Month: November 2008

If anyone you know still asks you why he or she should vote for Obama over McCain, show them this video, from the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s documentary The Bush Years:

In ancient Rome, and at other times in human history, rulers displayed the heads of their enemies after they had been executed. It is a particularly barbaric practice, and one much opposed by those on the right who recite endlessly that Muslims are barbarians because a few extremists cut off the heads of captured Westerners. Yet, here was the President of the United States of America, supposedly the most advanced and moral society in the world, ordering the CIA to bring him the heads of our enemies on ice so he could gloat over them like some demented feudal baron.

Forget for a moment the torture, the unlawful detainment of prisoners (most of whom we detained after we paid bounties to unscrupulous Afghans and Pakistanis without any evidence of involvement in “enemy combatant” activities). Forget the violation of our civil rights by the NSA’s warrantless electronic surveillance, and the databases of potential “terrorists” filled with the names of antiwar group members compiled by law enforcement and the US military. Forget the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm and white phosphorus against Iraqi civilians. Forget the millions of Iraqi refugees displaced by Bush’s war. Forget the plans that Vice President Cheney ordered the Pentagon to prepare for a surprise nuclear attack against Iran. Forget all that.

Just think on this. We had a President who was, in effect, an unaccountable warlord, ordering the decapitation of his enemies. The “leader of the free world” was a man every bit as barbaric as the worst Islamic jihadist. And McCain would continue those same policies which Bush put in place. He jokes about bombing Iran, as if the murder of innocent Iranian civilians would be not only an instance of acceptable, “collateral damage” but the height of hilarity.

The Republicans chose George Bush. And they chose John McCain to continue what Bush started. McCain, a so-called man of “honor” who has sullied his reputation forever by running an even nastier negative ad hominem attack campaign against his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, than Bush and Karl Rove ran against John Kerry in 2004. I cannot imagine a more disgraceful act on Tuesday than to cast your ballot for John McCain, the nominee of a party who, while they controlled Congress, enabled the most corrupt, the most power mad, and the most barbaric President in our history.

Bush wasn’t just the “Decider” he was the “Decapitator” as well. And McCain hungers to be the “Mad Bomber” who wins the war on the noun “terror” by any means necessary, including the continuation of Bush’s criminal policy of pre-emptive, aggressive wars of the President’s (not the Congress’) choice. McCain, a man with no principles left after he tossed all of his aside in pursuit of his ambition for higher office.

We can’t afford another such person of low character to inhabit the Oval Office for the next four years. One has in his eight years in office disgraced our nation and brought it to the precipice of moral and economic ruin. Who knows what the next such person could do if we give him the opportunity?

Doug Schoen, who served as an adviser to Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000, wrote the following on April 16th:

As the underdog, Clinton’s positive message will not work unless she is able to undermine Obama’s candidacy…

…Hillary Clinton took an important step Monday toward winning the Democratic nomination by launching an ad targeting Barack Obama’s recent comments about working-class voters clinging to “guns or religion.”

Today, his message is different.

Stated simply, if the Democrats conclude that they have a mandate to implement their agenda without real consultation with the Republicans, as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island suggested in an interview with the New York Times last weekend, the country will be headed for trouble.

Real trouble.

All of you that thought I was being unreasonable in my vociferous opposition to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, take note. We’ve seen recent articles just like Schoen’s from Mark Penn and Bob Kerrey, and we will continue to read them from former members of Camp Clinton. The analysis isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. As Richard Reeves notes this morning, 2008 represents the fifth-pivot election in our nation’s history.

[Professor Akhil Reed] Amar believes that a significant inertia was produced after each of those pivot elections; the ideas that made presidents of Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan produced issues that kept their constituencies alive and well for years, even decades, after their own administrations.

And now 2008. The country is engaged in two unpopular and probably unwinnable wars, the economy is in dangerous decline, and civil liberties have been aggressively repressed by the Bush administration in the name of the war on terror.

Therein, historically, lies the strength of the candidacy of Barack Obama. Despite his obvious political talents, it is hard to imagine a young, black two-year senator rising toward the presidency if his Republican opponent could have preached the winning doctrine of peace, prosperity and low taxation.

But there is no peace. There is no prosperity. And, whether through taxes or borrowing, the voters are going to foot the bill for the misjudgments and mistakes of the last eight years. The next question, in Amar’s terms, is how solid a coalition and how many Democratic terms might follow an Obama victory — or, to be consistent, a Bush-Reagan defeat.

Pivot elections occur when one party reaches the stage of epic failure. That’s where we are now. FDR didn’t consult with Hooverites and Lincoln didn’t consult with secessionist Democrats. It’s our time, now, and the Doug Schoens of the world can decide whether they want to live in the 1990’s or the present.

The Director of Montgomery County’s Voter Services in Pennsylvania, Joseph R. Passarella, readily admits he is not prepared to comply with the order of a Federal Court to provide paper ballots to voters if electronic voting machines break down, despite a history of problems with the electronic voting machines in Pennsylvania and an expected record turnout at the polls this year.

[O]fficials do not have any concrete compliance plan in place at this time.

“We are just going to have to train on the fly,” said county voter services Director Joseph R. Passarella, noting that all but one of the county’s 18 poll worker training classes have been completed.

Simply placing a letter with detailed instructions on how to handle the situation in each poll’s box of Election Day supplies “would only cause more confusion,” said Passarella.

Also, there is no time to print additional individualized emergency ballots for each of the county’s 418 polling places, according to Passarella.

Even if there was time, all of the supply boxes for each poll “are packed and ready to go,” he said.

And you wonder why we have such crappy elections, ones which invite fraud, long lines and voter suppression. Just look at the incompetent and/or corrupt local officials who run our elections all across the country as if they were feudal barons subject to no law but their own whims. Isn’t it about time we had a single procedure in place across the country to insure that every vote was counted on paper ballots? It seems to work in Canada just fine. So why do we insist on having electronic voting machines that are prone to break down and consistently flip votes from one party’s candidates (Democratic) to the other party’s candidates (Republican) purchased from and operated by companies with deep ties to the Republican party?*

*Another rhetorical question, my friends.

Less of a bang than a whimper. Yawn.

Welcome back.

This week we’ll be starting an entirely new painting.  Sometimes you just need to shake things up.  For this cycle I’ll be leaving temporarily the realm of landscape paintings for something a little different.  The photo that I’ll be using is seen directly below.  It is part of the grille of a 1949 Packard automobile.

Seen in a vintage illustration directly below is the entire vehicle showing the grille in
context.  This particular design is interesting because it combines the narrow central Packard grille of earlier models with a wide lower grille typical of the late 40s.  Separated by painted bodywork are the headlights, also a design throwback.

I have begun with those all-important first brushstrokes.  Seen directly below is the current state of the painting.

That’s about it for now.  Next week I’ll have more progress to show you.  See you then.  As always, feel free to add photos of your own work in the comments section below.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

America was founded and existed for a short time without a president.  As we prepare to elect our next one it may be useful to look back to when we didn’t have one at all, and to the very limited role envisioned for it by its creators.

For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

I recently began reading Dana D. Nelson’s Bad for Democracy, and with the presidential election less than a week away the timing was great.  Her thesis is that we have developed a concept of “presidentialism” in which Americans largely forsake traditional notions of civic duty in exchange for a quadrennial vote for the head of the executive branch, with the expectation that the executive will obviate the need for further involvement.  Right now is an especially good time to reflect on what we expect from a president, and whether any of those expectations have been displaced from our own obligations.

As Nelson points out, America did not start with a president.  The Articles of Confederation were the founding documents of American government and they did not provide for one.  We existed as a nation without a president from their final ratification in 1781 until the Constitution replaced them in 1789.  Not a long time, obviously, but its life was cut short not by emergency (I don’t think Shays’ Rebellion represented an existential threat to the young nation) but at the urging of those in favor of an expanded central government.  She not only argues against the slowly expanding power of the president but even raises the provocative question of whether one is needed at all.  The immediate, sarcastic response is to ask if just such a thing has not already been the case the last few years, but behind such a flip answer is a real point:  What exactly has the president done over the last few years that has served us well?  Given the relentless corruption and incompetence it does not take much effort to make the case that a substantial diminution of the president’s role would at the very least limit the harm s/he can do.

While we are looking back at pre-Constitution America why not look at the role presidential advocates envisioned?  Nelson references Federalist #69, where Alexander Hamilton anticipates a president whose

authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies — all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.

That is in fact what happened, but the modest role described by Hamilton bears little resemblance to the exalted one we currently have.  It has evolved from commander in chief as a role to Commander-In-Chief as a title.  Reading the rest of the section makes it clear that Hamilton expected states to have standing militias commanded by governors but no standing army at the disposal of the president.  If we can ask if a president is even necessary we can ask if a standing army is as well.  Certainly in a time of economic crisis with no military threat on our borders it should be safe to ask if it is a luxury.  Historically America has kept a smaller active duty military during peacetime and raised the personnel necessary during war.  Why shouldn’t we say, let’s wind down Iraq, negotiate some kind of agreement in Afghanistan and reduce our military footprint?  At the moment we do not need ten times the soldiers we had a century ago.  If another country tries to invade there will be plenty of volunteers, have no worry.  And it will be that much less temptation for the White House.

These ideas might seem completely unrealistic or unworkable, but I think they are important to keep in mind.  If nothing else it would stretch the outer limits of debate for any discussion of how to undo the excesses of the president (and the presidency itself over time).  If we want to simply reject the theory of the unitary executive then we will roll back presidentialism to Reagan-era levels.  And of course if that is where the marker is set then the struggle happens in front of it.  Suggesting a larger curtailing, however, even back to the very proposal of a presidency, might just make us start thinking of new possibilities – and about exercising some of the muscles of the body politic that have perhaps begun to atrophy.  If we cannot just cast a quadrennial ballot for an ever more powerful ruler whom we expect to Take Care Of Everything we may start to engage in civic life in ways that quietly but democratically prune back the power of the executive branch.

Let’s take a look at the power of the Progressive Caucus in the House, and let’s make an assessment of how they might fare in an Obama administration. The first thing that pops to light is the high percentage of House committee chairs that are currently controlled by progressives.

George Miller (D-CA) Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee
Ed Markey (D-MA) Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
Barney Frank (D-MA)- Chairman of the Financial Services Committee
Bennie Thompson (D-MS)- Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee
Bob Brady (D-PA)- Chairman of the House Administration Committee
John Conyers (D-MI)- Chairman of the Judiciary Committee
Henry Waxman (D-CA)- Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee
Louis Slaughter (D-NY)- Chairwoman of the Rules Committee
Nydia Velaquez (D-NY)- Chairwoman of the Small Business Committee
Bob Filner (D-CA)- Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee
Charlie Rangel (D-NY)- Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee

There is a small chance that George Miller might be offered the position of Secretary of Education. Rep. Miller is a close ally of Nancy Pelosi and she might be able to secure him that spot. There is also a decent chance that Nydia Velaquez might get some consideration for the position of head of the Small Business Administration. Other than that, I don’t see many prospects for these chairpeople getting promotions into the Obama administration. On the whole, that’s okay, because they have will have more clout where they are. Here are some other progressives that could have some influence in an Obama administration.

In 2011, either Neil Abercrombie (HI-01) or Mazie Hirono (HI-2) will have a good shot of replacing the centrist porkmeister, Senator Dan Inouye. Jesse Jackson Jr. could replace Barack Obama as one of the U.S. Senators from Illinois. He will also get consideration as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Rep. John Lewis (GA-5) could get a position in the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department. Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL) might get full voting rights as a representative of the District of Columbia, or she could become the Secretary of Transportation. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9) could become Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate. And Tom Udall will become a U.S. Senator from New Mexico.

That’s not a whole lot to look forward to as far as House progressives moving into positions of increased influence, but it’s not all bad, either.

Here are some other progressive possibilities in an Obama administration:

Interior Secretary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Labor Secretary: Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

I know that it is fairly thin gruel, but it will help if we get Jeff Merkley, Al Franken, and Tom Udall elected to the Senate.

For now, this looks to be all the spoils we can realistically expect.