Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Money down.

Not sure whether or not the government will have been shut down by cartoon pirates by the time you read this, but there’s a fair chance of it. It never ceases to amaze me how deeply insane our national legislature can become when there are no effective checks placed upon it. And trust me, there are no effective checks. We have a bicameral legislature in a federal system that divides power into three branches. With respect to initially passing legislation, really only two of those branches are relevant; the Democrats control the executive branch and the upper house of the legislative branch, the Republicans the lower house of the legislature. So who calls the shots? The Republicans, of course, by default.

Boehner started negotiations on the current fiscal year budget with a demand for $30 billion or so in cuts. The Democrats have acceded to that and then some. So now, naturally, Boehner’s caucus wants $60 billion in cuts, plus the passage of a bunch of extreme right riders that defund the EPA, banish Planned Parenthood from any federal support whatsoever, and so on. This is what you get when you give them what they want. Like any good blackmailer, they always want more. Democrats should have bitten the bullet during the lame duck and passed a reasonable spending resolution before the log went into the spokes. But there was a lack of spine then, and it’s still lacking now.

Does anyone in America remember the 2010 election? Is it just my imagination, or did these tea-party and mainstream Republicans ride around the country promising that they were going to focus like a laser beam on fiscal issues and on the mutually-exclusive values of job creation and deficit elimination? Bad as that was, I believe people expected to get that. What they didn’t expect, for example, was an all-out vendetta against Planned Parenthood, which provides vital health services – most notably cervical cancer screenings, breast exams, etc. – to women in poor communities all across the country. None of the federal funds sent to Planned Parenthood cover abortion. (That’s the product of a far earlier Democratic cave, frankly.) To reprise Keith Olbermann – Mr. Boehner, where are the jobs?  

As with Scott Walker, John Kasich, and other new G.O.P. governors, Boehner and company’s legislative agenda – contrary to what they claim – has little to do with balancing budgets and everything to do with scoring political points with their deluded, misogynistic, crypto-racist electoral base – essentially, the five psychos you see planted outside the local PP clinic every freaking day. There’s no point in trying to please them.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Creeping terror.

This hasn’t been a good week for the Libya enterprise, despite all that has been said and done to push it along in the right direction. Seems like mission creep is taking hold a lot faster than anyone might have guessed possible. It’s been reported that Obama has signed off on a finding to provide arms to the Libyan rebels and that C.I.A. operatives are on the ground and active in support of those forces. No surprise that the C.I.A. is there (it’s the rare nation that has never been the dubious beneficiary of Agency visitors, either invited or not). But that we would learn about it a little more than one week into this campaign is curious. And the word is that they have brought in close air support, including A-10 Warthogs and the like.  

A report by Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman on NPR’s Morning Edition was perhaps unintentionally illustrative of how badly this can go wrong:

“If their defeat is to be prevented, it’s inevitable that they get weapons from somewhere else,” says Frank Anderson, president of the Middle East Policy Council, a nonpartisan think tank. In the 1980s, he worked with the CIA, training Afghan rebels to fight the Soviets.

So… how did that Afghan thing turn out, anyhow? We are talking about a force that has no training, little leadership, few weapons, and no strategic resources to draw upon. Our operatives would effectively need to be their arms and legs, telling them where to move and when to shoot. That sounds, at best, like a formula for perpetual civil war and a divided Libya. However much I sympathize with Gaddafi’s opponents, I honestly don’t see how they can defeat an organized force. I’m not saying it’s not possible – just unlikely, even with an assist from the Agency. So…. what the hell are we doing?

The trouble with Obama’s splendid little war is that, if we were going to save the people of Benghazi by establishing a no-fly zone, we should have simply done so and gone no further. The outcome would not have been ideal – it will not be no matter what we do at this point. But trudging into yet another war is a patently bad idea for this country. If we had a draft (or a requirement that taxes be raised to cover every new conflict), this would never have even begun.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Radiation vibe.

Okay, I borrowed the title from Fountains of Wayne – quite like that song, actually. Here’s what’s on my tiny little mind this week…

Japan is glowing. The story keeps shifting on the crippled nuclear reactor in Japan. One day there’s a pressure problem in reactor 1, the next it’s #3 that’s spewing deadly isotopes. This feels a lot like the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe in that bland assurances are followed by new threats and, later, more bland assurances. The troubling part is that all six of these reactors have had problems – with both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, it was a single reactor. Add to that the multiple caches of spent fuel rods, the presence of plutonium in reactor #3, and the evident contamination of food, water, and soil, and this is, as Colbert has said, a “Disas-Turducken”.

Of course, we have similar reactors here, ludicrously close to major population centers, whose operating permits are based on equally ludicrous 50-mile perimeter population evacuation plans – eerily similar to the old Civil Defense evacuation plans that were on hand during the Cold War, when the entire population of, say,  Utica, NY was instructed to head to shelters in nearby Frankfort, NY, and stop by a McDonald’s on the way for refreshment (I am not making this up). I’m glad that NY Governor Andrew Cuomo is at least looking at the Indian Point plant a bit more closely. There is no realistic evacuation scenario for this, nor is there one for the Diablo Canyon plant, conveniently located on two fault lines in southern California. Some people talk like we’re married to nuclear power. ‘Til death do us part? Really?

Another War. This action against Gaddafi forces in Libya is no doubt partly the brainchild of humanitarian interventionists like Samantha Power and others. I can understand the rationale, but again – our military is an extremely blunt instrument. Once commenced, these operations create a life of their own. It probably is worth reminding people that the Afghan War is in its tenth year, and Iraq in its ninth. Our fearless leaders have found the formula for perpetual war – no conscription, borrowed funding, and a lot of bloviating. My hope is that, in this case, Obama is as good as his word that he will back away from the fighting quickly… because lord knows, the American people seem unmotivated to stop even those conflicts they no longer support.

luv u,

jp