“I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory and awake in the dawn’s early light,
But much to my surprise when I opened my eyes I was a victim of the great compromise.” -John Prine
In today’s New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai has a cogent analysis of “Clintonism” and how its centrist approach will likely influence Democratic voters in 2008.
It’s worth the time it takes to read through the piece, but here’s the part I’d like to share here:
Listening to him talk, I found it hard not to wonder why so many of the challenges facing the next president were almost identical to those he vowed to address in 1992. Why, after Clinton’s two terms in office, were we still thinking about tomorrow? In some areas, most notably health care, Clinton tried gamely to leave behind lasting change, and he failed. In many more areas, though, the progress that was made under Clinton — almost 23 million new jobs, reductions in poverty, lower crime and higher wages — had been reversed or wiped away entirely in a remarkably short time. Clinton’s presidency seems now to have been oddly ephemeral, his record etched in chalk and left out in the rain.
Supporters of the Clintons see an obvious reason for this, of course — that George W. Bush and his Republican Party have, for the past seven years, undertaken a ferocious and unbending assault on Clinton’s progressive legacy.
Some Democrats, though, and especially those who are apt to call themselves “progressives,†offer a more complicated and less charitable explanation. In their view, Clinton failed to seize his moment and create a more enduring, more progressive legacy — not just because of the personal travails and Republican attacks that hobbled his presidency, but because his centrist, “third way†political strategy, his strategy of “triangulating†to find some middle point in every argument, sapped the party of its core principles. By this thinking, Clinton and his friends at the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist think tank that served as a platform for his bid for national office, were so desperate to woo back moderate Southern voters that they accepted conservative assertions about government (that it was too big and unwieldy, that what was good for business was good for workers) and thus opened the door wide for Bush to come along and enact his extremist agenda with only token opposition. In other words, they say, he was less a victim of Bush’s radicalism than he was its enabler.
Bai has answers for the progressives that the Clinton’s would favor, but he also points out how Obama and Edwards are working to remind voters that a return of the Clintons’ to the White House would mean more of the same.
For me personally, there’s no debate. While Obama is far from the perfect candidate, he’s the only mainstream Dem offering even a shred of hope for substantive change. Given that I’m a resident of South Carolina, I look forward to casting my vote (for that possibiity of change) late next month.
Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev called for a renewed commitment to eliminate the world’s nuclear weapons, saying the current generation of world leaders cannot coast on disarmament treaties of the past.
Gorbachev said the world missed an opportunity for greater global cooperation in the Cold War’s wake, describing the past 18 years as ones of “stagnation and regression,†where even avoiding a war in the middle of Europe was beyond the world’s leaders.
“After the Cold War, we lost our way, the world lost its way,†Gorbachev said. “We should be moving toward the goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.â€
Gorbachev acknowledged that the world has changed significantly since the Cold War’s end, but said the recent re-militarization — particularly that of the United States — is puzzling.
“I really don’t know who the U.S. wants to go to war with, nobody wants to go to war with the U.S.,†Gorbachev said.
In all seriousness, I’d love to see a candidate grow a pair and run a creative ad campaign. Leave the empty promises to the stump speeches. TV viewers don’t want vacant rhetoric. We want entertainment.
As a South Carolina resident and periodic voter, I’m sorely disappointed that I will not be able to cast a vote for Charleston native Steven Colbert in the upcoming Democratic primary.
According to MTV, the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party shot the funny man down on November 1, despite the fact Colbert paid the $2,500 filing fee necessary to get into the race.
Colbert’s bid was voted down 13-3. Using random criteria such as whether the candidate was recognized in the national news media as a legitimate candidate and whether he’d actively campaigned in the state, the committee put the kibosh on the Colbert bid.
One of those who voted in favor of certifying Colbert was South Carolina Representative and social-work administrator Gilda Cobb-Hunter. She said having Colbert on the ballot would be a good way to bring a national spotlight on issues of concern to the Palmetto state. “Also, quite frankly, I think we — and I mean elected officials and party officials — take ourselves a bit too seriously and I think an injection of humor would have added to the process.”
According to Wonkette, one of the humorless ones is Waring Howe, who said, “Over my dead body will Colbert’s name be on the ballot.”
A recent poll of likely 2008 voters showed that in his short time in the running, Colbert was coming in at 2.3 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, which put him in fifth place above Governor Bill Richardson (2.1 percent), Congressman Dennis Kucinich (2.1 percent) and former Senator Mike Gravel (less than 1 percent).
Colbert said on his show recently, “ABC News says my campaign is ‘no joke.’ I ask you, is anyone saying that about Richardson or Biden?”
“A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.” -Guy Fawkes
According to Reveries, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, from the 14th district in Texas, raised more than $4 million dollars on Monday to help fund his run for President.
Ron Paul pulled off his fundraising coup by setting up a special web site called ThisNovember5th.com — a reference to Guy Fawkes Day. On the off chance you’ve never heard of Guy Fawkes, he’s “the Roman Catholic, anti-Protestant rebel who on Nov. 5, 1605, tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up the Parliament.”
Ron Paul is careful to note that he is not an advocate of assassination or of “blowing up government buildings.†However, he and his supporters apparently view Guy Fawkes as a metaphor for the kind of patriotism they deem lacking in present-day America. As Ron Paul explains in a ten-minute video posted at ThisNovember5th: “The true patriot challenges the state when the state embarks on enhancing its power at the expense of the individual … The American Republic is in remnant status … The stage is set for our country eventually devolving into a military dictatorship, and few seem to care.”
I prefer the radical concepts forwarded by U.S. Congressmen from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich–like his call for the establishment of a Department of Peace–but Ron Paul’s libertarian message is also appealing. Although, I’m somewhat surprised at his choice of historical figures to hold up as an example. We desperately need to remove the problems, and the people who create them, from our government, but not with violence. I understand that violence would be necessary should we ever “devolve into a military dictatorship,” but we’re not there yet.
“To keep going our present ideal of an industrial plutocracy we must continue to have war. We have to keep scaring the sheep. A politician today is that man among men who can scare them the worst and huddle them the fastest and the most, managing that way to get almost anything out of them.” -Frank Lloyd Wright in a speech given May 20, 1949 in Biloxi, MS
I periodically like to review the nation’s military history. To do the same, here’s a list of our wars and conflicts. It’s a lonnnnnnggggg list, and growing longer by the day.
People say we need to remove the money from politics. While that’s true, it seems more accurate to say we need to remove the profit from war. If we could manage that, many of our domestic ills could then be addressed. But the reality is we won’t manage it without a complete realignment of our priorities, and the structures that support them.
We like to believe our own rhetoric and refer to ourselves the greatest nation on earth. We’re not. We’re but the latest incarnation of imperial greed, bound to fail as Britian, France, Spain and ancient Rome failed. Imperialism is not a sustainable practice. The aftermath of our pending failure in this endeavor could mean utter darkness, or it could mean a new enlightenment.
People also talk about how we’re in the midst of an internal culture war (and have been for decades). That’s correct. And this internal battle is for our collective soul; therefore, its outcome is imperative to our future as a nation. I believe most Americans are good people, but we’re also an easily confused people with little sense of our own history. To stop the confusion, we need to shut off the TV and read. It may not sound like fun, but knowledge is freedom.
If you’d like to take my word for it and crack an important book, I can think of none better than Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Every concerned American can benefit greatly from this book, as it details in plain English what this country is all about.
President Bush ignored China’s pleas and honored one of the world’s most spiritual men yesterday.
“Americans cannot look to the plight of the religiously oppressed and close our eyes or turn away,” Bush said at the U.S. Capitol building, where he personally handed the Dalai Lama the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal.
“I support religious freedom; he supports religious freedom. … I want to honor this man,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “I have consistently told the Chinese that religious freedom is in their nation’s interest.”
China reviles the 72-year-old monk as a Tibetan separatist and vehemently protested the elaborate public ceremony. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Beijing said the events “seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China’s internal affairs.”
Maybe Chinese officials could consider the internal affairs of Tibet, before spouting off in such fashion.
The town that helped end school segregation offered Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a backdrop Thursday to offer a variation on a familiar theme: the two Americas.
“We still have two school systems in America,” he told a group gathered in the library at Scotts Branch High School. “We have one for the affluent and one for everybody else.”
Edwards’ remarks came in the town that spawned the Supreme Court ruling that, in 1954, ordered the desegregation of schools. It was part of a daylong tour of S.C. counties known as the “Corridor of Shame” for their impoverished schools and economies.
Edwards pushed a litany of remedies for failing rural schools. Among other things, he would offer universal preschool, a bonus of up to $15,000 to teachers in needy schools, and a new “teaching university” he compared to West Point. It would offer a free education to those willing to commit to teaching.
Clayton Holton of Dover, NH has muscular dystrophy. In the clip above he tells Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney that his doctor says he’s “living proof that medical marijuana works.”
His question for the candidate is, “Will you arrest me and my doctors?” The candidate douche bag says, I’m not in favor of medical marijuana and coldly walks away from the young man.
What a disgrace this is. There’s so much stupidity and fear in the world, but refusing to help people who are sick has to be one of the lowest forms of human behavior on record.
Media critic Norman Solomon’s book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death has been made into a movie by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp. It’s narrated by Sean Penn.
Guided by Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.
Jim Hightower suggests the book, which came out in 2005, is a must read:
If you want to help prevent another war (Iran? Syria?), read War Made Easy now. This is a stop-the-presses book filled with mind-blowing facts about Washington’s warmongers who keep the Pentagon budget rising. It would be funny if people weren’t dying. War Made Easy exposes the grisly game and offers the information we need to stop it.
