Has Anyone Found Trump’s Missing Soul?

A column in the New York Times looks at the damaging consequences of having a malignant narcissist lacking any true empathy for anyone in the White House. As I said in a Facebook comment, Donald Trump is making George W. Bush - a man plagued by disastrous decisions cost thousands of American lives in the Iraq War fiasco - look like an almost likable.  Why so?  Simple, actually.  Despite all of his horrific failings, Bush could exhibit empathy for others.  The same holds for Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and even George H.W. Bush.  Trump frighteningly stands in a league of his own - even compared to Richard Nixon.  It is as if Trump has no soul and is incapable of exhibiting feelings towards other (other perhaps lust for the pussies he wants to grab).  The irony is that before the coronavirus pandemic is over, even his idiot, racist supporters may be forced to this conclusion. Here are column excerpts:

Do you remember President George W. Bush’s remarks at Ground Zero in Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? I can still hear him speaking of national grief and national pride. This was before all the awful judgment calls and fatal mistakes, and it doesn’t excuse them. But it mattered, because it reassured us that our country’s leader was navigating some of the same emotional currents that we were.

Do you remember President Barack Obama’s news conference after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 28 people, including 20 children, dead? I do. Freshest in my memory is how he fought back tears. He was hurting. He cared.

One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?  It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.

In Trump’s predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can’t, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don’t know what to do with.

Americans are dying by the thousands, and he gloats about what a huge, rapt television audience he has. They’re confronting financial ruin and not sure how they’ll continue to pay for food and shelter, and he reprimands governors for not treating him with adequate adulation.

This is more than a failure of empathy, which is how many observers have described his deficiency. It’s more than a failure of decency, which has been my go-to lament. It’s a failure of basic humanity.

Michael Gerson, a conservative who worked in Bush’s White House, wrote that Trump’s spirit is “a vast, trackless wasteland.” Not exactly trackless. There are gaudy outposts of ego all along the horizon.

When the direness of this global health crisis began to be apparent, I was braced for the falsehoods and misinformation that are Trump’s trademarks. I was girded for the incompetence that defines an administration with such contempt for proper procedure and for true expertise.

But what has taken me by surprise and torn me up inside are the aloofness, arrogance, pettiness, meanness, narcissism and solipsism that persist in Trump — that flourish in him — even during a once-in-a-lifetime emergency that demands something nobler.

“I don’t take responsibility at all.” “Did you know I was number one on Facebook?” To bother with just one of those sentences while a nation trembles is disgusting. To bother with both, as Trump did, is perverse.

Obama Tells Democrats to Relax and Embrace Political Reality

As an earlier post noted today, Barrack Obama cautioned Democrats to not lose touch with political reality of what the American public opinion supports.  He also reminded Democrats that the lead up to his 2008 nomination had been "robust" and bruising.  While not naming them, Obama appeared to be taking shots at Bernie Sanders and their followers who live in a bubble and are out of touch with main stream Americans who want improvements and change, but not a revolution and turning health care upside down.  This comes on the election of moderate Democrats win in Louisiana and Kentucky.  The message - which Nancy Pelosi has echoed - is that a centrist candidate is more likely to see electoral success in 2020.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at Obama's comments.  Here are highlights:

[O]n Friday evening, he [Obama] climbed onto a stage in a basement ballroom in Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel and asked his party’s liberal elite to chill out a bit.

“We have a field of very accomplished, very serious, and passionate, and smart people who have a history of public service, and whoever emerges from the primary process, I will work my tail off to make sure they are the next president,” he told the room of a few hundred of the party’s biggest donors and top strategists, gathered for a conference of the Democracy Alliance group.

Obama signaled for the first time a willingness to try and modulate his party’s debate — in this case to a less frantic tenor. “To those who get stressed about robust primaries,” he added, fully embodying this new slightly exasperated adult-in-the-room role, “I just have to remind you: I had a very robust primary.”

Yet Obama’s remarks were not only aimed at the donors and chatterers. He had a sterner-than-usual warning for the campaigns, too. While over the last year-plus he has been sparing in weighing in on individual primary flash points, here he cast himself as understanding but concerned emissary to what he perceives as political reality. “This is still a country that is less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement,” he said. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.” In Obama’s telling, Americans are conservative, not in ideology, but in temperament.

Voters, including Democrats, are not driven by the same views that are reflected on certain left-leaning Twitter feeds, or the activist wing of our party,” he warned. “And that’s not a criticism to the activist wing — their job is to poke and prod and text and inspire and motivate. But the candidate’s job, whoever that ends up being, is to get elected.”

It’s a vision that clashes with some on his party’s left, most obviously including supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And while he dismissed the debate between persuading voters and energizing base Democrats as “a false division,” he explained that he’d been thinking about how the candidates have been talking about him on the trail. “I think it is important for candidates to push past what I was able to achieve as president.

“I think it is very important to all the candidates who are running, at every level, to pay some attention to where voters actually are, and how they think about their lives. And I don’t think we should be deluded into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven’t heard a bold enough proposal, and as soon as they hear a bold enough proposal that’s going to activate them. Because you know what? It turns out people are cautious, because they don’t have a margin for error.” Onstage, Obama stuck to most of his personal Trump-era rules: He didn’t mention the president, or the news of the day — in this case the impeachment hearings. He didn’t mention any of the presidential candidates by name, either. But his remarks, delivered onstage next to Stacey Abrams, painted the clearest picture yet of Obama’s view of the primary, and of the direction of his party in the Trump era. And his timing sent as much of a message to the operatives in the room, and the candidates in the race, as his words.

Should American Military Hawks Stop Hyperventilating Over the Crimea?

Cossack troops

As noted in a post this morning, to understand much of what is happening in Russia and the move to seize the Crimea from Ukraine, one must understand the history of Russia and the almost psychosis that afflicts Russia and its attitude toward the west.  And to avoid the disaster that befell Europe a little less than a century ago in August, 1914, it is important to learn a lesson that should have been learned long ago: demagoguery and inflammatory language can have horrific consequences and short term political posturing is not worth the ultimate cost.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the hyperventilating by many Republicans and conservative pundits and some of the questions these dangerous blowhards ought to be asking.  Here are excerpts:

Watch an hour of cable—and I’m talking MSNBC; forget Fox—and you might well come away from the hyper-ventilations thinking that we will or should go to war over Vladimir Putin’s takeover of Crimea. Listen: Nobody’s going to war over Crimea. This isn’t 1853. Yes, it matters to us how Crimea may once again become a part of Russia, and we don’t like it a bit, but let’s face it, it doesn’t really matter to us in cold, hard, realpolitik terms, whether Crimea is a part of Russia. It’s used as a naval base, and Russia’s had that all along.

 

Now Ukraine, that’s different. Or so everyone on TV says. But when everyone starts saying something, I start doubting. After all, a decade ago, nearly “everyone”—every “grown up,” that is, every person who took a “properly expansive” view of American security in the post 9/11 age—said we needed to topple a dictator who had nothing to do with 9/11. So: Is Ukraine different? We may decide that yes, it is, but there are some real and specific questions we’d better ask ourselves before we just automatically make that declaration.

One way we decide these things is by looking at the historical record, and the historical record practically screams no, Ukraine is not different, is not a vital American or Western interest. Soviet Russia annexed Ukraine in 1922, after a war that had commenced in 1917, when the Bolsheviks took Moscow. 

[H]istorically, Ukraine hasn’t been something the West regarded as worth fussing over very much. In more recent years, after the USSR’s collapse, Russia asserted that Ukraine and, for that matter, all 14 former satellite SSR’s were within the Russian sphere of influence. They even coined a term for it: the “near abroad.” Not all Americans have accepted the idea that the near abroad falls strictly within the Russian sphere of influence, by any means.

There’s nothing easier for pundits or commentators on cable to stomp the table about how Putin is playing us and running rings around Obama and he’s a madman who must be stopped. Our former ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, said yesterday after Putin’s duma speech that the post-Cold War era was over. McFaul has been a reliable guide through these rapids, but that’s nonsense. We aren’t in a new Cold War. Spend five minutes ruminating on what happened during the Cold War and what sparked it, and you should be able to clear your head of such combustible notions. We’re a long way from that yet.

I’d like to hear everyone tossing around those kind of rhetorical lightning bolts answer, in a calm voice, three questions: One, why should Ukraine, which never before was a realpolitik first-order concern of the United States, be one now? Two, what exact sacrifices are we willing to make to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity? And three, what broader risks might those acceptable sacrifices entail, and are they worth it?

There might be very good answers to all three questions. But our political culture has a very bad habit of not wanting to discuss them much. That’s a habit we need to change.

Did the DNC Chair Discouraged Support for ENDA Execurive Order?

If new allegations are true,, it looks like it's not only the powers that be in the Democratic Party of Virginia who are trying to alienate the LGBT vote in the lead up to the 2014 mid-term elections.  How else to explain claims that Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz discouraged U.S. House members from pressuring Barack Obama to sign an executive order to ban discrimination against LGBT employees.  Currently, in 29 states LGBT workers can be fired at will based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.  Having been fired for being gay myself, I know first hand just how devastating this experience can be both emotionally and financially.  As to why more LGBT activist haven't spoken out, one need only look at how Equality Virginia handled the controversy over anti-gay marriage DPVA chair Dwight Jones: hand wringing and little else out of fear of losing :access" and "burning bridges" even as LGBT Virginians were thrown under the bus. The Washington Blade looks at the controversy.  Here are excerpts:

A gay Democratic activist claims that Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) has discouraged House members from asking President Obama to take administrative action to protect LGBT workers, an assertion her office calls a “bald-faced lie.”

Paul Yandura, political director for gay philanthropist Jonathan Lewis, made the allegation when speaking with the Washington Blade from his home in West Virginia on Thursday regarding a 2013 missive that was circulated among House members by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.).

“I was told personally by two members that she was tamping down on public calls for the president to make good on his promise — this was last year when the issue was really getting hot,” Yandura said. “She is most likely doing the same still.”

Yandura’s allegation comes as lawmakers — led by the LGBT Equality Caucus and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) — are circulating a new missive among members of Congress calling on Obama to sign an executive order barring federal contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT workplace discrimination.

Two sources familiar with the 2013 letter told the Washington Blade that Wasserman Schultz discouraged members of Congress from signing it, but Yandura was the only source willing to go on the record. The other source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Wasserman Schultz, who represents Florida’s 23rd congressional district in the U.S. House, dissuaded Democrats from signing the letter in private conversations on the House floor.

“I’m sure she’ll come with something that sounds like a good excuse, but it’s about time,” Yandura said. “It’s time that she not only signs it, but tells people that they should publicly, and that it’s OK and that there’s no pressure not to sign it.”

Mara Sloan, a Wasserman Schultz spokesperson, disputed the allegations made by Yandura, saying any assertion that she discouraged members from signing the letter “is a bald-faced lie.”

“The congresswoman believes the most effective way to ensure equal rights for LGBT Americans in the workplace is through passing comprehensive non-discrimination legislation,” Sloan said. “The congresswoman regularly speaks to the administration about issues important to the LGBT community, and will continue to be a fierce advocate for full equality.”

Despite her record of support for the LGBT community, Wasserman Schultz has never explicitly called on Obama to sign an executive order barring LGBT discrimination among federal contractors. Asked about the issue in January by The Huffington Post, Wasserman Schultz said she supports the idea of Obama using his executive authority in “as broad a way as he can to ensure that we can move this country forward.”

Yandura said he thinks Wasserman Schultz refuses to express support for the executive order and has discouraged House members from speaking out in favor of it for political reasons.

“I think she doesn’t want to embarrass the president, and still doesn’t want to embarrass the president, because it is an embarrassment that he still hasn’t done it,” Yandura said. “We’re now coming down to the end of the second term, and if they don’t get moving on it, it’ll never even get implemented.”

Sadly, the take away for LGBT citizens is that we cannot take Democratic Party support for granted.  In the final analysis, all they want is our votes and our money and we need to constantly remind them that we attach conditions to both our monetary support and our votes.  The Dems cannot take our votes for granted.  Of course, if the GOP had any sense, it would kick the Christofascists to the curb and embrace the gays.  In close elections, the gay vote does make the difference.  Just ask Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring - although he seems to be quickly forgetting that reality notwithstanding his refusal to support Virginia's ban on gay marriage.

Republicans Admit Racism Is Big Obstacle To Immigration Reform

I have long maintained that racism is one of the primary motivators for today's GOP base which is increasingly comprised of angry white men and their subservient women who are enraged that their white privilege is being eroded by "those people."  Now, the GOP has finally had the honesty to tacitly admit that it is a racist party and that racism is behind the GOP opposition to immigration reform.  If one isn't a white preferably conservative Christian, today's GOP base doesn't want you in America,  End of discussion.  Think Progress looks at recent GOP acknowledgment of the party's racism.  Here are excerpts:

House Republicans have used a variety of excuses — citing Obamacare, sequestration, Syria, or the drug war — to explain their reasons for not passing a comprehensive immigration bill. But a Republican congressman cited one reason for the stalemate the GOP won’t admit publicly. The Southern congressman told BuzzFeed it is a matter of race. 

“Part of it, I think — and I hate to say this, because these are my people — but I hate to say it, but it’s racial,” said the lawmaker, who remained anonymous. “If you go to town halls people say things like, ‘These people have different cultural customs than we do.’ And that’s code for race.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) noted that race and demagoguery has always been a factor when it’s come to U.S. immigration policy, and it certainly is one now. “There’s nothing new going on today that’s gone on before,” Graham said. “This isn’t the first time that there’s been some ugliness around the issue of immigration.”

Ever since President Obama’s second-term push to pass immigration reform, the anti-reform caucus has used coded language and even racial insults to make a case against a path to citizenship for the undocumented. The GOP’s attempt to appear as a more welcoming party is still undermined by its nativists. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has spoken about young immigrants being “drug mules” with “cantaloupe-sized caves,” as Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach continues the drum-beat for self-deportation. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) made a case against multiculturalism, saying, “there’s only one race here, it’s the American race.”

The opposition puts Republicans at odds with Americans’ overwhelming support for immigration reform and a path to citizenship.

Has Obama's Weakness Set the Stage for Hillary?

For many, Barrack Obama's presidency has been a huge disappointment.  From "leading from behind" to seemingly always capitulating to Republicans, many see his presidency as a string of lost opportunities.  That's not to say that there have not been successes.  There have.  But could there have been more if Obama had displayed more backbone.  That's what many Democrats wonder.  Some, such as conservative columnist David Frum, believe that this may all play out to Hillary Clinton's benefit in the lead up to 2016.  Here are highlights from Frum's column in The Daily Beast:

Few of these liberal and Democratic critics think Obama's heart is in the wrong place. They support much of his record, admire his values, take pride in the symbolism of his victory. But they wonder, in the words of a MoveOn.org video ad, "What's happened to that bold progressive man we elected president in 2008?" With MoveOn, they are pleading, "please fight" to a president they see as fatally yielding.

In this mood, Democrats may care a lot more about toughness and combativeness than about minute gradations of progressiveness. And about Hillary Clinton's combativeness, nobody has ever had any doubts. . . . .  "Standing up strong" is what Democrats will be looking for in 2016. Affect will matter more than policy, and Hillary Clinton has the affect of the tough and decisive leader.

To woo progressive Democrats, Hillary Clinton does not need to deploy a radical policy platform. She needs to go toe-to-toe with Republicans. She needs to breathe fire. She needs to reassure her party that she doesn't believe that discredited old junk about "no red states and no blue states." Democrats now accept that the divide is real, and in their politicians as in their preferred cable channel, they are looking for champions willing to take heat and return fire. The details of each candidate's health care platform will matter a lot less than the candidate's eagerness for the fight.

Five years ago, Hillary Clinton sparked controversy by remarking that Martin Luther King's dream only became a reality when Lyndon Johnson forced the Civil Rights bill of 1964 through Congress. "It took a president to get it done." Obama supporters seized on Clinton's words as a slight against Martin Luther King. A political cycle later, progressive Democrats may feel new respect for LBJ's ability to get things done.

Peter Beinart's analysis of the cultural moment is astute. But be careful about over-predicting big sweeping new political changes. Democrats tried that in 2008. And what they'll be looking for in their next leader will be much less the ability to touch the nation's heart, and much more the ability to apply the knee to her Republican opponents' groins.

Bradley Manning Verdict: Not Guilty of Aiding the Enemy

Bradley Manning was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act by a military judge but was acquitted of the separate and far more serious charge of “aiding the enemy.”  Manning now “faces a possible maximum sentence of more than 130 years in military jail when his sentence is handed down.  Personally, I hope Manning receives a light sentence.  I believe that he was a whistle blower who provided an invaluable service in exposing some of the war crimes committed by American troops in the fool's errands launched by the feckless Chimperator Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  What I find most disturbing is that while Barack Obama has feign horror at the war crimes authorized by the Bush/Cheney regime, his administration has spent more time and effort prosecuting those who have exposed the crimes rather than prosecuting those who committed or authorized the crimes in the first place.   The end conclusion?  First, that Barack Obama is morally bankrupt and is not much better than Bush/Cheney in this regard.  Second, that a harsh sentence for Manning will be one more step towards totalitarianism which will intimidate the press.   A piece in The Guardian looks at Obama's unrelenting war on whistle blowers and, by extension, the press.  Here are highlights:

The American journalism trade is breathing a collective – but premature and, in many cases, grossly hypocritical – sigh of relief today. A military judge has found Bradley Manning guilty of many crimes, but "aiding the enemy" isn't one of them.

Had the judge found Manning guilty of aiding the enemy, she would have set a terrible precedent. For the first time, an American court – albeit a military court – would have said it was a potentially capital crime simply to give information to a news organization, because in the internet era an enemy would ultimately have been able to read what was leaked.

However, if journalism dodged one figurative bullet, it faces many more in this era. The ever-more-essential field of national security journalism was already endangered. It remains so. The Obama administration's war on leaks and, by extension, the work of investigative reporters who dare to challenge the most secretive government in our lifetimes, has been unrelenting.

The Manning verdict had plenty of bad news for the press. By finding Manning guilty of five counts of espionage, the judge endorsed the government's other radical theories, and left the journalism organization that initially passed along the leaks to the public, Wikileaks, no less vulnerable than it had been before the case started. Anyone who thinks Julian Assange isn't still a target of the US Government hasn't been paying attention; if the US can pry him loose from Ecuador's embassy in London and extradite him, you can be certain that he'll face charges, too, and the Manning verdict will be vital to that case.

The military tried its best to make life difficult for journalists covering the Manning trial, but activists – not traditional journalists – were the ones who fought restrictions most successfully.

National security journalist Jeremy Scahill summed it up after the verdict when he told Democracy Now: "We're in a moment when journalism is being criminalized."

For those who want to tell the public what the government is doing with our money and in our name, there are new imperatives. Governmental secrecy, surveillance and the systematic silencing of whistleblowers require updated methods for journalists and journalism organizations of all kinds. Americans pursuing this craft have to understand the risks and find countermeasures.

That is not enough. The public needs to awaken to the threat to its own freedoms from the Obama crackdown on leaks and, by extension, journalism and free speech itself. We are, more and more, a society where unaccountable people can commit unspeakable acts with impunity. They are creating a surveillance state that makes not just dissent, but knowledge itself, more and more dangerous. What we know about this is entirely due to leakers and their outlets. Ignorance is only bliss for the unaccountable.

Yes, I supported Obama over Romney, but in politics, often one has to pick the lesser of the evils.  Obama's persecution of whistle blowers and his refusal to sign and ENDA like executive order speak volumes and none of it good.   This portion of a piece in the Virginian Pilot on the verdict continues to haunt me:

Manning acknowledged giving WikiLeaks more than 700,000 battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, and video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

The video released by Manning showed the American military members involved exulting in the deaths of totally innocent civilians.  It makes me very ashamed to be an American.

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on GOP-Confederacy Parallels

The bulwark of today's Republican Party is the states that comprised the Confederate States of America 150 years ago.   And sadly, the racism of the GOP is little different that the pro-slavery states of the Confederacy.  Here's a part of Andrew Sullivan's reflection on the parallels between the Confederacy and today's GOP:

[I]f Virginia and Florida and North Carolina flip back to the GOP from Obama this November, as now looks likely, Romney will have won every state in the Confederacy.

I think America is currently in a Cold Civil War. The parties, of course, have switched sides since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The party of the Union and Lincoln is now the Democratic party. The party of the Confederacy is now the GOP. And racial polarization is at record levels, with whites entirely responsible for reversing Obama's 2008 inroads into the old Confederacy in three Southern states. You only have to look at the electoral map in 1992 and 1996, when Clinton won, to see how the consolidation of a Confederacy-based GOP and a Union-based Democratic party has intensified - and now even more under a black president from, ahem, Illinois.  I find it troubling - and interesting.

The current electoral map without toss-up states, and only the states that were in existence in 1861

The states in 1861, colored for their position on slavery

Democrats Issue Final Platform With Full Marriage Support

For LGBT Americans, the contrast between the Republican Party national platform and that just released by the Democrats could not be any starker (the full DNC platform can be found here).  Under the GOP platform, we remain an officially discriminated against minority pretty much across the board.  Indeed, the GOP platform does everything anti-gay possible except call for the official re-institution of the sodomy laws struck down by Lawrence v. Texas.   On marriage, the contrast could not be more extreme.  Here's the Democrat position on marriage equality:

Freedom to Marry. We support the right of all families to have equal respect, responsibilities, and protections under the law. We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples. We also support the freedom of churches and religious entities to decide how to administer marriage as a religious sacrament without government interference.

We oppose discriminatory federal and state constitutional amendments and other attempts to deny equal protection of the laws to committed same-sex couples who seek the same respect and responsibilities as other married couples. We support the full repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act.

But the sharp contrasts continue throughout the document.  Here are portions that deal with civil rights and equality:

Civil Rights. We believe in an America where everybody gets a fair shot and everybody plays by the same set of rules. At the core of the Democratic Party is the principle that no one should face discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability status. Democrats support our civil rights statutes and we have stepped up enforcement of laws that prohibit discrimination in the workplace and other settings. 


We know that putting America back to work is Job One, and we are committed to ensuring that Americans do not face employment discrimination. We support the Employment Non- Discrimination Act because people should not be fired based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The President’s record, from ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in full cooperation with our military leadership, to passing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, to ensuring same-sex couples can visit each other in the hospital, reflects Democrats’ belief that all Americans deserve the same chance to pursue happiness, earn a living, be safe in their communities, serve their country, and take care of the ones they love. The Administration has said that the word ‘family’ in immigration includes LGBT relationships in order to protect bi-national families threatened with deportation. 

The sharp contrasts also extend to women's rights and reflect a view that women, not angry, out of touch white men should make decision relating to their own bodies.  I continue to be dumbfounded how anyone in the LGBT community other than someone driven by greed and a desire for lower taxes or someone who is a self-loathing individual can support today's GOP and the Romney-Ryan ticket.  It's like a black American supporting the KKK or someone of Jewish descent supporting a Neo-Nazi agenda.  I just do not get it.

Who Is Really to Blame for the Nation's Debt

The Republicans and the Romney/Ryan campaign like to depict Barack Obama as a big spending liberal.  What has truly gotten the country is the big spending Republicans.  The chart above speaks volumes.  As I've noted before, the self-styled party of religious values does nothing but lie - a trait that must have come from its Christianist base.

Hypocrite Group Attacking Obama Includes Local Scoot Taylor

While I typically find it difficult to support any GOP candidate nowadays sense they all seem to drink from the same laced Kool-Aid.  But my impression of Scott Taylor (pictured at right), who lost the GOP 2nd Congressional District nomination in 2010 to extreme Christianist Scott Rigell (Rigell was endorsed by Lou Sheldon, head of the hate group, Traditional Values Coalition), was that perhaps Taylor was different.  Apparently, I was wrong.  Very wrong.  Several news outlets have reported that Taylor has joined with others - while claiming to be non-partisan, of course - who are out to slime Barack Obama and accuse him of leaking classified information.   There's one problem with the gambit based on a story in the Los Angeles Times: the group involves those who are leakers themselves.  In my opinion, Taylor is shamelessly seeking to endear himself with the most reality untethered elements of the Virginia GOP for his next run for office.  Don't hold your breath for the Virginian Pilot to report on this.  Here are highlights from the LA Times:

They are members of a new nonprofit group called Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund. Known as OPSEC, military shorthand for operational security, the group says it has raised about $1 million for TV ads and a short film called “Dishonorable Disclosures,” which criticizes the Obama administration for alleged national security leaks.  The organizers say they don’t intend to release a list of their donors or their members. Neither is required by law.

“It’s time for President Obama and other administration officials to stop jeopardizing national security operations for political gain,” said Fred Rustmann, an OPSEC member, who worked at the CIA for 24 years before he retired in 1990.

Rustmann and two other key members of the group, all self-described Republicans, have a history of talking openly to the media about national security, a review of articles and transcripts shows.
Rustmann appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes” in 2005 to discuss Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA operations officer who was outed in July 2003 by members of the George W. Bush administration.  A federal jury convicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, of four felony counts for his role in the crime.

Scott Taylor, chairman of OPSEC, is a former Navy SEAL. An unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia in 2010, he sat down with NBC News last summer for a documentary titled “Secrets of Seal Team Six.” The film said the military had urged former SEALs not to talk.

Hate Merchant Rick Warren Wants to Host Obama-Romney Forum

UPDATED:  Thank God!  Politico is reporting that the Obama campaign has said no to Rick Warren's forum proposal.  Here are highlights:

Contrary to reports on Pastor Rick Warren's call yesterday, there will be no joint Mitt Romney-President Obama appearances anywhere before the debates, campaign officials tell POLITICO.

Let's face it, the only reason for the proposed forum is to further inflate Warren's enormous ego and likely harm Obama.


ORIGINAL POST: While Rick Warren goes to great lengths to try to pretend that he's different from his fellow professional Christians whose main stock in trade consists of hate, hypocrisy, greed, the embracing of ignorance and  the denigration of others (I should probably throw in gluttony as well given Warren's obesity), he's actually little more than a more polished version of Tony Perkins and those who preach anti-gay animus.  Sadly, the mainstream media doesn't seem to have the brains to figure out that Warren's pushing the same foul message as his less moderate breather.  Now the porcine Warren wants to hold another candidate form with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney according the a story in the Baptist Press.  Obama is a fool if he agrees to this and will likely undo much of the good will he's rebuilt among the LGBT community and other progressive groups.  Meanwhile, the voters who eat up Warrens false piety and sanctimonious bullshit won't vote for Obama in any event.  It's a lose lose situation for Obama and the only winner is Warren who has his already inflated ego stroked.  Here are highlights from the Baptist Press: 

Pastor Rick Warren says he hopes to host another forum between the major two presidential candidates this year -- similar to what took place in 2008 -- although no formal agreement is in place.

The pastor of Saddleback Church in California told reporters during a conference call Monday (July 16) that he has reached out to the campaigns of President Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, FoxNews.com reported.

Bob Felton at Civil Commotion has a strong but accurate statement as to why Obama ought to tell Warren to get lost:

Shall we count the reasons?

1. America is explicitly, designedly, a secular country; religion, however cherished, is not a licit basis for a vote decision.
2. Accepting Rick Warren’s invitation has the de facto effect of elevating a particular set of religious beliefs above others; in the instant case, the beliefs of the intellectually crude and backward-looking evangelical right that has played so large a role in frustrating national progress.
3. Rick Warren is a rotten human being, with sewage for values.  You think I overstate? Watch this urging that believers be as implacably devoted to obeying Jesus as Nazis were to following Hitler, or Mao’s peasants on The Long March.

Warren should be a universal figure of ridicule and contempt, and American presidential candidates disgrace themselves when they toady to him.

Mitt Romney will be hard put to refuse, of course; indeed, sucking-up to the sort of people who think Rick Warren is a great man is indispensable to his ambitions. He should refuse anyway, as a matter of decency, dignity and, yes, patriotism.

Virginian Pilot: Make Gay Marriage Legal

I nearly fainted when I saw the lead editorial in today's Virginian Pilot which called for Virginia and the federal government to make same sex marriage legal.  Moreover, the column takes both Republicans and Democrats - but more so Republicans - in Virginia for the anti-gay discrimination that is the hallmark of this state.  And yes, "Slideshow" Bob Marshall gets slammed by name.  As do "Christians" who for centuries used the Bible as justification for slavery and later segregation.  Not surprisingly, in the comments left on the editorial some of the local Christofascsists and Kool-Aid drinkers are shrieking and claiming that they, not gays, are the ones being persecuted.  Obviously, these folks are not only liars and hypocrites but they also need to extricate their heads out of their asses.  Here are excerpts from the column:

Democrats and Republicans joined in Virginia to pass a law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Democrats and Republicans together decided to put the civil rights of homosexuals to a popular vote. And Virginians - Democrats and Republicans - voted to marginalize their gay neighbors in 2006.  It was clear, even then, that history would judge such "defense of marriage" measures harshly - and not only because they do nothing to defend marriage. Popular opinion has been moving inexorably toward tolerance for gay unions.

Still, state lawmakers this month rejected a judicial candidate because of his sexual orientation. That gave his chief detractor, the author of Virginia's constitutional amendment on marriage, the opportunity to explain.  Del. Bob Marshall denounced the notion that gay people struggling for marriage rights have any parallel in history: "Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks never took an oath of office that they broke," he said on CNN. "Sodomy is not a civil right. It's not the same as the civil rights movement."

One of the nation's most forceful civil rights organizations pointedly repudiated thinking like Marshall's: "(T)he NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens," read the organization's statement. "We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the 14th Amendment. ..."

Virginians seemed to recoil immediately at the legislature's vote on the judicial candidate and at Marshall's explanation, seeing both for what they are: embarrassments.  The vote and explanation also represent compelling arguments for why anything short of marriage equality will continue to provide cover for such bigotry and argument.

The federal government once deferred to states on mixed-race marriages, for example, and most passed laws barring it. The avowed purpose, to quote the U.S. Supreme Court, was "an endorsement of the doctrine of white supremacy."  The high court cited 14th Amendment freedoms when it settled the issue for the nation in the 1967 case that pitted Mildred and Richard Loving against Virginia: "To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law."

Civil life and laws aren't fixed to religious doctrine, nor should they be in a secular society.  Churches supported and resisted the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. But the legislation that ended institutional bigotry arose from America's foundation in equality, belated though its application might have been.

To deny marriage to any couple solely on the basis of the way they are born makes a mockery of America's bedrock principles. To refuse marriage to gay people based on tradition or cultural norms elevates both above human rights.  It gives government too much authority over the most intimate relationship in an adult's life without sufficient civil justification. If the NAACP and Obama's endorsements were overdue, so is this one: Gay marriage should be legal across America, and it should be legal now.

The Far Right's "Reign of Terror" Has Crippled Congress

In remarks that are sure to cause hyperventilating among some readers, David Axelrod has blamed a "reign of terror" by far right extremists for the gridlock in Congress and the refusal of members of the Congressional GOP to put the interests of the nation ahead of partisan politics.  Axelrod also maintains that Mitt Romney is out of touch with the reality faced by most Americans, a statement that I believe is 100% on point.  As for the extremists, Axelrod doesn't name them, but it's pretty obvious that he's referring to the Christofascists in the GOP base and the anti-tax extremist led by Grover Norquist and his minions.  Then, of course, there is the ignorance embracing Tea Party crowd.Here are highlights from Huffington Post of Axelrod's statements:

Republicans in the U.S. Congress are under a "reign of terror" imposed by the party's conservative wing that also has pushed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to the right, President Barack Obama's senior campaign strategist said on Sunday.

David Axelrod, in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" program, cited the Obama administration's plans for immigration reform as an example of Republican intransigence in Congress.  The political process in Washington should not be "monolithic opposition to everything the chief executive wants to do as a political strategy," Axelrod said, adding that an "implacable group of Republicans" had blocked any possibility of immigration reform.  "I think there are a lot of Republicans in Congress who want to cooperate ... but they're in the thralls of this reign of terror from the far right that has dragged the party to the right," he said.

Axelrod said Romney, the former Massachusetts governor in line to be the Republican challenger to Obama's re-election in the Nov. 6 election, has nothing new to offer voters.  People don't know Mitt Romney very well," he said on CNN. "They see a businessman. They hope he has new ideas. When they find out what his ideas are, slashing taxes at the top for the very wealthy ... they're going to think, 'This is very familiar. We've tried this. This was a big failure.'"

Axelrod said Romney's campaign for the Republican nomination had been a negative one, based on attacking his opponents rather than spelling out ideas. When he does, I think people are going to judge them for what they are, which is backward-looking and a repeat of what got us into this mess in the first place," he added.

Obama's Missing Foot Soldiers

Harold Meyerson has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the Obama administration's apparent failure to mobilize its grass roots supporters via the Internet as it did during the campaign. Since I - and I suspect many other LGBT Americans - have unsubscribed from Obama's Organizing for America in disgust over the non-progress on LGBT issues such as DADT, DOMA and ENDA, I do not know personal knowledge of what is being disseminated. Personally, I believe that Obama's failure to forcefully push for change and use the presidency as a "bully pulpit" has greatly dampened spirits and left many disappointed and not just within the LGBT community. With Virginia elections coming in the fall, I hope the sense of malaise doesn't give a boost to the ultra far right GOP slate lead by Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell who is working hard to cast himself as a moderate when he is in fact anything but. Here are some column highlights:

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If you measure the Obama administration's campaign for health-care reform by its ability to win crucial support from major institutions, things are going swimmingly. . . . But if you measure the administration's campaign by the degree of street heat on legislators to enact a universal plan, the results look far less rosy.

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The problem begins with the administration's inability -- or disinclination -- to use its greatest political asset, the list of 13 million supporters that the Obama presidential campaign amassed last year. In 2008, that list was the wonder of the political world, enabling Barack Obama to run the best-funded campaign in history and to activate more volunteers than any candidate ever had.

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This year, however, the administration has asked far less of that list and received, not surprisingly, far less in return. . . . . "What made the presidential campaign so potent were clear goals and a strategy that made sense to people," says Marshall Ganz, one of liberal America's foremost organizing geniuses (who led training sessions for Obama campaign staffers and volunteers last year). Such goals and strategies are hard to discern today, and the participation of Obama volunteers has declined accordingly.

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the administration's willingness to limit the potential of its army of supporters and the progressive groups' unwillingness to try to create a movement (say, for single-payer health care) that goes beyond the administration's goals have all but ensured that legislators will feel no major pressure for systemic change as Congress crafts national policy.

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Are Obama and the Congressional Democrats throwing away the mandate for change that voters so clearly wanted? It would seem so and much of the problem stems from Obama's desire to play nice with Republicans who hate him rather than work to enact legislation desired by those who supported him.

Obama and Faith Based Initiatives - A Bad Idea

Democratic presidential nominee apparent, Barack Obama, has announced that he would expand on certain faith based initiatives commenced under the Chimperator. His full sppech can be found here. Admittedly, I am leery of religious organizations, especially those with ties to conservative evangelical Christian denominations which have an utter inability to grasp the simple concepts of (i) separation of church and state and (ii) that others besides themselves have religious freedom rights too. Yes, there are many religious organizations that do very good work and address many ills in society and assist the poor. The issue is whether they can do so without proselytizing to the people they help and do so (A) without discriminating against elements of those they seek to help and (B) without discriminating against the people they hire - on the basis of their religion. I think the conservative organizations that have been aligned with the Chimperator's regime have amply shown that they CANNOT do so. In fact, they often blatantly refuse to do so. Perhaps some of the progressive mainline denominations can do a better job on this front, but I personally believe that absent 100% complinace with non-proselytizing and non-discrimination requirements, no religious organization should receive a penny of taxpayer derived funds. Here are a few highlights from Obama's speech:

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I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea - so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them - or against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.

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I will empower the nonprofit religious and community groups that do understand how this process works to train the thousands of groups that don't. We'll "train the trainers" by giving larger faith-based partners like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Services and secular nonprofits like Public/Private Ventures the support they need to help other groups build and run effective programs. Every house of worship that wants to run an effective program and that's willing to abide by our constitution - from the largest mega-churches and synagogues to the smallest store-front churches and mosques - can and will have access to the information and support they need to run that program.

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Again, I understand the concept that Obama is trying to achieve. I just think he is entirely out of touch with reality if he believes most religious based organization would be able to truly meet the requirement of not proselytizing and not discriminating aginst those assisted and/or employees should they noy conform to the organization's religious dogma/agenda. A good explanation of why Obama's idea is wrong is here. If nothing else, policing the program to prevent what I believe would be widespread and often outrageuos abuses would be a mammoth under taking in and of itself.

What Doing the Right Thing Would Be

Obsidian Wings has a great analysis of what Hillary Clinton should be doing given all of the circumstances. Like me the fact that she is not doing them says a lot. Having once run for political office and lost by a razor thin margin - mostly because my opponents was dipicting me as being "Christian Right" of all things - I wonder what those who believed that bull are thinking now. Thus I know that losing hurts and is hard to deal with particularly since there is a feeling of personal rejection. However, the mature and rational thing is to face the reality and get over it. The fact that Hillary will not/cannot speaks volumes and volumes about her character - or lack there of. Here are highlights from Obsidian Wings:

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I am aware that it must be hard to face the fact that you've lost. But it became clear that she [Hillary] was not going to win the nomination months ago -- I would say after Wisconsin, but certainly after Texas. Moreover, this is not unprecedented. People lose the nomination every four years. Most of the time, they do not stay on until it is mathematically impossible for them to win; they leave when it has become clear that they will not win. They do not complain about disenfranchising all the states with later primaries, they do not threaten to keep their supporters home, and they certainly do not threaten "open civil war" if they don't get nominated for Vice President. On those rare occasions when some candidate does this in the absence of some truly monumental issue, we normally think that that candidate is a narcissistic and unprincipled person who has just shown why s/he should never, ever be President.

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There is absolutely no reason not to apply these same standards to Hillary Clinton. Right now, instead of floating demands in the press and comparing herself to abolitionists and suffragists, she could be telling her supporters that she lost fair and square; that while there was a lot of sexism in the campaign, there was racism as well, and that sexism does not explain why a candidate with literally every institutional advantage over her opponent lost the nomination. She could be reaching out to the voters who supported her in places where Obama has had trouble, and urging them to vote for him. She could, in a word, be doing the right thing: trying to earn that respect she seems to want.

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Instead, she's throwing tantrums, making demands that she has no right to make, and threatening civil war.

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I can't imagine a better demonstration of why she should not be President or Vice President. Nor can I imagine a better demonstration of why some of us who are committed feminists are not happy with her as our standard-bearer. She lost. It happens. If she were an adult or a professional, she would deal with it. Apparently, she is neither.