Political Capitalism 101

First, the other day I received a bumper sticker, plus the usual letter asking for money, from some very conservative right-wing Catholic organization explaining how my religious liberty was at stake because the Affordable Health Care Act allows for insurance companies to provide contraception coverage for women who are not Catholic.  The religious liberty of these women, assuming they have a religion, did not seem to be an issue.  But the bumper sticker read, “I’m Catholic, and I vote”.  I looked at it for a long time, and then put it on my vehicle.  But underneath, and it fit quite nicely, I placed an Obama/Biden sticker, so it now reads, “I’m Catholic and I vote Obama/Biden”.  So, if anyone who reads this gets the above mentioned bumper sticker, please use it in the manner I have described.  Mustn’t let any free bumper sticker go to waste!

But the main point of this post is the extraordinarily blunder Mitt Romney made concerning the incident in the Middle East.  Let’s review the time line.

1.       A rather noisy crowd gathers in front of the American Embassy in Cairo regarding a ginned up 10 minute crass video insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

2.      The members of the Embassy are rightly concerned and issue a statement decrying the video and making a statement to the effect that it is not the policy of the United States to insult anyone’s religious faith, and that our country is based on freedom of religion. 

3.      Concurrently, the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is really under attack, and four Americans are killed, including the American Ambassador to Libya. 

4.      Prior to the news of the tragedy in Benghazi, however, Romney issued a statement that the Obama Administration had apologized to the protesters in Cairo, and that this is but more of Obama’s bad foreign policy of apologizing for America, blah, blah, blah.  (That neither Obama nor his Administration has ever apologized for America is apparently totally irrelevant to Romney.)

As we know, these protests against this disgusting video have traveled clear across the Moslem world from Morocco to Indonesia by today, 9/14/12.  As many thoughtful pundits have said, it is very difficult for people who have lived their entire lives under a dictatorship that controlled their very lives to understand that in the United States we have freedom of speech, religion, the right of free association, etc.  Thus, when something like this video is made, it is virtually impossible to make those offended understand the government was not behind it.

What does this tell us about Mitt Romney?  Michelle Obama made a comment during her speech at the Democratic Convention that was spot on when she said that being in office doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are.  I can attest to that from my own experience, miniscule though it was compared to the Presidency.  I found I had talents I had no idea even existed.  So, what do we know now about Mitt Romney.

From a previous blog, Romney and Bullying, I discussed Romney’s lack of empathy for either dogs or people:  from harassing the perhaps gay boy in high school, to strapping the dog’s kennel on the roof of the car for a 12 hour trip, to gutting businesses for profit and thereby stripping the workers of health care, jobs and pensions.

Der Mitt jumped on this event in Cairo before he had all of the facts, though that has usually never bothered him before, in an effort to expand his political capital.  He saw an opportunity to undercut President Obama, he thought, and it apparently never occurred to him that he was damaging the image of the United States at the same time.  Nor, I doubt, did he care.

The kindest thing to believe is that he blundered, though he has not only not backed down, he has tripled-down on his statements that Obama is weak because he hasn’t invaded another country yet.

Or, the unkindest thing to believe is that the video was deliberately brought to the attention of the Moslem world on the anniversary of 9/11 to incite riots and give Romney an opportunity to indulge in what the radical right wing of the Republican Party would perceive to be “strong manly and American” rhetoric, rather than the nuanced and striving for peace of the Obama foreign policy.  (I doubt that even the radical right wing anticipated the tragedy in Libya because apparently it was a separate operation by a rather small radical right wing group in Libya.) 

Romney had his speech deriding the Obama administration readily at hand.  He stumbled in his presentation to make it fit the statement from the Embassy.  The surfacing of the video, the incitement to protests, this statement from Romney have an unpleasant “Turd Blossom” odor.  

 

 

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Seven Deadly Sins

 

Usually when people refer to the Middle Ages they only have really negative things to say about the major religion of the time – Catholic Christianity.  But with almost everything, not all of it was bad by a long shot.  Some was, so don’t think I am naïve! 

One of the best things about it was that it defined pretty well what behavior was to be sought after, and what behavior was to be shunned and ripped out of one’s life patterns.  These last were the Seven Deadly Sins.  The good behavior was called the Fruits of the Spirit.  The Spirit in this case is the Holy Spirit, or third person of the Trinity.  These Fruits of the Spirit can be the theme of another blog, but today I’ll stick to the Deadly ones.  I actually hadn’t thought much about these Seven Deadly Sins since Vatican II when the emphasis in the Church turned more on the positive actions that Christians should take to help transform the individual and society into something more akin to what God has taught in almost every religion that society ought to be.  

A few nights after forcing myself to watch the Republican National Convention I couldn’t get back to sleep in the middle of the night, and my mind began to wander over and around the speeches I had heard, and the budget plan the Paul Ryan, Vice Presidential candidate, but current Congressman from Wisconsin had presented.  And, there they were – the Seven Deadly Sins.  Pride, Greed, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth.  What was said that brought these to mind? 

Pride

Pride is knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you and only you know what is right.  It is not ever being able to admitting a fault.  So, the Republicans started out President Obama’s Presidency determined to see to it that he was a one-term President, and as we know now, they made this determination on the day he was inaugurated!  And in February of 2009 they were already calling President Obama a failure!!  That’s because they are right and everyone else is wrong. 

Greed

Greed can easily be explained by the quip I had put together when I was in office and people would come into my office demanding that I approve of whatever they wanted to do, regardless of whether it would be damaging to their neighbors, or in compliance with the laws.  “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine.  I want mine, I want it now, and I want you to pay for it”.  This is the attitude of the the 1% who have started the mantra, “No new taxes”.  

Lust

Lust doesn’t have to be just sex.  One can lust for power as well.  Lust is the Deadly Sin that allows what one lusts after to take over every other thought.  Thus, the lust for power will infiltrate any and all decisions that one, or one’s group, will make. 

Anger

The radical right is really angry that from their perspective they are losing power to that rabble out there called the diversity of America.  They see women and people of color beginning to also gain some power and they are exceedingly angry about that.  So, the best way to keep women out of power is to control their reproductive choices so the women are back under the control of men.  I find it ironic that women in seats of power make decisions that impact the daily lives of people all of the time.  But when it comes to their own bodies, only men can make those decisions.  There is something wrong with that picture, for sure!  People of color are to be feared as well as ‘the other’.  Barack Obama is not quite an American; he probably has not even been born here; and those other people of color will vote to keep him in office, and we will lose even more power, and that makes us really angry.  As well as very afraid. 

Gluttony

Gluttony can be defined as referring only to food.  That is, you have enough food on your plate, but you want even more.  You eat much more than your body needs, you crave more than your body needs, and you become gluttonous.  This can apply to ‘things’, as well.  Who has the need for so many vehicles that he will need an elevator in his garage to bring the vehicle of choice up to be driven away?  Probably Mitt Romney!  There is a difference between what we need and what we want.  We need clean water, adequate food, clothing, shelter, and a safe place to sleep.  Everything else we want.  If we keep those wants in perspective, that is fine.  A really comfortable mattress may not be an actual need, but it sure is a nice want.  It is when our desire for these ‘wants’ gets out of hand that we are in trouble of becoming gluttonous. 

Envy

The radical right accuses those who long for economic justice of being envious of success, when actually the opposite is true.  Those who define success by how much money one has are envious of the ‘widow’s mite’, and they want that as well as their millions or billions of dollars.  For example, I have never figured out why women who can afford to stay home and care for the children are extolled for being really great Moms.  But poor women who are on welfare are cheats and must be sent out to work because they are taking our hard-earned tax dollars!  What is wrong with this picture as well?  To envy the little that the poor have, and a desire to take even that away, probably violates several Deadly Sins. 

Sloth

Another word for sloth is apathy.  In the radical right, sloth is not being able to be bothered by the fact that the economic policies they espouse are causing children, in our own country, to go hungry to bed every night.  Calling this ‘food insecurity’ really bothers me.  It is hunger, and it is totally unacceptable.  Sloth is not caring that people are out of work.  Sloth is not caring that climate change is real, and future generations will have a major problem with this.  I could fill this whole page with examples of sloth in the radical right. 

So, there you have it – the Seven Deadly Sins and the Republican National Convention.  Not a pretty sight for this former Republican.  Whatever happened to the party that supported civil rights; the party that supported clean water, clean air, and the environment in general.  We need that party back, and we need it now.

 

 

Mendacity Perfected

Mendacity Perfected

So many people have written so eloquently about the Republican National Convention that I actually hesitate to follow.  But, I will.

There has been outrage over all of the lying that went on, and rightly so.  Paragraphs have been written about the weird Clint Eastwood segment last night.  I have been slightly offended that some people have said it is because he’s 82, so cut him some slack.  It seems to me that it is imperative that an actor who memorizes scripts, then portrays his or her character as perfectly as Eastwood has done, should not be allowed out on a stage before thousands of people to ad lib.  Sure, he was the mayor of Carmel in California, but the entire city of Carmel could probably be put inside that convention hall, so the bare-faced audiences he has faced in his life have been much smaller.  I fault the planner of the convention for not giving him a script to follow.  And Eastwood for not demanding one. 

Much has been written about all of the lies Paul Ryan told during his speech.  Willie Brown, former CA Assemblyman and former mayor of San Francisco, and consummate politician was on Chris Matthews today.  The subject of Ryan’s lies came up, of course.  Willie Brown’s comments, and I have to paraphrase, were right on.  He said when any politician is caught deliberately lying it lets people know this person is not trustworthy.  And the stench of that untrustworthiness follows that politician forever.  Although I was an elected official in a small rural California county, I know that some people will get up in front of people and lie.  But there seems to be a certain degree of shamelessness between lying to not too many people, counted in the hundreds, and lying to hundreds of thousands of people.  And in front of your own mother, wife and children to boot!  Ryan also makes much of his Catholic faith.  And yet he also says that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is the one he follows.  For Ryan, my question is, “Whatever happened to Jesus?”

Enough of lyin’ Ryan.  Let’s move on to Mitt and his speech.  As I listened to him speak I had the most peculiar feeling of déjà vu.  It was about the junior high school I never attended.  In my opinion, the speech was vapid, with jabs at the science of climate change on the level of the class clown (which I understand he was), with many less than truthful jabs at President Obama, and a conclusion to his speech that was immature almost in the extreme.  To base the conclusion of a speech for the Presidency of the United States on the premise that “…the future is before us; it is our destiny…”  Where the hell else does he think the future is??

As we enter this high gear election season we must all be very careful about what we hear and see on TV.  Although many people will excoriate some of us for making this comparison, it was the propagandist for the German Third Reich that perfected the telling of a big lie over, and over, and over, until in the minds of the listeners, it became the truth.  If we catch our candidates in constantly telling lies, not the occasional blooper, after the candidate has been shown what the truth actually is, then let’s follow Willie Brown’s statement, and let the stench of that untrustworthiness drive us away from that candidate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Just Don't Understand Women

(Sorry this is late.  Trouble with a change of e-mail address, but Google and I figured it out.)

 

 

I Just Don’t Understand Women?

In this one statement by men lies an underlying, unspoken prejudice, and that is that all women are the same, and since they are all the same, we should be able to understand them.  But since we don’t understand them, and since men are the more rational gender, then the fault lies with the women for not being understandable.

Once, many years ago not long after Vatican II and before a lot of people came to embrace the theology and rationale of Vat II, some member of the Roman hierarchy decided that before any woman, world-wide, could have a hysterectomy, she must first get permission from her parish priest.  At that time I wrote a letter-to-the editor of National Catholic Reporter stating that this was by far one of the more stupid edicts regarding women to come out of Rome ever!  I continued with the fact that every woman who faces a hysterectomy has emotions, spiritual values, physical and psychological attributes that are unique to that woman, and to lump all women of the world into one category was about as misogynistic as one could get.  Probably there was a universal uproar also from all the parish priests who certainly did not want to deal with that can of worms relative to the women in the parishes.

Todd Akin and the rest of the Republicans who believe what he said about “legitimate rape” preventing pregnancy have fallen into that same trap.  The problem with them is that they have mixed up their religion with politics.  They believe that women should rely on their husbands to provide them with health care – or not, as the case may be, but it certainly is not the purview of government to be involved in a family matter. It says so in the Bible.  Once again, all women are all alike. 

And this is why, even though I am absolutely opposed to abortion, I am pro-choice.  I not only value the life of the fetus, I value the life of the mother as well.  There are some women who will make the choice not to have an abortion after being raped and becoming pregnant.  And that is admirable.  But there are some women for whom this would be a devastating experience, and they may well never recover from it.  One has to leave this choice up to the individual woman.  And, once a woman has been raped, the so-called “morning after” pill ought to be made immediately available to her.  This is not to induce an abortion.  It prevents the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall.   

 For all of those men who say they don’t understand women, try to understand women one at a time!

Each woman is as unique as each man.  By understanding one, and then understanding another one, and another, a thinking man will realize that any woman is as easy to understand as any man.  My exhortation for women, and all people of color, or no color, for the sake of our country, to vote this year.

In conclusion, let me quote David Letterman, 8/23/12:  “The fact that hurricane Isaac is moving north and will impact Tampa (during the Republican convention) is irrefutable proof that God is a woman.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come On, Guys. Grow Up!

What are these crackpot Republicans trying to do to women now? 

When ‘the pill’ was finally put on the market, women’s access to birth control was pretty primitive.  There was the diaphragm which was to be inserted prior to intercourse, or IUD’s, which apparently didn’t work very well either, and also could cause infections if left in place too long.  Once inserted I never learned how one got an IUD out.  So the pill was really terrific. 

It was not only terrific for women, it was great for families, also, since the economy started going to pieces in the early to mid-1970’s.  Salaries of the main breadwinners began to flatten out while the cost of almost everything was steadily going up.  A salary that had been adequate no longer could be stretched by frugal housekeeping to cover a family’s basic necessities, much less some of the frills that could make life interesting, such as extra curricular activities for children still in school, or music lessons.  Because of this predicament that certainly was not the fault of the average householder, women had to enter the workforce.  

Fortunately for families, the pill enabled women to prevent the pregnancies that would have insured not only another mouth to feed, clothe and educate, but with even less income.  Seldom did women get more than sex weeks maternity leave with the birth of their child, which then meant they had to find child care when they returned to work.  With families living away from their extended families, this became a great problem.  So the pill was most welcome. 

At the same time, and this certainly had both an impact on, and was impacted as well, was the social movement called feminism.  Women were made fun of, criticized, denigrated and whatever for imagining that they could actually think and function without a man to tell them how.  No longer was the phrase, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about this.  We’ll take care of it” not acceptable to women, it became, at least for me, fighting words!   

As time went by it seemed that women had finally come into their own.  Their talents and gifts were being appreciated, although not always compensated for at work fairly.  There were a few battles left to fight, but contraceptives were generally accepted and abortion was safe and available.  Women’s voices were being heard throughout the land, so to speak. 

Then 2010 happened, and for women, all hell broke loose.  Suddenly contraception became a sin again.  Restrictions were put on how a woman might go about getting an abortion.  Abortion clinics were bombed, and abortion doctors were killed.  There has even been a real push to declare that a fertilized human egg is a person.  And because of that, women who have miscarriages could easily become criminals, regardless of whether they really wanted the pregnancy to continue.  It was proposed that women in Virginia who want an abortion have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound procedure that appear to women to be nothing more than legal rape, since it would occur without their full consent. 

Do not misunderstand me.  I think an abortion is a horrible decision to have to be made.  But I also firmly believe that there are all sorts of other means of preventing abortions than to criminalize and humiliate women.  Wherever there are good economic and social programs to support pregnant women who on their own cannot find a way out of the dilemma they are in, sometimes not of their choosing, the rate of abortion drops dramatically.   

So this is the terrible pickle women find themselves in, and it is not of their making.  They must work to help support their families.  But in order to do that, they must resort to contraceptives, which are once again under attack, both from the radical religious right, as well as the radical political right which are often the same. I think it is time some men (and by no means all) take a good look at the fear on their part that is driving these attacks on women’s sexuality.  It is so obvious to so many of us that the main reason for these attempts to squish women back into the constrained roles they had prior to the 1970’s is fear of women and their sexuality.   

Come on, guys.  Grow up.  You’re not going to succeed.  Women have had a marvelous taste of freedom, and they are not about ready to give it up.  Being barefoot and pregnant is over.  Get used to it.

El Salvador Revisited

El Salvador Revisited

Jon Weiner wrote in The Nation, 7/19/12, Bain Capital’s Ties to Salvadoran Death Squads.

“When Bain Capital was founded in 1984, Romney and his partners had trouble raising funds for their initial investments. “$9 million came from rich Latin Americans,” the Times reports, “including powerful Salvadoran families living in Miami.… At the time, U.S. officials were publicly accusing some exiles in Miami of funding right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Some family members of the first Bain Capital investors were later linked to groups responsible for killings.

“The civil war in El Salvador lasted from 1980 to 1992 and killed more than 70,000 Salvadorans. It started after Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated while giving a mass shortly after he published an open letter to President Carter asking him to cut off US military aid to the Salvadoran military regime.”

When I read about this connection between Romney and El Salvador, which apparently is still going on,  I remembered an article I had cut out of our local paper and kept all of these years.  The article appeared originally in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and was reported by the Scripps Howard News Service in our local paper, The Telegram-Tribune, 1/14/91, Death squads threaten foes. Following are excerpts from this article.  I am only leaving out extraneous material such as what some Salvadorans like Archbishop Arturo Rivera Y Damas were saying.

“SAN SALVADOR – The worst fears of El Salvador’s leftist political leaders came true during the weekend, when a San Salvador radio station broadcast a threat from two of the country’s death squads to kill opposition and labor leaders, priests and intellectuals. 

The general commands of the Maximillian Hernandez Martinez and Aquiles Baires death squads sent the written statements by mail to the radio station, which broadcast the contents on Saturday…

“At this time,” the statement reads, “we are going to talk in all frankness about our philosophical basis and the politics of our movement.

This country’s society is divided into three classes:  a superior creative class composed essentially of specialists and large landholders; a smaller class that tries to imitate this superior class; and an inferior rustic class that is made up essentially of workers, poor peasants, students and small businessmen.

Another group exists that we hold in low regard and consider very small – the dangerous intellectual class that tries to contaminate the above mentioned classes.”

The death squads’ message to this intellectual class and opposition leaders is clear.

“The superior capitalist class in our country is naturally the strongest, and its destiny, without question, is to govern and regulate the inferior classes.  And what is more, it has a duty to exploit, dispose of, conquer and even exterminate elements of these inferior classes when the benefits of capitalism require such.

Our adversaries, the subversives and the great inferior mass, must be exterminated, or at least their leaders."

Thinking about these articles at the same time I am listening to what Der Mitt says he will do as soon as he is elected, I truly do get shivers.  He wants to eliminate all of the government entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  He wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood, and the Affordable Health Care Act, which has provisions in to support pregnant women, but also just to get rid of all of it.  He would like to get rid of unemployment benefits, pension benefits, teachers, fire fighters, and law enforcement.  These are the programs that the “inferior classes” rely on.

He talks constantly about how capitalism much be unfettered by government regulation – that corporations know best how to run their business, and he believes that corporations have the same rights as people. 

At the same time Der Mitt is campaigning on the above issues, the Republican Party, wherever they are in power in states, are doing their utmost to keep from voting the “inferior classes when the benefits of capitalism require such.”  If these voter suppression laws actually stay in effect during the November elections, it is estimated that approximately five million people, mostly students, elderly, and minority voters who would vote for President Obama, will lose their right to vote.  People will no longer be “equal before the law”.  Some will be more equal than others, by far. 

For years during elections, I have heard “we are at a crossroads” so we must vote for blank.  Well, during this election, we are at a humongous crossroad.  One of the first things a potentially totalitarian government does is take away the people’s right to vote, or to have any say in their government.  If these voter suppression laws are not overturned and if Romney is elected, watch out.  We are in for a terrible time. 

As the old Yiddish curse says, “May you live in interesting times”.  Well, these are certainly interesting!

Negative Campaigning. Define It!

As a former candidate who made every effort to avoid negative campaigning, these attacks on President Obama’s ads really tick me off.  I had an opponent who was relatively new to the area and whose name was Kat.  Since I had been a much longer resident here, naturally my first fund-raising letter commented, “I am no kitty come lately”.  The reaction I got from her campaign was that I was running a negative campaign, and on, and on, and on!  One would have thought I had accused her of the most baseless of actions.  Her campaign against me was pretty awful, but we never mentioned anything about her, at any time, from that point forward.

And that is a campaign ploy.  Accuse your opponent of doing what you are doing.  Get enough people to repeat what you are saying and pretty soon it becomes “common knowledge”, and everyone says it, even though it may not be true.  This is what the Republicans use Fox News for.  They give Fox the talking point of the day or week, Fox runs with it, and without checking on whether it is a fact or not, the other rumor outlets, sometimes called news, pick it up and run with it.  And as an aside, there is nothing much that irritates me more than the phrase, “true facts”.  Has anyone, ever, for the last 50,000 years or so, heard of a “false fact”?  By definition, a fact is true. 

Back to campaigning.  A candidate’s record is fair game in a campaign.  It is perfectly all right for President Obama to rip into Romney’s record at Bain Capital, as Governor of Massachusetts, or his tax returns.  All of these are an indication of the direction, and the decisions, that Romney would make if, God forbid, he were elected.  Negative campaigning is inferring that somehow President Obama is not a real American, that there is something about him that prevents him from really understanding what America is all about, that his heritage means he can’t really understand American business.  Now that is negative campaigning, par excellence, because it is directed at some flaw in President Obama himself, and many of us believe that flaw for Romney, et al, is his skin color.  Present the record and let the people decide for themselves.

Of course we all would like to have the candidates only tout their own wonderfulness, and all that they have accomplished in their political lives.  But unless both sides pledge on a stack of Bibles, Korans, or whatever, that is not going to happen because even if they did swear to do so, their Superpacs would innocently go right ahead with the negatives and smirk that they did not pledge. 

Our entire campaigning system needs overhauling.  In my opinion three things need to happen:

1.       get the money out, and

2.       shorten the campaign to no more than six months, and

3.       overturn Citizens United.

These three steps would be a great start.  Probably everyone who reads this will be able to add to my three criteria, but they are a start.  In the meantime, stop saying that both sides are indulging in negative campaigning.  They are not!