At any given moment

I can't decide whether I'm more disgusted by the official GOP who want to control my body

or by the racist wingnuts who want to smear a dead child.

That lady up there with the sign? She's Oklahoma State Senator Judy McIntyre(D). I guess she needed to say something too.

Civil Rights

This was such a touching moment, a reminder that we can do important things, become better people, and let people be who they are. I'm taking a day to be joyous before I go back to working for the next baby step.

Dr. Martin Luther King Wasn't A Darling Of The Establishment

Many of you only have a sense of Dr. Martin Luther King as a sort of martyred elder statesman, someone who expressed what have become platitudes about morning in America that are frequently co-opted by the southern right to show that we should no longer see race, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Dr. King was a rebel, a troublemaker, whose life work was pushing the establishment to do the right thing.

Forty-seven years ago he wrote one of the pieces you don't often hear quoted in dulcet tones. He was a young 34 years old. The established clergy in Alabama had issued a statement called on him to stop stirring the pot, to cease demonstrating for civil rights. It said in part (emphasis added)

We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.

In response Dr. King wrote to those clergymen what is now known as his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," a statement with a jail cell, not the Lincoln Memorial, in the background. This is the point of Dr. King's legacy. He says "I am here because injustice is here ..."

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Think about the notion that we are all of a piece, that what affects one affects all. A radical notion totally rejected by what used to be the right but what is now considered to be the center. He insists that moderation is the enemy saying

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Let me repeat that last part -- "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." yet that is what we are constantly called on to accept.

Gay people who want to marry are told that they should live with civil unions and be grateful for the crumbs. Formerly middle class people who express dissatisfaction with corporate executive salaries are supposed to be grateful for having jobs.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Perhaps most importantly

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself

because ultimately Dr. King's work and life was about upsetting the status quo, about pushing against the established order in an effort to create something better. That is why he was killed instead of ignored.

Read the letter if you haven't or read it again if it has been a while. Spend a few minutes thinking about the purpose of Dr. King's life and death.

Good News on the Taser Wars

A federal appeals court this week ruled that a California police officer can be held liable for injuries suffered by an unarmed man he Tasered during a traffic stop. The decision, if allowed to stand, would set a rigorous legal precedent for when police are permitted to use the weapons and would force some law enforcement agencies throughout the state -- and presumably the nation -- to tighten their policies governing Taser use, experts said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taser30-2009dec30,0,3444530.story

The unanimous ruling, issued Monday by a three-judge panel, stemmed from a 2005 encounter in which a former Coronado, Calif., police officer, Brian McPherson, stopped a man for failing to wear a seat belt while driving. The driver, Carl Bryan, who testified that he did not hear McPherson order him to remain in the car, exited the vehicle and stood about 20 feet away from the officer. Bryan grew visibly agitated and angry with himself, but did not make any verbal threats against McPherson, according to court documents. McPherson has said he fired his Taser when Bryan took a step toward him -- a claim Bryan has denied.

Bryan's face slammed against the pavement when he collapsed, causing bruises and smashing four front teeth.

The appellate court did not rule on whether McPherson acted appropriately, but simply cleared the way for Bryan to pursue a civil case against the officer and the city of Coronado in a lower court. Based on Bryan's version of events, though, the judges found that McPherson used excessive force in firing the Taser, since Bryan did not appear to pose any immediate threat.

McCarthyism, Barely Disguised

It's amazing how little the tactics have changed in more than half a century since Joe McCarthy (on the right over there misused his access to the media to accuse people of disloyalty, treason, and undermining the nation without regard to facts or evidence of any kind. Today we see the exact same process taking place, fueled by partisan media outlets who pretend to offer "news" to the American public.

Jon DeVore says it well.

Yeah, this is war. Either the far right puke funnel is brought to heel by utterly destroying its undeserved credibility, something that should have happened long ago, or our democracy plunges into neo-McCarthyite darkness for who-knows-how-long. Which obscure administration or member of Congress will be next? Will it it be a third under-secretary for African affairs, or will it be, um, YOU?...

Yeah, probably me. People like me are often a target when right-wing terrorists are looking around for somebody to aim their peashooters at.

How’s that post-partisanship civility working out? Yeah, I know, regular people get sick and tired of the clown shows, but the clown shows are not a bug, they’re a design feature. They show that many Democrats won’t fight for their principles, or that many Democrats are unprincipled whores, and in either case weakness and whorishness is exposed.

The clowns clown, the pundits pontificate and the “reasonable” Republicans chortle while they watch the polls and congratulate each other on what a great monkey wrench they possess. Next up will be a set of “promises” from the GOP, probably with some grandiose name only a Colbert could appreciate, that will list the requisite demands for lower taxes, bashing of immigrants, fear-mongering against gays and any clever phraseology Frank Luntz crafts to make a shit sandwich look like Pan-bagnat.

Exactly. It's about distraction and fearmongering and tactics, tactics, tactics, all aimed to grab the spotlight, control the message. Meanwhile the moderates who care and the left that is too amazed to lift a finger are falling under the bus.

Remember, they always call the opposition what they are. So whey they claim that Obama is Hitler, there's a good reason to listen to what they are really saying. Doesn't anybody think it's time to stop them?

A Returning To School Gift

for my friends who teach high school English -- five worst required reading books. So you have advanced warning, two of my least favorite are on the list. The Old Man and the Sea and something -- anything -- by Dickens.

I Know It Is Fashionable

to negate everything Mr. Obama does. Yes, I'm disappointed too.

But I remain touched by how well he represented us in Europe. I was shocked to hear from Elie Wiesel that he was the first American president to visit a concentration camp. It was about time, I'd say.

Today

Courtesy of NASA

Slow Learners

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Basic Cable Personality Clash Skirmish '09

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

Good News!

David Sirota tells me that Judd Gregg just withdrew his nomination for Commerce Secretary. I don't know more than that but if true, it is good.

(And he tweeted it. Which is why I know so soon. Yay Twitter.)

Do you think he will suddenly discover his ability to vote against the stimulus bill? I do.

It Is Time

for Obama to go all LBJ on Mitch McConnell's ass.

Telphoning -- Ring, ring ....

BO: Mitch? Barack Obama here. How you doing today?

MM: Um, I'm just fine .. *pause* .. Mr. *pause* Mr. President. How are you?

BO: Well, Mitch, I'm pretty well but I could be better. *silence*

MM: Uh, ... Uh, why ... Uh, what can I do for you?

BO: *laughing* I notice you're having a little trouble with that "Mr. President" part.

MM: *too quickly* Why no Mr. President, I was just a little distracted is all.

BO: That's OK, my boy. You'll get used to it. .....
You see Mitch -- may I call you Mitch?

MM: Of course *cough* Mr. President.

BO: Good, Mitch. Good. You see Mitch, I just wanted to spend a few minutes talking to you about my package.

MM: *coughing fit*

BO: You seem to be having a little trouble there Mitch? I'll wait until you are feeling better. I hope it won't take too long. I have a few more calls to make.

MM: *coughing trails off* I just had a little tickle in my throat Mr. President.

BO: I'm glad you're feeling better Mitch. Now about my package.

MM: *more coughing*

BO: You see, Mitch, my package is real important to me. You may think I'm just another negro that you can ignore, but you'll understand when I say I want it large and I want it fast. And you seem to be getting in my way.

Now I know you want to show your people that you're in charge but Mitch? You aren't. I am.

You see I want this and I want it now.

MM: *haughty, the accent thick as old grits* I don't .. but .. you are ignoring the tax cuts that ..

BO: *cutting him off* There, there, Mitch. You know who won that little election. Your boy gave you all of the tax cuts you're ever going to get. I'm not asking you Mitch.

MM: *sputtering*

BO: I'm just explaining that if you don't help me with my package, and fast, I'll make sure that Kentucky doesn't get one single tax dollar as long as I'm in the White House. I know you aren't up for reelection for a while, but your folks are going to remember. Understand what I'm saying Mitch?

MM: *officious* Yes Mr. President.

BO: I'm sure you'll do the right thing, Mitch. *click*

Where Does Obama Go From Here?

The meme du jour seems to view Barack Hussein Obama as the rightful heir of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the progenitor of the New New Deal. Franklin Delano Obama is the subject of a Paul Krugman piece that argues for bold economic strokes and audacity. But he is an economist. We would expect no less. Michael Lind writing in Salon is also stuck within the window of his own specialization. Viewing the nation through a lens of broad changes based largely on centralization and decentralizaation, he tells us, in a stunning display of egomanaical fancy, that we hae entered the era of the Fourth Republic.

More often these comparisons seem based on the nature of the presidency that came before the two men then wander into a comparison that, in my view, is based largely on a lack of imagination. Here is George Packer for The New Yorker.

Barack Obama’s decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932. It brings to a close another conservative era, one that rose amid the ashes of the New Deal coalition in the late sixties, consolidated its power with the election of Ronald Reagan, in 1980, and immolated itself during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression; the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan’s incantations, failed to work, and the need for some “new machinery” is painfully obvious.

In spite of the fact that the right from the time of Barry Goldwater on has been doggedly struggling to obliterate all of the social changes created during the new deal I don't see the Roosevelt/Obama comparison as a good fit. Nor do I see the occasional comparison between Reagan and Obama apt, in spite of Obama's obvious admiration for the accomplishments of Reagan.

Listening to the radio the week of the election -- that was just last week, wasn't it? -- I heard someone say that for him the morning after the election was November 23, 1963. The promise that seemed to die with the assasination of John Kennedy seemed alive for him again. That felt exactly right to me.

Which brings me to the appropriate comparison for the Obama presidency -- Lyndon Baines Johnson, an effective yet tragically flawed presidency. If Obama can do the kinds of things that Johnson did, can be legislatively bold while avoiding getting bogged down in a war in Afghanistan or Pakistan or wherever a war seems to beckon him, he could become a great president ushering in an equally great era.

This is a blog entry, not a book chapter, so I'm not going to wade through all of Johnson's accomplishments. Robert Dallek synopsizes some of his major accomplishments

Johnson seized upon the national mood of regard for the fallen president to win passage of his major unrealized legislative initiatives - an $11 billion tax cut, the 1964 civil rights bill, and subsequently, in 1965, the Medicare/Medicaid and federal aid to education laws.

Johnson was not content to simply embrace JFK's proposals. He successfully took up the cudgels for the voting rights, open housing, immigration reform, environmental protections, consumer safety bills, cabinet departments of transportation and housing and urban development, cultural reforms like the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and the Freedom of Information Act. The War on Poverty also became part of his presidential legacy. Head Start, food stamps, elimination of urban slums, public housing, expanded social security, legal services and expanded welfare to needy citizens added up to an assault on poverty that reduced the percentage of Americans living in penury from roughly 23 percent to 12 percent. Although a number of Johnson's initiatives fell short of what he hoped they might accomplish, his domestic reforms added up to a record of liberal alterations that rivaled FDR's New Deal.
Moreover, Johnson's civil rights actions permanently transformed the South.

I don't know what they teach in schools these days about Johnson but his fatal flaw was his belief in the war in Vietnam. Dallek again

Convinced it was in the country's national interest to combat Communist aggression in Vietnam, believing that a failure to fight a limited war would lead to a larger one with Russia and China, and fearful that losing Vietnam would touch off a right-wing, McCarthyite reaction in the United States, Johnson sent over 500,000 U.S. troops to fight the war.

His assumption that a combination of bombing, ground forces and aid to the Saigon government would assure the independence of South Vietnam proved to be false. Despite repeated assertions that American was winning in Vietnam, Johnson could not convince Americans we were achieving our goals, especially after Tet, the North Vietnamese-Viet Cong offensive early in 1968 that seemed to give the lie to Johnson's assertions about the fighting.

We still bear the cultural scars from these decisions. And from Bush (and McCain's) equally flawed efforts to create an American empire, in spite of those failures. Obama started out with the right impulses, speaking out against an invasion of Iraq. Yet during the campaign he began to speak of a "surge" in Afghanistan. There have been leaks about closing Guantanamo but it is too soon to see whether he has a less militaristic model to take its place. We hear rumors of Mr. Gates staying on as the Secretary of Defense while we hear pleas to cut the defense budget.

President-elect Obama is a smart guy. He is well known for being cool, no drama Obama. If he can keep his head about him, if he can learn from history and hold onto his core, he can become a great president ushering in a great era in United States history. I wish him the best.

Dave Stewart

for the waiting time.

Les MisBarack

h/t tristero at Hullabaloo

Further Thoughts On The Bailout

I watched Secretary Paulson on the Sunday shows. It was exactly like the Iraq war setup. We don't know exactly what is the right thing to do but it is urgenturgenturgent and if we don't THE SKY IS FALLING/the country will fail and you won't have any credit cards and OHMYGODHURRYHURRYHURRY. Well, really, I do think this can wait until we read the bill. And notice that it contains passages like the one above.

That said, the only person I trust on matters like this is Robert Reich. He agrees that we have to do it but not because he is convinced that it is the right thing to do. Rather it is a set up.

Put yourself in the shoes of a member of Congress, including our two presidential candidates. The Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair have told you this is necessary to save the economy. If you don’t agree, you risk a meltdown of the entire global financial system. Your own constituents’ savings could go down with it. An election is six weeks away. Besides, in the last two days of trading, since rumors spread that the Treasury and the Fed were planning something of this sort, stock prices revived.

Now – quick -- what do you do? You have no choice but to say yes.

But he suggests five conditions --

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public. So when and if Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.

2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability. Why should taxpayers feather their already amply-feathered nests?

3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers. Why should taxpayers finance Wall Street’s outsized political power – especially when that power is being exercised to get favorable terms from taxpayers?

4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be convened immediately. After all, inadequate regulation and lack of oversight got us into this mess.

5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes. Why should distressed homeowners lose their homes when Wall Streeters receive taxpayer money that helps them keep their fancy ones?

It would be a start.

Time To Get To Work

The fun is over for now. It is time to get to work. Do you remember the presidential election of 2004? There is a picture of how it went over there on the right, just in case you have forgotten.

While you are planning the best course for the Obama campaign, enjoying the debates, railing over the outrageous lies, and the like, you need to do your part by getting everybody and their second cousin to register to vote. The opposition is still full of really really bad guys, and if you doubt that, let me remind you about the seamier side of Sarah Palin.

They will try everything they can to maintain power. They are the corporatists, the Republicans, the Cheneys, the oil and medical and war interests. They will misallocate voting machines, lock doors, reprogram computers, remove legitimate voters from the rolls, vote two or three or four time, and do lots of other things that we haven't thought of yet. They will target brown districts and democratic districts. We can't stop everything they will do.

But we can overwhelm them. They can't steal all of the votes. Democratic registration is up while Republican registration is down. But that isn't enough. We have to get every single possible person registered now and get them to the polls later. We can't give them a chance to steal this one. It is too important.

Made Me Smile

With a great deal of gratitude I take a moment here to thank the kind person who stapled that bright orange piece of posterboard onto the telephone pole, the one on 2nd Street with the large hand lettered word R A D A R.

You are a fine human being.

Johnny Sack has returned

I've seen this several times today. Good casting.

Follow This Link

Landru on Autism Awareness Day, which, as BLCKDGRD says is the Best Post You'll Read Today™.

4000

As we pause briefly to remember the 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq, the 29,395 additional casualties, and the at least 82,000 Iraqis dead, let us try to remember why it is so important to put an end to this obscene war in Iraq. As we bicker over who would be the best Democrat to lead the nation, let us try to focus on the things that matter the most and get this divisiveness behind us.