Month: July 2013

The Presidential “Bully Pulpit” From TR To Obama: Our Greatest Moments!

Ronald 18 Comments

Theodore Roosevelt, the first President of the 20th century, came up with the term “Bully Pulpit” to describe his efforts to draw attention to emerging national issues that needed our attention, with him leading the charge from the White House, and the Presidency was never the same after that!

TR led the struggle against monopoly capitalism; for conservation of natural resources; for improvement of labor conditions; and for government regulation of our food and drugs–all as important national goals. He appealed to our “better angels” in his campaigns on these issues.

Franklin D. Roosevelt led from the “Bully Pulpit” on the need for government activism to deal with the Great Depression, and in getting us ready for the challenge of international Fascism’s threat to the democracies by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan.

John F. Kennedy led us from his “Bully Pulpit” on the need to deal with civil rights as a moral crusade, and also the significance of learning to coexist in the world, so as to avoid an ultimate war that no one could win during the Cold War era.

Lyndon B. Johnson led from his “Bully Pulpit” on the issue of civil rights, and also on the reality of poverty in America and the need to take serious action on these issues.

And now Barack Obama has used the “Bully Pulpit” to address the issues of gay rights and the role of race in our society, and what he has done is draw attention and stature to issues that have long been ignored or overlooked as too controversial to deal with on the White House level, but he has the courage and principle that TR, FDR, JFK, and LBJ had before him!

So Barack Obama, with all of the positives and negatives that we find in any President, will be long remembered for challenging our better nature with his leadership on gay rights and race. And it is good already that New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks and 2008 Republican Presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, have endorsed his message on race as recently as the time when this author is writing this entry!

Conservatives Call Barack Obama First Racist President: Look In The Mirror And At History, Right Wingers!

Ronald 88 Comments

What a preposterous statement by many people in the Right Wing of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, to call Barack Obama our first “racist” President, because of his detailed, courageous, principled statement about race yesterday before White House reporters!

What Obama said about young black men growing up in America is absolutely true, and despicable, and Obama made it clear that he had, personally, experienced the same racism, and all that talk show hosts can do is throw the appellation “racist” at the President, rather than admit the history of the country, and the reality of the profiling of blacks in 2013, along with Hispanics and Latinos as well!

And the Right Wing chooses to ignore history, probably affected by fake historian David Barton, who promotes a sanitized view of American history, and has had a dramatic effect on textbook companies, pressuring them to write myths, rather than facts, about American history!

The facts are as follows:

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor all owned and exploited slaves, and some of them had children with their slaves, what could be called rape situations!

Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren forcibly removed Native Americans, the infamous “Trail of Tears”, while in office; and William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, and Zachary Taylor all gained their original fame by killing Native Americans, and bragging about it!

Andrew Johnson was probably the most outspoken racist President, and made it clear in working against the Freedmen’s Bureau continuation after the Civil War!

Ulysses S. Grant warred against Native Americans during his Presidency in a massive campaign to take away their lands!

Republican Presidents after Grant ignored violations of civil rights by Southerners, beginning with the fixed election of Rutherford B. Hayes on a promise to end military occupation of the South and let Democrats take care of their own states, and promoting racial segregation, Jim Crow laws!

Woodrow Wilson demonstrated strong racist tendencies and views during his administration, catering to the Southern Democratic heritage of his boyhood!

Many Presidents in their writings displayed racist thoughts, and some did so in speech at times, including Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan (who talked about welfare queens).

Only since Truman has it been fashionable to be FOR civil rights, but even then, Nixon and Ronald Reagan worked against civil rights any opportunity they were given!

So we have at least 18 Presidents who were racists, or displayed racist tendencies, toward African Americans and Native Americans in different forms!

So the concept that Barack Obama is a racist for speaking up on injustices toward people of his heritage is outrageous, ridiculous, and preposterous to the extreme!

Do you hear that?—Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter and the rest of their ilk?

Senator Rand Paul, Confederate Sympathies, And Racial Insensitivities

Ronald 19 Comments

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul is making clear his desire to be the GOP Presidential nominee in 2016, and this was known even before he won the Senate seat in 2010 over the opposition of fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Following in the footsteps of his father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who gained the backing of naive college students when he ran for President in 2008 and 2012, Paul hopes to mine the support of Tea Party activists and libertarians to overcome the business establishment, the Neoconservatives who wish military intervention overseas all of the time, and mainline Republicans who see Paul as an alarm bell for the future of the Republican Party.

Rand Paul, meanwhile, has demonstrated again and again of his sympathies with Confederate types who still fight the Civil War, and has shown lack of sensitivity about racism.

Paul has kept on his Senate staff an individual who goes around in Confederate uniform and mask, a person by the name of Jack Hunter. And Paul has expressed in the past his view of his doubts about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And he comes across as naive about the outside world, and his libertarian views, while appealing to naive people, has never worked, and will never occur in reality!

Face the facts: Rand Paul is a lunatic, a weirdo with no qualifications, no message of significance, and with troubling connections to racism (which his father has also shown in his political career), and the odds of his being the GOP nominee against all of the other Republican factions is less than zero!

Were he, somehow, to win the nomination, which would require a miracle, it would lead to the total destruction of the Republican Party, worse than Barry Goldwater in 1964 or Alf Landon in 1936, both men of intelligence, which Rand Paul is not!

And imagine Paul against Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. She would walk all over him in a debate, and would join Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt in a massive win over their Republican opponents!

Strong Reaction Against Liz Cheney Bid For Wyoming Senate Seat

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Dick Cheney has become the most controversial, outspoken Vice President in American history, and his daughter, Fox News commentator Liz Cheney, is adding to that Cheney family image by her announced run for a Senate seat in the smallest populated state in America, Wyoming.

Liz Cheney, who has been a Virginia resident for years, but recently moved back to Wyoming, is seen by many there as a “carpetbagger”, who has moved back where she grew up only with the expressly clear cut reason to continue the Cheney tradition in American politics, knowing full well that she could not win a Virginia Senate seat, in strong hands with Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

She is challenging a sitting Republican Senator, Mike Enzi, who has been a loyal conservative Republican in his voting, but is not as outspoken as other conservatives. Enzi, however, has had the “gall” to work occasionally with some fellow Senate Democrats on some legislation, and that makes him somehow regarded as not loyal enough to the conservative tradition.

Liz Cheney is ridiculing Enzi’s age of 69, while her father is older, and would not be alive without a heart transplant, which could have gone to a much younger person, rather than the 72 year old Cheney, but Cheney and his family have long felt entitled to whatever they want, and to speak their mind, no matter how divisive it might be!

Liz Cheney takes the view of her father, a no holds barred, confrontational, refusal to cooperate or compromise with the Obama Administration on ANYTHING! Just simply go on the attack and take no prisoners is the approach to what Liz Cheney wishes to do in the Senate, and if others are hurt in the process, so be it!

So we have seen former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson; the other Wyoming Senator, John Barrasso; Wyoming’s only Congresswoman, Cynthia Lummis; Kansas Senator Jerry Moran; and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, all condemn the entry of Liz Cheney as bad for the Republican Party in Wyoming.

Moran and particularly, Paul, are Tea Party types, and it is clear that what Liz Cheney is doing is making bare the massive split in the Republican Party, not only in Wyoming, but nationally, as this is not just a personal battle for the Cheney family against the Republican Party in that state, but an example of the struggle between the neoconservatives who took America into two massive wars that we have not won, and the Rand Paul wing of the party that wants America out of foreign interventions. So Liz Cheney is declaring war on Rand Paul, and wishes, as her father does, to take away any strength he might have to win the GOP Presidential nomination in 2016 or beyond!

It is very clear that Liz Cheney has greater ambitions, and IF she wins the Senate seat in Wyoming in 2014, do not be surprised if she comes out of the gate as a quickly announced Presidential candidate, who would be supported by the neoconservatives who want us to intervene in Iran and Syria and Egypt, and have no problem with the use of military force all over the world, with the budget issue being unimportant!

And we can be sure that Liz Cheney would continue to back the “Birther” myth about Barack Obama, and continue to infer that Obama is a secret Muslim who is against what is good for America. She has no ethics or scruples, as she intends to be a dominant figure in the Republican Party future, and does not care to make friends among Democrats, and really has little regard for fellow Republicans of any stripe!

That is why the first goal must be the defeat of Liz Cheney’s grandiose ambitions in the Wyoming Republican Senate primary, but by causing a massive rift and split, it would be wonderful if the Democrats could win that seat, and hold it for a generation, as moderate Democrat Gale McGee did from 1959-1977.

The Tragedy Of Detroit: A Sign Of The Future?

Ronald 51 Comments

Detroit, the “Motor City”, the fourth largest city in population (1.8 million) in 1950, has declared bankruptcy, and has shrunk to 700,000 population in 2010.

This city, which was the center of industrial expansion, success, and prosperity in the first two thirds of the 20th century, is the largest entity in America ever to declare bankruptcy!

At least $18 billion in debt, the impact of this bankruptcy will likely cause further decline of the once great city, which is now a total disaster in relation to housing abandonment, crime, destruction of education, and the total deterioration of the quality of life for those who remain.

And the idea that those who have devoted their lives to working for the city–as cops, firefighters, teachers, social workers and others–will now be likely to lose their pensions in their old age, is totally unconscionable, totally immoral! Why would anyone ever wish to work another day for a government that will not keep the legal agreements to its employees who devote their lives to service, often at much lower rates than workers in the private sector?

If this can happen in Detroit, is that a warning sign that other cities, and state governments, could also cancel all obligations to their workers, and leave them impoverished in their old age?

Are governments now to become no different than corporations who too often cheat their workers out of a hard earned pension, while the elite at the top continue to enrich themselves in a greedy manner?

If this becomes a trend, it will not be surprising if we see people unwilling to work for government at all levels, and that will lead to chaos and anarchy, as we cannot allow all government workers, or any of them, to be so totally mistreated and disregarded as if they are willing “slaves” who can be kicked around as no better than garbage!

A New Push For The Equal Rights Amendment: Is It Possible?

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In 1972, the Congress passed the proposed Equal Rights Amendment for women overwhelmingly in both houses, and Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter supported it wholeheartedly over the next decade.

At the same time, Ronald Reagan opposed it, and it finally failed of passage by a shortage of three states in 1982, only gaining 35 of the 38 states required for ratification of an amendment!

90 years ago on July 21, 1923, Alice Paul first proposed the ERA, and it is time to take action on final ratification, with Democrats needing to support the end of the time limitation on the amendment.

So far, Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and also Elizabeth Warren, have not agreed to cosponsor such a change in the amendment process, but they need to.

The question is whether three more states can be convinced to ratify the ERA, if the time limitation is eliminated, since almost all of them are Southern states.

But the hope is that Illinois, Virginia and Nevada might be the states, but no certainty of course, but there is the old saying, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”! The fact that these three states were “Blue” in 2008 and 2012 give hope, and hope springs eternal!

The Imploding Of The Republican Party, As Factions Develop Around John Boehner And Mitch McConnell!

Ronald 5 Comments

The nation is witnessing the implosion of the Republican Party, as their leaders in Congress, Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are being ripped apart by factional division in both houses!

When the Republican leadership in both houses of Congress is being torn apart by ideological and personal rivalries, that is a sign of the GOP falling apart, and indicates there could be an internal rebellion that forces both out of leadership roles in the present Congress, an unheard of idea historically!

In the House, the key battle has been over immigration reform, and in the Senate, it has been over filibuster reform.

In the House, the key opposition has been the Tea Party loonies, but in the Senate, it is the mainstream conservatives, who are “comparative moderates”, as somewhat rational and reasonable on the issue of avoiding changes in filibuster rules, by allowing President Obama his choice as the administrators of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Secretary of Labor. So it is John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Bob Corker, and Susan Collins who saw the virtues of some compromise arranged to avoid a permanent change in the filibuster rules.

There is no respect, no diplomacy, no tact any more in the Republican caucus in either house, and it is a danger sign that the party may be unable to overcome their internal divisions and operate as a responsible political party for the long term future!

165th Anniversary Of Seneca Falls Equal Rights Convention: A Time For Women’s Rights Advocates To Plan Strategy For Future!

Ronald 5 Comments

165 years ago this week, specifically on July 19 and 20, the momentous event known as the Seneca Falls Convention took place in upstate New York.

300 men and women gathered, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and including the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, demanding equal rights for women, including the right of suffrage, participating in voting.

That fight for suffrage took 72 years, until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and the move for the Equal Rights Amendment proposal of 1972 fell short by three states, and was declared dead in 1982.

But now there is an urgency to fight for that proposed amendment, despite the odds against it being ratified in the political climate we live in now, if for no other reason than to declare that the strategy of the future is that women are not going to allow backtracking on basic rights that have now been the law for years, specifically the Roe V. Wade decision on Abortion Rights forty years ago, plus the push for equal pay, equal treatment in the military, fighting against acceptance of rape by many politicians of the Republican Party, and the Religious Right desire to send women back home, not working, cooking and being available for a man’s desires in the bedroom!

There may be women who are willing to accept the Republican view on women in 2013, but they are NOT a majority, and if Betty Ford, the First Lady with President Gerald Ford, were alive and well today, she would be leading the fight for women’s rights, as she did when she was in the White House!

Having visited the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids yesterday, it reminded the author of how far the GOP has moved from the Ford Presidency experience, and remember that turn to the right began when Ronald Reagan challenged President Ford for the Presidential nomination in 1976, helping to cause his defeat, and the ultimate takeover of the Republican Party by the Right Wing led by Reagan!

So women, and men who agree that they deserve equal treatment, need to organize and fight for women’s rights, even now, 165 years after Seneca Falls!

The Florida “Stand Your Ground” Law, George Zimmerman and Marissa Alexander

Ronald Leave a comment

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was used to justify what George Zimmerman did, the killing of Trayvon Martin.

But the same law was used to justify the 20 year prison term of a black woman, Marissa Alexander, who fired a warning shot into the ceiling to ward off the threat of a beating by her husband, who had already been cited for abuse of Alexander.

Marissa Alexander did not kill anyone, only used a gun to threaten a husband who was threatening to her, and how can anyone see this as fair, to give her 20 years without parole possibility, and have her child conceived with this husband brought up by him, with her having little or no contact with her own child?

How can anyone NOT see the injustice in this, and the fact that the jury in her case only took 12 minutes to convict her? Is it any wonder that African Americans see this as open season for whites who are racists to fire guns on blacks and get away with it through the justice system?

Is it any wonder that the offices of Governor Rick Scott have faced sit ins, insisting that the Governor and the legislature do something about Marissa Alexander? Should not this law be repealed, as Attorney General Eric Holder declared yesterday? Should not Jeb Bush, the former Governor, and brother and son of two Presidents, explain how he can justify this law he signed in 2005, and should he not be expected to lead the fight to have this unjust, discriminatory, and dangerous law repealed?

And should not “Stand Your Ground” laws be reviewed as dangers to the civil rights of minorities, giving whites open season for a new, different form of lynching, as in the Jim Crow Era of Segregation?

At the least, Marissa Alexander needs to be released immediately, have her child given back to her with the father not allowed to have contact anymore because of his abusive behavior, and compensation paid to Alexander for her unjust conviction and time in prison!

A Deal Is Reached To Avoid Filibuster Reform, But Gain Approval Of Obama Executive Nominees!

Ronald 7 Comments

As the Senate went to the brink on the possibility of changing the filibuster, the leading weapon of a minority in the chamber, an agreement was reached to allow a vote on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director, Richard Cordrey, and six other executive branch nominees, through an understanding arranged by Senator John McCain with Senator Chuck Schumer and others, taking away the weapon of holding off votes on these nominees, without changing the outline of the filibuster tactic!

It was an amazing example of ability for cooperation across the aisle, as the Republicans admitted that they should not stand in the way of confirmation of nominees to executive agencies they do not like, as it prevents proper functioning of such government agencies.

It was a defeat for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a victory for Senator McCain, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Senator Susan Collins, all seen as rational and reasonable, but able, with the adept handling by Senator Schumer, and the willingness of Senator Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, to push through Senate Filibuster reform IF the Republicans would not bend on the nominees.

Whether this surprising agreement at the last moment will bring about more comity and willingness to cooperate long term is yet to be seen, but President Obama succeeded in gaining a successful confirmation of Cordray, and the likelihood of other important confirmations being moved forward, so it was a good day for progressivism.