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A Lot To Say

and no time to say it. I’m off at 8:45am to the Eyecare Medical Group in Portland for my left cataract removal. I sit here with no breakfast rather grumpily. And I read about Obama’s three year freeze in discretionary spending (I guess John McCain agrees — how nice) and note his lack of leadership on health care. I’ve about given up on Obama. His plans for solving the job problems in America are piddling, in addition to the budget freeze not helping jobs at all. The Republicans will take over. But I’m looking forward to getting this cataract removed and doing without glasses, although they say I’ll need them for reading. OK, now I gotta go and start taking eye drops. Kate will be over soon and the three of us, Kate, me, Cynthia will head out for Portland at 8:45am.

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More Juan Cole stuff this morning. He’s making a good argument that these new Obama administration airline passenger screening measures are casting too wide a net and will end up alienating people. Also, they tell al-Qaida which countries not to send bombers from. For example, Indonesia and India aren’t on the list. And why is Cuba on the list?

It’s hard to find a discussion of these issues on the American media which is so scared it might be called ‘liberal’ that it constantly bends over backwards to appease the republicans, who are mostly right wing now, with vanishing numbers of ‘moderates’. So, it was refreshing to hear, thanks to Juan Cole, a different analysis of these new screening measures brought to us by, yes, you guessed it, AlJazeeraEnglish.

Here’s a 24 minute video from AlJazeeraEnglish with the title, “Inside Story – New airline security measures: Safe or discriminatory? – 5 Jan 2009″

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So, if Obama’s rhetoric is high minded and progressive, are his actions more like a continuation of George W. Bush’s policies? In other words, is Obama becoming W-ized?

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I’ve been getting pissed at what’s going on. Here we have Obama trying to make nice with the Republicans, and you know? They could care less*. Some of them are masters at speaking out of both sides of their mouths simultaneously, while others don’t even bother to hide their sanctimonious nastiness. Mitch McConnell would be in the former camp, John Boehner in the latter.

Oh, but Obama’s just as bad as the rest of them! Look at all these tax swindlers he’s appointed to high office. Sure, squeaky clean you’ve got to be to get into high office these days, especially if you’re a Democrat. Tom Daschle’s tax problems seem large to the “ordinary person”, and they are. However, he is not a crook! He would have been the best choice to beat back the Republican machine which will pull out all the stops, along with the insurance industry, to beat back any attempts to establish what they’ll call “socialized medicine”.

The best guy for Daschle’s job would be Arnold S. Relman, M.D., but nobody’s ever heard of him and he’d have zero political clout amongst the hyenas. That’s why we needed Tom Daschle, tax warts and all.

I’m so sick of the news media, especially the sanctimonious news anchors, you know, Katie, Brian, Chris and Charlie, not to mention that slime journalist Maureen Dowd of the NYT. Oh, I’m pissed alright!

I try to read people who really know what the hell’s going on like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, plus a lot of financial blogs all over the place. Hey, Robert Reich’s latest blog entries are really great!

Many economists feel the stimulus plan isn’t large enough! Even the conservative well-known economist, Martin Feldstein, Ronald Reagan’s chief economist, told Congress that the stimulus should be $800 billion.

I could rattle on but why don’t you just read Barney Frank’s latest comment? Frank to bankers: People hate you! OK, I’ll stop now!

* Well, according to this article he is making some progress.

UPDATE:
Here’s Josh Marshall on Denial As Political Strategy:

Behind all the back and forth over the Stimulus Bill is a simple fact: the debate in Washington is rapidly moving away from any recognition that the US economy — and the global economy, for that matter — is in free-fall. The range of outcomes stretches from severe recession to something closer to a replay of the Great Depression, though that label is perhaps better seen as a placeholder for ‘catastrophic economic collapse’ since the underlying place of the US economy in the world economy is very different from what it was in 1929. This reality was palpable in the political debate until as recently as a few weeks ago. But Republicans are using a strategy of conscious denial to push it off the stage.

Take stock of the last few weeks and you can almost visualize the two conversations — path toward economic calamity and debate over Stimulus Bill — diverging.

The other key into the current debate is that the Republican position is ominously similar to their position on global warming or, for that matter, evolution. The discussion of what to do on the Democratic side tracks more or less with textbook macroeconomics, while Republican argument track either with tax cut monomania or rhetorical claptrap intended to confuse. It’s true that macro-economics doesn’t make controlled experiments possible. And economists can’t speak to these issues with certainty. But in most areas of our lives, when faced with dire potential consequences, we put our stock with scientific or professional consensus where it exists, as it does here. Only in cases where it goes against Republican political interests or economic interests of money-backers do we prefer the schemes of yahoos and cranks to people who study the stuff for a living.

Of course, at some level, why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff? Well, not pretty to say, but they see it in their political interests. Yes, the DeMints and Coburns just don’t believe in government at all or have genuinely held if crankish economic views. But a successful Stimulus Bill would be devastating politically for the Republican party. And they know it. If the GOP successfully bottles this up or kills it with a death of a thousand cuts, Democrats will have a good argument amongst themselves that Republicans were responsible for creating the carnage that followed. But the satisfaction will have to be amongst themselves since as a political matter it will be irrelevant. The public will be entirely within its rights to blame Democrats for any failure of government action that happened while Democrats held the White House and sizable majorities in both houses of Congress.

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LAST WORD on Her!

OK, there’s a great article in the latest New Yorker magazine with the title, The State of Sarah Palin, which happens to be online. I finished reading it yesterday and it gives a fine insight into not only her but Alaska as well: Alaska, that far-out state where Mastodon teeth are no big deal. Well, over 50% of the population are Independents, 25% Republicans, 15% Democrats, and they do have running water most places.

The article is by Philip Gourevitch who spent a few weeks up in Alaska interviewing her and discovering the lay of the land. The article has the sub-title, The peculiar political landscape of the Vice-Presidential hopeful. I came away from the reading with a better grasp of her personality and also that of Alaska.

OK, now that her popularity is in decline (see the chart below), I can say this will be my last word on this distraction. From now on it should be all about Obama! I agree with Anne Lamott in her post A Call to Arms.

Thanks to Matthew Yglesias for this chart from Research 200 Tracking and Poll Data.

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Mudflats latest post is a storm warning! A legal blizzard is hitting Alaska. Suddenly five Republicans on the Legislative Council, consisting of eight Republicans and four Democrats, are bringing suit against the other members and the Council itself to delay the investigation until after the November 4th election, plus they are suing to remove two of the Democrats. This is the investigation of Palin’s dismissal of the Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan. Originally, the Council had voted unanimously to perform the investigation. Here’s what Mudflats says about Walt Monegan:

Walt Monegan was, in a word, beloved. He was beloved by the troopers he lead, the people he served, and basically anyone who had the privilege of working with him. He cared about people, the important issues, and he was the real deal. There are many Alaskans today thinking, “Who do these people think they are to come here, and tear down the likes of Walt Monegan?” You have to remember, the rest of the country is “outside”. We are “inside”. That feeling defines Alaskans. We don’t like the government coming in here and telling us how to run things, dammit. And we don’t like outsiders ripping apart respected public servants in our town.

Read the whole thing. It’s fascinating, very well written, and humorous to boot in spite of everything, or maybe because of it. There are already 133 371 405 responses.

See the typical moose below from which Sarah makes her burgers! This great moose picture comes from a Garrison Keillor article today, A liberal in moose country.

UPDATE: For a great slide show with music of the 50 photos taken at the anti-Palin rally in Anchorage on Sunday, Sept. 14, see here.

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The NYT has a great editorial today, Mississippi’s Ballot Trick, and this is one of the 150 comments so far, an editor’s pick:Wow, what a shock! Republicans trying to rig an election! Since the 2000 election, which saw the Supreme Court violate the law to stop the vote counting and appoint our President, we’ve discovered voter rolls purged of legitimate (democratic) voters, voter challenges, voter caging lists, voter registrations thrown in the trash, letters sent to the homes of voters to mis-inform them of the election date, phone banks jammed to prevent voters from contacting campaign offices for rides to the polls, students told they can’t vote in the districts where they attend school, and of course the continued use of notoriously flawed touch screen, paperless, voting machines which flip votes, lose votes, crash, and were invented to throw elections to the republicans. Has there been any serious investigation of these tactics by the mainstream media? Only now you’re offended? Eight long and tragic years late, but better late than never, though not by much.

— Kenneth D. Brown, Redondo Beach, CA

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GO BARACK GO!

Here’s Barack Obama’s South Carolina victory speech:
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It was a slam dunk victory. Obama received more votes (295,091) than all Democrats in the 2004 South Carolina Democratic Primary (292,383), and he received more votes in this primary than George W. Bush received (293,652) in 2000 when he beat John McCain. And South Carolina is a “deep red” state where Republicans greatly outnumber Democrats. Interesting!

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Iraqi Refugees

Juan Cole this morning lists the Top Ten Middle East Policy Challenges for the US in 2008. Worth a read. Here’s the third one:

3. The US Congress must allocate substantial funds, on the order of $1 billion or more, for Iraqi refugee relief in Syria and Jordan. UNO relief funds are running out. Iraqis’ own savings are running out. Children are not in school and are going hungry. People are being exploited, including young girls forced into prostitution. A majority of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria went there in 2007, nd almost all of them have been forced out of Baghdad and other areas because of the political instability that the United States unleashed in their country. The surge is being touted as a victory in the US press, but it seems to have displaced 700,000 Iraqi civilians! The US is spending $15 billion a month on the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. It can afford $1 billion a year for refugee relief. This is our responsibility. How future generations of Iraqis view the United States will in part depend on whether we do this. I ask all Americans to write your congressional representatives and press them on this humanitarian issue.

How long will it take congress to act on this? Will it act? Will Bush and the republicans block it if enacted? Answers: Who knows?, Maybe, Yes.

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