The Daily Howler discusses how the idea that Al Gore is becoming a billionaire from clean energy entered the debate (and no, he isn’t). Mostly courtesy of a congressional aide who gets funding from an business group that opposes environmental regulation. This was then picked up and parrotted by that supposedly liberal media of ours.
Read on.
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Archive for the 'Politics' Category
Al Gore, carbon billionaire
November 5th, 2009, 11:27 am by fshermanPerhaps they have a point
November 3rd, 2009, 4:14 pm by fshermanYou know all those people who say nobody’s read the health-care bill all the way through?
Well, it turns out the LA Times just discovered a provision that would require insurers to cover costs related to praying for cures, a la Christian Science (it’s unclear from the article, and maybe the bill, what exactly qualifies for funding).
I have no problem with anyone praying for a miracle or believing that disease is divinely caused, but there’s not the slightest evidence that these are true. So why are we shelling out money (albeit, according to the article, small quantities) on this when the government is straining to contain costs?
Hammers and nails
October 23rd, 2009, 11:28 am by fshermanThere’s an old saying that the person who’s an expert with a hammer sees every problem as a nail. Apparently it applies to pundits too.
Specifically, Walter Williams, whose columns focus repeatedly on how government, in his opinion, is screwing up the world. Which is, of course, a valid topic, except that he tends to use it on topics that have only marginal relevance.
When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building, for instance, Williams devoted one paragraph to what a bad thing that was, then devoted the rest of his column to all the terrible things government does that drive decent people to terrorism (contrasting this to his post-9/11 screeching about Muslim terrorism is illuminating—apparently being hard on terrorism is a good thing unless the terrorist is a white right-winger).
In his latest column he discusses how Americ has gone from “an 18th century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind’s entire history … what accounts for what some have called American exceptionalism?”
More specifically, how have we avoided “the level of hideousness seen in other nations … despite the fact that our population consists of people who have for centuries been trying to slaughter one another in their home countries, whether the struggle was between the French and Germans, or the English and Irish, or the Japanese and Chinese, or the Palestinians and Jews” plus of course, longstanding religious conflicts. “Why is the United States an exception?”
His conclusion: It’s because Americans drafted a Constitution that set strict limits on government, and that by unconstitutional acts such as the bailout, “we are losing what has made our country great.”
And the connection with why we’ve not wound up killing ourselves is—what? Does he really imagine that hostility between the Palestinians and the Jews is caused by big government.
Also, while I agree with him it’s amazing we haven’t wound in endless Civil War, the amazement isn’t over all the wars immigrants had back home, it’s because of all the horrors we’ve had here: The slaughter of the native tribes, keeping blacks in slavery for centuries, Jim Crow … That has nothing to do with the wars between Japan and Ireland and Germany and France, it’s something ingrown in us.
But Williams never fusses about discrimination unless it affects straight white males, so it’s not surprising he’d rather not discuss that stuff.
NOW Congress thinks lobbying is bad
October 16th, 2009, 3:28 pm by fshermanOK, not all lobbying, and not all of Congress, just a handful of congressmen and women who are horrified that the Council on American-Islamic Relations has plans to lobby Congress and try to get its people on board as Congressional interns.
When big business does it, it’s fine; when Muslims do it, it hands over America to al-Qaida!
Glenn Greenwald has the story.
Ronald Reagan and Ron Hart
October 14th, 2009, 9:35 am by fshermanRon Hart, in his latest column: “Ronald Reagan, who only ended the Cold War and brought down the Berlin Wall, did not win a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Now certainly ending the Cold War was an impressive accomplishment—and at a time when conservatives decried Reagan as a naive twit indulging in “appeasement” for not seeing this was a Soviet scam—and he probably deserved it as much as Gorbachev did. But Reagan’s record was hardly that of a peacemaker.
•In El Salvador he supported a dictatorship that murdered priests and nuns for teaching peasants to read (Reagan reported to Congress that the country was doing a great job preserving human rights).
•He greenlighted Saddam’s use of poison gas on Iranian soldiers. Our only reservation was that it might make it harder to condemn the use of chemical weapons when employed by sociopaths who weren’t working for us.
•He sold weapons to Iran. Funny, Hart was blasting Obama in the previous column for being naive about trusting the Iranians would make peace; apparently if Obama were selling them weapons, that would be A-OK. Well, actually not: Obama’s a Democrat, Reagan’s a Republican saint, so they can hardly be judged by the same standard.
•He funded the Afghanistanian mujahedeen as proxy soldiers against the Soviets. The people who later turned into Taliban and gave shelter to al-Qaida.
•He directed the CIA to lie to Congress about Pakistan having a nuclear program because that would have resulted in sanctions and Pakistan was our chief supply route to the mujahedeen. So now we have a nuclear-armed nation in an unstable part of the world, with government ties to Islamic extremists.
All in all, Reagan’s support for peace, democracy and freedom was non-existent any time they weren’t convenient for us.
Ron Hart’s parallel universe
October 12th, 2009, 1:56 pm by fshermanFrom Hart’s Saturday column: “Negotiating missile treaties with naiveté jeopardizes our security. The belief that if the United States lays down its arms, those militant countries that hate us will do the same, is folly.”
And when has Obama suggested otherwise? Heck, we’re discussing increasing the troop strength in Afghanistan; that’s hardly beating swords into plowshares.
It’s a little vague what Hart is referring to, but if he means yanking the anti-missile system from Eastern Europe, that was a good move, and hardly naive. If he means negotiating with Iran, I don’t recall anything in that about laying down our arms.
I’m not sure if he has a point he wasn’t clear about or if, as usual, he’s regurgitating Republican themes—Obama is weak! Diplomacy is bad! Nuke Iran!—without saying anything definite enough to argue with.
From the Daily News letters page
October 12th, 2009, 1:51 pm by fsherman1)G.M. Ross of Navarrre: “How did a socialist Republican-in-name-only like Gov. Charlie Crist ever get embraced by and elected into office?”
Crist is not a socialist. Period.
Man, until Obama got into office, I’d forgotten the automatic tendency of some right-wingers to label everyone they don’t like a socialist (or a communist). Since they were screaming it during the campaign with no results, I’d naively assumed they’d give up on that tactic. After all, there are people eligible to vote who don’t even remember when the USSR existed, let alone remember the Cold War; it’s the kind of rallying cry that works best on very old, very conservative people.
But then again, we have so many of those around here.
Then we have FWB’s April Bryant who opens with a long rant about how mean left-wingers were to people under Bush (no suggestion that those cries of “traitor” might be comparably divisive) and adds “as long as you agree with the left you’re free to speak. Otherwise, you are intolerant or extreme. What hypocrites!”
I’m sorry if poor Mr. Masick’s feelings were hurt by his side being criticized, but being told you’re intolerant or extreme doesn’t deny him or anyone else their freedom to speak. It just means that if they say something other people object to, they can expect to be called on it.
Next: “Why is it OK for a black person to disagree with a white president, but when a white person disagrees with President Obama, it’s racism … It is what it is—a disagreement about policy and ideology, not skin color.”
Certainly a lot of times—most I suspect—it is a disagreement about policy.
A lot of times, however, it’s also a disagreement about skin color. The sign mentioned in my previous post can hardly be seen as a racism-free discussion of the merits of health care. Nor can those campaign buttons about “If Obama wins, can we call it the White House?” or Jonah Goldberg claiming that whites are just voting for Obama out of a fear of race riots if he loses.
Likewise, a lot of the reaction over Obama’s Islamic roots, Christianity and his alleged softness toward Islam relate not to policy differences about dealing with Islamic terrorism but to religious bigotry: The tone often comes down to Obama not hating or wanting to wage war on Islam. And part of that, I suspect, is also racist, the whole thing about a lot of Muslims being so dark-skinned.
Hurray for Russ Feingold
October 9th, 2009, 2:46 pm by fshermanThe Wisconsin senator was a staunch defender of civil liberties under Bush, and he isn’t softening under Obama. His criticism of the Patriot Act reauthorization bill is here.
I particularly like his comment about the duties of the Judiciary Committee to be about justice, not just law enforcement: “It’s not the prosecutors’ committee, it’s the Judiciary Committee.”
Oh, joy
October 9th, 2009, 2:39 pm by fshermanDemocratic National Committee Communications Director Brad Woodhouse: “The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize …put[ting] politics above patriotism.”
Now BOTH political parties are playing the Everyone Who Disagrees With Us Is A Terrorist card. Absolutely wonderful. Not.
Word games
October 9th, 2009, 2:29 pm by fshermanWalter Williams’ column today: “There’s little or no distinction between Nazism and socialism. Even the word ‘Nazi’ is short for the National Socialist German Workers Party.”
By this logic, everyone who writes in to the daily news and announces “America is a republic, not a democracy” must be some sort of Stalinist—after all, the USSR stood for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
And no, the Nazis were not socialists, despite the name. They crushed the socialist parties and actively solicited support on the right. And despite Williams’ effort to suggest that leftist=Nazi-in-training, the fascists in America are all solidly on the right; David Duke, for instance, ran as a Republican, not a Democrat.
No, that’s not equating Republicans and Nazis. But the Republicans have been playing the Southern strategy (cater to racists without being open about it) for forty years, it’s not surprising the far right embraces themm.
More amusingly, Williams grumbles that leftists “are willing to abandon constitutional principles and rule of law so that the nation’s elite, who believe they are morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us, can have the tools to implement “social justice.”"
Of course, it’s the right wing that spent the first eight years of this century pushing centralized government in the form of the Patriot Act, “enemy combatant” laws and the unitary president theories. Apparently that was fine—I don’t recall Williams saying one word of objection—but like a number of Repubs, the horror of government providing medical care? THAT’S stalinist!
