A Garden of NeoCon Horrors*

You’d think Paul Wolfowitz would have the good sense to keep quiet, but as Maureen Dowd wrote in her column on Sunday, he has no shame. Neo-Cons, like all fanatics and preachers of moral rectitude, do not know silence, nor do they have the remorse chromosome in their genetic codes. They are not known for the qualities of soul-searching and self-examination. If they ever admitted they were wrong about Iraq, their heads might explode.

And, as long as complicent cable news outlets and newspapers are willing to give Wolfowitz and his cohort free airtime and space, they will never be silenced. They may have left public office, but they still wield inexplicable power in the court of public opinion. Like their cousins in radical conservatism, the Tea Partiers, the Neo-Cons thrive on fear-mongering and outright lies. They make millions of dollars on their ghostwritten fictional memoirs, and rise to the top of bestseller lists. Somebody out there is buying what they sell.

For example, Wolfowitz told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last Sunday that the families of the Pan-Am bombing victims had demanded money during the Bush Administration's negotiations with Libya over its removal from the official terrorism list. Wolfowitz admitted he had no proof to back up his claim, but he said it anyway. (The Pan-Am families, of course, have vehemently denied his allegations). But no matter – Wolfowitz and other relics of the Bush era seem to have a peculiar talent for staying front and center. Do you suppose it’s because we are all so in awe that none of them has ever been prosecuted for war crimes, and we are irresistibly drawn by the sheer chutzpah of career criminals who get away with it?. Or, does the mainstream media still remain convinced now, as they were then., that Iraq was a grand adventure and a rousing success despite a few “setbacks?”

Now. Wolfowitz is calling for aggressive military intervention in Libya, and was given valuable Wall Street Journal op-ed space to make his case.  Several months ago, he and Bush torture enabler John Yoo lambasted the decision to try terrorists on our soil, or to close Gitmo, in a high-profile New York Times op-ed piece.   Somebody obviously listened to them. Attorney General Holder long ago walked back on plans for New York City trials as perfect symbolic venues for 9/11 terrorism payback. Gitmo is still very much there. All trials will now be by military tribunal, not in civilian courts.

 Maureen Dowd suggested in her column that Wolfowitz should just go away and take up horticulture. Any NeoCon Garden would surely include the toxic herb Wolfbane, which is an apt name and has the unpleasant side-effect of causing too much nervous excitement ( I think W. might have been given an infusion of that particular herb to psych him up for invading Iraq).

 And Wolfowitz has always cultivated bleeding hearts, which look lovely, but their pretty name belies the fact that every part of them is poisonous. The Bush crowd sold the nation on its bleeding heart doctrine in the run-up to invasion - by ginning up a lie about WMDs and then spreading vaunted, unwanted and nonexistent Democracy where it smelled money to be made for the Military Industrial complex.

Of course, there's always been a fair amount of the noxious Dumbcane in the NeoCon botanica. That's another toxic weed that is the devil to get rid of once it takes hold. Just when you think you it's gone, it keeps popping up, year after year.  It  thrives especially well in the moist unhealthy air and swampy soil around Washington, D.C. 

 * This post was originally submitted as a "comment" to the NY Times. It was rejected, probably because it was deemed too abusive.  How can you be too abusive to Paul Wolfowitz?  Other posts openly called for his demise.  Wow, life is so unfair.  

Bullies and Pulpits



"Commander in Cute" - This is Getting Scary




Lately, Barack Obama has been acting more like the president of the PTA than the president of the United States.  Instead of leader of the free world  he’s been in Daddy in Chief mode, frenetically hopping from one school to the next to push for public/private partnership in his “Race to the Top” initiative.  Instead of leading the battle of the budget, he’s talking about dealing with playground bullies.  Instead of condemning the Republican assault on unions and the McCarthyesque hearings against Muslims, he's sent out an email called “Commander in Cute.” The official White House photo Thursday was of Barack hoisting an adorable four-month-old in the air. It was a parody of a campaign photo. This guy has never stopped running. On average, he spent every other day on Air Force One last year, crisscrossing the country for town halls and backyard schmoozes.



And we thought George Bush was not up for the job with all his brush-clearing jaunts to the Crawford ranch.  Where the hell is Obama?  This week, he’s played a game of football in the Oval Office with the Australian prime minister. Today he’s hosting a White House Conference on Bullying with Michelle. Don’t get me wrong, I hate bullying.  One of my children was a bullying victim 15 years ago, when it was still considered just a normal part of growing up, and my complaints were not taken seriously by school administrators. Now that cyberbullying has started causing kids to actually kill themselves, we are finally addressing it on a national level. But is it necessary for the President to devote what seems like an entire day to it? 



He Likes to be the Only Adult in the Room



I am beginning to think of the President as a figurehead or a public relations front guy. He is kind of like Prince William or Prince Charles, appearing at one charity event, one factory, one school, one photo-op after the other.  He is a Royal who poses, but does not truly govern. He does not lead. His own Party is beginning to complain about his total failure to deal what appears to be an imminent government shutdown.

“President Obama is the only person in the country with the clout to reframe the debate on public sector unions in a more sensible manner, and he seems to have wrapped himself in a radio silence,” writes Sasha Abramsky today in Salon.com. “….he’s not only the president, he’s also a first rate orator with an almost preternatural ability to get people to see things his way when he really wants them to.”

When he wants them to…. There’s the rub. I don’t think Obama really wants people to see anything any particular way, unless it has to do with him or the corporations which he serves.  Remember his groundbreaking speech on race during the 2008 campaign, after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle?  That wasn’t really about his concern over racial inequality. That was Barack, soaring rhapsodic, to save his own candidacy. We have not heard one thing about race from his lips since he became president. Not one word about poverty, even though a quarter of all children are officially poor. Not one word about gun control since the Tucson Massacre two months ago. Not one word about the illegal vote in Wisconsin destroying collective bargaining. Not one word since Feb. 17  when he made a non-committal remark that Governor Walker appeared to be assaulting the unions. I rejoiced when I heard that the Organizing for America wing of the Democratic National Committee had gotten involved in the Madison protests. I despaired when I heard that Obama caved when House Speaker Boehner demanded that he back off, and he obliged by angrily ordering his renegade organizers away from the scene.

So, when Abramsky writes: “Mr. President – Use the Damn Bully Pulpit!” I can only reply that Obama will never do any such thing. Theodore Roosevelt coined that phrase when he was president, and he was referring to the use of the White House as a platform from which to advocate policies and agendas. A century ago, “bully” had a different meaning than it does today. Far from being a perjorative term for an abusive person, it used to mean “great” or “superb.”



The Original Bull Moose



Obama fits neither definition of the word.  He is not an in-your-face bully in the vein of Teddy, or Chris Christie, or LBJ. Nor is he superb.  He's an empty suit in front of twin teleprompters, uttering so much canned pablum that even infants in photo-ops and his staunchest supporters are beginning to tire of it.

Down the Memory Hole

Maureen Dowd has a column in today's NY Times about Joshua Foer, a 20-something who is getting big bucks for memorizing useless things. It's a typical Dowd book report of a piece, puffing up the latest pop culture/pseudo-intellectual phenom, who memorizes stuff, in part, by imagining his relatives having sex. My "comment" in response was rejected, so for what it's worth, here it is:

And the cynics said you couldn’t be a millionaire, and that the American dream was dead! This must be what President Obama means when he talks about entrepreneurship being the job-replacing wave of the future. If you’re a millennial and out of work, there’s no reason to retire to your parents’ basement. Just memorize decks of cards and other useless stuff while you wallow in porn, then enter a contest and voila! you are the lucky winner of a million dollar book and movie deal.

Of course, it helps if your mother is in public relations and your other relatives are in publishing -- which brings me to a bone to pick. Dowd writes in the column (which I have not yet managed to forget) that Foer’s mother is “president of a public relations firm whose parents were Holocaust survivors.” So... public relations firms not only have parents, but parents who were Holocaust survivors! Instead of shelling out some hard earned money for this wunderkind’s classic, somebody needs to go online and bone up on Strunck. It's free.

Curioser and Curioser.....My Parents Actually Having Sex!

I think we should remind ourselves to skip this book with the too-cute-by-half title "Moonwalking with Einstein." While I was waiting for the comments box to open, I checked out the reviews on Amazon. The first thing I noticed is that this newly-published tome has only seven reviews (all five-star raves -- highly suspect) and it's already half price, which should tell you something right there. Only I can’t remember what. Oh, it’s coming back to me. On his Amazon page, Foer says his book will not help you remember where you put your car keys. So forget about it!

I think I will stick with Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” and not worry about grocery lists and phone numbers. I am too old to care about this stuff. And anyway, I prefer my memories to be misty and water- colored and evoked by the sweet aroma of a madeleine.

International Woman in the Hood

 


Official White House Photo Totally Captures International Female Empowerment 

 


  While Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama talked up female empowerment at an International Woman's Day press confab in Washington today, the First Lady made sure to thank visiting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard for hanging out and playing catch with her husband on Monday, so she wouldn't have to. 


According to "West Wing Week", that really fun daily email somebody sends me  to let me know about all the inside info in the White House, the zany World Leader duo dropped by a local elementary school for "Show and Tell" after the game. First, they sang "Happy Birthday" to the teacher, and Obama giggled about how he and his new pal had almost knocked over the Lincoln Bust in the Oval from all that fooling around. But no way did that football crack any ceilings!  Then Ms. Gillard shared a veggie spread recipe with the kids. 

Today, Ms. Gillard shared the stage with Hillary and Michelle, and gabbed, air-kissed and hugged at the heavy-security, invitation-only power hour. Michelle told Julia she and Barack hoped to drop by Australia to do lunch, but that the schedule wasn't up to her.  She's already had to cancel twice because of volcanic ash, or an oil spill, or a monthly vacation or something, and doesn't want to disappoint yet again. But not to worry, Hillary will get there, because that's her job.

Oh. That Empowering Feeling


  Meanwhile, Barack was in Boston, at about his 14th school in a week, to give yet another speech about Winning the Future, because the present so totally sucks.  Back in Washington, even his own Party is starting to wonder about this guy.  Senator Joe Manchin loudly complained on the Floor that he just isn't leading on the budget. Senator Sherrod Brown, ever the polite one, offered that they would always welcome the president actually doing his job or even saying something, not that he's being critical or pushy or anything. It could always be that the intoxicating fumes of kindergarten paste have been getting to the president. Maybe it's time for a friendly intervention from some fellow Democrats.

The Peter King Hearings: Another Republican Fear Tactic

The Republicans are in panic mode.  They don't have a viable candidate for 2012, and the polls are indicating that Obama is unbeatable. So the GOP is doing what it does best: using a little Psy-Op theater to scare the crap out of people and once again, fool them into voting against their own economic interests.

Pew Polls over the past year indicate that while most people feel Islam is a non-violent religion, more and more people are coming to believe the president is a Muslim. So what better way to chip away at his favorables than by changing public opinion about Islam itself?  Why not hold made-for-cable public hearings on the looming threat of Muslim terrorism and home-grown Muslim radicalization? It'll be a circus, and undoubtedly receive all the stenographic mainstream media coverage that politicians have come to expect as their due.

Peter King is a two-bit political hack, a Torquemada wannabe with a dash of Archie Bunker,  and as head of the Homeland Security investigative committee, he is finally getting his moment in the sun.  To get his audience in the mood for the real purpose of the hearings, his cohort Mike Huckabee went on the radio last week and casually mentioned that Obama grew up in Kenya.  He knew it was a lie, of course, but it achieved the objective of casting just a smidgen more doubt on the president's allegiance and bona fides. And it received coverage galore.  Repeat a lie often enough, and the facts don't matter.  Allow the lies to go unchallenged and uncondemned and the truth is no longer important.

The problem the Republicans have with Obama, of course, is that he is not liberal enough. He doesn't attack them enough.  He is way too reasonable and willing to compromise.  Their ideas - cutting the deficit, getting those entitlements on the table, fighting endless wars, kowtowing to Wall Street - are his ideas.  He is really one of them.  He might as well be a Republican.

He is not playing by the rules.  So they have to make stuff up and create problems where none existed before. Investigating American Muslims will stir up the hornet's nest, both here and abroad.  It will take our minds off the real terrorists - the oligarchic cartel that brought down our economy, got rewarded, and continues on its merry way, looting the treasury and destroying what is left of our middle class.

Maybe if President Obama traveled to Wisconsin to show some solidarity with the unions, all the media attention would be deflected away from Peter King's ridiculous, McCarthyesque show hearings. Maybe Obama should give the Republicans something to really sink their teeth into.  Maybe he could turn into a real Democrat.

Green Eggs and Flim Flam

To kick off National Education Month, President Obama sent out the missus to read Dr. Seuss to some school children. Then, apparently in conjunction with  quitting cigarettes, Obama also made a public announcement about the end of his Bush-bashing habit.  Not only is he no longer blaming George for leaving him a monumental mess, he is lauding the entire Bush clan as “outstanding public servants”.  He was joined by Jeb, former Florida governor, at a Miami high school this week, to announce some sort of weird hybrid between W’s No Child Left Behind  with his own Race to the Top education initiative, with a little of that nauseating Winning the Future P.R. tripe thrown in for good measure.

Outstanding public servants? Jeb a champion of education reform? While the collective bargaining rights of American teachers are under assault, while Republicans are threatening draconian cuts to education and all kinds of programs benefitting children and their families, the president chooses the Bushes for role models of social integrity?  I knew this guy was a corporatist president, but this was way over the top.

The most infamous Bush moment of education-championing chutzpah came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when matriarch Barbara made a public donation to a charity for victims – with the stipulation that the money only be used for son Neil’s educational software. His product, costing over $3,000 per pupil, conveniently was designed to help prepare students for the endless batteries of No Child Left Behind standardized testing. The NOLA kids had no desks, no classrooms, no teachers, no buildings – but they had some real nifty software!  Later on, the attempt by Jeb and Neil to sneak the software into Florida schools via no-bid contracts was brought to public  light and then apparently abandoned. From an AP story:

"A software company run by Neil Bush, a younger brother of Gov. Jeb Bush, hopes to sell a program to Florida schools that students would use to prepare for the test that is key to the governor's education policy.Texas-based Ignite Inc. makes software being used in a pilot program at an Orlando-area middle school to help students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which the governor has championed as a yardstick for school performance.

Ocoee Middle School, which has received millions of dollars in state grants to study ways of lowering costs, is using the software for free.But a company spokeswoman said Saturday that Ignite soon hopes to sell its early American history course to other Florida schools, at a cost of $30 a year per student.

Ignite spokeswoman Louise Thacker denied the company had an unfair advantage because its founder and CEO, Neil Bush, is a brother of Florida's governor. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Education said Friday that Ignite officials had not approached the state about its product. Mike Eason, formerly the top technology official for the department, is a member of an Ignite advisory board.Katie Muniz, a spokeswoman for Jeb Bush, said the governor has never talked with his brother about the business”.(Associated Press, 2007).

It is widely reported that the Bush clan, including George and Laura, Poppy and Barb Sr., as well as investors from some of their oil-rich Middle East potentate friends, have made a profiteering fortune from the No Child Left Behind Act. One of their historic fortune-making accomplishments, it will be remembered, was when GrandPoppy Prescott Bush hid some money for the Nazis, kind of illegally. What a distinguished family, indeed.

But back to the bad blood between Obama and the Bushes. The feud continued all the way  through the bitterly fought 2010 campaign season, with the president sniping that the Republican president had left him a huge stinking mess of a car in a ditch, and Jeb grousing that Obama was like the kid who always complains that the dog ate his homework.  And it got personal. The president, Jeb said, was like “Hubert Humphrey on steroids.” (not a pretty picture).

Then Obama took his shellacking in November and decided to come around to the GOP's way of thinking. Not only did he cut, is cutting and will forever cut, he can never get enough of asking the Republicans just how much more deeply he needs to slash. This, at the Miami photo op:

“So what I’ve done is I’ve called for a five-year freeze on annual domestic spending -– and that freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and it will bring that kind of spending to a lower share of our economy than has been true for the last 50 years.  To achieve those savings, we’ve proposed eliminating more than 200 federal programs.  We’re freezing the salaries of hardworking civil servants for the next two years.  We’re finding ways to save billions of dollars, of tax dollars, by selling, for example, 14,000 government properties that we don’t need anymore.

And that’s just a start.  If we’re serious about tackling our long-run fiscal challenges, we’re going to have to cut excessive spending wherever we find it -– in defense spending, in spending on entitlements, spending through tax breaks and loopholes.  And I’m going to be sitting down with Democrats and Republicans to figure out how we can reduce our deficits.

But I want everybody to understand, our job is not just to cut.  Even as we find ways to cut spending, what we can’t do is cut back on investments like education that will help us create jobs and grow our economy.  (Applause.)  We can’t sacrifice your future.

Think about your family.  Let’s say something tough happens — somebody gets laid off in the family, or you have a medical emergency.  If you’re a family that has to cut back, what do you do?  First thing you do is you give things you don’t need.  So you give up vacations.  Maybe you eat out a little bit less.  Maybe you don’t buy as many new clothes.  Maybe you don’t buy that new car that you thought you needed.  But the last thing you give up on is saving for your child’s college education.  (Applause.)  The last thing you give up on is making sure that your children have the books they need and the computers they need — because you know that’s going to be the key to his or her success in life, over the long term."

Is it me, or was that just a whole truckload of doubletalk?  Cut, slash, starve , get evicted – but save for that college education, by golly!  Don’t eat, but buy the kids their computers (and don’t forget that educational software from you-know-who).

Meanwhile, I hope the president took the time to read the N.Y. Times op-ed today in which Bob Herbert wrote about American students’ abysmal lack of critical thinking, reading and writing skills. Obama’s main education thrust has been to “out-compete and out-educate the rest of the world” in science and technology (and  lead the way in acquisitions of huge, obscene profits presumably). He has mentioned little to nothing about the humanities or the liberal arts in his futuristic Race to the Top agenda. Wall Street has certainly proven you don't have to be a deep thinker to make, or even steal, money. You too can be in the one percent ownership of a third of all the wealth and leave your countrymen behind. It's called innovation, people!

So, the story of Jeb and Obama has a happy Dr. Seuss ending. Jeb has gone from singing “That Bam-I-Am, that Bam-I-Am, I do not like that Bam-I-Am” to taking a gander at Obama’s corporation-loving No Child Left in the Race to the Top of the Future, and chortling:

“Say! I like green eggs and flim flam!

I do!

I like them, Bam-I-Am!”

International Human Rights Agency Calls Out U.S. on Workplace Abuse

A week after the international Human Rights Watch came out with a scathing report on the USA’s abysmal lack of paid family leave policies in the workplace, the Obama Administration unveiled its own report revealing that women are still being paid only about 80 cents to a man’s dollar. And what is our president going to do about it?  Why, consult private corporations of course.  We can be sure these behemoth, tax-dodging, profit-hoarding, overseas job-shipping, male-dominated, hoggish bonus-awarding conglomerates will immediately do the right thing and start paying women what they’re worth.  And not only that – they will hire more women, give them paid maternity leave, set up on-site day care centers and establish remunerated liberal leave policies to care for sick family members.  All because President Obama asks them, nicely, to do the right thing. His assistant, Valerie Jarrett, has announced a partnership with private industry that would “encourage” girls to enter more lucrative professions. Cool.

The Human Rights report story, which was buried in last week’s Times and got little corporate media attention, points out that the United States is an “extreme outlier” when it comes to family-friendly workplace policies. Of 179 other countries in the developed world, the USA  is alone in not providing mandatory, extended paid maternity leave. And contrary to the constant haranguing of our politicians that social safety net programs are the cause of our deficit, the truth is that nations with humane employment laws actually do better economically.  They are competititive and they are productive.  Workers are more rested, they get more vacation time, they work fewer hours and they don’t feel forced to come to work sick.  Oh, and they can afford all this because, because they tax the wealthy at reasonable rates. They don’t make working people suffer so the wealthy can get even richer.  Their top one percent of millionaires and billionaires don’t hold a full third of the wealth of an entire nation, like ours does.

The Human Rights Watch people conclude that as a result of our economic barbarism, we Americans are less healthy and definitely not as happy as our global fellows.  Our children don’t do as well in school and they tend to get into more trouble.  The parents are tired, the kids are bored and neglected. The elderly are shipped off to nursing homes, putting a further unnecessary strain on Medicare and Medicaid. Other countries are more liberal in providing in-home care.

We currently have  unpaid family leave legislation, but that only covers about half the nation’s workforce.  Only 11 percent of companies provide paid leave to care for family members. Although two-thirds of American workers have some paid sick time, only one fifth of the low-income workers do. These benefits are decreasing as the glut of job-seekers increases and employers are less inclined to provide incentives for employees to stay on the job. The workers of America have become mere fodder and are emininently expendable. American life is cheap.

“ We can't afford not to guarantee paid family leave under law – especially in these tough economic times. The US is actually missing out by failing to ensure that all workers have access to paid family leave. Countries that have these programs show productivity gains, reduced turnover costs, and health care savings” said Janet Walsh, deputy womens rights director of HRW. "Millions of US workers - including parents of infants - are harmed by weak or nonexistent laws on paid leave, breastfeeding accommodation, and discrimination against workers with family responsibilities,” she continued. "Workers face grave health, financial, and career repercussions as a result. US employers miss productivity gains and turnover savings that these cost-effective policies generate in other countries".

The 90-page report, "Failing its Families: Lack of Paid Leave and Work-Family Supports in the US," is based on interviews with 64 parents across the country. It documents the health and financial impact on American workers of having little or no paid family leave after childbirth or adoption, employer reticence to offer breastfeeding support or flexible schedules, and workplace discrimination against new parents, especially mothers. Parents said that having scarce or no paid leave contributed to delaying babies' immunizations, postpartum depression and other health problems, and caused mothers to give up breastfeeding early. Many who took unpaid leave went into debt and some were forced to seek public assistance. Some women said employer bias against working mothers derailed their careers. Same-sex parents were often denied even unpaid leave.  (from the Human Rights Watch report).

The White House-commissioned-study on women and girls was the first such report since President Kennedy commissioned Eleanor Roosevelt to conduct one in the 1960s.  Of course, back then, women were paid lousily when they had jobs at all.  But income tax levels were still equitable and there was a thriving middle class.  Families could actually survive on one paycheck.

Not so today. Families are barely making ends meet on two, even three or four paychecks, many of them earned at low or no-benefit, low-wage jobs.  Jobs that disappeared at the high end of the wage scale are not coming back.  Wages have not only stagnated  - they are plummeting.  President Obama himself instituted a wage freeze on federal employees which amounts to a virtual five-year wage cut.  States have not only followed suit in cutting wages and eliminating jobs, but they are instituting full-scale attacks on workers’ unions and collective bargaining rights.  Congressional Republicans have gone even further, aggressively attacking every program that benefits women and children.  WIC, which provides funding for mother and child nutrition, and Planned Parenthood, are just two of them. These Republicans actually seem to harbor a deep-seated hatred for families and all vulnerable members of society.  Better that a billionaire can buy another yacht than a hundred innocent children have a roof over their heads and enough to eat.  Even Dickens would be shocked by the barbarism of 21^st century America. Human Rights Watch  watch surely was, and they’ve certainly seen it all – from cholera outbreaks and homelessness in Haiti to the bloody streets of autocratic Libya.  We are officially a banana republic. So much for American exceptionalism.

And what would Eleanor Roosevelt think?  Well, we know she wouldn’t be hanging around the White House at a press conference and photo ops touting a new study about the plight of women and offering no solutions.  We know she would not be approaching the spawn of J.P. Morgan or Andrew Mellon to ask for "suggestions".  I have a feeling she would be camped out at the state capital in Madison to show solidarity with the nurses and teachers and firefighters being scapegoated by the oligarchs.

"You in the unions do not yet represent all of labor. But I hope some day you will, because I believe that it is through strength, through the fact that people who know what people need are working to make this country a better place for all people, that we will help the world to accept our leadership and understand that under our form of government, and through our way of life, we have something to offer them." (Eleanor Roosevelt, ACWA Convention, 1956).