War of the Words

[Political Waves]

First, a belated Happy Father's Day to you all and blessed Solstice as well. I'd planned on putting something out this weekend, but electrical oddity had me down, as well as some local TV channels stuck on Friday's offering. How weird is that!

 

In these remarkable times, it's best to carefully study the words coming out of politicians mouths -- but since we assign the meaning from our own particular bias, we either embrace them, promote them and redefine them to meet our own needs or parse them, attack them and get our panties in a twist over them. Still, the truth is in there somewhere.

As we close in on November, we'll hear a lot more blah-blah both from the politicos and about them and, as if we needed any more, the press is always anxious to promote a controversy and improve their ratings. Put it all in the perspective of the Big Picture. Politicians are guns for hire -- best to face that fact. Until we get the money out of the quotient, we are subject to corruption by lobbying interests and, more often than not, core bias from the individual themselves. Few are exempt -- take mild-mannered [and high-ranking] Dem, Chuck Schumer, for example, and his recent religious commentary: a sure sign that it's best not to appoint him to Mideast peace talks.

It's depressing but productive, this recent tendency to blurt out personal truth. On one hand, we seem to be surrounded by people who are tinfoil hat crazeeeeee, promoting Armageddon or proposing Prohibition or prompting sedition. On the other hand, progressive have no problem defining our own position and refining our understanding of what's valuable and required. That's what polarity provides us -- and polarity is the name of the game here in 3D  -- so it's no surprise that we are completely polarized in this closing of an era. Trent Lott recently commented on how sadly partisan Congress had become -- TRENT LOTT, fer chrissakes! The assault on the hopey-changey stuff has gone viral and makes our choices crystal clear.

For the rest of this election season, the Dems are pinning their hopes on the GOP embrace of Big Oil with their apology to BP as a print-out of Republican DNA, and a reflection of what will happen if they get more slots in Congress -- they're absolutely right. Yet who knows if that's a winning strategy. Logic doesn't impact the Pubs and only a portion of the Indi's seem to respond to reason. Perversely, the Pub embrace of Big Bidness does not translate into what it is, a virulent form of elitism, for their base, who seem to think that they are served by being delivered into the mouths of ruthless, gobbling corporate giants. Reminds me of the old Twilight Zone about aliens dedicated to 'serving mankind' which meant, literally, with an apple in their mouths -- but the Pub base doesn't see the knife and fork poised, they only resonate to distrust of government and embrace of opportunism that may ... some day ... trickle down to them.

Lets 'frame' this pro-, anti-government Word War correctly, then -- this is all about public service vs. private sector. Neither must have the upper hand if the Republic is to endure and, quite clearly, government was not designed as a vehicle for private profit. The split between public and private and has gone the way of the separation between church and state. That's the correction we need so desperately, on all fronts. The Pubs already know where they stand; the Dems will have to pick a side now, if they want to survive.

There are a few straight-shooters out there, one our own Veep ... and here's the rub: those who speak their piece will sometimes end up with foot-in-mouth disease. Me, I prefer an actual opinion to a blah-blah response, no matter where the chips fall. Here's a recent moment when Good Old Joe got it right, and when he does, nobody does it better.

Of course, it's helpful to have some gravitas as a human before you open your mouth; take Sister Sarah, as example -- she is constantly flapping hers. Her confused and often incoherent 'truthiness' has been harnessed for the Righty propaganda machine. Here's a snip from Playboy by an anonymous Bagger consultant that gives us a chilling definition of that cynical snake oil:

Strategists deliberately try to stir up rage among average Americans, calculating that it's much easier to push a political movement if it's deeply frightened than if it's entirely hopeful. "We're playing to the reptilian brain rather than the logic centers, so we look for key words and images to leverage the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives," the consultant writes. "In other words, I talk to the same part of your brain that causes road rage."

Besides Joe, there's another guy in the wings who seems unafraid to be himself -- that's Rep. Alan Grayson out of Florida. You'll find a few of his reads below on Afghanistan and his efforts of promote a Peace Party. The problem with people like Joe and Alan and others who tell their truth, like Kucinich, is that we don't take them seriously. The truth-tellers are laughable folks while people like Boehner and McConnell are heavy hitters?

Piffle! It's a sad state of affairs, my dears, if we prefer the blah-blah to the genuine. Logic won't sway the hold-outs, but the times may do a fine job of whittling the Republicans down to size.

Oh, and kudos to General McChrystal who has been summoned to the White House to explain his candor in the recent Rolling Stones piece that made us all think twice about our 'mission' in Afghanistan. Blurt, blurt -- blessed blurt!

Here's the deal -- if Democrats are going to prove that government can work and that public service is an honorable profession, they're going to have to stop playing by the Republican rules. That means dialing back generations of propaganda and proving ... in this frightfully incompetent period ... that these things can be done. They have to start telling the truth which means a shitstorm of criticism for being arrogant and partisan -- but in order to have a bipartisan conversation, BOTH sides have to give something. The Right stopped giving anything when Bush retired back into the Texas suburbs.

And as far as arrogance goes, there is NOTHING so arrogant as promoting the unemployed as lazy lay-abouts who won't work in order to justify obstruction to funding. Or, well, perhaps they were trumped this week when the BP spokesman finally got his life back and promptly went yachting on the very ocean his company is quickly killing -- but in his defense, he's not one of the 'small' people.

A few short reads, good ones, below. And here's my advice to us all -- let the words come from the heart and they can't miss their mark.

Jude

 
  

Afghan Follies: Obama Versus McChrystal
Jacob Heilbrunn, HuffPo
June 22, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-heilbrunn/afghan-follies-obama-vers_b_620597.html

Is the Obama White House filled with wimps like Vice President Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke?

That's apparently what Gen. Stanley McChrystal told Rolling Stone magazine, only to apologize today. Biden could be fairly described as loquacious. And Holbrooke, as bellicose. But wimpy? No way. Instead, it sounds as though McChrystal is doing more than simply venting. He's trying to dodge responsibility for the war and pin it on President Obama. His remarks thus crystallize, if you'll forgive the pun, the problem facing the Obama White House, which is that its Afghan surge appears to have failed before it even began.

The signs of failure are everywhere. A shyster Afghan president who's enriching his family rather than rebuilding his country. An American ambassador who believes that the war plan is doomed. And a scorching new report from Rep. John Tierney called "Warlord, Inc., Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan" which shows, as the Washington Post puts it today, that the "U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country..." And now the American General who's heading the effort is tearing down the commander-in-chief.

In Jonathan Alter's bestseller about the Obama administration The Promise, he describes how Obama agreed to the 30,000 troop surge on the condition that they start returning in July 2011 and that the Pentagon brass explicitly acknowledge that it had received everything it needed to prosecute the war successfully. So much for that acknowledgment.

The military is retreating on attacking Kandahar. Now McChrystal has handed Obama a crisis in relations with the military. McChrystal said Tuesday, "I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard."

The General is on the road to Canossa -- he's been ordered to return to Washington -- but will it be enough to smooth over relations with Obama? Obama doubtless feels betrayed by McChrystal. But perhaps he betrayed himself by signing on to the Afghan war in the first place. ++


Half a Century Under the Whip
Rep. Alan Grayson, U.S. Congressman from Florida's 8th District
HuffPo -- June 21, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/half-a-century-under-the_b_620283.html

I was two years old when President Eisenhower gave a stunningly precise prediction of our fate for the next 50 years. He said that for the first time in human history, America had created a permanent military-industrial complex that employed millions and spent billions. "More than the net income of all United States corporations," he noted.

Now, the military-industrial complex dictates our foreign policy. Wall Street dictates our economic policy. Big Oil dictates our energy policy.

Eisenhower told us that the domination of this military-industrial complex would have "grave implications" for the "very structure of our society." He warned against "the disastrous rise of misplaced power." But he hoped that an "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" would protect us.

If only. As if. You wish.

For the past half century, the military-industrial complex has perpetuated one war after another, at enormous cost in both blood and money. In its lust for oil, it has broken country after country, and now the sea floor. 9/11 cost Osama bin Laden $500,000, while U.S. military action afterward cost us well over $500,000,000,000.

Now, it's nine years later. And the war goes on. My five children cannot remember a time in their lives when America was at peace.

And no one in power seems to be able to deliver on the things that matter to us -- deliver on jobs, on health, on education, on clean water and air, on better roads. On peace. On meeting human needs.
I've done my best in Congress to show the way. Now I need your help. On June 28, we're going to hold an online 'Peace Party' event, where thousands of us come together to support this campaign. We need to raise $200,000 or more by that day, to show BP and other corporate behemoths that the "small people" (as BP put it) still matter.

We need a peace dividend. We need new priorities. We need people in government who will tell the military-industrial complex, and Wall Street, and Big Oil, to go to hell. And I'm one of them.

Can you pitch in $25, $50 or more to our Peace Party? Please do it now, at the "new and improved" www.CongressmanWithGuts.com ++

 

 

Kent State: "They Can't Kill Us All" 
Alan Grayson, HuffPo
May 6, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/kent-state-they-cant-kill_b_566226.html

Tuesday marked 40 years since the Kent State Massacre. It was one of the most important moments in American history, triggering the only nationwide student strike we've ever seen, animating the antiwar movement, and ultimately ending the war -- four long years later.

It was also one of the saddest moments in American history: our soldiers killing our children.

I worked with Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents Kent State today, to pass a House resolution yesterday memorializing the event. But I felt that wasn't enough. So I gave this speech on the Floor of the House last night: [open link for video]

My father was a history teacher. I sometimes wonder what kind of speeches he might give, if he had been elected to Congress instead of me. It's too late to ask him -- he's been gone for ten years. But last night I gave the speech that I thought he might give, explaining what Kent State meant then, and what it means today. This one is for you, Dad. ++


Diamonds in Your Bathtub
Rep. Alan Grayson, HuffPo
June 18, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/diamonds-in-your-bathtub_b_617119.html

  

"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."
~ Barack Obama

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.