Prose and Thorn

If the dust only wouldn't fly

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:29:00 +0000

"The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn't fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad. The owner men went on leading to their point: 'You know the land's getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.' The squatters nodded—they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land." - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The plains of American promise have become a wilderness, sucked of their sustaining dollars by those who have moved on to riper riches, and abandoned by those whose dreams are as dead and dry as the grey sand that bites at their eyes. It's the dust bowl of upward mobility, blowing in rolling black blizzards over the dried, overworked earth of middle class labor that once yielded bumper crops of opportunity. Now, the middle class is an icon, a legend, like Jesus or the Fountain of Youth, easy for many to believe in, but hard to prove ever existed.
Indeed, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) said in a New Hampshire debate, earlier this month, that the term middle class "is something that should not be part of the Republican lexicon."
"We're a country that doesn't allow for titles," he said. "We don't put people in classes. Maybe middle income people."
Today, the empty space where the "middle income people" used to be has been taken by bankers and bailouts, the honest hard work moved to China and other emerging economies. "Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores," President Obama noted in his State of the Union speech, Tuesday. "Folks at the top saw their incomes rise like never before, but most hardworking Americans struggled."
These days, we are all Okies, but unlike the Great Plains farmers of the 1930s, the former middle class doesn't have an emerging domestic economy out west in which to seek their fortune. Instead, we fade into the streetscape, the coffee shops and bars, the food banks and food stamp lines, and watch the dancing shadows of the capital gainers and offshore bank account holders, disappearing below a distant sunset horizon.
"Now, the banks aren't bad people. They're just overwhelmed right now," the One Percenters say, echoing GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's words to a Florida audience, last Tuesday, as they continue their march away from the dying middle class. But even depression era, dust bowl land agents knew that wasn't the case. As John Steinbeck writes, in Grapes of Wrath:

"No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it."

Who owns the American Dream? Is it scrawled in the cracked earth of the middle class' economic dust bowl, or locked away in the safe of the one percent, earning $50,000 a day in interest and dividends?
The money for the middle class recovery has to come from somewhere, and it's not coming from the capitalists who are more concerned with creating wealth than creating jobs. Bitter Tea Party shouters and stimulus doubters destroyed the political will for public funding, and the private capital that funds our freedom to enterprise, that made this the Land of Opportunity, is being hoarded by the few who see themselves as the lynch pin to America's success, but instead, have become the firing pin in the bombardment on our economy. They've bought all they can buy, leaving the rest with nothing.
One day, the wealthy will turn around to ask for a cup of coffee, or to get some dry cleaning done, or get their car repaired, and there will be no one there to service them. Their shouts and demands will echo into the evening, and dissipate over the acres of lost opportunity. If they want us, they will have to put their hats in their hands and come find us, for we will all be far away, across the dry gulch, our backs to them, greeting the new sunrise.
-PBG

It Is The Middle Class, Stupids! (catsnjammer64.wordpress.com)
Swiss Mitt: Romney's Latest Out-Of-Touch Debate Moments (thinkprogress.org)
Santorum: Stop using term "middle class" (cbsnews.com)

Boycott 2012? A political system on the razor’s edge

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Boycott 2012? A political system on the razor’s edge

Jan 11

Posted by PB Goodfriend

“We deal in illusion, man! None of it’s true! But you people sit there — all of you — day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds — we’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe this illusion we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing! We’re the illusions! So turn off this goddam set!” – Howard Beale, “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves,” from the movie “Network,” by Paddy Chayefsky (Sc. 122)

Welcome to the media helicopter. Join us, as we fly over the political landscape. Below, to the right, you see the mountain that the Republicans have constructed, that if you were standing, with your feet on the ground, you would notice is actually a molehill. But don’t worry. Up here, we’re not afraid to blow everything out of proportion. Their memes make it so easy, and it seems the rest of the country takes to our words like pigs to slop.
You can track the landscape beneath us like a map. That’s President Obama’s motorcade on the road to the left, driving on what is, for sure, a bumpy trail that leads back to the White House. The DNC work crew is busy filling in the potholes with Obama’s patchwork accomplishments. They want the road to look good, at least, as they are counting on a convoy of support to fall in line, nostalgic music blaring “Yes, We Can,” the New Day “O” logo flying from banners, bumpers and car antennas.
There remains something strange about the landscape we tour from the helicopter. It maintains a certain sameness, where light and shadow seem never to change, no matter which direction the activity below us seems to be moving. It’s like, if you zoom in to Google Earth, and change the axis on your neighborhood view, there comes a point when all you get is a stretching out of roof lines, because the satellites are presenting only the tops of the houses, and not what goes on beneath the eaves.
The more you stretch it out, the closer you get to a single, thin, nearly invisible line. It is along that line our national politics play out, merely moving back and forth, side to side, or up and down. In its reluctance to embrace the texture of our varied and difficult lives, it seeks to flatten us, compress us, force us into the assimilation of a single political continuum: left, left of center, center, right of center, right.
And while there is plenty of blame for the dysfunctional breakdown of the engine of government that can be laid at the feet of Congressional Republicans, the executive branch is deep under the hood, up to its elbows in gears and grime, and the president cannot show his face as if it is clean of grease smears. Plouffe and Axelrod can dump a cooler of Go-Jo over the commander-in-chief as if he just won the Superbowl, but there’s still that puddle of dirt at his feet. Between now and November, every step he takes tracks damp and dingy traces of the mistakes and missteps of his presidency.
Americans, then, abandon the government issued vehicle at the garage, where they expect nothing good to happen, walk next door to the Greyhound station, and take a bus on a journey through the political wilderness. At least that way, they can chart a course that’s not as one dimensional as the one in which, the system insists, we are participants. Instead, they call for a new ideal, a new set of tools, a new “shining city on the hill.”
There are serious activists in this election cycle who are calling for a boycott of the presidential ballot. Their dissatisfaction will not even be placated with an idyllic third party run – it’s just putting questionable oil into the same engine, and there is no confidence it would go smoothly because, their Facebook event page declares, a third party has “no possibility of winning the Presidential election due to corporate control over the media and the electoral process.”
“Third parties and third party candidates are unable to establish an alternate party or see a candidate to victory,” explained political activist Terri Lee, in an interview with Political Context’s Matt J. Stannard. “We know it, the third party candidates know it and The Establishment knows it too. Boycotting presidential elections does no harm to them because there was no chance for victory from the onset.”
“I can’t believe people are talking about voting,” one recent Facebook commenter wrote, in referring to the bias with which Americans react to news about the inappropriate and unethical behavior of their political enemies. What does it take to go that far in one’s mind, to imply that not voting will send any signal at all?
“It’s desirable to The Establishment to have us follow these silly elections,” Lee said, “to have us believe in the illusion of choice, and to have the public think ‘that’s politics’ and busy ourselves with phone banking, fundraising, canvassing, etc which is all FOR THEM! Intentionally, purposefully, and loudly not-voting is an act of defiance.”
“We do not struggle for control of organizations, social circles, and government,” declares the Vote for Nobody Campaign, on its website. “We do not lobby the State for favors or permission to control those with whom we disagree. Rather, we advocate freedom.”
The question remains, though, by giving up your vote, are you not abdicating that very freedom to the forces you eschew? This may be one tool in the belt, but the only way to create change in this country is to “lobby the State.”
Even if you want to change the entire government system to, say, a parliamentary one, as Ms. Lee advocates in her interview, a Constitutional Convention is necessary. To convene one, you have to lobby for it. One must distinguish, then, between inaction, as “an act of defiance,” and action, as an act of engagement.
Ignoring the November ballot, or even just the presidential sections (and I am not advocating that, yet) is not and cannot be the only solution one chooses to create real change and “freedom” in our country. It can, though, be a catalyst to get activists moving to produce the right kind of revolution, one that serves our social, economic and diplomatic future.

“You say you’ll change the Constitution.
Well, you know, we all want to change your head.
You tell me it’s the institution.
Well, you know, you better free your mind instead.”
- Revolution, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

It’s the irony of revolution, that to change it on the outside, we have to change it from within; to move the surface, you have to start at the core. In our country, that’s the Constitution. I haven’t given up on that process, yet. Maybe Howard Beale and the Beatles are right – the media want to change my head, want me to free my mind and go along. They want to give dimension to the illusion of choice. I get that. But the real choices, when you get down to it, are either follow the Constitutional process, or engage in forceful, possibly armed, resistance, and if that’s in the mind of any of these movements, as The Beatles sang, “you can count me out.”
- PBG

Ron Paul's sphere sucks young voters into racism's toilet

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:24:00 +0000

Ron Paul’s sphere sucks young voters into racism’s toilet

by PB Goodfriend

To the casual observer, like Baltimore Sun columnist Thomas F. Schaller, the perception of the Ron Paul brand is a simple one. "To look at him," Schaller points out in his opinion piece, Tuesday, "Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul seems harmless. He's cute and contrarian. He wears poorly fitting suits. He's decidedly un-slick. You almost [...]

Legislative surreal-ities; what the GOP resists, persists

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:58:00 +0000

Legislative surreal-ities; what the GOP resists, persists

by PB Goodfriend

Obama: "Got it!" Boehner: "Uh-oh. What? I...this isn't what it looks like." Cantor: "You ain't gettin' this hand."

Compromise - it's the word that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) eschewed as a synonym for "sell out," when he spoke to CBS' Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes, one year ago, before he took the gavel from Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in January. It should come as no surprise, then, that the third most powerful man in our government is meeting resistance, even within his own caucus, when it comes to implementing a basic and necessary tool used to mitigate government dysfunction. There will be no negotiated solution, no compromise, as long as Boehner, Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Republicans maintain an unassailable majority in the Lower Chamber.

The numerical advantage enabled them to pull back from an apparent debt deal in the summer, and allowed Republicans on the ensuing Super Committee - which itself was supposed to negotiate a solution - to accept failure. And it pulled back Boehner's hand at the current payroll tax cut extension agreement, because his caucus reminded him he would be branded a sell out.

Now, though, Boehner & Co. are under attack from those who are supposed to be on their side. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said on CNN, Tuesday, that what his brothers and sisters in the House are doing with the payroll tax cut extension, " is harming the Republican Party."

In an editorial Wednesday morning, the decidedly right of center Wall Street Journal admonished the House GOP leadership, calling their actions a "fiasco."

Despite the House's maneuver that allowed their caucus to vote against the Senate's compromise, Tuesday, without it looking like a vote against a tax break, the Journal recognizes it would be perceived that way, anyway. "The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter," the WSJ editorial board said, adding, "This should be impossible."

A somewhat cynical McCain took note of the dismal ratings of Congress in his critique. "It is harming the view, if it's possible any more, of the American people about Congress," he said.

The continuing cries from the House of, "But our bill will be better. We want a whole year," is falling on deaf ears because, as they acknowledge, everyone wants a whole year. What they, the Senate and the President want or are willing to exchange for that year, in a hurried negotiation, is the sticking point.

By engaging in another post-settlement negotiation, John Boehner and Eric Cantor are substituting the "legislative realities" the Republicans like to talk about when they "negotiate" a bill, with legislative surreal-ities. And for the millions this legislation affects, the consequences of their political gaming couldn't be more real.

"The entire exercise is political," the WSJ editorial points out, "but Republicans have thoroughly botched the politics."

Maybe the voters will remember that, come November.

-PBG

Conservatives Pan GOP Strategy On Payroll Tax Cut: 'A Fiasco,' 'Entirely Outplayed' By Obama (thinkprogress.org)
Drama trumps progress on payroll tax (politico.com)
Cantor: Failure of tax cut extension would 'be on Harry Reid's lap' (thehill.com)
Has Boehner lost control of the House? (politico.com)

PB Goodfriend | December 21, 2011 at 4:58 pm | Tags: Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, payroll, Senate, Tax cut, Wall Street Journal | Categories: politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-oN

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[New post] ‘Job Creators’ are Jōb creators

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:20:00 +0000

‘Job Creators’ are Jōb creators

by PB Goodfriend

Satan smiting Job with boils, William Blake

"My worry is that for American job creators, all the uncertainty is turning to fear that this toxic environment for job creation is a permanent state.
"Job creators in America are essentially on strike."
- Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH), to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., September 15, 2011

Job creators. We owe them our unbridled loyalty, the Frank Luntz inspired talking points assure us, because these companies - whose annual gross is at least in the eight or nine digit range and yet are still mysteriously referred to as small businesses - made the middle class mobility of the last century possible.

This is a story of America's middle class, in the midst of peace and prosperity, and the greedy adversaries in the one percent who took it all away, because they wanted to challenge our faith in, and fealty to, the nation they have taken unto themselves, as if it were another bauble in their jewelry drawer.

"You have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth Your hand now, and touch all he has, and he will curse You to Your face." Satan, goading God into testing Job's faith, Book of Job, 1:10-11

Like Satan in the Book of Job, they jealously solicited Congresses and presidents for a test of faith in our system, one that had - to their dismay - smiled on, and showed at least some favor to, America's working class. The prosperity of the 1990s made Bill Clinton one of the most popular presidents of modern times, practically immune to their slings and arrows. Between that and losing the popular vote in the 2000 election, those who stood against the social equality that is the Democrats' legacy (thanks to FDR and LBJ), became paranoid, fearing they were losing the control to which the thought they were entitled, as "sons of God."

Perhaps they may be forgiven that misguided illusion, since their cultural ancestors were enabled by our country's sordid history of exploiting and disenfranchising the working classes, from slavery to migrant workers to the depressed wages of the South's industrial underclass. Or as they call it, the good old days.

Our brothers and sisters in civil service and the trades are the latest caste of society to be sacrificed and exploited for the financial gain of the wealthy. Yet the entitled still expect us to worship them, as if the money they make falls to us like manna from heaven. They are envious, and derisive, of a society that "succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules," as President Obama said in Kansas on Tuesday.

Such a broad, social philosophy is an anathema to those who believe their wealth is constantly under siege by the Federal purse, and must be protected. "[G]overnment cannot engineer an economic recovery from Washington," according to a recent article by the Job Creators Alliance, a group of millionaires and billionaires who claim to represent the interests of small businesses. "What it can do is increase incentives for business leaders to invest in human capital, or encourage entrepreneurs by giving them certainty about what the tax rates will be moving forward, or stop the steady flow of burdensome regulations from weighing down small businesses on Main Street."

The bankers, industrialists and oil executives of the JCA may know a thing or two about making money - for themselves and their shareholders. But when it comes to creating opportunity for everyone else, it will always be measured against the bottom line. The president, though, says he wants there to be a chance for everyone to succeed, for everyone to be considered above the bottom line - not below it.

"They want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years," Obama said in his speech, "and their philosophy is simple: 'We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. '"

And then he added, to the delight of the crowd, "I am here to say they are wrong."

It's a shame that it took an unfunded war and the collapse of the economy for Americans to wake up about what it means to vote against one's self interest. It may have been forgivable, had not most of those who voted grown up tasting a decent life, and taken it for granted. We're not talking about what it takes to become wealthy - merely to be comfortable. Just to reach the middle class these days takes a Herculean effort. Maybe this is where we, as a nation, see the light of equal opportunity, a level playing field, a "fair shot," as the president said.

Then, those who had forgotten, either through cognitive dissonance or the span of generations, what it means to be middle class in America, can have a new sense of appreciation of what they had and lost, as Job did, when he confessed to God, "I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." (Book of Job, 42:3)

-PBG

PB Goodfriend | December 7, 2011 at 6:20 pm | Tags: Barack Obama, class warfare, job creators, jobs, middle class | Categories: politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-n2

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[New post] I’m with stupid – how blind loyalty is killing US politics

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:02:00 +0000

I’m with stupid – how blind loyalty is killing US politics

by PB Goodfriend

Victory casts a veil on truth, and crushes critical thinking with an anvil. It's as true in politics as it is in sports. You win in American football, and all the persistent clouds over execution are overlooked by the shiny object of the victory. In politics, too, the clouds over unexecutable policy statements and personal failings are burned away by the cognitive dissonance that emanates from the glow of election night acceptance speeches. The voters have spoken. The fans screamed their support. We won. Go team.

To some, for whom ambition applies more to policy than personality, the votes are a starter's pistol, a referee's whistle, a signal that the clock has started and it's time to get busy. But to others, the win is a rush of serotonin - engaging, enraging, empowering - a call for blind loyalty that builds a brick-brained wall of silence against detractors, even when they're right.

The Republican victories of 2010, as those of the Democrats in 2006 and 2008, were spun by the winners as an unquestionable mandate, an embrace of their agenda, as opposed to what the results of those elections really were - a repudiation of the actions - and inaction - of the sitting Congress.

These are politicians "who have refused to listen to the voices of reason and compromise that are coming from outside of Washington," as President Obama said, last week, referring to Republicans on the Super Committee, a construct that itself was a nod to stubborn stupidity, and that truly, and sadly, represented nothing good about our republic - only the constipation of compromise, the lowest common denominator of what passes for political discussion in the District of Columbia.

It is only within the beltway bubble, that the GOP can rail against higher taxes for millionaires because, as Speaker Boehner's office claims, it would be a "job-killing tax hike on small businesses," while also railing against the president's plan for tax breaks for small businesses to spur hiring. There's no disconnect, for them (or their followers), because they're the ones saying it.

Similarly, when the president announced, last month, that he would withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of the year, effectively concluding the war there, the Republicans pounced on his policy as "cut-and-run," even though the agreement to pull troops out by December, 2011, was negotiated by the Bush "Mission Accomplished" administration.

But this cognitive dissonance doesn't just cut against the GOP. The Democrats are guilty of it, too. Otherwise, the mid-term elections of 2010 would have had a much different result.

Much of the dissatisfaction is brought about by a perception of overreaching, whether it's the Democrats with the Affordable Care Act (which really di dn't reach far enough), or Republican actions, like the recently overturned Ohio collective bargaining law and Mississippi's controversial Personhood Amendment. Extreme, anti-populist, anti-middle class, legislation like that is "too much, too soon," as Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) admitted that night.

Politics like that have put us on an increasingly unproductive political course.

"Our politics have become so polarized that both parties seem to be getting pushed farther and farther from the center, which means farther and farther from where most voters reside," Republican pollster, Whit Ayers, told the Los Angeles Times, after the election.

Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster, seemed to agree with his colleague, admitting to the LA Times, in the same story, "This is a passionately unhappy electorate."

It has gotten so bad, that even popular legislative proposals, like the tax hike on millionaires, are re-framed as left wing socialism, solely because they are supported by most of the Democratic caucus and President Obama.

"The President can't get anything done without the support of Congress," then DNC chair, Tim Kaine, told a group of students in 2010, before the elections. He might have added, that without the agreement of the president, nothing can get done, either.

Our Founding Fathers intended the separation of powers to be a check and balance against overreaching by any single branch of government, with the expectation that reason would prevail. Instead, it has become a catch-22, where leaders are available only when they're not there, and parading in lockstep is a fool's obsession. "I'm with stupid" may make a cute T-shirt, but it's a lousy name tag. Time for the real leaders, in all the policy making branches, to cut the cord.

-PBG

PB Goodfriend | November 29, 2011 at 8:02 pm | Tags: catch 22, jobs act, partisanship | Categories: politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-oh

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[New post] Linking arms with Occupy – the last, best Baby Boomer chance

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:23:00 +0000

Linking arms with Occupy – the last, best Baby Boomer chance

by PB Goodfriend

I am of the undertow of the Baby Boomers, the last third of a generation, unwilling to let go of our ability to subvert the tide and change the world, defined for us by our older brothers and sisters. Born between 1957 and 1964, we are the President of the United States, the governors of ten states (only three states have chief executives younger than we are), 16 US Senators and almost 100 members in the US House of Representatives. We are Democrats and Republicans, atheists and adherents, activists and apathetics.

The older Boomers who came before us were born in a time of a great, nationalist, moral validation brought on by the victories in World War Two, born when the world was trying to right itself after the end of European colonialism and the beginning of the Arms Race with the Soviet Union. By the time we, the remnants of a generation, came along, it seemed all the hard work had already been done.

From Occupy Dallas, Dept. of Defense, UW Digital Archives & other public domain sources

Our younger brothers and sisters in the Occupy Movement have made that hard work worth doing again. Many more choose, once again, to link arms in unity against the enemies of social progress, like wealth disparity and growing national poverty, like a government controlled more by a complex of corporate corruption than by the needs of the people who elected them. The money promises to get our overpaid representatives reelected, and the new Super PACs, like the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity, and legislative ghost writers from ALEC, promise to keep their political opponents at bay by working to inhibit voter access through laws passed in more than a dozen states.

Just today, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) formally requested that US Attorney General Eric Holder investigate "whether new state voting laws resulted from collusion or an orchestrated effort to limit voter turnout," the Miami Herald reported.

In one instance, a teacher in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, unknowingly violated that state's new voter registration laws while trying to teach her students about the importance of becoming a voter. According to a story in the Daytona Beach News-Journal:

"What happened is that [high school teacher Jill] Cicciarelli helped her 17-year-old seniors with the paperwork to preregister for the voting rolls, as she does every year. She'd been on maternity leave in the spring when the Legislature passed a voting law that, among other things, requires third parties to register with the state before they help sign up new voters.

"The law has proved so daunting that the League of Women Voters suspended voter registration efforts in Florida for fear of exposing volunteers to up to $1,000 in fines."

Nelson told the students, "It is voter suppression," the Daytona Beach paper reported.

But it's not just voting rights. The entire debt ceiling debate last summer, and the current travails of the resulting Super Committee, now in session, are about the tax breaks for the wealthiest versus the needs of those who depend on government help to feed themselves and their families.

And that demographic is growing alarmingly fast. According to a September report from the US Census Bureau, between 2009 and 2010, "[r]eal median household income declined," and "[t]he poverty rate increased."

More to the point of the younger protesters participating in the Occupy Movement, the Census Bureau report continues:

"An estimated 5.9 million young adults aged 25 to 34 resided in their parents' households in 2011, compared to 4.7 million before the recession. By spring 2011, 14.2 percent of young adults lived in their parents' households, representing an increase of 2.4 percentage points since spring 2007."

Why do so many more live at home at an age when the rest of us couldn't wait to get out of the house? The report points out, "45.3 percent had income below the poverty threshold for a single person under age 65 ($11,344)."

Some people have folded their arms, unwilling to embrace Occupy because they do not understand what the movement stands for. That might be because there is so much not going right for the future of our country, that one can throw a dart and hit an issue of concern to Occupy's participants and adherents.

That's why it is important not to greet them with folded arms, but with linked arms, the position they are proud to take before they arrested for calling attention to the vanishing American Dream.

-PBG

PB Goodfriend | November 3, 2011 at 5:23 pm | Tags: Baby Boom Generation, debt ceiling, Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, poverty, super committee, voter suppression | Categories: economy, politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-dC

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[New post] ‘Careful’ and ‘Responsible’ foreign policy flusters GOP

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 02:50:00 +0000

‘Careful’ and ‘Responsible’ foreign policy flusters GOP

by PB Goodfriend

"...we have a phased redeployment, where we're as careful getting out as we were careless getting in..."
- Sen. Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, referring to his plan for withdrawal from Iraq, in an interview with Politico before the Potomac Primaries, Feb. 11, 2008.

"As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end, for the sake of our national security, and to strengthen American leadership around the world."
- President Obama, announcing the end to the Iraq War, with all troops coming home by the end of the year, Friday, October 21, 2011.

No aircraft carrier. No glorious banner. Just a man announcing the resolution of a campaign promise, standing at the podium in the White House briefing room. What a refreshing change. Less than three years after taking his oath of office, President Obama announced today that not only he, but the nation he leads, our nation, "keeps its commitments."

By doing so, he said, "the United States is moving forward from a position of strength." That goes not only for the Iraqi theater, but also on the wide and brightly lit stage of global politics.

For his political opponents, though, all the president's victories are framed as failures. It doesn't matter how measured the delivery, or how much these foreign policy resolutions raise America's stock in the eyes of our global partners, the GOP is ready to throw mud on it.

Getting bin Laden was a failure for Obama because he rejected "harsh interrogation techniques;" helping a NATO mission to get rid of Gaddafi was, according to former UN Ambassador John Bolton, a "massive strategic failure;" and today's announcement has been greeted by Republican presidential primary candidate Mitt Romney as an "astonishing failure" of negotiation with the Iraqis, who cou ld not get their parliament to agree on taking out the trash, much less protecting US troops from war crimes charges that would obviously be against our national interest. Romney actually called the president's efforts at securing an agreement "sheer ineptitude."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) at least attempted to point out that it's the Iraqis who failed, here, while he also blamed his former opponent. "It is a consequential failure of both the Obama Administration," he said, "as well as the Iraqi government."

We are no longer welcome in Iraq, and no amount of blood-lust pride is worth the arm twisting it would take to make their government work the way we would like. It was their deadline to meet, under the agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration, and they could not meet it. But the GOP and other right wing war machine have adopted the anachronistic, imperial view, that as long as we're in charge, and we have guns, things will go our way. Might makes right is a basic tenet of their thinking, whether they're talking about foreign policy or domestic issues. As conservative über-blogger Andrew Breitbart ranted in September, "We outnumber [liberals] in this country, and we have the guns."

Breitbart, of course, is wrong. Guns don't rule. People do. He is influenced by the same Second Amendment radicalism as the politicians, who operate under the influence of the diesel fumes and gunpowder smoke their perpetual campaigns must inhale to live. They are like ostriches on a pipe dream, still unwilling to accept that in our shrunken world, we can no longer be lulled by 1950s style, commie-behind-every-tree, mom and apple pie, Madison Avenue icons, nor can we be bullied into believing what is best for captains of industry is best for us.

President Obama talks with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq during a secure video teleconference in the Situation Room of the White House, in which he informed the Iraqi president of the decision to withdraw all forces by the end of the year. Oct. 21, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Iraq was Bush and Cheney's war of revenge. It was a war to put money in the pockets of big government contractors, like Haliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root, and Blackwater. The failure to reach terms with the Iraqi parliament affects them as much as the troops. Should they continue to work for the State Department, they would no longer have any kind of diplomatic protection. Ironic, perhaps, because it is precisely because of Blackwater's alleged overreaction in a Baghdad firefight, in 2007, which killed 17 Iraqi civilians, that blew away any chance of criminal immunity for America's military, or the contractors who wor k for them.

"The tide of war is receding," in our major foreign involvements, Obama reiterated, today. But as long as our Congress remains as dysfunctional as the Iraqi parliament, the ship of state will remain painfully aground, here, for there will be no reciprocal rising tide to lift us. Welcome to the economy, a new kind quagmire.

-PBG

PB Goodfriend | October 21, 2011 at 10:50 pm | Tags: GOP, Haliburton, Iraq War, Libya, Mitt Romney, Obama | Categories: Iraq, politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-nU

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[New post] Occupy – Grassroots, at the root level

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 22:17:00 +0000

Occupy – Grassroots, at the root level

by PB Goodfriend

"Yesterday, I brought to your attention how offended we are at the Tea Party Express that the media would dare to continually insist that the Occupy Wall Street protests are motivated by the same issues that the Tea Party coalesced around and that they are the Tea Party of the left!"
- E-mail from Tea Party Express to supporters, sent Monday September 11, 2011

"[W]hen you compare these people with tea partiers—now you've got a problem with We the People."
- Web posting from Tea Party Patriots to its local groups, Tuesday, October 11, 2011

They're offended. They've got a problem. They're using exclamation points. The longer Occupy Wall Street, and its nationwide inspired clones, continue their protests, the more vociferous the right's opposition is getting. The Tea Party just does not get the Occupy movement. They don't get that it is an actual grassroots movement, in the dirt, at the root level, and not the grass of a manicured, suburban lawn, cared for by gardeners who have been hired by big banks and John Birchers like the Koch brothers.

It only makes sense that in trying to voice opposition to Occupy, the radical right has resorted to categorizing the participants in anarchistic memes. "[W]atch us keep owning Teamsters and Hippies," invites one right wing video website.

"Whenever I hear somebody call me a hippy, I just write it off as ignorance, because that's a term that's no longer relevant," said Kate, an Atlanta teacher and community organizer, who spent Thursday evening helping feed those camping at Occupy Atlanta, in Woodruff Park, in the heart of the city's downtown business district.

"I have very little respect for people who try to take down someone else whose trying to do some good work," she insists. Still, she says there is commonality among the Occupy and Tea Party movements. "The people I've spoken to from the Tea Party are interested in community work, and we may not agree on all of our political points, but I have respect for people who are trying to go out into the community and engage with their neighbors."

A young web designer at the Occupy Atlanta site, named Ginsen, seemed to agree. "Overall, I support any sort of passion for people to change something they don't believe is right," she said, after setting aside the Hula Hoop she had been swaying around in.

Tea Party groups, however, see it much differently, feeling their organized, political message trumps any semblance of credibility Occupy participants think they have. "Tea partiers usually have informed opinions and clear articulation of their principles and goals," claims the Tea Party Express. "The socialist mobs sitting around in NYC rely on mind-numbing chants, bongo drums and bullhorns, because there is no substance to their message."

But Kate, the teacher, sees that as a plus. "Politics is not relevant on the grassroots," she said. "What's relevant here, is that people are coming together, on a very personal level. You can ask people here. You don't see big non-profits, with a big presence; you don't see labor organizations; you don't see the Tea Party. You see people, and that, to me, is what grassroots organizing is. When you get politics involved, that is when it loses that people power."

Harrison Schultz, an activist participating in Occupy Wall Street, told Politico much the same thing. "This is not a political movement, this is a social movement," he said.

But the Tea Party groups see the politics as proof of their power, particularly after the 2010 Congressional elections. "Occupy Wall Street may someday become a significant force in American politics, but they're certainly not today," said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, according to the Politico article.

Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, a group that trains tea party activists, told Politico that he's not too worried about Occupy protesters becoming a force. "The more you read about [them] and their behavior," he insisted, "the more it looks like they'll implode on their own."

"C'mon. Do we look like union organizers?"

In Atlanta, Ginsen seemed unfazed by the actions and threats of Tea Party and other right wing activists. "We can handle a little bit of push back. It's okay," she said, matter of factly. "In the end, if they push back, we'll push harder."

And while Ryun doesn't seem to take the Occupy protesters seriously, the more strident Tea Party Express had a different characterization of the Americans participating in the Occupy movement. "They are a disorganized unruly mob of shiftless protestors that has been reinforced by union and organized labor thugs," said Amy Kremer, in her letter to supporters, asking for donations.

Ginsen indicated that she believed that was nothing but partisan hype. "When you see girls with Hula Hoops, it's kind of hard to think we're a bunch of union organizers here," she said. "I mean, c'mon. Do we look like we're part of a union?"

-PBG

That Tea Party-Occupy Wall Street Venn Diagram (businessinsider.com)
Tea partiers defend turf from Occupiers (politico.com)
'Shop Talk': Tea Party Battles 'Occupy Wall Street' (npr.org)
A Very Simple Venn Diagram of Where the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Agree (theatlantic.com)

PB Goodfriend | October 14, 2011 at 6:16 pm | Tags: Atlanta, Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, Wall Street | Categories: politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-nJ

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[New post] Now is the spring of Arab discontent made glorious by the Wall Street occupation of autumn

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:07:00 +0000

Now is the spring of Arab discontent made glorious by the Wall Street occupation of autumn

by PB Goodfriend

Occupy Wall Street protester, New York City, September 18, 2011. By David Shankbone (Own work) CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

The drumbeat of political progress has seized the conscience of the world since the first Arabs in North Africa took to the streets last December, and the peals of their chants and screams have finally reached Wall Street.

The Arabs marched against tyranny, most certainly, but were motivated to do so because they could no longer afford to feed themselves or their families. While those in political and financial power during the Great Global Recession made sure they had consolidated the resources to take care of their own, the people, out of work and trying to get by, now watch helplessly as the price of food and fuel rise beyond their ability to pay for them. Moneyed men fight for bailouts and tax breaks, claiming they need bigger bottom lines so they can maintain their expanding belt lines, and those of their shareholders.

In our complicated world, while we are not all stockholders in multinational energy and agribusinesses, we are all stakeholders. We are most satisfied with life when these businesses are successful at providing goods we can afford, so we can be free to engage in creative and noble pursuits for the betterment of our communities, our nations, and our little, blue planet.

Yet now, as many of those same companies complain to our governments about standing on the shores of uncertainty, they, and the politicians they pay, ignore the rest of us. They feign amazement at the tidewaters rising and falling against their paper tiger legs, and never lift their gaze at the rest of us for whom drowning in the turbulent waves of an uncertain sea is an everyday reality, and not just a rhetorical device to shine a light on the money they are afraid of not making.

All we ask is for them to reach out beyond that shore. Tow, throw, row, go. Some uncharacteristic generosity now could pay dividends later, for we can consume their goods, if we have the resources to do so. But they keep their hands in their own pockets, anxiously jiggling their coins like a young boy playing with his testicles. They withhold, and for those who are hungry, the shrinking away of opportunity is grist for the mill of anxiety.

That is all the hundreds of people who have been occupying Wall Street, since September 17, are asking for. This is a time for us to rise up and help one another. Many want to paint the protesters in Lower Manhattan as anti-business anarchists, like those who viciously riot in the towns where the World Trade Organization (WTO) has its meetings, but these brave people in New York believe in the promise of America, the ability for anyone to work hard, in business, and succeed. They are not anarchists. They don't eschew their piece of the pie; they want to chew it, in large bites. The problem is, they don't think that it will be there for them, and if something in our culture doesn't change, it won't be.

This is not class warfare, as some politicians and pundits doggedly demagogue. It is an appeal for community, for the lost value of caring for those who need our society's attention. It has become apparent that, unless they are forced by federal law, those who have the resources to help rescue our society are too content to stand on the shore and watch the rest of us drown. Maybe they'll be happy being kings with no kingdom, for a minute, but they are going to wake up with a huge hangover the next morning, incredulous that they stand alone.

Wall Street protesters at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, September 19, 2011.By David Shankbone (Own work) CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

-PBG

Occupy Boston: smart, savvy, and aiming to emulate Wall Street protests (guardian.co.uk)
The Revolution Begins at Home: A Clarion Call to Join the Wall Street Protests (alternet.org)
Here's Everything You Need To Know About All The Occupy Wall Street Protests Springing Up All Around The Country (businessinsider.com)

PB Goodfriend | September 28, 2011 at 4:07 pm | Tags: Arab Spring, class warfare, Protest, uncertainty, Wall Street | Categories: politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-ng

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[New post] Too much doubt

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Too much doubt

PB Goodfriend | September 19, 2011 at 4:15 pm | Tags: death penalty, Troy Davis | Categories: politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-n8

A rally to save Troy Davis, Atlanta, GA, September 16, 2011

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[New post] Too much doubt

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:07:00 +0000

Too much doubt

PB Goodfriend | September 19, 2011 at 4:07 pm | Categories: politics | URL: http://wp.me/p11Ml3-mS

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Building blue communities, birthing blue babies and illumintaing self interest

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 23:37:00 +0000

Which would you think could turn those red and pink states blue sooner? They are all important, but more vital than the birthing - and educating - of future socially conscious and culturally generous Americans, more challenging than enticing out-of-state progressives to accept the challenge of red state politics, is getting our fellow citizens to realize, and vote, their own self interests.

Living in Georgia, where state Republicans literally broke out a broom at their celebration in Atlanta, Tuesday night, it all seems rather insurmountable. Just because the GOP have spent the last eight years in power in this state, doesn't mean it is either inevitable or for the good of the state. Just because this is a traditionally conservative state, doesn't mean it cannot be a conservatory for strong, progressive ideas. Finally, just because the blue bleeds to red once the vote gets outside the state's urban zones, doesn't mean that the people voting there are all aware of the consequences of touch screening a Republican slate of candidates.

[caption id="attachment_440" align="alignright" width="261" caption="Blue counties in Georgia that voted for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2010. Almost all the blue represents metropolitan areas of the state's largest cities, including Atlanta, Athens, Savannah, Augusta, Albany, Macon and Columbus."][/caption]

In Georgia, like many other southern and western conservative states, the social ideals of the electorate move as slowly as a man with a push-mower on a sweltering, summer day. In fact, it could be argued that the mood hardly changes at all - only the labels worn by those elected do. After all, this is the state that awarded Lester Maddox, a segregationist Democrat, the governorship in 1966, and elected Jimmy Carter governor right after that.

To put that into context, Maddox and his Dixiecrat contemporaries, like Alabama's George Wallace, would have been darlings of Jim DeMint, Rand Paul and Sarah Palin's Tea Party followers today. If you doubt it, check out Wallace's rhetoric during his independent presidential run in 1968. "They're building a bridge over the Potomac for all the white liberals fleeing to Virginia," he said at one point during the campaign. Can't you just hear the Embarrassment of Alaska saying that?

"His campaign in California and other states attracted the interest of the far right, including the John Birch Society," cites a Wikibin article on Wallace's failed bid. If you look at the crowds from his rallies that cycle, you'll see many faces, and many signs, that are similar to today's TP gatherings. He actually carried five Southern states that election, as the candidate for the American Independent Party (any one of which could have given Democrat Hubert Humphrey the election), including Georgia.

The last two-term Democratic governor in Georgia was Zell Miller (1991-1999), whose eccentricities and knee-jerk conservatism led him to the floor of the 2004 Republican National Convention, as keynote speaker and outspoken supporter of George W. Bush.

The thirty years from Maddox to Miller shows that very little changes in Georgia politics. Yes, we elected a string of Democrats in that time, but most just rode the tide of the Southern Democrat machine that was so prevalent in this part of the country in the twentieth century. The tide shifted within four years of Miller's leaving office.

Even though we elected another Democrat, Roy Barnes, as governor in 1998, he only served one term, being swept out in the Great Changeover of 2002. That's when Georgia elected its first Republican governor since Reconstruction - Sonny Perdue - and both houses of the State Legislature went to the GOP. In fact, many of the Democrats who did get re-elected, sensing the changing winds, switched parties, giving the Republicans an even more overwhelming majority.

If you are thinking, "Okay, campaign like a Republican; govern like a Democrat," that probably won't work either - at least, not in this political climate. Barnes, who lost another bid for a second term, Tuesday - to the crooked former Congressman, Nathan Deal - tried to run with Republican ideas this time. He came out in favor of an Arizona-style immigration law and against the recently passed Affordable Care Act (Healthcare Reform).

There's no telling if another candidate, running on a similar, pandering platform, would have done any better than Roy. That is, the majority of voters either didn't trust him because he was Roy Barnes - who took the states' rights, confederate emblem off the state flag when he was governor - or they just don't want to vote for Democrats.

Roy's disingenuousness was probably his downfall. That, and the fact that the state Democratic Party is afraid to back a bolder candidate. If you are going to be derided and pigeon-holed as a Pinko or Liberal or Socialist, no matter what you stand for, if they're not going to believe what you say anyway, you may as well say what you believe. They'll respect you more for it, and they may even vote for you, as long as you are honest and can demonstrate that you love this state as much as they do, and you're putting their best interests ahead of your own.

By the way, we would welcome progressive carpetbaggers, too. Y'all come.

-PBG

Auto Draft

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 19:31:00 +0000

Elections 2010: A Requiem for Reason

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:24:00 +0000

American reason should not be an oxymoron, and irrationality should not be the flame that powers our politics. We are smarter than that.

It is hard not to feel, that in a year where candidates use fictional beheadings, claim there is shariya law in American communities, and make hay about some stupid, bong-induced college prank, all in an effort to rile up people to vote for them, our ability to reason has gone into hibernation.

Imagine you are watching a magician perform on stage, and he has just "levitated" his lovely assistant. As she floats horizontally in front of him, her gown draping from her long legs toward the floor, the magician dramatically runs a hoop around her body, from head to foot and back again. He performs this maneuver because he wants to convince you that what you are witnessing is real, that the beautiful woman in front of him is actually floating. You know it cannot possibly be real, that this is some kind of trick, and still, you let your mind suspend reality for just a moment or two, and allow yourself to entertain the notion of, "But, what if it is?"

That moment of cognitive dissonance gives us a buzz. Serotonin, that lovely neurotransmitter, makes us feel we fit wonderfully and perfectly in this moment of universal time, validates us for who we are, what we are, and with whom we associate ourselves. There is no such thing as unsound judgment, because by allowing ourselves to suspend reality, we can believe that everything we think, feel and hear is actually happening. A woman is floating, ungrounded, in mid-air. Headless torsos are rotting in the Arizona desert. People in Dearborn, Michigan, are having their hands chopped off and being stoned to death. There is an anti-Christian cult of students at Baylor University that ties up young women and makes them bow to Aqua Buddha.

We believe these things because we want to, or don't in the case of the Aqua Buddha story. (The funny thing is, that even though Jack Conway's story about Rand Paul is the closest to a real event, it backfired because the Democrat's insistence that this was a legitimate campaign issue jumped the shark. Ahh, irony.)

That brings us to Saturday's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" on the National Mall, in Washington, DC. There was a bittersweet air about the crowd, at once poking fun at this year's insane political discourse...

[caption id="attachment_409" align="alignleft" width="143" caption="Photo by Annie Parker"][/caption]

while at the same time, lamenting the power it had over a frighteningly large amount of the electorate.

The craziness of this election, as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert pointed out, played out under the shimmering lights and fog machine clouds of 24-hour cable news, all helping us get that cognitive dissonance rush, because like a magic show, in order for a medium like television to work, we have to believe - even if it's only for a moment - that everything we are witnessing is real.

For Stewart, reality is the give-and-take, community mentality that gets people from different backgrounds and beliefs through the Lincoln Tunnel. He's right that sometimes, the light at the end of the tunnel is not the Promised Land, but New Jersey. The thing is, the rational, sane way to look at life as part of our American community, is that the light at the end of the tunnel may never be what we want or expect or think we deserve. But it's the light in which we live.

Don't forget to vote, and make that light just a little brighter.

- PBG

Remember to VOTE !!! Remember WHY!!!

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:25:00 +0000

This time, it really is Daddy Warbucks' war

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:20:00 +0000

"I love money, I love power, I love capitalism."

- "Daddy Warbucks," from the Broadway musical, Annie (1982)

It's not hyperbole, or the overused metaphor of the battle for electoral victory. It's a war for political power - a war fought with ammunition of bucks rather than bullets.

Ho hum, you say? A tiresome analogy?

Look at how much money Tea Party darlings Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell have raised recently: $14 million for Ms. "Second Amendment remedies," compared to only $2 million for her opponent, incumbent Sen. Harry Reid - and that amount is only $5 million short of what the Senate majority leader has raised since he began soliciting for this election cycle back in 2005; and Ms. "I'm not a witch" has raised, since the Delaware primary in mid-September, $3.8 million, twice as much as Democrat Chris Coons.

In this war, O'Donnell and Rand Paul, Angle and Marco Rubio are not political pioneers, but cannon fodder for the super rich backing up the Right's rear flank. People like the Koch brothers push these Kool-Aid® drinking greenhorns out on the front line, telling them they are leading the charge, "taking the country back," and meanwhile, the truly scary maniacs are hiding in the background.

In this war, Gen. Palin raises the money and Col. Beck raises the hackles of weakened minds, and they are only two of a handful who can control the crazy corporals who are zealously rattling their sabers and flapping their gums on the front lines. It's not that they are smarter or less insane than their troops. They were just out there first.

With groups backed by relentless Republicans, like Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, spending buckets of money on ads against Congressional Democratic candidates that are either misleading or just plainly false, "campaign finance reform in this country is virtually dead," as columnist David Corn put it, Friday, "and that means any entity with a lot of money -- a corporation, a billionaire, a union -- can pour as much cash as it wants into an effort to rig the political system in its favor."

It is up to us, the real America, to not let money win the power it salivates for so greedily. This is our country, and - in this the Tea Partiers are right - we have lost control of it. Vote, and remind those with riches that money doesn't vote. People do.

- PBG

Religion poll equates dense, Tea Party dunce demographic to Christian right

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:09:00 +0000

"On many important political and social issues, Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement also hold views similar to the views of Americans who identify with the Christian conservative movement..."
- Public Religion Research Institute, October 5, 2010

There may not be much of a surprise here, but a new poll published by the Public Religion Research Institute says that chances are, if you are White, non-Hispanic, call Fox News your "most trusted source of news about politics and current events," and prefer extreme Christian social values, you are supporting the Tea Party and its unhinged cabal of crazy candidates in this year's midterm election.

The biennial poll, conducted by the PRRI every two years since 2006, found that more than half (57%) of those in the ultra-conservative, Palin embracing, DeMint encouraged social conservatives in the Tea Party "consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement." I guess it could be worse, considering the survey also found that more than 8-in-10 of them call themselves Christians.

[caption id="attachment_358" align="alignright" width="477" caption="What would Jesus do? This sign from the October 2, 2010, One Nation demonstration on the National Mall, in Washington, DC, has an idea, one with which the Tea Party may not agree. (photo by Carole Keith)"][/caption]

To bring home the point that these are not just fiscally-conscious, socially accepting Libertarians, the poll, which PRRI calls the American Values Survey, points out that almost two-of-three Tea Partiers surveyed are against abortion "in all or most cases," and less than 20% support gay marriage. (I would have thought that number was much worse.)

They are also - no surprise here - overwhelmingly Republican, with basically three-of-four saying they always vote GOP, and more than eight-of-ten (83%) saying they will be supporting Republican candidates in November.

Daily Beast columnist and "Wingnuts" author John Avlon, in a March column, called it "Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism," and says this "demonizing of our president" has "infected the Republican Party."

The more appropriate and timeless quote may be the one from Jonathan Swift, which appears as the epigraph of the John Kennedy Toole classic, "A Confederacy of Dunces." Swift said:

"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."

-PBG

When the election fix is in, Congress is in a fix

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 10:43:00 +0000

"...the current system of privately financed campaigns for election to the House of Representatives has the capacity... to undermine democracy..."
- Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1826), Title I

Our electoral system has been stolen from the people who need it most by the people who care about us the least. The irony is that those who fight entitlements the loudest are the ones taking the most from our tax coffers. Corporate money interferes with democracy, beguiles Congress and suckles at the government breast with such unfettered access that the rest of the people are ignored like we are the runt of Mother Country's litter. It is an issue that is Right and Left, front and center.

Republican strategist Mark McKinnon called it a "broken trust," when he addressed the Coffee Party Convention in Louisville, Kentucky on last Saturday. "Congress now ranks sixteenth among public institutions when it comes to trust," he pointed out, "behind big business, and even the media." The people, he said, feel "unable to impact the process because money has taken over the process."

"It's a mad, mad merry-go-round, where Congress endlessly chases campaign cash, and voters can't even get a ticket for the ride."

On September 23, the Fair Elections Now Act came out of committee in the U.S. House. The bill sets up a matching funding system for Congressional campaigns, with fundraising limits based on the number of US Congressional districts in each state. Like presidential elections, Candidates can opt into this fund and run on a more competitive field, or they can opt-out, and collect from big donors. Regardless, under the terms of the bill, "Joint fundraising committees between candidates and parties would be prohibited," publicampaign.org says in its summary.

Unfortunately, Congress adjourned for the fall/mid-term election break before any action could be taken on the floor of the House. In fact, our elected representatives spend far more time raising money to get us to keep them in their jobs than they spend actually doing the work of the people - if by "people" you mean the corporate special interests.

David Donnelly, of the Public Campaign Action Fund, also appearing at the Coffee Party Convention, cited a Roll Call article that estimated that in September alone, Congress was in session only seven days, "but they would have held 415 fundraisers in our nation's capital."

[caption id="attachment_341" align="alignright" width="297" caption="David Donnelly addresses the Coffee Party Convention in Louisville, Kentucky at the end of September. (from livestream provided, via UStream, by 5 Steps Forward Media)"][/caption]

"That doesn't take into account the countless hours we know elected officials and candidates for office spend on the phone dialing-for-dollars," Donnelly added.

It's possible the bill may come to the floor of the House during the lame duck session following the election, especially if the fallout from the Citizens United decision has an obvious and profound influence on November 2. But it will only do that if we come together and call our Congressional leaders and make it happen. They may not know how serious we are, but they know we are here.

"Politicians' and elected officials' antennae are quivering right now," McKinnon said, "because they see what's happening with the Tea Party; they see what's happening here [with the Coffee Party]; they know that something's happening in America and they've got to do something about it."

-PBG

Power, Political Will and the New Movement for Democracy

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:58:00 +0000

"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."
- James Madison

Power motivates and constipates, elevates and eviscerates. Where do you stand?

"You can't stop a movement."
- Johnny 5 of The Flobots

Now is the time to recognize that not all Americans on the left are being ripped apart, excused or held back by a so-called "enthusiasm gap." For over 300 people meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, this past weekend, the worst of the gap is nothing more than a couple of centimeters between the ledge we stand on and the rest of the short climb to the mountain top - and that's only if we choose to line up behind this media driven division.

Some may allow themselves to linger, to indulge in the lazy luxury of voter vertigo that can make even the tiniest of spaces look like an intraversable gorge - but that's not how futures are built, how ships are guided or how countries thrive.

When the six-month-old Coffee Party Movement held its first ever national convention on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, two blocks from the museum dedicated to favorite son Muhammad Ali, it was not to bemoan the gap but to celebrate the fight for our country's return to its founding democratic principles. It was, in deference to the famous pugilist, a gathering of the greatest... and some famous people too.

Indeed, the fight-card was set by young Rebecca Baird, a recent college graduate and one of the event organizers, who exhorted those gathered for Friday's opening session to "roll up our sleeves and make it happen," and literally pulled the sleeves of her sweater up her small arms and curled her fists over her shoulders, making a pair of strong-man muscles. "Doing what's hard is what's good and right," she said. "Whether it's a mental or a physical challenge, you're going to come out stronger from it."

Then switch to the sixty-six year old Francis Moore Lappé, author of the seminal Seventies classic, "Diet for a Small Planet," and founder, with her daughter Anna, of The Small Planet Institute, who similarly curled her arms, saying, "This feels really good," and reminded all of us just how powerful we are. "We see power as what we create, moment to moment," she said.

Lt. Dan Choi brought the crowd to its feet with his version of Jesse Jackson's famous "I am somebody" mantra. Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig got us to believe that the Fair Elections Now Act (which just came out of committee in the House) is what everyone wants, regardless of what your beverage of choice happens to be.

Seattle activist Bill Moyer (not the similarly named journalist), founder of Backbone Campaign - as in "get one, fellow progressives" - talked about the inherent contagiousness of "celebrating progressive values," and quoted the late, great Sixties activist Abbie Hoffman, who told him to "be the 800 pound gorilla."

[caption id="attachment_323" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Bill Moyer, of the Backbone Campaign, leads a course on Creative Actions, at the first Coffee Party Convention in Louisville, KY, Friday, September 24, 2010 (Rebecca Baird)"][/caption]

Even centrist Republican strategist, Mark McKinnon, told the group that "something is happening in America..we've got a real opportunity to change the system."

"The time is ripe," he said, and quoted James Madison, who said, in 1897, "The people are the fountain of all power."

"The revolt is widespread," McKinnon added, "From the left and the right, citizens recognize that democracy does not work when the power of the people is perverted."

The power of political will, when it comes to moving the country forward cannot be taken for granted. "You can't stop," as singer Johnny 5 of the Flobots called out to the audience who had come to hear his conscious rap, "a movement."

The next thing I will post, is how and why the policy experts at the Coffee Party Convention say Fair Elections is the best way we can change the tenor of the conversation in Washington, DC.
Video from the Coffee Party Convention are available through U-stream.

Tea bags and broomsticks

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:53:00 +0000

So it wasn't the trip to the altar she was expecting, nor the kind of sacrifice she wanted to make for love. I guess leaving blood on a Satanic altar is one way to lose your virginity. No wonder why the woman thinks lust is evil. To her, a penis is the same as a pitchfork.

But before we dismiss the crack-tea-pottery of Christine O'Donnell, let's keep in mind that the more a mama grizzly is cornered, the harder she scratches, especially when her cubbette is in trouble. She may be hiding behind Palin's skirts, but like Yosemite tourists behaving badly, the tea baggers will just keep leaving more food for the bears. The more resources they consume, the stronger they get; the harder they fight.

What killed Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware's Republican primary last week was low voter turnout. The caution expressed in this column after O'Donnell's den-mate, Rand Paul, won in Kentucky still holds true. We cannot say these people are unelectable, because they managed to get elected. So the only way we can get these folks out of politics is to vote them out, defensively. They may be clawing out only a small, conservative corner of the electorate, but they are noisy and get all the attention. Only the rational sanity of the majority of Americans showing up to vote can upstage the Tea Party spectacle.

So when Bill Maher reveals he has intercepted O'Donnell's owl-borne invitation to Hogwarts, we can laugh, but make sure you're guffawing all the way to the voting booth, that you're tittering as you present your voter ID, that you're snickering when you see Diebold across the voting screen, then just let your belly explode with laughter when you vote against these people. That way, when it's morning in America, it won't look as dark as the long, Alaskan winter night.

-PBG

Rounding up the Roma in Europe's Arizona

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:27:00 +0000

"A disgrace." That's what the European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding called France's continuing deportation of thousands of Roma (part of a group commonly known as Gypsies) to Romania.

France claims the ethnic minority, who mostly live in poverty in more than 300 camps across the country, are disproportionally responsible for a high number of crimes and criminal behavior. France has expelled the Roma before, but the latest wave follows an attack by Roma on a police station, in reaction to a young woman from a local camp being shot and killed by police.

What makes this episode particularly vile, is the leaking of a memorandum that was issued in the beginning of August, calling for a "systematic action to dismantle the illegal camps, in priority those of the Roma." Furthermore, to the EU's dismay, French officials have insisted that they are working "in favor of the Roma population."

"We can improve the situation of the Roma," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, "who are at the heart of our concerns and our action."

So the French are uprooting thousands of individuals, putting them on buses and airplanes back to the discrimination they will face in Bulgaria and Romania in order to "improve the situation" for them.

The French Interior Minister, Brice Hortefeux, defended the action, saying the deportations are happening "not because they are Roma, but because they (the camps) are illegal." Remind you of anything?

The refrain in Arizona, and elsewhere, is that the anger over illegal immigration is over the "illegal" part, and not racism. This despite the fact that the most vocal anti-immigrant groups are the ones worried about White people becoming a minority, those who see the US defined as a nation run by Europeans.

The EU's Reding pegged it Tuesday, when she said, "This is a situation I thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War." In World War Two, Vichy France was notoriously complicit in rounding up Jews and Gypsies and sending them to Nazi death camps.

So what's going on here? The French have decided that because they are French, they cannot possibly be racist. Everything they are doing - expelling the Roma, outlawing the burqa for Muslim women - they are doing for their minority populations, not to them. N'est pas?

-PBG

When the moon says it's Rosh Hashanah and Eid al-Fitr, and the sun says it's 9/11

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:44:00 +0000

"Allah is great, Allah is great.
There is no deity but Allah.
Allah is great, Allah is great
And all praises are for Allah."
- Opening Takbir prayer Muslims say when Ramadan is declared over, and Eid al-Fitr begins

"It is true that You alone are the One Who judges,
proves, knows, and bears witness;
Who writes and seats, (counts and calculates);
Who remembers all that was forgotten."
- from the Un'taneh Tokef prayer, recited by Jews on
Rosh Hashanah

"This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day."
- President George W. Bush address to the nation on September 11, 2001

This year marks the first time since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), the Eid (festival) marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and September 11 have all aligned.

It is a poignant reminder that the faith of humanity moves as a clock, and will not be disrupted by angry men, violent weapons, and hateful words.

When this year's Ramadan began, and it became apparent that 9/11 could end up being the first day of Eid al-Fitr, Muslim leaders in America became nervous. It could, after all, appear that the faithful, with parties and carnivals worldwide, were celebrating 9/11, rather than commemorating the end of Ramadan festival in their traditional way.

A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Associated Press when the month began, that he could "sense brewing" hate on the internet, especially with the Manhattan Islamic Center controversy inflaming tensions. "It's getting really scary out there," Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR told the AP.

As it turns out, the Saudi Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Eid will begin in Saudi Arabia on Friday, which is September 10. Most Muslim countries are expected to follow the Saudi lead on this. Although in the U.S., one can expect the traditional Eid celebrations to be more muted than usual in deference to the 9/11 anniversary.

Although both Jews and Muslims follow a lunar calendar - with days and months delineated by the phases of the moon - the Jewish calendar is always adjusted to make certain that the appropriate festivals correspond to the appropriate seasons. Passover, for example, will always be in the spring, Shavuot in the early summer, and Rosh Hashanah in the autumn.

The Muslim calendar, in contrast, is not locked to the seasons. It slips about ten days a year, relative to the secular, Gregorian calendar. That is why Ramadan, a holiday where people fast during daylight hours, can come in the short days of winter or the long, hot days of summer.

A specific Muslim date will align with a specific Jewish date only once every 33 years. Some find the confluence of holy days significant. "Both Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan are opportunities for thauba or teshuvah, improving one's character through introspection, increasing one's commitment to doing good deeds," according to an interfaith dialogue on one Jewish British website.

Some, like Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who just "suspended" his plans to burn Qur'ans on Saturday's anniversary, have drawn brimstone lines in the coal sands of intolerance, hoping to rally the vapid minds of rabid ignorance to their side. Instead, their line has become a circle of light, uniting Muslims and Jews, and all those for whom the insanity of this hateful act was beyond the pale.

The "extended period of soul-searching," as one author put it, present during both Ramadan and the Jewish High Holidays, must, Insha'Allah /Im Yirtza HaShem/God willing, "help bond our communities together."

-PBG

BLOG HAS MOVED

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:33:00 +0000

Prose and Thorn has moved to Wordpress.
http://proseandthorn.wordpress.com/

Minarets are not Missiles

comments@proseandthorn.net (PB Goodfriend) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:59:00 +0000

A mosque grows in Manhattan

“...we would betray our values if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, August 3, 2010

There are so many ways that the Ugly American shows itself these days. The flap over the community center and mosque blocks from the 9/11 attacks makes it clear that even though the Cowboy is out of the White House, he is an integral part of the American Manifest Destiny psyche. (I apologize to real cowboys for that remark; you are all better than he ever will be.)

Make no mistake - had the GOP controlled Congress and the Executive during this anti-Muslim mud slinging, they would have pulled a Terry Schiavo and stuck their self-righteous noses where they don't belong - in urban zoning and permitting issues.

Even now, supposedly smart people like Newt Gingrich, who should be bigger than the gutter swimmers in this country, are calling for a congressional resolution that says we will never enact sharia, Islam's strict religious based law, in America. As if!!!

Don't we already have a resolution like that, a little something called the U.S. Constitution? This is a problematic solution to a non-existent problem. I mean, why stop there? Why not say we can never enact Mosaic law, or Feudal law, or even Roman law? We must stop before we are drawn and quartered in the streets! Puh-leeze. We don't have to pass a resolution to say we'll never have a king, or never allow unreasonable search and seiz-

Well, maybe that one needs help.

You see, Newt, if you believed in the importance of the ACLU in this country, you wouldn't have to worry about sharia becoming the law of the land.

We, quite properly, have no "hallowed ground" in this country; we have landmarks on historical grounds and institutions on government grounds and echoes of war on battlegrounds. A community center for Muslims in New York City, half-a-mile from Ground Zero, is about the best in America, and the best in that great city. The Constitution keeps us from being reactionary.

What law says that it's American to be angry, resentful and racist? Wait...I got this one. "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee." Where is that one from again?

-PBG

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The next thing I will post, is how and why the policy experts at the Coffee Party Convention say Fair Elections is the best way we can change the tenor of the conversation in Washington, DC.Video from the Coffee Party Convention are available through U-stream.

Tea bags and broomsticks

Rounding up the Roma in Europe's Arizona

When the moon says it's Rosh Hashanah and Eid al-Fitr, and the sun says it's 9/11

BLOG HAS MOVED

Minarets are not Missiles

The next thing I will post, is how and why the policy experts at the Coffee Party Convention say Fair Elections is the best way we can change the tenor of the conversation in Washington, DC.
Video from the Coffee Party Convention are available through U-stream.