Terry McKenna's Open Salon Blog

Oh No! Obama Is In Trouble! !!!

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:05:10 -0400

Oh No, Obama Is In Trouble

The press is alive with talk of scandal. The right is giddy with joy. The left is collapsing into self doubt.

Three scandals at once! Oh no!

To all this I suggest we all take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

For conservatives, really, do you think this will last till 2016? Even till 2014? And you’ll never impeach on this, sorry, these so called scandals are nothing compared to Watergate (nor to Iran-Contra!)

For liberals I suggest you buck up. Remember that all presidencies are considered failures when considered up close - and all second terms worse than the first (or don’t you remember Clinton’s second term!) Reagan’s second term was troubled. Of course Bush II’s second term was no worse that the first, since his entire misbegotten presidency was rotten through and through.

Let’s examine the Benghazi attack. However it was described when it happened, unless the president caused it or could have prevented it, all that happened was that the president danced around the word terrorism - and all because he was in an election campaign. Republicans thought that if they could pin a terror attack on the president that they might win the White House. But Mitt Romney was a dud, and it is unlikely that the Benghazi attack, however described, would have lifted his weak candidacy. So this remains a mountain over a mole hill.

There remains a troubling whisper about whether US forces could have intervened. But if you read all of the accounts, it looks like there was an effort to have the Libyans respond with air power. And remember, Libya and the US are not at war, so it is not as if we can just launch a mission on their property. Nope, we can’t.

This IRS matter may be more troubling, but this is far from targeted tax audits. It seems many groups were scrutinized carefully. Remember, this was an effort to secure tax exempt status, and the IRS had every reason to scrutinize groups with political sounding names. And in the end, most groups were awarded tax exempt status, so little harm was done. Does anyone think that the president ordered this? Yes, senior IRS officials likely knew this earlier than stated, but at best we have a cover up of an embarrassment. It will be sorted out, but I doubt Obama will be tarnished by this one.

The third scandal is one that means even less - but because it concerns reporters, has excited the media even more. This is the flap over the justice department subpoenaing Associated Press telephone records. The press is furious because if the Justice Department starts to investigate leaks, this will dry up news sources that reporters rely on. By the way, Republicans normally support the investigation of leaks, but since this involves Obama, now its a bad thing.

So in the end all we have is controversy, not scandal.

Will the president survive? Yes.

He will be damaged, but in the end, second terms are always a failure.

So let that deep breath out slowly!

Gridlock, the Long Tail of Slavery

Sat, 11 May 2013 16:05:15 -0400

Yes, the gridlock between so called small government conservatives on the one hand and liberal tax and spenders on the other is not new - it is not even a 20th century creation; the split goes back to our founding.

Stay with me on this one. Though we didn’t have liberals in 1789, we had folks who believed government should take an active role in the economy. One such fellow was Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, and a believer is a strong national bank and a believer in government encouragement of manufacturing. I count modern liberals as the intellectual heirs of Alexander Hamilton.

I thought about this as I pondered the notion that people get the government they deserve. This phase has appeared in many forms and been attributed to various thinkers from Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin to H.L. Mencken. Whoever actually said it, it suggests something that sounds true. Here is Mencken’s version: “"People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard." Sounds right, doesn’t it?

When I was a young man, I thought of the USSR as an example of socio-economic Karma. Yet when you think about it, it seems odd that a people who have suffered so much over their long history would continue to be beset with bad government, even after the fall of communism, an event that was thought of as a societal do-over. Still, after a chaotic decade following the collapse of communism, Russia has reverted to authoritarian rule. Russians may be able to travel, and may be more prosperous now, but if you dare speak out against the current leader (Vladimir Putin) you risk everything.

Until recently I favored a view of our own government that I learned from grade school civics; thus my belief that our government was uniquely just and virtuous, that we never have operated from bad motives and have engaged in no misdeeds. For me, the Reagan era forced me to reconsider my beliefs (as if Vietnam wasn’t enough) but even as I recognized our failures, it never dawned on my that we too had the government that we deserved.

Our original sin was slavery.

Slavery dominated the Southern colonies when we broke free of Britain. In order to make a nation, Northern states accepted a compromise that may have been necessary, but which ultimately masked differences that remain unresolved. While it is true that slavery existed in the Northern states too, nonetheless, slavery did not have the corrupting influence that it had in the South.

Having bound ourselves to the slaveholders, we let them have it both ways. Southern states could count slaves as people (at a discount) when it came time to set the number of representatives in Congress, yet these same slaves had no rights at all. As our nation settled into representative government, the slave states usually held Congress in near gridlock, so much so that they were able to push through a gag rule in the House. John Quincy Adams labored mightily to get around this, though he ultimately failed.

Slaveholders held values that were at odds with the rest of America. The planter class lived in relative self sufficiency, growing most of their food, and making much of what they needed. The rest of America depended on a vigorous internal trade as well as on international markets. And when new land was opened up, the new townships included land set aside for public schools. By the first decades of the 19th century, northerners wanted canals to improve transport between the newly opened west and the eastern seaboard. With opposition from Southerners and a key veto by president Monroe, canals became a state matter. Luckily, funding was found anyway and over time, canals were built in most Northern states. Eventually railroad took their place, and these two remained state supported (usually public-private partnerships).

Thus it was that Northerners wanted tariffs, internal improvements and an active government. It was only the South that made a fetish of small government. So, saddled with the slaveholders, we built an ineffective government that had too many mechanisms for legislation to be stopped. And after a brief era of relatively progressive government during the civil war, we retreated to a staid conservatism as the Southern states re-acclimated to union, and gradually rebuilt the old slave economy, with chattel slaves replaced by virtual slaves - sharecroppers.

The slaveholder (sharecropping) economy survived until very recently, with sharecropping remaining viable until the post WW2 era when farming mechanized and sharecroppers were forced off the land. The Southern politicians who switched parties in the 1960s held almost the very same values as the planters of 1800. The successive two generations of Southern Republicans hold those values still.

Syria, Haven't We Heard This All Before?

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:04:19 -0400

Haven’t We Heard This All Before?

Let me get this right.

John McCain wants us to enforce a no fly zone and to arm the Syrian rebels? I’m ok with that if he and his follow Senators fly the planes and their rich friends pay for it.

Yes, I know that’s absurd, but so is his notion that we can just breeze into Syria like Superman and help the good guys.

It always sounds easy if you don’t have to do it or pay for it. David Pryce-Jones (writing in the National Review) condemns Obama for offering words only. He’s right that Obama is offering words, but he won’t tell us why (or maybe he really thinks Obama is a coward). The real cowards are old gas bags like McCain or Pryce-Jones who can’t admit to themselves that we don’t live in a world where we can shut the natives up if we send in a bunch of marines. We have spent 60 some years since WW2 trying to tell others how to behave, and mostly failed. Backing the dictator failed, so did aiding the rebels. And now, after our big blunder in Iraq (remember that Saddam also gassed his people) the rest of the world is none too keen to join us in a bloody battle between Syrian ethnic minorities (protected by Assad) and the rebels, many of whom are radical Muslims.

So the president has said meaningless words again. That’s ok, a president must keep everyone happy, or at least keep them quite, so by pretending that we have the power to influence world affairs, Obama limits conservative criticism; but by not sending in American forces, he keeps the anti-war left quite (or quieter). Had Obama told us the truth at the start, now almost 2 years ago, he would have lost his re-election and we’d have a Republican boob in the White House. By the way, all presidents hide some of their beliefs - they have too.

No fly zones sound so easy, and this tactic may have worked in Libya, but Syria is supposed to have better air defenses. Do they? Damned if I know, but even a no-fly zone has its costs in maintenance and morale. (It wears down the pilots and planes). And then we have the objective: what is it? We pretty much let Libya alone while we did our no fly zone. Our involvement ended quickly, and now Libya seems to be a mess, but their mess is theirs alone. A previous no-fly zone was in Iraq. Surely you remember Iraq. That involvement led to a stalemate and international pressure to end our sanctions - remember all the wailing about the children? So we went to war in 2003 and that turned our great didn’t it! Ok, irony.

Vali Nasr (Brookings Institution) laments America’s failure to use its soft power. But soft power takes time - it is too late to do any good in Syria. And whenever gas bags like Mr. Nasr tell us what we could do, I want to ask them, but have you seen our Congress. Soft power in the middle east ultimately means aid to muslims, and that get wrapped up in complaints about terrorism. (Or haven’t you heard the Israeli lobby). Hard power is another matter. We have the time to use is, but who do we arm? And when they get our weapons, how long will it take before we see these same weapons used against us? Oh, if we need to train them, the Syrians learn our tactics too.

And why should we get involved anyway? Syria is not a direct or indirect threat to us. At worst, they may become a locus for more terrorism, but as it turns out, as long as we remain involved in the middle east and north Africa, we will inspire angry young terrorists to fight against us.

Sometimes history must play itself out. This happened in Europe after the Reformation, as Northern Europe tore itself apart. It happened in Asia and Africa after the end of colonialism - where the settling continues, especially in Africa. The same process is occurring in the middle east.

Let’s leave Syria alone. If Israel and Jordan need help to stop border incursions, or if Jordan and Turkey need help with refugees, we can help with that, but as for the rest, sorry, the Syrians are not mine to protect.

We Lost the GWOT, Now What!

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:04:08 -0400

We Lost the GWOT, Now What!

Nearly twelve years after September 11, 2011, two failed wars, the expenditure of maybe two trillion borrowed dollars, and a supposedly secret drone war, we ended up with a Terror Attack anyway.

Can we at least get a T-Shirt saying, “I spent $Trillions to lose the GWOT, and all I got was this T-Shirt?”

Did we lose it? Yes we did. We are still fighting, but whatever we might accomplish, we won’t prevent angry young Muslims from wanting to kills Americans. For you see, we were doing exactly the wrong thing. There was never any hope of killing every actual and potential terrorist, but over time young men age and sometimes mellow. And if we had kept the peace, the older ones would have moved on, and we would have manufactured far fewer new ones.

Angering Muslims is inevitable, after all, our policies in the middle east favor Israel, and tyranny. Our favoring Israel is natural for us. Jews are part of what we Americans have been, almost from our creation. To anyone who thinks we don’t favor tyrants, please recheck your facts. Remember, Saddam Hussein was ours before he wasn’t. And when I remind us that we tilt toward Israel (and yes, we do) I am not saying that we should tilt the other way, but we ought to remember that policies have consequences. For example, in the aftermath of the collapse of the old Soviet Union, we added several former Soviet satellites to NATO. However useful this may have seemed (personally, I think it was misguided policy) once added, these nations became more reasons for Russia to believe that we wanted the worst for them. We could have let the new Russia gradually recover, and at least wait and see how they behaved toward Poland et al; instead we rubbed their noses in it. So when the corrupt state of Georgia eventually allied itself with us, it got more or less what WE deserved. We were never in a position to defend isolated Georgia. It was a really really bad (stupid?) idea to pretend that we could.

Today the news is that the terror attack in Boston was the work of two legal immigrants, Chechin refugees and two brothers. The boys appear to have been alienated, but even if they were not, they had the opportunity to see Americans express distaste for Islam and Muslims - remember the flack from the right over the “World Trade Center Mosque.” Even if today’s news turns out to be wrong, if we want to prevent a future attack, we can see that our next move is not more drone strikes, nor another hot war in Central Asia. And as far as Iran is concerned, we may label them a terrorist nation, but making war against them is out of the question.

Drone strike allows our military to run a war on the cheap. Our generals are much like little boys playing army. No one gets hurt, at least no Americans get hurt. But lots of innocent Muslims have been killed, and many of their family and friends will hate us forever. Drones are a terrible idea, for it turns out that the attacks have created a climate where, even when deaths are not the result of our drones, the locals will believe that they are. This is already occurring in Pakistan. Even outside of Pakistan and Yemen, the blood of Muslims is boiling.

So we may have reaped what we have sown.

PS don’t take me wrong. What happened in Boston is terrible and should never happen - but if we mistakenly interpret what happened as the result of folks hating our freedom, we will never learn anything.

Melissa Harris Perry is Right!

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 09:04:58 -0400

Melissa Harris-Perry is Right!

Your kids do belong to all of us.

They also are still your kids, by the way, but if they fuck up, we all end up paying the bill (and when they do well, we gain from their prosperity and good citizenship).

If you missed it, Ms. Harris-Perry goaded the political right into giving MSNBC a bunch of free publicity. Knowing the right’s tactic of taking things out of context, she used the word collective in one of her sentences. So what was ultimately an innocent message was turned into a hot video, or a series of hot videos and web links as the MSNBC promo, and the right wing reaction, were picked up and regurgitated.

And let’s stop pretending that the right and left use the same tactics. They don’t. Left wing conversations (in the media) are, however extreme, real exchanges. But on the right, media conversations are pretenses. A gaggle assemble on a TV set (or radio studio) and they enjoy themselves making witty remarks about a liberal outrage, or about an event of no significance that the right wishes to use as an example to make some point that has no meaning but to their crowd. They never engage in anything remotely analytical; the tone of these exchanges is more or less golly gee. This time, they were taken and Melissa’s promo was pushed far beyond the scope of the MSNBC audience.

Oh, you think she was wrong?

Ok, try this. You are in Alabama (or Texas or Mississippi) on a Friday night in the fall. (By the way, you are also a fat goober, who listens to Rush while working on cars in a nearby auto repair shop – mean, sure, but too fucking bad.) You and everybody else in town are at the local football stadium to see a game between your hometown favorites and a nearby rival. You and the rest of the crowd admire your strong young football players, and the pretty cheerleaders. When the game is over, if your team won, you beam with pride for YOUR boys. If they lost, you share the sting of defeat.

And if you attend a high school graduation in any town small enough that you know many of the kids who are graduating (from sports or scouts, or even from church) you bask too as you son or daughter enjoys the warm feelings passed to all the kids by the assembled parents, grandparents, other guests and even a few dignitaries.

Community pride is a commonplace and very American matter. So is a community’s gathering together after a disaster – and asking for help from the rest of us. Public schools may have their problems, but their problems are very much a reflection of who attends these schools. So poor kids living among violence also have shitty schools – they have shitty lives too.

So when they mock Melissa, they really mock us – our good-natured belief that we all still might have a chance - that belief is no longer true. Melissa is more or less reminding us that we need to do something about it. And we do. Argue the details, but to argue against the concept is to dismiss what has been best about America.

Postscript: during the civil war, the Republicans took power as the slaveholding south left the Union. Left to their own desires, Republicans voted for land grant colleges, the Homestead Act and the transcontinental railroad. These were good ideas and were part of what allowed America to expand and become a powerful and prosperous continental nation that grew more food than it could eat, and produced more industrial goods than it could use (so it sold to the world).

Today’s Republicans have no such big ideas, nor any genuine commitment to American prosperity.