Be honest. Don’t you deserve better than Beck?
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Month: March, 2009
I just spent much of the last week at an industry conference doing what most people do at industry conferences:Â attending 
sessions, meeting new people and giving years of communication new meaning by putting faces to names, or e-mail addresses or voices.
What I mean by that last part is this: words have a tendency to seem rather hollow unless you can attribute a real human to them. It’s why so many online conversations tend to be acrimonious. Many people tend to not care what they say to people they haven’t actually met. It’s almost as if the person on the other side of the screen is an artificial construct, not a real person whose opinion carries equal weight to the person standing next to you.
This is a problem Progressive Republicans have long faced. Certainly there are plenty of blogs and organizations which espouse Progressive Republican views on a number of issues. But, can you identify a single individual who publicly stnads for those views? There are plenty of conservative Republicans (more than enough, if you ask me) more than willing to stand up for their views, but, Progressives?
Over the past couple of weeks, our first high-profile Progressive Republican has finally come foreward: Meghan Mccain, daughter of Senator John McCain calls herself a Progressive Republican. First she did it in an article about her feud with Ann Coulter. Then again on Larry King Live:
To be honest, I thought this was pretty neat. I don’t know if she’s ever heard of this blog (I do know she’s received an e-mail or two from us since the Coulter piece) or the movement we’re trying to start, but it’s nice to finally put a face to a name.   I wonder who’s going to introduce themselves next?
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I’d like to first preface what I write here by saying that I love John Stewart. I think he is as smart as he is funny. He and Stephen Colbert have forged new ground in television that will prove to be seminal in years to come in terms of comedy. But for those of you who watched the recent John-Stewart-vs-Jim-Cramer Debacle unfold, I have this to say.
I think John Stewart is being disingenuous.
At first, I applauded what he did to Cramer. Here, finally, was a voice speaking for the masses, angry and demanding answers. Stewart spoke for all of us and it was refreshing, bold and a much-needed voice in the wild.
But the more I thought about it, I realized there was a disconnect. Here’s the problem: we’re in a lot of trouble. Economically, speaking, we are looking at the next ten years as a lost decade. Our banks have failed us, our government has failed us, heck, our entire economic system has failed us. And yes, while some of us were culpable buying houses we couldn’t afford, most us played a hand in accruing debt that we couldn’t afford. But the lion’s share of the blame goes to the institutions we trusted with our money.
The current administration, under President Obama, has done a monumental job in the short time they have been in office in trying to fix what’s wrong. They have implemented new laws, passed giant stimulus bills and created a realistic budget for the years to come. I’m out of breath just talking about their accomplishments.
But will their plans work? There are plenty who think they will (certainly the administration seems confident) while others think they will not. No one knows for sure. What is certain is that there is a lot of confusion. I think it would be safe to say that only few understand what happened, few know what the plan is and few see what the future will bring. No one knows the full story.
And there’s an inherent danger in that. Because right now we are suffering from what I’m calling a Crisis of Confidence. Here’s how it breaks down. There is a battle taking place between the classes. The middle and lower classes are broke, tired and hurt. They are out of work, have seen their pensions disappear and their future looking bleak. They’re angry. And they have every right to be.
For years, the upper class has enacted a rape-and-pillage mentality to take as much money as they can from the lower class. In light of this, why would the middle and lower classes want to give these guys at AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and all the other failing financial institutions taxpayer money to get them out of the hole that they created? And then to hear that the executives in charge have the audacity to not even use the money to restructure their business, instead looting their new-found treasure chests of bail-out money and pocketing it for themselves.
Yeah…we’re pissed.
Now Obama comes along. He says, okay we’re gonna fix what’s wrong. Give money to those who deserve it and punish those who stole. That’s exactly what should be done. He comes up with a plan to fix the economy. He is, in no uncertain terms, changing the way we understand how capitalism works. “Capitalism will be different,†Geithner (who I like, by the way) said to Charlie Rose. That’s a good thing. That’s exactly what should happen. But yet, the market continues to plummet and the nay-sayers get their voices heard.
What festers here is the confusion. It has become exacerbated by the media. Media figures like Jim Cramer. With confusion comes a loss of confidence. With a loss of confidence comes a public unwilling to spend their money, borrow from the banks or buy new homes. When the money stops pouring in, the banks get nervous and stop lending. When the banks stop lending, the economy grinds to a halt.
And that’s where we find ourselves right now. The great Cramer vs Stewart comes at a crucial point in all of this. I agree with everything Stewart had to say to Cramer. I don’t know Cramer, I’ve never watched his show, but from what I’ve seen, he’s bombastic and loud and he puts on a show. Just like John Stewart does every night.
Stewart, whether he wants to admit it or not (he doesn’t) is part of mainstream media. He’s not real news, he’s fake news. But news nonetheless. It’s a modern way of knowing what’s going on. An entire generation looks to him (and to a lesser extent to Colbert) for their source of the news. Yes, it’s funnier when there are jokes thrown in for good measure, but that’s where a lot of people find out what’s going in the world. It’s foolish to think that most people who watch The Daily Show are watching because they’ve just watched the real news and now want to see it skewed. They don’t have to because Stewart does a good job of telling everyone what’s going on.
So, he is, in a very real sense, a news outlet. And so, he becomes a part of the media machine that creates the confusion that creates the loss of confidence in the market. So for him to single out Cramer for doing exactly what I spoke of, creating confusion, feels disingenuous. Stewart has always professed that ‘getting the laugh at any cost’ is the only objective to everything that’s done on The Daily Show, but what I felt while watching that interview was anger, shame and confusion. I didn’t once laugh. It was akin to watching a bully beat up a weakling or a cat toying with a mouse.
John Stewart spoke what we have wanted to hear spoken out loud. But he did that only because he knows he speaks for a generation. And that’s a great thing. We need more people like that. But he cannot run and hide behind the veil of comedy, under the guise of a jester. That it’s just a joke. It adds to the confusion.
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Ross Douthat has a good post about Obama and the Center-Left. He notes that conservatives were happy with some of the Clintonite picks he made in the cabinet. However, as policy started coming out, those same conservatives (myself included) were not as happy.
So what happened? Douthat posed three solutions and it is the third one that makes the most sense:
But there’s a third answer as well – which is that the smart center-left, embodied by Larry Summers as much as anyone, has moved steadily leftward over the last ten years, as part of a broader Bush-era rapprochement between the Democratic Party’s moderate and liberal factions. On health care, the environment, income inequality and other fronts, figures like Summers are closer to their erstwhile lefty antagonists than they used to be, sharing common ground even when they don’t have identical policy preferences. Thus the Obama team can include many of the same people who worked for Bill Clinton in 1998 or so, and still produce a more leftward-tilting policy agenda than the second-term Clinton White House – because the people in question don’t have the same priorities they did a decade ago.
I think this is correct. What many conservatives (again, myself included) forgot is that the so-called New Democrats ala Bill Clinton, came about because the Dems had lost the presidency several times and were losing key voting blocks. The Republicans were ascendant, so the New Democrats decided to steer the party where the country was at that time.
These days you don’t hear much about the New Democrats and they have for the most part, dissapeared. That’s mostly because as the Bush Administration drifted ever so rightward, that caused the moderates and liberals in the Democratic party to seek common ground and move leftward. As the GOP faltered, there was no need for the New Deomcrats on a social or economic front, so we have what we have today: former Clintonistas who are more left of center than a decade ago.
But Douthat notes that something else has changed, besides the Dems-the nation:
American public opinion has moved leftward with the Clintonites, and under the influence of the same trends and events – from the mounting health-care crisis to the post-Clinton return of wage stagnation to the current financial debacle. And this is what’s missing from the conservative attacks on Obama’s radicalism – a recognition that the political landscape has shifted dramatically since the days when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich were struggling over the American center, and that in the absence of a conservatism that’s responsive to the changing situation, yesterday’s radicalism can start to look a lot like today’s common sense.
Let’s face it, the ideas being proposed by Obama are hardly new: they are old liberal chestnuts that have been sitting on a shelf somewhere for the last 30 years. But the fact that the nation is moving leftward and more importantly, the fact the the GOP doesn’t seem interested in engaging in debate on this, means that everything old is new again.
The speech that Rush Limbaugh gave a few weeks ago at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference was not that surprising- I mean that’s the stuff Limbuagh has been pushing for years. Nevertheless, what was disturbing was what he had to say in response to those within the GOP calling for change:
Now let’s talk about the conservative movement as it were. We, ladies and gentlemen, have challenges that are part and parcel of a movement that feels it has just suffered a humiliating defeat when it’s not humiliating. This wasn’t a landslide victory, 52 to, what, 46. Fifty-eight million people voted against Obama. There would have been more if we would have had a conservative nominee. [Applause] I don’t mean that — I mean that in an instructive way, as a lead-in to what I’m talking about here. No humiliating defeat here. I can’t — sometimes I get livid and angry. We do have an organizational problem. We have a challenge. We’ve got factions now within our own movement seeking power to dominate it, and worst of all to redefine it. Well, the Constitution doesn’t need to be redefined. Conservative intellectuals, the Declaration of Independence does not need to be redefined and neither does conservatism. Conservatism is what it is and it is forever. It’s not something you can bend and shape and flake and form. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you.
His belief, which is shared by others, is that there is nothing wrong with conservatism, that it does not need to change, and that those who question that are elitists.
No doubt, there were many a liberal saying that circa 1988. They believed that nothing was wrong with liberalism and that it didn’t have to change with the times.
That worked out well.
So, the question that needs to be asked today is where are the New Republicans? Where are the people who are interested in trying to make the GOP and conservatism viable for the current age?
Rush and others are betting that people will not go for Obama’s plans. That well might be the case…in time. But in the midst of a crisis, people want answers and if the only person around is giving bad answers, then they will take them.
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Apologies for not writing anything for a while, but so much has been happening in the world these days that it’s hard to wrap one’s mind on anything. Everything that’s happening has such gravity and weight, that it’s hard to focus on just one issue. The economy, yes, the environment, yes, foreign policy, yes…these are all elements of what I’m seeing as the perfect storm designed to capsize the Obama administration. The Ship of State(s) is listing terribly, and, unless we all do our part, we’ll all go down with it.
Certainly, Obama’s address to Congress and the public on the 24th of February was as important and in many ways symbolic a speech as Bush’s speech to the nation after the 9/11 attacks. It was simple, broad and concise. It spoke to the heart of the problem without sugarcoating the ugly truth of the new world we have awoken to. Our current financial crisis has plunged us into the economic and emotional equivalent of 9/11. They don’t call it a “depression†for just any reason.
But are there solutions? Is there a way out? Certainly, but the answers aren’t pretty. They aren’t easy. And that’s exactly why there is a very good chance that whatever we do will fail. It may sound like pessimism, but well…let me explain.
My apartment building is a microcosm of the world I live in. Missy and I live in a pre-war building in Brooklyn. It used to be low-rent housing but is slowly being gentrified as our neighborhood borders the more affluent Park Slope (where those who couldn’t afford the Upper West Side get banished). So, we have tenants of all kinds, middle-income families, hipsters, and young professionals. We also have families, holdovers from the days of the low-rent housing. Please do not get me wrong, these are nice people from working-class families, there is no judgment on their condition.
One day, as I trudged my recyclables down to the dank, dirty basement, I witnessed my neighbor throwing bottles and cans down the regular garbage chute. I thought about this as I waited for the elevator to bring me down to the dungeon of our building. I asked myself, “why do I even bother, if my neighbor doesn’t even care?†Didn’t care or didn’t know better? That’s a big distinction.
The distinction between apathy and ignorance is a crisis of epic proportions. Why? Because any solution to any of the problems we face, as a race, will endeavor the efforts of everyone…everyone.
Consider this. A recent article reported how 665 million people in India rely on open defecation. That means 665 million people shitting out in the open because they don’t have access to something we Westerners consider our God-given right, a toilet. That means hygiene and water pollution problems. That means bacteria, virus and parasites. That means people (especially women) get sick and taken out of the workforce. That means an economic drain on both the workforce and health care. That also means poor water supply because of both industrial and human effluent. Dirty water means more people getting sick and more bottled water to be processed. More bottled water means more pollution. You see where this is going? And this is happening all over the world. Unicef estimates that 1.2 billion people are affected with 884 million drinking unsafe water.
Now, the question is, do they know better or do they just not care?
We Westerners are quick to condemn the poor to their fate as if it was a choice. But that argument is false if given a moment of scrutiny. Are we to assume that people like to shit out in the open? Of course they don’t. But they have no choice. Still, the paradox remains. If one were to stop shitting out in the open, one would have a better quality of life. But, how can one have a better quality of life if one has no choice but to shit out in the open? The Catch-22 known as the Poverty Trap.
What does this have to do with anything, you may ask. Plenty. See, of we are to tackle the triumvirate problems of the economy, the environment and foreign policy, we must tackle it as one thing. This is Cerberus incarnate.
The only way to tackle our economy is if we re-invent the way the economy works. Our financial system is in tatters and there’s a good reason for it…greed. Not specifically corporate greed, not public greed, just greed. Gordon Gecko was wrong, greed is not good. Financial experts have realized that the only way to healthy economy is if we change the entire financial structure. And that means the rest of the world too. The hard part will be to convince executives to go against their baser instincts, to not be greedy. A tall order, I know, but what choice do we have? There is no short-term answer to the economy. None. That’s a fact. Yes, the stimulus helps, but it’s a band-aid to our hemorrhaging economic wounds. To fix what ails us demands discipline,responsibility, a modicum of frugality and realistic sense of one’s lifestyle. It demands it from everyone. Everyone.
The only way to tackle the environment is if every country in the world, yes every country (even the developing ones) rolls up their sleeves, switch to renewables, put a price on carbon, stop deforestation, change their current transportation fleet and re-design how everything we buy is made so that there is less waste in the product’s manufacture and disposal. That means the U.S., Europe, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), everyone.
And then there’s the little problem of foreign policy, specifically Afghanistan. Again, the only solution, the ones experts call for, is a concerted effort from every country that borders those two countries (yes, that means Iran) to deal with the problems there. Any policy that does not include foreign assistance is doomed to fail. And if we fail, we face the over-run of Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan by the militant Taliban. Pakistan, you know, where they have nuclear weapons, that Pakistan. If that happens, then the problems of the economy and the environment will seem, well…quaint. Again, to prevent what could potentially be the third world war, everyone has to get on board. Everyone.
Oh and here’s what makes it even more fun. If there’s a mis-step on any one of these negotiations, it affects the other two. If we piss off the Russians while looking for a solution to Afghanistan, we risk losing their help when it comes to bringing them to the table for environmental policy talks. If the Chinese lose faith in the U.S. dollar, then the ground becomes shaky when we talk to them about a new energy policy. We are, truly, in one-world thinking. See, the solution to all these problems is actually quite simple and it’s the same solution for all three…unity. The sword that can kill the three-headed dog is that everyone has to get involved. Everyone. Simple, yet seemingly impossible (hence my pessimism).
We stand at a crossroads that we have never seen before. This is new country. We could work hard and pull ourselves out of the deepest hole we’ve ever been in or we don’t. If we don’t then you can find me at the top of my building, behind the barricades, armed and loaded, protecting my water and food supply, because that’s a world we may face.
Overwhelming, I know. But again, there’s hope. And this is where my neighbor and the 665 million Indians come into play. See, everyone reading this, gets it. They realize what’s at stake and they’re already doing their part. They are recycling and doing whatever they can…but it’s the ones living on the fringes of society that need to be reached. They need to be reached because the stark reality is that those people number in the billions. We, the “enlightened one†are actually the ones who live on the fringe.
So what to do? We all need to do our part, Reach out to those people who may not have a choice or may not know better…give to Unicef, give to the One Campaign, donate your time somewhere. And if you can’t do any of those things, spread the word. Me? I’m gonna talk to my neighbor.
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Today brings yet another misleading attack on family planning and access to contraception from social extremists. Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina has offered an amendment that would strip the language from the supplemental spending package that would restore affordable birth control to college campus health clinics and safety-net providers.
We have all been fighting for the last two years to fix a technical error that inadvertently cut off these providers to be able to supply their patients with affordable birth control. Price have risen as much as 900% in some cases. We are so close to the finish line-the prevision passed the House without any controversy. As there has always been for this measure, there is strong bipartisan support in both chambers and from the public.
[Originally Distributed by the Republican Majority for Choice]
Senator DeMint is trying to mislead what the intent of the fix by calling it a spending earmark. Let’s be clear: the affordable birth control fix is at no cost to taxpayers. It is a common sense fix that will make it possible for more low-income and fixed-income woman to afford birth control.
Your Senator absolutely needs to hear from you and the rest of the pro-choice majority of the Republican Party. These attacks are hurting millions of responsible women and families, and it’s hurting our Party by making the GOP look extreme on common sense issues like birth control.
Contact your Senator and tell them this problem has gone unfixed for far too long and to vote no on the DeMint Amendment-649.
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I started out with every intention of writing a post calling RNC Chairman Michael Steele to task for an interview he gave on the Curtis Sliwa Radio Program last week. While I think he really has some explaining to do to a whole host of folks for that performance, events of the last few days have changed my mind.
I’ve decided, instead, I’m going to call the entire Republican Leadership to task for political cowardice.
Over the weekend, Chairman Steele was interviewed by comedian and CNN talk show host, DL Hughley, as well as hip hop legend Chuck D,about the state of the Republican Party. Unlike in the Sliwa interview, Steele articulately and eloquently made the case for the black Americans to give the Republican Party a try. The Steele we saw in that interview is the Steele I proudly supported for the RNC Chairmanship. Then, this happened:
Hughley called Rush the leader of the GOP and Steele said he wasn’t. “I am” the leader of the Party, Steele correctly responded. Then, Steele committed what seems to have become the Cardinal Sin of our age: He criticized Limbaugh. He said Limbaugh was an “entertainer,” that his words were “incendiary” and his rhetoric was “ugly.”  Despite the truth of Steele’s words (Rush calls himself an entertainer and, come on, who doesn’t think Rush isn’t “incendiary?”), Rush got angry.
Why? Did Rush not like it when Steele said that Rush isn’t the leader of the Republican Party? Did he let his reception at CPAC go to his head? Whatever the reason, he let loose the tirade referenced above, causing a storm among all of his loyal “Dittoheads” because Steele had the temerity to accurately describe Rush’s actual role in the Party.
This afternoon, someone dropped me a line asking me to write a post standing up for Chairman Steele. I had a tough time getting started on it, because, frankly, that Sliwa interview still stuck in my craw. But, I watched Steele’s interview with Hughley and Chuck D (ADMISSION: Chuck D is one of my personal heroes. And, though this would grate on him to no end, he is one of the reasons I’m a Republican) and thought, “One bad interview shouldn’t change my opinion of the man. I’ve respected him for some time and that hasn’t changed. I’ll be happy to defend him.”
Then, this showed up in my RSS reader (from Politico)
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer†whose show can be “incendiary.â€Â
“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,†Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.â€Â
I think it was Chris Rock who said Dick Cheney was so “gangsta” he could shoot his friend in the face and then make the friend apologize for getting in the way. Is that Rush? Is he so powerful that he can make our ELECTED LEADERS apologize for telling THE TRUTH? That’s what it seems like to me. Let’s look at the history:
Representative Phil Gingrey, after saying Limbaugh should “back off” of Majority Leader John Boehner:
The Congressman Mike Pence carrying water on MSNBC to defend Limbaugh after saying Obama is getting special treatment because his father is black:
Why are our elected officials, the people we, the American People, have elected to represent us in Congress or have elected to lead one of our two Major political parties “bending over” (to use his words) for a talk show host? Here’s why:
They’re scared.
It’s as simple as that.  Rush has a big audience, and wields a considerable amount of influence of them. The Party leaders are terrified that he’ll turn on them and convince his listeners to vote against them, or, to stay at home, or, just to show how much of a joker he is convince them to vote for Hillary Clinton!
If you read his angry rant against Michael Steele, you’ll see something disturbing. Attacks on Limbaugh have somehow become attacks on all conservatives. He reminds me of a Renaissance Pope, treating any criticism of himself as an attack on Christendom as a whole. Is that what we want, my friends? Do we want RUSH LIMBAUGH to be the “de facto head of the Republican Party?” Do we want the men and women who choose to become public servants and represent us and lead us to be forced to kiss the ring of a man like Limbaugh?
If we ever want to return to the majority, the answer to that must be an emphatic “NO!” Our Congressman must no longer try to make his divisive rhetoric more palatable. They must not apologize when they express an opinion about his role in the legislative process. Our Paty leader can not apologize to him when all he’s doing is truthfully describing the man. This is Not the Way, my friends.
Rush is yesterday’s Republican Party. He’s so popular because he speaks to the anger in all of us.  He speaks to our baser natures. If we’re going to return to lead this country, we must find leaders who appeal to our better natures. We need to embrace a BETTER WAY.
If you’re reading this, there are very good odds you agree with me. Please. Spread the word to those who don’t. Send this message, or one of your own to our leaders, telling them that Rush does not speak for you. Let’s help our leaders get their courage back. overwhelm them with one, simple message:
“Rush is Not the Face or the Voice of the Republican Party. YOU are.”
Send it to your Congressman your Senator, to Chairman Steele. Send it to everyone who needs to hear this message. This is YOUR Party. Not Rush’s.
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