Not Entitled

I guess I'm one of the 47% not entitled to healthcare. My insurance provider just refused to help cover the costs of a medical procedure my doctor recommended. Next I'll find out I'm not entitled to food, either. It's a good thing I have a garden (though here in September, it's mainly bearing okra, eggplant, and basil; that stir fry could get a little old).

Eggplant, okra, bell peppers, peas from our summer garden

What Mitt Romney Really Thinks of Us

Yes, I'm offended that Mitt Romney has this to say about people who support Barack Obama:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax. ["Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters," David Corn, in Mother Jones, 17 September 2012.]

The guy who wants to be president of these United States believes that half of Americans think they are "victims" and don't "take responsibility and care for their lives." What arrogance.

And he's back to that stupid "no income tax" meme. Hey, Mitt, those same people pay sales taxes, state taxes, and payroll taxes. And guess what? A bunch of the 47% of folks who DON'T MAKE ENOUGH MONEY to pay federal income taxes (the elderly, college students, the poor) are voting for you because they think you support their values and that you're in their corner. What a joke on them.

Note:
See "Why the Poor Pay No Federal Income Tax: A Wee Tutorial," Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, 17 Sept. 2012.

See also, "The 47%: Who They Are, Where They Live, How They Vote, and Why They Matter," Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 18 Sept. 2012.

Another Death in the "War on Terror"

I am going to vote for Barack Obama for president in November, and I have good reasons to do so. The Democratic ticket more closely represents my ideals, though it isn't perfect. I believe in gay rights; I believe in a woman's right to choose her own birth control and to have low-cost, easy access to methods that prevent pregnancy in the first place. I believe that the wealth gap is widening in our country, that corporations and the rich have too much power. I really think we should have universal healthcare and that the government should be able to negotiate lower drug prices. I believe in a public education that helps its citizens to become critical thinkers. I believe in the separation of church and state. The Republican Party, as it exists today, supports policies that are inimical to  these ideas, and it's largely responsible, through following the rhetorical instructions of people such as Newt Gingrich, in creating the toxic public rhetoric that drives our politics today. In addition, under the presidency of Barack Obama, Republicans have been pig-headedly obstructive in these times of economic crises, putting politics before the good of the country.

That being said, one of my really big disappointments in the Obama administration is its inability to shut down Guantanamo Bay and its continuing many of the war policies of the Bush administration. And I despise the fact that the DOJ hadn't the balls to go after those who approved administration-sanctioned torture in its "war on terror." (How's that working? Has terror disappeared from the face of the earth?) Unfortunately, voting Republican would not create a change here, either. Mitt Romney is being advised by some of the same neo-cons who got us in the war in Iraq with their lies and unbelievable naiveté about how long the war would last, how much the war would cost, and how little the war would impact the very people we were supposed to be liberating. 

My disappointment is magnified by stories such as that of Adnan Latif, who was finally successful this past week in his many attempts to commit suicide in that national disgrace of a prison, Guantanamo Bay. 

Congress, of course, is greatly at fault, too, in abdicating its responsibility to declare war and in allowing the executive branch to accrue more power. And so are we responsible, too, in our silence, in our eager readiness to follow that presidential advice years ago to "go shopping" rather than to deal with the harsh realities of our nation's actions.

Adnan Latif is finally returning home after ten years. . . . in a coffin. I doubt his death has aided the "war on terror." Do you?

Sick of the Willful Amnesia

Because of the riots in the Mideast, the attacks on U.S. embassies, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) calls President Barack Obama the "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy." Where was this woman on 9/11? Did she call President Bush "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy" then?

As early as May 2, 2001, "the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that 'a group presently in the United States' was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be 'imminent,' although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible." Yet Bush's neo-con advisors pooh-poohed the idea, and the government did not go on high alert. [Kurt Eichenwald,  "The Deafness Before the Storm," New York Times, 10 September 2012; a reason why Eichenwald's reminder matters here--"Why the New Pre-9/11 Disclosures Matter," Alec McGillis, The New Republic, 11 September 2012.]

(I almost laughed aloud in disbelief when a relative of mine told me recently that George W. Bush had "kept us safe." The attacks on the Twin Towers came almost eight months into Bush's first year in office--and then there were the anthrax attacks, in which five people died and at least 22 people were infected with the deadly virus!)

Did Michele Bachman call President George W. Bush "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy" when:

• A car bomb killed 10 people and injured over 50 others outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002?
• Explosions erupted near the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan in 2004?
• Gunman "stormed the American Consulate" in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in 2004?
• Armed gunmen attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, in 2006?
• An antitank grenade was fired on the U.S. Embassy in Athens in 2007?
• Protesters set fire to the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, in 2008?
• Ten people were killed in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in 2008? (h/t Media Matters-- When I started looking up information on embassy attacks, I discovered that others had done the work already.) 

How about the 2005 riots in Afghanistan over "a report that interrogators desecrated Iran's holy book at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay"? 

Or how about these Pew Research Findings in 2006, well into George W. Bush's second year in office:

Positive views of the United States have declined sharply in Spain (from 41% to 23%), India (71% to 56%), and Turkey (23% to 12%). Even in Indonesia, where U.S. tsunami aid helped lift America's image in 2005, favorable opinions of the U.S. have fallen (from 38% to 30%). . . .[snip] Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great Britain, 60% say the war has made the world more dangerous, compared with 30% who say it has made the world safer.

Did Michele Bachmann think then, "uh, oh, President George W. Bush is falling down on the job in foreign policy"?

Have we forgotten Abu Ghraib?  Whose Mideast policy was responsible for that blot on our nation?

Discussing policy differences is fine and necessary. Willfully forgetting the past in order to propagandize the present is stupid. But even more stupid? Believing those who do this.

Short, Sweet, and on Message

 Andrew Tobias makes two points in his short message to the Democratic National Convention of 2012. Wash, rinse, repeat:





 h/t, James Bennet of The Atlantic

Laughter Better than Tears?

I try not to get all wobbly when people say crazy, mean, and stupid things, you know, the "man in the street" comments that make one wonder about the morality and intelligence of one's fellow travelers. But when elected officials (or leaders of groups of people) make crazy, mean or stupid comments, I wonder not only about the morality and intelligence of the official who is supposed to make important decisions, sometimes national decisions, for us, but I also wonder about the majority of voters who put him or her in power.  Are they complicit? hateful? stupid? clueless? uninformed? or gobsmacked that their representative, so clever and eloquent during the campaign, has turned out to be such a prick?

Political rhetoric has always had a mean streak, but it seems particularly vitriolic these days. Joe Wilson's (R-SC) screaming "you lie" during President Obama's 2009 address to Congress seemed to me to presage the vaguely (and sometimes overtly) racist comments aimed at our first black president. Some would deny that Wilson's outburst was racist, but many of us in the South heard the unexpressed "boy" hovering at the end of that accusation, a ghost of Old Dixie that has materialized more substantially in the past four years. Underneath such comments is the ancient fear of the black uprising and a resentment of the "uppity" black. To keep people in their place, you have to convince yourself that they are inferior; when they prove to be equal or superior--morally, socially, intellectually--well, that's a challenge to a lot of people. No one shouted "you lie" in that august chamber when President Bush pushed the more obvious lies of weapons of mass destruction and yellowcake uranium. No, his lies were met with silence, approbation, and submission. You decide what the difference in response means.

But in keeping with my resolve to laugh at the follies of our elected officials, in the hope that laughter will prove more efficacious than tears, I offer here for derisive laughter a comment by Haley Barbour, former Republican governor of Mississippi, who actually hoped to be president of this country.

Barbour offered a brief assessment of the Republican National Convention. 'While I would love for [Chris] Christie to put a hot poker to Obama’s butt,' said Barbour of the RNC keynote speaker, 'I thought he did what he was supposed to do.' [source: Sheelah Kolhatkar, "Exclusive: How Karl Rove's Super PAC Plays the Senate," Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 04 September 2012]

Whew! close call! Aren't you [cue relieved laughter] glad this person isn't making national decisions now? Can you imagine [guffaw] what the brutality of that image says about the illustrious former governor of Mississippi? Oh, [wiping eyes] but the sexual innuendo and the implied delight in the forced submissiveness of our president isn't racist at all....oh....no.... Of course, comments such as this play well to a certain demographic. Isn't that hilarious?
 

A Missing Month and the Comfort of Philosophy

I abandoned the post here at 6 Generations as summer heated up, environmentally and politically, and as I became engrossed with family matters: visits with our college-aged children, trips out of state, a birthday party for my 80-year-old father, and preparations for enduring a hurricane. August included a ride back from Atlanta on Amtrak, on which I pondered the sad difference between public transportation in countries I have visited overseas and public transportation in our country. That disappointing difference, however, has not weakened my resolve to take public transportation more often.  One personal promise I made to myself during August was not to allow politics to make me crazy or despairing. Though I feel strongly that the best choice for the presidential election is the Democratic choice, I refuse to let vitriolic polarization poison my daily attempts at maintaining some portion of happiness in my own life. I try to remember the words of my favorite Stoic philosopher, Seneca:

But there is no point in banishing the causes of private sorrow, for sometimes we are gripped by a hatred of the human race. When you consider how rare is simplicity and how unknown is innocence, how you scarcely ever find loyalty except when it is expedient, what a host of successful crimes you come across, and all the things equally hateful that men gain and lose through lust, and how ambition is now so far from setting limits to itself that it acquires a lustre of viciousness -- all this drives the mind into a darkness whose shadows overwhelm it, as though those virtues were overturned which it is not possible to hope for and not useful to possess. We must therefore school ourselves to regard all commonly held vices as not hateful but ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. For whenever these went out in public, the latter used to weep and the former to laugh; the latter thought all our activities sorrows, the former, follies. So we should make light of all things and endure them with tolerance: it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it. Bear in mind too that he deserves better of the human race as well as who laughs at it than he who grieves over it; since the one allows it a fair prospect of hope, while the other stupidly laments over things he cannot hope will be put right. [from "On Tranquility of Mind"]

Maintaining that balance can be quite tricky, especially in this crazy season of political conventions, presidential aspirations, and pernicious propaganda, but recent weather here in Louisiana helped put things in perspective. While Clint Eastwood was talking to an empty chair in Tampa, we were hunkered down in the darkness as Hurricane Isaac slowly dumped rain that flooded our rivers and creeks, inundating whole neighborhoods. Fortunately, our house is on high ground--comparatively, that is--and we were without electricity only 49 hours. Our only access to news was a battery-powered radio, with which I kept up-to-date on the rising waters and evacuations and somewhat informed of the outside world through National Public Radio.

I'll continue to read my favorite political bloggers and be engaged in the political process, but I'll bear in mind that my daily happiness is determined by me, not a pundit, preacher, prophet, or political leader. As Seneca says:

Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away. The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. [from "Consolation to Helvia"]