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I hate getting up early in the morning. I didn’t like it when I was in school. I didn’t like it when my children were young. I didn’t like it when I was working. I certainly don’t like it now. Every now and then I have to make an exception. Today was one of those days. There was a dog walk to go to.
I belong to a meet up group for Great Danes. We have gone to dog parks on previous meet-ups but there are enough irresponsible idiots out there with dogs that run wild to make those situations unattractive and potentially dangerous. Instead, we meet at a public park and take our dogs out for a long walk. Works for everyone. Most Danes love the exercise and all the new smells. Mine just want to be first in the walk line. Forget about smelling everything.
We got everybody ready and hopped in the truck, the Stinky Dog Truck as the wife likes to call it. Even though we don’t go a lot of places, they remember who goes first and where to sit when it is time to go. Hello Kitty jumps in the rear cab followed by Sophia. Sophia cannot go first because she somehow cannot remember how to jump up into the truck but she can follow Kitty once Kitty does it. Then that door gets closed and Stoopid jumps up front and sits with me since she is my dog. Pack leadership has its privileges.
I hadn’t been to Brack in a long time. It is about ten miles from my house so it’s not in my usual circle of places to visit. I walk all three of them together 4 or 5 times a week closer to home so this 2 mile walk was no big deal. We piled out and got leashed up. Everyone has their own leash to match their collar color. It was cold but not freezing. I drank my morning Diet Mountain Dew as we waited to walk and I got re-acquainted with the few folks I remembered from past walks. I had not walked with the group for a while due to a number of different issues that have all been solved, including how to walk with three dogs at once. It took some time to work it out. The daily walk around our local outdoor shopping mall helped smooth the kinks out.
It was a 30 minute walk through the barren woods on a paved trail. The three did not have any dog issues or any problems with anyone on the walk but they did not grasp the concept that it was not a race. I must have jerked on that communal leash 100 times to get them to slow down to little avail. I finally just stopped and let a bunch of other folks walk past and then walked real slow before they got the message. They got in plenty of butt-sniffs and tail whips afterwards and got a treat for their trouble.
All told there were 35 Danes present and a collection of other big dogs that tag along when we have these outings. My favorite is an Irish Wolfhound named Cloe that is as mellow as a dog can be. There was also a mastiff and a St Bernard there today. The Danes did not mind in the slightest. Mine were well behaved except for the tug-of-war part with the pack leader (me). Everyone was sufficiently chilled out for the ride home. It was a good morning all told, almost worth getting up early for.
There is no better and more striking of a lesson in the hypocrisy of republican dogmas as when some republican officeholder or rightwing shill coughs up advice for others that they themselves never followed.I just discussed one such example in my last post but now comes word of an even better example of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Karl Rove aka Bush’s Brain deposited this little gem in Reader’s Digest in a piece where public figures offered Mr Obama advice: encourage dissent in your administration. Yep. You heard me right. Karl Rove advises Mr Obama to encourage dissent. More specifically, he said, “Plain speaking, straight talk, and dissent must be encouraged, with participants thoroughly prepared, ideas offered with deference for opposing views, and colleagues not subjected to self-serving leaks. The power of the Oval Office can cower critics and silence disagreement; the Chief Executive must labor hard to make it a place of debate and vigorous debate.”
Well, I think I have heard it all now. The person most responsible for advising the most secretive, the most politicized, the most divisive administration in the last 200+ years comes out and tells the next president to open the doors he never would open in his own house. What a load.
At first glance, it looks like Karl has seen the light. It looks like he is being the elder statesman and offering a wise tidbit of advice that he gleaned from years of public service. It appears that he has come to the realization that discussion brings out valuable ideas that would help shape the country for the better. If you believe that Karl has seen the light and is passing along his well-intentioned wisdom to the next president, I have some earthquake proof land in California to sell you. Please.
First of all, the fact that Reader’s Digest sought out the words of Karl Rove is suspect in the first place. I knew that RD leaned to the right on many things but trying to mainstream the most divisive political hack of the last 20 years is proof positive that rightwing arrogance knows no bounds. Feeding us Karl’s words to us in such a way as if everything he has done or said in the past eight years is forgotten and all is well and good is just unbelievable. Compare it to Fidel Castro telling us that Communism in Cuba was a mistake or Hitler proclaiming his love for Judaism or Gandhi saying let’s just shoot everybody. Sorry. I’m not buying it.
Karl is just laying another NeoCon trap for gullible followers to grab onto. You see, NeoCons do not like dissent. They pushed out every moderate in the republican ranks in the name of ideological purity or RINOism because they dared dissent from the party orthodoxy. Ask John McCain how Karl approves of republican dissent and you’ll see how hollow those words ring.
No, Karl WANTS dissent in the Obama Administration so him and his rightwing vultures can come along and pick apart the dissenting parties and keep any real progress from being made on issues that Karl (and his more ignorant half) could not tackle or solve when they were steering the ship of state. He wants the discord that brings paralysis that have marked previous Democratic administrations. I think he’ll be disappointed this time around.
Obama is going to encourage discussion about vital issues in order to come up with viable and far-reaching solutions but I doubt it will reach the level that Karl & Company hopes it will. Keeping your eye on the prize is one of Mr Obama’s better characteristics and the “dissent” that will come from the people he has surrounded himself with will make a better product, not a worse one.
Karl has, for too long, operated from his George Bush/NeoCon perspective where dissent deters the NeoCons from getting their way. They put forth an idea backed up by ideology and defended it from attack or even questioning with a “because I said so” attitude. Scientific reasoning where facts are presented and a theory or course of action is determined runs contrary to NeoCon philosophy. They already know everything so they need no discussion much less tolerating any dissent. It’s why the Bush Administration has so many major accomplishments under their belts.
The next four years will show America how a presidency is run where ideas are treated like gold, not dung. The best ideas come from a free exchange of those ideas, something that Karl may pay lip service to in Reader’s Digest but he never put into practice when he had the chance. In the dictionary of ideas next to the phrase “talk is cheap” is forever emblazoned a picture of Karl the NeoCon Rove. His burnishing of the tarnished image he so justly deserves from his actions during this administration will not be helped by a sanctimonious and self-serving piece in a rightwing publication.
Inspirational link: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/17/rove-obama-dissent/
Nothing is more disappointing to a loyal supporter of an elected candidate is when your guy begins backtracking from the promises made on the campaign trail. Well, there is one thing more irritating and that is when some rightwing flunky comes out and calls for your candidate to break a campaign promise. It’s especially irritating when you can see that the flunky is nothing more than a shill for vested interests and lacks a fundamental grasp of the problem, We have that now with Froma Harrop.
Less than two weeks after the election of Barack Obama to the White House, Ms Harrop used her syndicated column to call for Mr Obama to break one of his promises calling the promise he made to union workers disturbing and undemocratic. The issue in question here is in the form of a piece of proposed legislation entitled the Employee Free Choice Act. Mr Obama supports it and anti-labor forces (along with their shills) do not. The reasons are pretty clear why big business fears this legislation: it levels the playing field when it comes to deciding whether to form a union.
As things stand now, the field is sharply tilted in favor of businesses. After two eight-year pro-business presidential administrations, the rules governing union formation and elections have been sharply curtailed and slanted to the business side. The EFCA is the response to that tilt.
In short, the EFCA allows workers to sign a card and if more than 50% of a workforce signs up then the union is authorized to represent the workforce at that site or company. It bypasses the traditional secret ballot method and with good reason: the stumbling blocks placed in front of an election of a representing union are pretty formidable and subject to manipulation by the businesses involved. In other words, the deck is stacked against the union organizers. Free and fair elections to determine whether a union should come in and represent a workforce are rare to non-existent. The rules established over the past four decades have made sure of that.
What blows my mind is now the rightwing shills are preaching the virtues of the secret ballot as opposed to the card check after waging war against that very secret ballot since, well, forever. The rules, as they are applied now, give businesses a number of opportunities to over-influence that proposed vote including intimidating workers while on the job, firing pro-union workers, and any number of other tactics that, however illegal or legally shady, are rarely punished by governmental powers. It shows you how much they all fear an abused workforce just standing up and saying, “Count me in the union!” and signing a union card. If these businesses are so in favor of the secret ballot, they should propose to remove all the stumbling blocks to those elections and stop harassing or bullying workers who may want to join a union. They have not and thus the reason for the EFCA. In essence, it allows a worker to cast a ballot before the polls open just like early voting does in presidential elections.
We would all like to live in a society where businesses are benevolent to their workforces without being coerced to and where the safety and well-being of that workforce comes before, and not in place of, the worship of the all-mighty dollar. Some businesses manage quite well without a union but most do not. The worst go out of business altogether but those that survive do so on the backs of their workers and passage of the EFCA would make their workforces’ prospects for a better future a bit brighter. Who in their right mind is against that? Well, those in their rightwing mind, as Ms Harrop’s rant will testify.
Mr Obama should stick by his union supporters and support the EFCA so the playing field for middle class and poor workers can come back to level. If you have any reason to think that this would be a disaster for businesses all you have to do is look around you right now and see what a free market, unrestrained, unregulated workplace without union influence has done to the economy. Time for some common sense rules for everybody.
Influential link: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/
2008/11/unions_creepy_push_against_sec.html
(I split the link because it goofed with the layout of the column…)
Howard Dean is a guy that most people associate with an ill-timed scream and a failed presidential bid. Not me. In my opinion, Howard Dean is the quiet, unsung hero of 21st Century Democrats. I give Howard Dean credit for one of the most stunning transitions of political power in our history. His vision, borne from a decade as a governor of a small Northeastern state, saw a Democratic Party viable all over the United States, not just along the West Coast, the Northeast, and a few places in the Midwest. The election of 2008 saw that vision come to fruition.
Better than anyone, Howard Dean understood that Democrats had to go back to their roots. They had to reach out to the people that left the party in the 1970s and 1980s but who still shared our values. They had to convince those people that their future had a home in the Democratic Party, that if they wanted a better life, a better job, a better America, that the Democratic Party was their best hope for that to come true. Furthermore, they had to get their base moving and capture the next generation of our youth and persuade them that Democrats understood them and wanted the change they wanted, change that the Republicans paid a lot of lip service to but failed to deliver in a meaningful way. Democrats got the message loud and clear. The credit goes to Howard Dean.
His 50 state strategy was roundly pooh-poohed after he took over the DNC. Most people looked at Dean as a successful but quiet little governor and a guy who got too big for his britches in running for president. They bought into the ridicule that the media heaped on him after his Internet driven campaign faltered and ground to a halt under the wheels of a Kerry machine. I think they almost looked at him the way we look at boxers who retire then un-retire to come back for one last shot at glory, a shot that never goes well. Howard Dean fooled them. He fooled them all.
Howard Dean had his ear to the ground and heard rumblings among the so-called (inaccurately) center-right nation that things were not going as promised. The needs of the corporate bosses and their favored minions were humming right along attended to by the crony capitalist cabal ensconced in Washington but the people, the very people who helped build those corporations were suffering. Their needs were being ignored because the NeoCon crowd had other issues, non-people issues, to deal with. The time was ripe to strike.
Howard Dean read his history well and knew that a party that appealed to the people and intended to serve the people and deal effectively with their problems would get more traction than a party based on ideological grounds. This was a lesson forgotten by the Democrats after the success of LBJ’s Great Society. Howard Dean brought it back in a big way. The party bosses fought him tooth and nail until they saw the success of his approach in the 2006 election. For a Democratic Party that was alternatively described as dead or dying, this was a major surprise. It was no surprise to those Democrats who suffered in silence in those red states where they had been ignored and passed over for a generation. They still believed in the power of the people but they had no support. Howard Dean gave them that support. They gave him a victory.
That victory was multiplied in 2008 by a re-energized Democratic base that saw the possibility of an end to the NeoCon dominated political landscape and the destructive policies of George Bush aka Chimpy McFlightpants. The candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton assisted in that end because they took their historic battle to every state in the country and unwittingly confirmed what Howard Dean had been saying all along: no state is unimportant when you are trying to talk to the American people.
So, here’s to Howard Dean, the architect of the 50-state strategy. May he always be remembered as the guy who resuscitated a dying Democratic Party and brought them back to being a party of the people. I guess we just needed a real life doctor (like Howard Dean) to actually do for the country what he did in private practice.
Thanks.
inspirational link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090105/berman/single
In what can only be described as rewriting history in a most cynical way, George Bush and Karl Rove are at it again this time with the legacy of the George Bush administration as the target. Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and numerous others are hard at work distorting, manipulating, and covering up the history that they created over the last eight years. They hope that their most recent comments about the events that have nearly destroyed this republic over the last two terms will be the ones that the American public will remember in the long run. I hope the public will remember ALL of what they said so that history can judge them for the liars they are.
Bush is doing a series of “exit interviews” where he hopes to gloss over, prevaricate and set the record straight on his eight years as the Leader of The Free World. Karl Rove is using his position at Fox News to accomplish the same thing. Other senior advisors are offering up their distorted perceptions of what actually happened to our country in a devious attempt to corrupt the actuality of events and the destructive NeoCon philosophy that led the people in power to take the ideological steps they did; steps that were ultimately disastrous in result and wide spread in their effects.
One of the Bush Legacy Lies being propagated is the one where everyone says that we would not have invaded Iraq had we had better intelligence about Saddam’s true intents and whether he had WMDs or nuclear weapons. What a load. Between the inspectors and the backchannel intel that Iraqi insiders were feeding to our intelligence network, we knew full well that those weapons were nowhere to be found. The Bush people doctored the evidence to eliminate all those references and left so-called intel from idiots like Curveball as the justification for our actions after 9/11. Anything Bush says that is contrary to those truths is just a flatout lie.
One wonders why Saddam said he had them when American intelligence knew that those weapons and the capability to make those weapons were destroyed back in the Gulf War in the early 1990s if you forget about the eight year war that Saddam waged with Iran. This war wiped out a generation of Iraq’s youth and crippled those youth who survived. Saddam’s fear of Iranian military might led him down that path of claiming to have WMDs and American intelligence knew that. Somehow, those reports never made it to Bush’s desk and, if they did, they were promptly ignored as not fitting in with current NeoCon dictums about the tin horn dictator we created but lost control over. Thoes dictums stated that Saddam had to go so the NeoCon Democracy Project could go forward. We all see how well that turned out.
If we remember just one Bush Legacy Lie above all others it should be this one. The War in Iraq should be the real legacy of the Bush years and a reminder never to buy into arrogance of American military power theory that has dictated our foreign (and domestic) policy since the beginning of Bush’s first term. So much for the ‘humble’ foreign policy that he promised us while campaigning for the job back in 2000.
Links:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/02/legacy-project/
This blog has been a long time coming. For the past dozen or so years I have been posting on various political forums but I have come to the conclusion that very little is gained by exchanging views with most posters. Lately, the haters have come to rule many of my previous hangouts so I have hung up my rhetorical boots in favor of expressing my opinion on items of interest here on this blog. Some of my dearest friends will be stopping by to offer up their opinions in the near future but for right now this will just be my place to vent and pontificate. Enjoy the ride.
Black & White and Cardinal Red All Over 