Political Pass

The wingnuts, republicans, and conservatives are going crazy. Sometimes it seems nothing in life changes. But after just six months miracles should be happening according to them! They missed those last eight years I guess. Today, since they have nothing better to do, they constantly ask us liberals what we think of Obama. I guess Rome was built in a day, destroyed in a day, and rebuilt the next day. Oh, how easy history would be. So here is my canned answer to how this liberal feels Obama is doing.

My only criticism of Obama and the administration is that they are not liberal enough. When nations start to collapse as America did in the thirties after republican neglect and wall street euphoria, FDR took the upper hand and moved America towards what Albert Hirschman calls the third great progressive challenge and change for human society: the welfare state. I will link book below.

Obama needs to push through healthcare, draw back war and aggression, support American worker rights, support gay marriage, change tax law so business and the wealthy pay their fair share, improve regulatory rules and make sure they work, penalize outsourcing, not reward it. And Americans need to start supporting Americans by buying American and supporting American companies that pay a fair wage and keep jobs in America. If we want to continue the republican trip to third world status we can neglect these items and continue down the voodoo economic path of Reaganomics, greed, and me first. You pick.

By the way the first two progressive steps were: equality before the law and civil rights and the second, universal suffrage. For the thinkers among the readers here, check this book out. Excellent writing too.

But since conservatives and republicans always question us, I have a question too. Conservative politics from Reagan to Bush Jr were a consensus failure for our infrastructure, for the economy, and for working Americans, so then why are you asking liberals what they think? We think - no, we know - you made a mess, quick and simple answer, final answer. Time to move forward again.

“Liberals demand that the social order should in principle be capable of explaining itself at the tribunal of each person’s understanding.” Jeremy Waldron

I have often tried to explain the liberal point of view only to be met with conservative / libertarian rhetoric about giveaways, lazy people, big government, and of course taxes. Again today with Obama’s election the same naysayers are raising their voices in a unified cry against the party democratically elected by the American people. The same loud cries came when Clinton won, and foolishly he gave them fodder for their moral machine gun.

As the libertarians, conservatives, and republicans again raise their voices in a crescendo of negativity about any issue they define as government help, one has to wonder where they were these last eight years as America compromised its most cherished values and moved closer to a nation of mostly have nots. What are their values, for certainly few would argue that George W. Bush accomplished anything more than debt and death.

So for all the foes of progress I post this excerpt from the Boston Review, an excellent article on an ideology that from our founders, to Lincoln, FDR, and LBJ contains within it the ideas that move us forward.

“…”the content of a liberal political conception of justice is given by three main features:

1. a specification of basic rights, liberties and opportunities (of a kind familiar from constitutional democratic regimes);

2. an assignment of special priority to those rights, liberties and opportunities, especially with respect of claims of the general good and perfectionist values; and

3. measures assuring to all citizens adequate all-purpose means to make effective use of their liberties and opportunities.

These [three] elements can be understood in different ways, so that there are many variant liberalisms.”"

“First, to believe in the equality and priority of basic personal and political liberties; to be skeptical as a corollary about paternalism, moralism, and perfectionism; to embrace an ideal of equality of opportunity and an assurance of adequate resources for all: these mark out a distinctive family of political views. Those three points are not common ground that we political liberals share with fascists; communitarians; traditionalists of various kinds; Stalinists; suffocating, oxygen-depleting moralists; believers in a confessional state (whatever the confession); or adherents to anti-state, anarchist libertarianism. We may be dull, but we are dull from our own distinctive principles.”

Read Here. Book mentioned in article.

Whenever the discussion turns to unions or fair wages or corporate power the Right inevitably defends corporations and wealth against people. This has always struck me as odd and off base. The same anti-worker mentality that gained precedence with Reagan still exists today. So many zombie economists think formulas equal reality, you wonder where it is they work and what their lives must be. But every so often people speak out honestly. Joe Bageant writes eloquently, in a backwoods manner, that makes the topic real.

“…In the mornings while making coffee I listen to NPR. And in the evenings before this besotted old carcass craps out for the night, I watch the our Public Broadcasting systems’ history specials and retrospectives, or the History Channel (Native Virginians are obsessive about history). And I hear narrators and commentators feed the same thin witted stuff to the nation. Things like, “Race has always been the primary historical and cultural issue of American history, especially in the South.”

Bullshit!

It’s always been about cheap labor down here, just like everywhere else in America. Free slave labor may connect Southern history, but cheap labor connects all of American history. True, preserving free slave labor was the reason southern Congressman Preston Brooks clubbed the living hell out of Massachusetts anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner right there on the Senate Chamber floor in 1856. But the main theme has always been about powerful men and more recently, faceless, bloodless corporations more powerful than any of the oligarchs of earlier times, aggregating wealth from the toil of the masses. That’s why there were hundreds of thousands of white indentured servants in America before the slave economy arose to the levels it did. And that’s why today the U.S. has such strong union busting laws as the Taft-Hartley Act and the misleadingly named The Right to Work Act.”

Rest here. and another good old boy worth a read.

“Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.”

Judge Sonia Sotomayor

“I don’t come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up. And I know about their experiences and I didn’t experience those things. I don’t take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame. But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, “You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.” And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who’s been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I’ve known and admire very greatly who’ve had disabilities, and I’ve watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn’t think of what it’s doing — the barriers that it puts up to them. So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.” Samuel Alito

Excerpts that sound pretty much alike, can you spell empathy.

‘The Fallen Kindly Wait’

“Should I expire on foreign soil
mourn for me you must not.
First recall all else who fell
lest they be forgot.

I’ll weep for those I leave behind
but don’t you weep for me
for I’ll have joined my brethren
and be in good company.

In service of their country
all of their dues were paid
but there are empty ranks to fill
on the grand final parade.

If God wills that I should join them
I will accept my fate.
But I’d rather God delay awhile,
as the fallen kindly wait.”

B J Lewis

War Poetry

Join me, please.

I was riding home today after a middle distance bicycle ride, tired and a bit out of shape when I started counting cars, America - foreign, American - foreign. It occurred to me if only a small percentage of these people, the people who can afford more than a used clunker, bought American there would be no problems in one of our largest industries today. And lots of people would have a job and lots of businesses would be OK.

So I started giving thumbs up for American and thumbs down for foreign. Hard to distinguish which foreign car is made here, but no need I am a bit of a hard core American when it comes to cars. My ‘55′ Chevy was my first love.

I’m sure the people thought me spastic, as my left hand thumb pointed up, then down, then up as cars drove by. Did anyone figure it out I wondered. Who is this nut! So if the whiners who lost the election can out of the blue protest taxes, can we not protest something that has been going on for years due to cheaper prices, but is having an insidious affect on our labor and on our industrial base?

So if you own foreign go to you nearest mirror and give yourself a thumbs down and if you own American and support all of us and America, a thumbs up is due and thank you. Take to the streets and express yourself.

Oh, and my bicycle is made in America too.

Made in America Sticker.

Buy American, support yourself.

Are we Happy?

It seems other nations, even those so called socialistic nations are happier than we are. Why does that surprise anyone? The problem with this type of question of happiness for Americans is most are not happy but will argue forever the opposing point of view. Why aren’t they happy? They always want more and they assume their present location, or one close by, affords them the best opportunity to get to point ‘happy.’

Since material well being is probably the biggest determinant of happiness, or at least the essential ingredient, then socialistic, humanitarian societies with safety nets and freedoms are way ahead of the dog eat dog world of most Americans. Insecurity does not equate to happiness.

This fellow challenges a fundamental premise of most Americans, desire and what they want in life.

“Psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness “synthetic happiness,” and he says it’s “every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”"

Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy? | Video on TED.com

Listening again to the above made me aware of why most Americans are unhappy.

“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.” Adam Smith

This quote is in video.