Posted inPolitics: National

American theocracy

In his book, American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips wrote about the new phenomenon of fundamentalist religion in driving American policy, including U.S. military adventures in "the Middle Eastern Bible lands." He goes on: "The
rapture, end-times, and Armageddon hucksters in the United States rank
with any Shiite ayatollahs, and the last two presidential elections
mark the transformation of the GOP into the first religious party in
U.S. history."

That this remains true was clear from President-elect McCain’s kissing of Rick Warren’s ring at the suburban megachurch over the weekend, to the rapturous applause of the Orange County "conservative" congregation. The "maverick," in his desperate effort to get elected, mouthed all the Republican culture war theocratic platitudes. "Paris is worth a mass," as Henry of Navarre said. Now it comes out that McCain may have violated the "cone of silence" and known in advance the questions to be asked. That Obama went into this hostile environment at all is to be commended, I suppose. That he gave thoughtful answers will not help him at all with the anti-intellectual, know-nothing "Southernized" (to use Phillips’ word) American electorate.

I write "I suppose" about Obama because of those stubborn words in Article VI of the Constitution: "…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
 

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Posted inPolitics: National

Why America slept, 2008 edition

Even a cursory knowledge of 20th century history tells us that little countries spark world wars. Thus, we had Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia in World War I and Czechoslovakia in World War II. But that’s not quite right. Trouble in a little country must be combined with foreign policy blunders by great powers. Thus, if Britain had made its intentions more clearly known to the Kaiser in 1914; if Britain and France had marched on Hitler the moment he remilitarized the Rhineland (German generals issued orders to retreat if the Allies acted; some hoped it would give them cause to topple the Fuhrer).

Let’s not take the analogies too far with the fast-moving events involving Georgia and Russia. But it was chilling in the U.N. Sunday when the Russian ambassador responded to U.S. complaints that Moscow was seeking "regime change" in pro-Western Georgia. "Regime change," he said, "is purely an American invention."

The consequences of eight years of disastrous Bush policies are growing. There’s no nice, non-partisan way to put it. This is the bunch that has been in charge — commandingly so. As the Soviet, er, Russian ambassador made clear, the American departure from our nation’s historic policies into the preemptive war and "regime change" beloved of neo-cons is the nightmarish gift that keeps on giving. Pots are calling kettles black.

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Posted inUncategorized

Oil prices falling — will IQs follow?

Gasoline at $5, $6, $10 a gallon over the next two years would have been a severe mercy for the United States. It would have forced changes that will eventually be essential: more transit and rail passenger service, a return to our core cities, an urgency to raise fuel economy standards and develop alternatives. At last suburban and exurban living would be properly priced and costly, and the enterprise to retrofit savable suburbia to transit could begin. Foot-dragging on reducing greenhouse gases would have been similarly eliminated.

I don’t think it will go down that way. Oil prices have been dropping in recent days, as I long predicted they would. The decline is because the nation that uses a quarter of the world’s petroleum is seen heading into a nasty recession, which will cut world demand. So prices will drop, and soon we can expect some to start saying the worst is over and we can get back to driving SUVs and other self-destructive behavior.

(I think of a story in today’s Arizona Republic about Lake Powell "recovering," and the ‘Zonies thinking "happy days are here again!" even though their water crisis is unabated — although a State Secret).

Yet the fundamentals haven’t changed. World oil production has either reached peak or will do so in a few years. That means half of this one-time resource will have been extracted and burned off — and it was the easy half, the cheap half. So the remainder will be more costly, and getting it will be more geopolitically destabilizing. So oil will fall a little, then rise more the next time; retreat a bit again and resume its upward climb. The major oil companies and oil exporting nations (which control most of the oil) know this. Most Americans still don’t.

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Posted inPolitics: National

A referendum on conservatism and ‘conservatism’

Part of me wants to nap until election day — and I’m a political junkie. The campaign coverage has descended to such a level of distraction and foolishness, especially in the electronic media, that it’s difficult to bear. Unfortunately, most people will be sufficiently indoctrinated by this sideshow, and I give you President-elect McCain. Where he is the truly risky choice, the media must have Obama in that box. Where the election should be a referendum on the now incontestable consequences of the Republican policies McCain will continue, it will be a referendum on Obama. I give you: President-elect McCain.

And he’s the "conservative." Yet he is no impostor. He is the same kind of "conservative" that has run the country for years.

This perhaps is the biggest irony in the room. A quarter century of "conservative" rule — including Bill Clinton and the Gingrich Congress — have given us a larger government, huge deficits, a crippling debt, debased culture, overseas adventures and imperial presidential power (We’re Americans: we torture) that would make Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater cringe. It is even counter to the ideas of Ronald Reagan as a political thinker (and, yes, he was a formidable one). By way of context, Ike, Nixon and George H.W. Bush were right-of-center pragmatists, not conservatives.

The heirs of Buckley bravely carry water for today’s "conservatives," but Buckley couldn’t have died a happy man, to see where his counter-revolution led (he became a vocal critic of the Iraq adventure). Burke and Russell Kirk are spinning so fast in their graves as to provide new data to particle physicists.

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Posted inPolitics: National

McCain’s national security cred and TR — more media lies

The corporate media, particularly the electronic division, keeps repeating certain shorthand, whether it’s true or not. One example, on display almost daily, is that "John McCain’s the maverick." I’ve gone to great lengths on this blog to disprove that notion. McCain is a fairly conventional "conservative" who once or twice bucked his party when it didn’t really matter. You can check his voting record. This is no secret.

McCain’s utter hostility to helping the state he claims to represent deal with the problems of rapid urbanization and funding the illegal alien surge that was so profitable to Republican businessmen shows how he will govern domestically. Likewise his "straight shooter integrity" image is shattered by the facts, from the Keating Five onward. (Check the McCain File to your right for more).

Now two more "givens" are in the teleprompter scrips. First is the idea that McCain is a national security expert, ready to be commander in chief on "day one" — Sen. Clinton helpfully said it herself. The second is that McCain is a "Theodore Roosevelt Republican."

There’s just one problem: Neither is true.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Is it already over for Obama, IV?

Obama’s win in the Democratic primary showed him to potentially be one of the most gifted politicians in American history. Yes, he gives a good speech — something that is underrated, particularly after the embarrassingly inarticulate George W. Bush. If we’re to have any chance to address the historic challenges facing the country, we’re going to need an inspiring leader at the bully pulpit.

But he also ran a great ground game, outflanking Hillary’s admittedly badly run operation, and showed he could push back effectively against Rovian tactics. After the disaster of conservative government on display everywhere and every indication this should be a Democratic year, why can’t I come out an admit I was wrong about Obama?

I hope I can. Unfortunately, he has several things going against him, which may prove insurmountable. Remember, Michelle said, "this is it, one campaign and no more," or words to that effect. If Nancy  Reagan had said the same thing in 1976, no book would be called "The Age of Reagan," however gifted that orator and politician was.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Is the ‘nation of whiners’ also a nation of suckers?

Let’s get this straight at the outset: Phil Gramm, President-elect McCain’s chief economics adviser, did not misspeak when he said the only thing wrong now is a "mental recession" and America is a "nation of whiners." The corporate media, to the extent they are covering the story at all, are leading with McCain’s disavowal of Gramm. McCain has said the same kinds of things. He also said Social Security is "an absolute disgrace." This is what Republicans believe. Imagine if Obama had said such things?

While McCain is again showing his fundamental dishonesty, and the media are continuing to cover for him, Gramm unambiguously showed the mindset of today’s Republican Party. "Creative destruction" is their mantra, "free markets" their religion. And if you lived Gramm’s life, you might well wonder, "why are people complaining?" The former senator from Texas championed tax cuts for the wealthy, breaks for corporation and deregulation. He was repaid handsomely, most recently with his ties to the giant bank UBS.

Most Americans have paid a huge price. Median incomes have actually fallen in recent years, millions have lost their health insurance, and most average workers are losing the foundation of the middle class: secure jobs at good wages with benefits and pensions. This was partially concealed by the scam of the housing bubble, and now that’s gone. The Republican leaders, who have become wealthy from tax cuts, outsourcing, union busting and community-destroying mergers say, "stop whining."

But will they pay a price in November? I’m not convinced.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

John McCain, you’re no Barry Goldwater

I’m probably the wrong one to ask for an objective comparison between Barry Goldwater and John McCain. I’ll always love Barry, despite the flaws and misjudgments that were as big as his accomplishments. Attending Kenilworth School in Phoenix — where Barry himself had gone years before — I remember being one of only two kids with the guts to wear Goldwater buttons in 1964. Such was the power of LBJ. But I loved Barry, even at age seven.

Nearly everyone attests to, at best, an arm’s length relationship between the aging Goldwater and the newcomer McCain. John Dean and Barry Goldwater Jr. have a new book that looks at a true "maverick from Arizona." Although McCain brags about being a "Goldwater Republican," younger Goldwater family members are having none of it. Granddaughter Alison Goldwater told the Huffington Post, that Barry felt "deceived" by McCain. She says,  "I’m sure if we were to raise his ashes from the Colorado River…he would be going, ‘What? This is not my vision. This is not my party.’ "

McCain is an opportunist where Barry never was. McCain lands in scandals — from the Keating Five to the latest property tax oops — that Barry never would have contemplated. If McCain has principles aside from orthodox 1990s right-wing politics, with an occasional tilt to please the national press, I can’t find them. Most of all, Barry was an Arizonan. He loved Arizona deeply, personally. Starting as a Phoenix City Councilman, he supported every bond issue to make the city better (his name used to be on the plaque at the old library, simply listed as a city council member). He was a true conservationist.

Yet McCain-as-Goldwater isn’t another campaign distraction. It’s a topic worth debate and contemplation, one that says much about the trajectory of America over the past 45 years.

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Posted inPolitics: National

How passenger rail was wounded, and how to fix it

The New York Times is a fine newspaper, but it has its blind spots. Its reporting on energy is often incomplete or downright wrong. The latter sin was not in evidence when it finally reported on the popularity of Amtrak. What’s frustrating is what the article left out or left unsaid, which makes it harder to achieve some results beyond our transportation system frozen in 1965 (and we had more trains then).

From the article:

Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it
carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May
is not usually a strong travel month.

But the railroad, and its
suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial
constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet
the demand.

And:

The problem is that rail has shriveled. The number of “passenger miles”
traveled on intercity rail has dropped by about two-thirds since 1960,
and the companies that build rail cars and locomotives have also
shrunk, making it hard to expand.

Only late in the story is a glancing reference made to Amtrak’s fate being tied to the whims of the federal government, and late late in the story the Times admits their boy crush President-elect McCain "was a staunch opponent of subsidies to Amtrak when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee." Indeed he wants to abolish it.

Let’s fill in some of the blanks so Americans might have some options beyond expensive and congested driving, and airlines that treat passengers like cattle.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Daddy, what did you do in the war on the Constitution?

It’s clear that President-elect McCain will run with this major theme: Barack Obama is not qualified to be president because he didn’t serve in the military. For example, when Obama praised McCain’s service and wondered why he refused to support the new GI Bill, McCain shot back, "I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his
responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my
regard for those who did."

The "religious test" prohibited by the Constitution has been seriously eroded by modern politics. But what McCain implies is more dangerous still to the future of the nation: that only soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are really qualified to lead the nation, particularly in wartime.

So many contradictions and hypocrisies here. Neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin Roosevelt were veterans, yet they led the nation in the two world wars. And where was McCain’s outrage over the neo-con chicken-hawks who took draft deferments during Vietnam, notably Dick Cheney (five deferments). Obama was a child during Vietnam. And what of the swift-boated John Kerry?

But the biggest concerns cut to the core of the American republic. They could reveal McCain not merely as a misinformed and misguided candidate, but a potentially dangerous one.

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Posted inPolitics: National

What is the McCain camp hiding with his health records?

The McCain campaign "released" the president-elect’s long awaited, long promised, health records in classic fashion: on the edge of a holiday weekend, when they would be guaranteed to get little attention. Not only that, but the records were made available to only 20 reporters hand-picked by the campaign.

Those journalists were given three hours to view more than 1,000 pages of often highly technical records; they were not allowed to make copies or remove them. McCain’s doctors were made available for 90 minutes — or so the newspeople were told. The questions were cut short after 45 minutes.

America’s increasingly lapdog media did not report much about this odd, not to mention suspicious, situation, made more compelling given McCain’s age and cancer history. The headlines were essentially "McCain is healthy…robust…takes a baby aspirin…no cancer recurrence."

Tellingly, the McCain campaign excluded the New York Times’ Lawrence K. Altman, a reporter and a medical doctor. Even so, Dr. Altman’s examination of the pool report made the real news, which Rogue Columnist will start your week with and keep up.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The Stack: Super Loss; McCain greenwash; kid gloves for polygamists; Karen’s no crackpot; peak oil

The funniest story in the stack is an item reporting that Glendale did not even recoup what it spent as host "city" for the Super Bowl.  For years ahead of the spectacle, Phoenix media reported what an economic boon it would be. This is a classic example about how critical thinking is neither taught nor valued in today’s newsrooms (gee, why do we keep losing readers?).

A basic analysis of the hype would have shown that the promised economic benefits would be modest. It happened during high season, so resorts and hotels would already be booked. Indeed, considering the NFL demands blocks of rooms at a discount, the hotel industry probably made less money than it would have otherwise. Sales of souvenirs? Most of the profit goes back to the NFL. Restaurants would have similarly been packed anyway. And so on.

It’s not that the Super Bowl doesn’t bring benefits, in terms of exposure and the gathering of big deal makers. Too bad it took place in an amorphous place without an identity and a stadium in a cotton field on the metro fringe, in a place with little economy besides the great — now shuttered — housing factory. But the media shouldn’t have bought into the economic hype. Alas, the pressure is always extreme to "say something positive." Unfortunately, many reporters today would never even have applied the basic bullshit detector that was once a standard-issue item in their craft.

Read on for more of the Stack.

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