Good News is No News

  On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the economy added 243,000 jobs in January, which dropped the unemployment rate to 8.3% -- the lowest jobless rate since January 2009, the month Barak Obama took the oath of office.  Although certainly slower and weaker than the president and millions of un- and underemployed Americans would wish, there is no question but that the American economy is improving.  Indeed, over the past year, the economy has added nearly 2 million non-government  jobs; over the past 23 months that figure is 3.7 million. jobs

This represents the best 12 months in at least 5 years.  Buoyed by the good news, the Dow rose by slightly more than 200 points, ending the week at 12,862.23 -- a 77.4% rise since Barack Obama took the oath of office slightly more than 3 years ago.

 

  According to a broad array of data, the economy has been gaining strength for almost six months, offering some reason for hope that the effects of the deep financial crisis are finally starting to fade. Still, the economy will need several more years of strong job growth to return to anything resembling full health. And although many forecasters are growing more hopeful about this year, several factors — including Europe’s financial troubles and the turmoil in Iran — could change the situation quickly.  As such, in speaking about the economy this past Friday, the president essentially laid out the theme that will be at the center of his re-election campaign, reminding voters how bad an economy he inherited and hailing recent progress while being careful to add that there is still a long way to go. "The economy is growing stronger; the recovery is speeding up," the president said.  But he then quickly conceded: "These numbers will go up and down in the coming months."  

   In other words, despite the much-needed good news, the president neither crowed nor took a rhetorical victory lap.  He knows that while the path we're on is a good and solid one, it nonetheless contains many ruts, jags and potholes. Sounds pretty realistic to me; hopeful and cautiously optimistic.  There is much to be both proud and hopeful about:

• After more than a decade of job losses, American manufacturing has been creating jobs since December 2009.
• The American auto industry is back. GM is again No. 1 in the world; auto manufacturers are expected to add more than 100,000 new jobs in the next 2 years.
• American oil production is at its highest level in more than 8 years.
  

   To listen to the none-too-loyal opposition, none of the above is true; things are getting worse. For them, there is no good news. Or, to put it another way, "good news is no news." Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the House Republican Conference, like many of his colleagues, essentially ignored the positive economic news. “Today is an indication of another failure of this president’s policies — 36 months in a row of 8 percent-plus unemployment,” he said. Speaker John Boehner said, "The American people are still asking,  'Where are the jobs?'"

According to Romney, Gingrich, Paul and Santorum, President Obama and his administration, far from leading the economy down the road to recovery, are lost at sea clinging to a deflated life raft.  According to them, the newest Labor Department figures are meaningless at best, suspect at worst. (Limbaugh and Hannaty both argued "The jobs report is corrupt."  Hannaty said the report ". . . has phony numbers all around it.")  Such a position places President Obama's potential challengers -- especially Gov. Romney -- in the position of ignoring statistical evidence and sounding the tocsin of angry, conspiratorial negativity . . . never a great strategy in a presidential campaign.  It also leaves voters wondering whether these guys are actually pulling for the economy to remain in the tank -- at least until they can take over.  If so, this is, to my way of thinking, ideological treason.

  Speaking at a campaign stop in Sparks, Nevada just a few hours before that state's caucus gatherings, Romney said, “This recovery has been slower than it should have been. People have been suffering for longer than they should have had to suffer. Will it get better? I think it’ll get better,” he added. “But this president has not helped the process. He’s hurt it.”  And despite making these comments in Nevada -- the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation (slightly above 13%), Romney's only "cure for what ails us" is -- like virtually every other Republican in America -- lower taxes and less regulation.  From day one, Romney has been proclaiming that as a businessman -- one who has "an intimate knowledge of the private sector" -- he "knows what it takes" to get America out of its economic doldrums.

  There is ample evidence that having "an intimate knowledge of the private sector" is no guarantee of succeeding in government. Take the last American president to come from the ranks of business: Hoover Hoover.  Need one say more?  Or Florida's current Governor, Rick Scott. Despite having experienced enough success in the private sector to pay for a campaign out of his own pocket, he has been an utter disaster as governor; running a for-profit business is one heck of a lot different than running a state.  Even Scott's fellow Republicans are turning against him.  (It should be noted that despite spending $73 million of his own money, Scott only managed to defeat Democrat Alex Sink by a razor-thin margin of 48.87%-47.72%).  One can also site the failed governorships of Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and John Corzine (D-NJ), two highly successful, fabulously wealthy men, which were more notable for their failures than successes.  The short and sweet of it is that running a business and running a government are two very different enterprises.  

  It is in no way surprising that Mitt Romney, a man who made an unfathomable fortune in the private sector, should ask us to place our faith in the free market.  After all, from his perspective -- and that of most of his Republican colleagues -- this is whence all economic health and success emanates.  Their argument has long been that by lowering taxes for the wealthy, by cutting -- if not eliminating -- the tax on capital gains, it will permit business owners to expand their enterprises, thus increasing employment and thus strengthening the economy.  Over the past generation, this argument has gone by the name "supply-side" economics.  There is, I am sorry to say, no historic evidence for its ever having succeeded.  In order for "supply-side" to work, there must be a "demand-side" -- consumers -- who have the cash to buy what the wealthy are supplying.   

  One need not agree with "the free market is the salvation of us all" philosophy to understand how it could be quite appealing to many -- especially those who have been taught that "government is the problem, not the solution."  What is terribly difficult to comprehend however, is how people can take good news and spin it into being no news at all.

©2012 Kurt F. Stone