Whining about bowing and Other Attempts to Demean the President


These goons never miss a moment to demean our President. Never. Politics stops at the water's edge? Not when the President is a Democrat. It is enough to make one think there is a vast right wing conspiracy against our President.

Yesterday it was the Known Traitor Hoekstra (having disclosed highly secure information he received as a member of the Intelligence (cough, cough) Committee), on Face the Nation:

I think that the government has been too slow in giving us information. There hasn't been enough transparency for members of Congress, for the press, or for the American people. You know, I think that we need to move very, very aggressively and do a full-scale investigation as to who knew what and where.

You know, this Awlaki guy in Yemen. He's been on our radar screen since 2001, 2002. What -- my sources tell me we had evidence back in 2002 that would have enabled us to prosecute him. Why didn't we prosecute him then?

The other thing I want to know is people want to know who Hasan has been talking to in the Middle East. I want to know who Awlaki is talking to in the United States. And have we been able to capture those communications? I want to know what's going on between the intel community, the Department of Defense, and the FBI.

I think we had a lot of information on Hasan, but I'm not sure that we put all of these things in place so that we would have been in a position to perhaps stop what happened at Fort Hood last week.

Read more »

The United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, et al


There were so many other things that seemed to be good subjects for a post this week. Then this jumped out of today's New York Times :

Margit Arias-Kastell lost her husband, Adam Arias, in Tower 2. She, too, could not countenance the prospect of the suspects being defended by lawyers in a court in her city. She was among scores of relatives who had signed a letter opposing regular criminal trials for them.

"It's totally unfair," she said. "Why do we have to constantly relive this? When do we get to be at peace? They should be hung."


and everything else that seemed worth writing about was washed away by the answer to that question.

Read more »

Missing President Bush but trying to learn lessons anyway


Do we miss him yet? Republicans surely don't, but maybe the rest of us, motivated by the daily mess created and exacerbated by the least competent person to serve as president since either Andrew Johnson or James Buchanan, do. It was, after all, his blundering and constant attempts to feather the nests of his benefactors and friends that showed our less progressive friends and relatives that assault on government was inspired by nothing more than greed and was not in the best interests of anybody but those who directly benefited from the bizarro operation of government by those dedicated to its destruction.

Read more »

One year later


President Kennedy's inauguration on January 20, 1961 is the first Great National Event which I can actually recall. The flights of Alan B. Shepherd and John Glenn, leading to the actual exploration of another celestial body in 1969 also come to mind, as does the fall of the Berlin Wall, a tribute to the airlift in 1948 in President Truman's administration and President Kennedy's endorsement of the hopes of "free men everywhere" as it is to anything or anyone else.

And then there is Election Day, 2008. Hope. Freedom. Renewal. Long lines of people in states where their vote has no real bearing on the outcome, wanting to be part of something. And they were. And we are on our way to becoming once again, the land of the free and the brave; the last best hope for mankind.


Read more »

Lieberman


I came late to the bash Lieberman party. Orthodoxy, or knee jerkism has never much appealed to me and I do not expect or even want politicians to agree with me on every issue. I voted for Presidents Carter and Clinton twice in general elections each even though their version of a Democratic Party is not mine, nor that of Presidents Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but they were better candidates than their opponents, so I did what one does.

Moreover, the state Attorneys General who fought back when the Reagan Justice Department abandoned so many of its traditional functions (at least since the Kennedy years), included Connecticut's Lieberman and that was worthy of some respect, it seemed to me.

Read more »

Time magazine nails the health care debate


A great piece which really explains the issue, how backward we have become in this area and what the stakes are. They report:

While every American may be entitled to at least adequate health care, he is not getting it, and will not, until a momentous national debate reaches election-year levels of acrimony and is somehow resolved.

... Apart from such standpatters ... and its arch-conservative Republican allies, there is a growing consensus that some national insurance blanket must be thrown over the ailing body of health care.


Rarely have I seen such excellent reporting in the mainstream press. The fact that this article appeared in its issue dated March 11, 1970 should not diminish our gratitude to Time for its excellent coverage of this problem.

Citizen Responsibility


If you are of a certain age, you have heard this so many times, you can probably probably feel the beat when it gets played again and again.

As we watch a nearly dysfunctional legislative process try to accomplish what strong majorities of Americans want them to doagainst the will of the torrent of money dangled as campaign contributions before the very eyes of those privileged to serve as our Senators and Representatives, those words, from a cold and snowy January day more than 48 years ago, deserve another reading:

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?..

I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

...[W]hether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

Read more »

Voices


The forums created by modern technology allowing for the expressions of pain that some of us feel so often to be heard by those willing to listen provide for sort of an inexpensive therapy, and there is always the chance somebody will read what is posted and be motivated to do something good for us all. We are reaching the point, though, where those voices better start getting louder and louder because we are in real danger of destroying whatever it is that has connected us as a nation.

Nothing less than our very system of government is at stake. We are watching the spectacle of a Congress beholden to the contributors who make possible their continued hold on office unable to respond to the call of a vast majority to reform health care, to protect our posterity from the doomsday path on which we have placed our nation and to regulate wizards of finance whose obsession with their self-interest have put the financial security and well being of the rest of us in permanent jeopardy. This is a recipe for disaster all by itself and placed side by side with the fact that we are no longer able to have civilized discourse over opposing views, the future looks bleak indeed. 

Read more »

Filibusters (a special midweek post)


The link here is to the Official Explanation of why, in the current view, the mere threat of a filibuster, is the same as an actual filibuster and why it takes sixty votes to pass a bill in the Senate and not just a simple majority. The link does not explain how, in that event, major legislation has been passed with fewer than the votes needed for cloture nor why advocates for, say, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, stayed with the bill until they got the votes for cloture, rather than just mark it off calendar.


Read more »

Winter


I know.  These pages are meant for the weighty issues of our time, but I have written my diary of the week about such things and now find it is time to contemplate the winter.

Read more »

Why are we in Afghanistan?


I do not know what to do about Afghanistan. Though I was in high school when this question arose about another war, I did not know what to do about Vietnam either, but I did learn a few things watching what happened and reading about it for many years since.

And it is this: deciding what to do is not helped by politicians announcing what they would do or suggesting that anything other than saluting and doing exactly what some field commander is treasonous, wimpy or surrender.

Read more »

Because it is right


Forty-six years ago, the President of the United States, the youngest ever elected as President, addressed the civil rights issues facing the nation and explained the core reason why they had to be resolved:

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
This year, President Kennedy's youngest brother, the one who survived into the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and most of the decade which followed, wrote for what he called a "final time" to a new President he helped to elect about the cause of his own life, a guarantee to American citizens of affordable health insurance to insure that care for those who need it, and almost all of us will, does not depend on one's bank account:

you have also reminded all of us that it concerns more than material things; that what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.

Read more »

Drowning in Delusions


Something is very wrong. You know it and, as Senator Robert Dole used to say in another context,"the American people know it." We no longer sound like the people of the United States. We are not the country of hope and light, the beacon to the oppressed of the world which we have been in the best moments of our national history.

We are now becoming increasingly selfish, stupid and self-delusional and there can be little question that each of those benchmarks of what passes for political "thought" in this country, carry seeds of disaster and of our demise as a great nation. 

Read more »

A Time for Reflection


With a few exceptions,  all memorable, I have not attended religious services even on, as today, Rosh Ha-shana. I do not fast on Yom Kippur. I have allowed others to convince me that I am less than a good Jew for those reasons. But, those people are wrong, I have come to believe. My Jewishness is an important part of who I am, and its teachings are part of what has called me into public service and how I see the world.

My faith is my own business, and not something to diary about. It is not my intent to proselytize, nor to preach. Not everyone sees the world as I do, and I do expect that anyone should, but one of my obligations as an American, as a Jew and as a human being, is to promote the well being of those who need our help. I am not perfect, and do not do as much as I could, but I try and that, it seems to me, at least, makes me as observant a Jew as the person who attends every service, or just those on the High Holy Days.

Read more »

Questions about health care and then some


Before we get too wrapped up in the shame of it all, or whether the President was telling the truth or not when he was called a liar, may I just ask why a person who needs medical care should be denied it and permitted to suffer or maybe die because he is an "illegal immigrant"?

Ah, never mind. We are too mean, and self-centered a nation to worry about others these days, I suppose, or to do something just because it is the right thing to do. 

The President, we are told, needs to explain to the millions who have medical insurance and "like it" why these reform are necessary. Morning Joe tells me this every day: "I got news for you, Mr. President, most people have health insurance and they like what they have." End of story.

Read more »

barth

user-pic

Following: 8
Followers: 31

Posts
Comments & Recommends


Favorites

  • Favorite Blogs Firedoglake HuffingtonPost.com Talking Points Memo FiveThirtyEight.com Daily Kos Media Matters for America Electoral-vote.com SCOTUSblog Borrowed Suits Robert Reich's Blog Eschaton The Public Servant White House Watch/Dan Froomkin Salon Extra Bases - Red Sox blog The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
  • Favorite Books currently reading the autobiography of one of the greatest public figures of our time: Senator Edward Moore Kennedy
  • Favorite Quotes "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine..." (Edward R. Murrow) "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" (President Kennedy)"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." (Pres. F. D. Roosevelt)"So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other." (President-elect Obama)

Bio

A dedicated public servant, as discussed at some length at http://edsbarth.blogspot.com/

All Reader Posts
How to use myTPM

Advertise Liberally
Share
Close Social Web Email

"To" Email Address

Your Name

Your Email Address