A Time For Reason:

When Rachel Maddow interviewed John Stewart he criticized her for being too partisan. I enjoy Mr. Stewart’s show, but I disagree with his criticism of Ms. Maddow and the other commentators on MSNBC. Although I was a child at the time I remember Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts. I remember the Army-McCarthy hearings, which I watched with my parents, and I remember Edward R. Murrow putting his career on the line by taking a stand against Senator McCarthy. Edward R. Murrow was correct when he said we cannot promote freedom abroad by destroying it at home. The John Birch Society thought Joseph McCarthy was right even after he had been discredited. Their paranoid rants about traitors and conspiracies made them as dangerous as he was! No one should have remained non-partisan about Senator Joseph McCarthy or the Birchers.

Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch society were eventually defeated but the paranoia and irrational fears they exploited live on. The Republican Party has swung so far to the right that it is now pandering to the same sort of paranoia embraced by the Birchers and Joseph McCarthy. The Republicans are once more taking into their party people who are advancing wacky theories about traitors and government conspiracies. At least one Republican candidate for the Senate even advocated second amendment remedies, which means armed insurrection and/or assassinations. No one should be non-partisan about candidates who are making such threats!

The paragraphs above were inspired by Keith Olbermann’s commentary on Ted Koppel. In that brilliant commentary Mr. Olbermann also talked about Edward R. Murrow’s courageous stand against Senator McCarthy. What Mr. Olbermann addressed so well in that commentary are the issues of journalistic integrity and, perhaps more importantly, journalistic responsibility. He was saying that the fear mongering and demagoguery we are witnessing today are so wrong and so dangerous that they fall out of the realm of partisan politics and must not be tolerated. I agree with him, and I thank him for the stance he has taken. At the very least journalists have a duty to report the facts. They should point out the absurdity of Republicans alleging that the health care reform bill has a provision creating death panels. They should tell us what is actually in the health care bill that was passed. They should report that extending the Bush tax cuts for the Rich will add seven hundred billion dollars to our national debt and that it will not create as many jobs as other things on which that money could be spent. Omitting facts is not responsible reporting and including facts that reflect poorly on one of the parties is not a partisan act. The facts are never partisan; they are reality.

I can remember a time when there was a growing concern about the influence of television. There was a commitment to public service at that time. News broadcasters were expected to report the facts and educate the public about the issues. My sincerest hope is that Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and the other good people at MSNBC will have enough influence to make the main stream media accept the responsibility they have to inform the public regardless of which political party might benefit from that. Now is the time for reason. Only an informed electorate can make wise decisions! Since most people rely on television for the news it is up to news broadcasters to keep the public informed. That is the duty of any news organization, and most news broadcasters have been shirking that duty.

Note to my visitors: Please see my previous post entitled “Who Shall Pay?” It is about the extension of the Bush tax cuts, and we need to make it clear to President Obama that only the cuts for middle class should be extended!

Who Shall Pay?

I believe most people are misreading what we should learn from the midterm elections. President Obama and the Democratic Party did not do a good job of selling their accomplishments or their agenda. There was also a strong wimp factor. I know compromise is an essential part of the process, but the Democrats were the only ones giving ground on issues they let the Republicans define. As a result of this much of the legislation, although still significant, fell short of what we expected and wanted. The most pressing issue is now an extension of tax cuts for the middle class. We simply cannot afford to let those tax cuts expire; nor can we afford to blow a seven hundred billion dollar hole in the budget when we are running such a large deficit. Please join me in telling President Obama and your representative that we need those tax cuts and that we oppose the absurd tax cuts for the very people who are exporting our jobs. Below is an e-mail I have sent to President Obama and another e-mail I have sent to Speaker Pelosi. I know you might be too busy to write similar e-mails. If you are too busy to write, please use the link I am providing to Credo and sign their petition to Speaker Pelosi. If you have the time, please write to President Obama and to your congressperson as well.



Dear President Obama

I have been defending you from the criticism that you are weak. Not anymore! If you extend tax cuts for the rich for any length of time at all the Republicans will have no reason to compromise with you on anything because they will know you do not stand your ground. The people who have supported you will also know that. Get an extension of the middle class tax cuts through the House and into the Senate as quickly as possible. Then use the bully pulpit and crank up the PR machine. Say to the voters: “There is a bill in the Senate that will extend YOUR tax cuts. Republican Senators are threatening to filibuster that bill. If they succeed in holding up the passage of that bill until your tax cuts expire you will be paying much higher taxes. I know you need those tax cuts and you know you need those tax cuts. The Republicans either do not know that or they do not care about it. So tell them. Send your Senators e-mails or letters or telegrams demanding an extension of YOUR tax cuts.”

Do not let the Republicans draw you into a debate about the other Bush tax cuts. The tax cuts you are extending are for everyone. Whether people should get the tax cuts extended for amounts above two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or businesses should get tax cuts extended is not the issue. As far as the voters are concerned the tax cuts you are extending are their tax cuts; they are not tax cuts for an abstract group such as the middle class or for special interests. This is the sort of simple approach Republicans use to define issues, and it works. If you define the tax cuts you are extending in the manner I am suggesting I will bet you a tax cut that enough Republicans will blink. No politician wants to go into the elections of 2012 having to explain to angry voters why he or she opposed tax cuts that would have prevented an increase in the taxes those voters pay. Yes, it is brinkmanship, but you must make your stand while you still have the majorities you need to do it.

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

Thank you for all you have done thus far. There is one more thing I am compelled to ask of you. Please make every effort to get a bill extending the middle class tax cuts through the House as quickly as possible. President Obama seems to be wavering on his stated opposition to extending tax cuts for the wealthy. Neither he nor we can afford to have him cave in on this issue. I have sent him an e-mail stating my position on this issue and suggesting how he can sell to the voters an extension of middle class tax cuts only. I have also posted that letter and this one on Macsbackporch.blogspot.com., and I am using that blog to encourage others to send similar e-mails.

An Alternate Universe

I am an old man. I remember when the John Birch Society was influential. What I said about the John Birch Society and other right wing extremists then is true of the Tea Party and other right wing extremists today. They live in an alternate universe. It is a universe where beliefs are never questioned and all inconvenient facts are either ignored or denied. I will not say the right wing extremists are unfazed by the honest reporting of accurate news stories or other factual information, but they have a traditional tactic for combating facts. They simply circle the wagons and poison all the wells outside of the circle. “You can’t trust anything outside of the circle,” they say. “Scientists and the main stream news media have a liberal bias, don’t you know?”

In the universe of the circled wagons the dialogue is circular; any story that seems to confirm the beliefs and feed the paranoia is passed around and repeated until it is accepted as a fact. Thus we find unprincipled purveyors of ring wing bull, like Andrew Brietbart, dumping crap onto the inter net, and other right wing bloggers spreading that crap like a plague. Profiteers such as Rupert Murdoch are more than happy to serve this crap to gullible viewers who accept it as the truth because they hear it from their friends and see it presented on what is supposed to be a news program.

The latest example of this is the rumor that President Obama’s trip to India will cost two hundred million dollars a day. The rumor was allegedly started by an unknown person in India and was soon being repeated on right wing blogs. Republican nut cases, like Michelle Bachmann, then cited this unconfirmed rumor as proof that President Obama is squandering the government’s money. The most ludicrous lunatic at the Fox disinformation factory, Glen Beck, also presented the rumor as though it were a fact. The babbling heads at Fox, who try to pass themselves off as reporters, never questioned the story. Neither they nor Glen Beck raised any questions about the veracity of the original source, nor did they ask any questions about the supposed use of assets, such as navy ships, that would make the trip so expensive. Since their viewers were more than willing to believe this rumor the babbling heads at Fox News reported it ad nauseum, as if the repetition somehow added some legitimacy to the allegations.

The thing to remember is that the Fox News organization is part of the political right wing’s alternate universe. The rules and standards that apply to journalists outside of the circled wagons have no place in the alternate universe of Fox viewers. In that universe it is a perfectly acceptable for Fox to lift a story from a supermarket tabloid and tell its viewers that it has been reported that the Los Angeles Police Department is squandering millions of dollars on jet packs for its police officers. Fox also thinks it is acceptable to air altered videos and other things from the Blog of Andrew Brietbart even after the previous things from Breitbart’s blog, such as the altered videos that caused Acorn to lose its funding, were proven to be outrageous hoaxes. Fox has no conscience. It is not embarrassed by revelations that many of the stories it presents as news are false. Whether a story is true or false does not matter to Fox if its viewers accept the story as the red meat that sustains the paranoia of their dark world. Fox’s primary goal is to keep those viewers tuning in; they are money in the bank. Most of them will not look outside of the alternate universe to find out the truth anyhow. Even the few viewers who find out that a story is untrue will not criticize Fox for presenting it. Where else are those viewers going to get stories that seem to confirm their erroneous beliefs and fears? Certainly not from any legitimate news organization!

Sustaining whatever influence the right wing extremists have on the real world, however, is not an easy thing to do. When reality asserts itself people of sound mind always reject the alternate universe. The John Birch society was literally laughed into irrelevance. It and its members became such a laughing stock that it was too embarrassing for the Republican Party to continue pandering to them. The same thing will eventually happen to the Tea Party and the right wing extremists who are now enjoying another surge of influence. The problem is that marginalizing them is not the same thing as getting rid of them. They will draw their wagons into a tighter circle, and they will continue to suck gullible recruits into their dark and dangerous world. There will always be a Rush Limbaugh, a Glen Beck, and probably a Fox News making loads of money by feeding their fears and supporting their beliefs.

What The Hell?

After the primaries I said that the nomination of so many extremists as Republican candidates had changed this election from being a political IQ test to being a mental health test. In the days leading up to the election Meg Whitman in California quoted Arnold Schwartzeneggar saying that insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Voting for people who want to continue the failed policies of George W. Bush and who have used every means to try to prevent the government from getting us out of Bush’s recession is insane by definition. Extreme Republican candidates such as Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell, to name just a few, want to go back much farther to the failed Republican policies that brought us the great depression. An informed electorate would have said “Hell No” by handing the Republican Party a devastating defeat; they would have given the Democrats a large enough majority to override filibusters in the senate and would have given the Democrats an even greater majority in the house. Instead the voters sent a mixed but angry message. They allowed the Democrats to keep a small majority in the senate but they also gave the Republicans control of the house.

Because of the number of elections for the house I am going to discuss the outcome generally rather than specifically. I am also going to confine my discussion to those senate races the pundits said the Republicans had to win in order to gain a majority in the senate.

Alaska: The results are not in but one thing is evident: the people of Alaska were sane enough to reject Sarah Palin’s stocking horse, Joe Miller. Ms. Palin responded by letting her populist veil slip. She blamed the defeat of Miller on media bias and called the reporters “corrupt bastards.” Sorry Ms. Palin, but those reporters were doing what reporters are supposed to do by presenting accurate stories. I guess when you work for or watch the disinformation factory known as Fox News it is difficult to imagine that real news organizations have some journalistic integrity.

Arkansas: It was not pivotal, but I cannot resist commenting on it. Thanks to Blanch Lincoln’s outrageous tactics during the primary the people of Arkansas had a very dismal choice to make. The result of telling Ms. Lincoln that there is only so much the voters will tolerate was appalling, but sending that message was the right thing to do.

California: This state waved a not for sale sign in the face of corporate candidates, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, and this demonstrated a high political IQ.

Colorado: Michael Bennett is clearly preferable to the extremist, Ken Buck, and it looks like Bennett has won a very close race.

Florida: I would like very much to blame the election of Rubio on the fact that there were three candidates but Rubio received too many votes for me to do that. It was an absurd outcome compounded by the election of Daniel Webster over Alan Grayson. Congressman Grayson is a breath of fresh air. His courage and integrity will be sorely missed. I hope he runs for office again.

Illinois: It looks like Republican Mark Kirk has defeated Alexi Giannoulias. Illinois also voted heavily for Republicans in the house races. I guess the voters there are not bright enough to figure out who will represent them and who will represent the people exporting their jobs. Just follow the bouncing dollars, folks. If those dollars are from hidden sources it cannot be good.

Kentucky: mental health clinics are desperately needed there! Rand Paul is such an extremist that he might even filibuster a bill raising the national debt ceiling. Doing this would cause the U.S. to default on the interest payments of its loans and would cause a world wide economic panic. The only good thing about him doing this is that it would result in the abolition of the filibuster rules the Republicans have been misusing to thwart the legislation needed to further an economic recovery.

Nevada: It took the outrageous race baiting of one of the worst political candidates ever to allow Harry Reid to win this election. What this says about the mental health of Nevada is not good, but at least Nevada does not have to admit that they elected someone as extreme and unqualified as Sharon Angle.

Pennsylvania: The difference between Joe Sestak and Pat Toomey are like night and day, and the voters made the wrong choice by electing Toomey. One can only hope that this insanity is temporary.

Washington: Patty Murray holds a slight lead over Dino Rossi. Electing Rossi would be stupid. Hopefully, sanity will prevail.

West Virginia: Joe Manchin had to swing too far to the right to defeat Robert Byrd. This does not speak well for the mental health of West Virginians, but they made the right choice.

There is obviously an ignorance gap between informed voters and the majority of voters. Too many people apparently do not pay any attention what is going on in Washington. As a result of this lack of attention and/or the inability to comprehend the events taking place they are too easily swayed by deceptive political advertisements and simplistic slogans like “death panels.” Instead of thinking about the issues they react viscerally to their personal situations and often crap on their own interests as a result. That is what they have done in this election. Believe me, I understand the desperation of being unemployed for a long period of time. It is something I have experienced. That is why I pay enough attention to know who is representing my interests rather than representing the people who export jobs. It takes more than two years to rebuild an economy. This is particularly true when the opposition is determined to make you fail. The Republicans have fought and will continue to fight legislation that would discourage the exportation of jobs and all other efforts to get this economy moving again. This does not mean you have to be patient. Informed voters prod the people representing them for quicker results, and they remove the people who are standing in the way of those results.

In this instance the voters damaged their own cause by lashing out blindly and angrily. They punished the party that was trying to get this economy moving again and rewarded the party that was impeding progress. I would like to think the Republicans will act responsibly, but their behavior over the past two years makes me believe they will not. The most likely result of this election will be greater gridlock in Washington and a deepening recession. The special interests who kept their identities hidden from you and me while pouring millions of dollars into the campaign efforts of Republican candidates will demand a return on their investments, and those returns will be taken out of your hide in the form of outsourcing and deficit producing tax cuts for the wealthy individuals who own or run the companies that export your jobs! The next two years are going to be hell, and the special interest lackeys you elected to the House of Representatives will be stoking the fires. For your own sake, pay attention to what is really happening!