Month: October 2011

Dear Readers:

Since I started this blog in early 2005, I have had one overriding focus. The GOP is the problem. The GOP was ruining our country on every level, and things have gotten progressively worse at every point along the way. The Great Awakening of the progressives in this country, represented by the emergence of the blogosphere, has accomplished a great many things. We helped win back Congress in 2006 and elect the first black president in 2008. We’ve provided a counterweight to the corporate media and even groomed a few voices to be participants in the corporate media. In many ways things have improved. More importantly, things could have been much, much worse. Just contemplate a McCain-Palin administration, for example.

But the condition of our country is still unacceptable, and it’s still almost entirely the fault of Republicans. Republican-appointed judges legalized unlimited and unaccountable corporate funding of campaigns. Republicans created so much fear around Guantanamo Bay that Congress decided to forbid the president from closing the facility, moving the prisoners to a maximum-security prison in the United States, or even putting them on trial in civilian courts. They’ve basically undermined our system of justice. Under Republican leadership, Wall Street was allowed to ruin the economy and countless people’s lives, and then the Republicans refused to support the president’s efforts to fix the problem. They almost unanimously opposed the Stimulus Bill, negotiating its size down to an inadequate amount. They refuse all efforts to create jobs, going so far now as to try to organize a hiring freeze. Republicans unanimously opposed the health care reforms. They nearly-unanimously opposed the Wall Street reforms. They killed efforts to deal with climate change. They’re engaged in a nationwide voter suppression effort that mainly disenfranchises blacks. They demonize Latinos at every opportunity. It’s gotten so bad that they have a presidential candidate talking about electrocuting border-crossers. The same candidate has openly opposed Muslims’ right to build their own centers of worship and has promised repeatedly not to employ any Muslims in his administration. Republicans continue to demonize gays and have opposed every bit of progress made for gay rights under Obama’s administration. They’re engaged in a relentless war on women and children.

Before Obama was even inaugurated, the Republicans decided on a plan of maximum obstruction unlike anything seen since the lead-up to the Civil War. And that, you know, ended in civil war. As a result of Republican influence, ideology, and action, our electoral system is worse than ever and our federal government is paralyzed.

You can, of course, blame the Democrats for some of this. They aren’t the best organization in the world. And there are many problems facing this country in which the Democratic Party is fully complicit. I include the president in that criticism. It may seem like I have blinders on sometimes, where I only see what’s wrong with the other side. If you pay closer attention, you’ll notice that I do not fail to be critical of the president or the Democrats when I think they deserve it. But my focus remains the same as it was when I got started as a blogger. The GOP is the problem. Upset about the war on drugs? The GOP is worse, and this administration finally did away with crack/cocaine sentencing disparity. Upset that the health care bill didn’t include a public option? Every Republican candidate for president has pledged to destroy the health care reforms. Upset that the Dodd-Frank bill wasn’t stronger? Only three Republican senators voted to do any Wall Street reforms at all.

Our country used to work. It had its problems, but it limped along. Now it’s so dysfunctional that we lost our AAA credit rating. And, in almost every case, the Republicans hold the primary blame. In every case, they’re on the wrong side of the issues and are pushing us in the wrong direction.

So, that’s why I blog, and that’s why I blog the way I do. I know I don’t see eye-to-eye with a lot of progressives, and I feel like the progressive blogosphere kind of splintered and lost focus on the big picture after Obama was elected. I hope my perspective isn’t too unique, but it seems to be a bit unusual. If you value my perspective please consider making a donation towards the upkeep of the Frog Pond. I can only continue to blog through the support of people like you. We had a very rough summer financially, and we’re still trying to recover. Anything you give will be immensely appreciated.

Best,

BooMan

Hello again painting fans.

This week I’ll be continuing with the painting of the Cape May, New Jersey shingle style house. It is seen in the photo directly below. (I’m using my usual acrylic paints on an 8×8 inch canvas.)

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I’ve addressed a number of details for this week’s installment.  Note that the windows now have the details that give the house much of its character.  These include the diagonal sections on the upper windows.  Out in front, the bushes have received highlights, providing definition and a 3 dimensional quality.  Highlights have been added to the grassy areas and bush far to the rear.  Finally, the sidewalk has received some blue for a more varied surface.

The current and final state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

That’s about it for now. Next week I’ll have an entirely new painting 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.

I don’t know why the administration decided to announce the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq on a Friday when hardly anyone will notice, but I am very pleased at the news. Not so, Lindsey Graham. I guess some people just like being wrong. If I were Graham, instead of criticizing the decision to leave Iraq, I’d pretend that it proves that the neo-cons were right all along. The truth is, we broke the country and now part of it is being occupied by Turkey. We couldn’t put Iraq back together again and now we’re leaving. Other than removing Saddam Hussein from power, our mission wasn’t successful on any level. Investing more lives and treasure isn’t going to make Lindsey Graham right. It’s not going to reduce Iran’s expanded influence. Nine years of futility is enough. Of all the things Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail, this was the most important to me. It’s a promise a lot of people thought he wouldn’t keep.

Mitt Romney says it’s a failure of leadership. He’s an idiot.

Some people are just ungracious:

Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi should have been killed in the early summer, former United Nations spokesman John Bolton said in the wake of his death on Thursday.

The Mad Dog of the Desert, as Ronald Reagan dubbed him, was killed in his hometown of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast the rebels announced…

…Bolton, a strident critic of the Obama administration, said the dictator should have been taken out in much earlier.

“If we had acted swiftly and decisively at the beginning of this thing instead of having it drag out for six months with a much higher toll in civilian deaths, we might have shattered Gadhafi’s government near the beginning of the conflict and brought it to a resolution sooner,” he told Fox News.

“It’s entirely appropriate that Gadhafi was killed this way but as symbolically important as it is, many of the big issues facing Libya remain.” Bolton warned though that some in Libya may now regard the tyrant as a martyr.

“This is certainly not the end of the struggle, it’s the end of Gadhafi – and that’s a good thing,” Bolton added.

To be fair, I made a similar argument in the spring. I argued that it would be risky to rely on the Libyan forces to remove Gaddafi because it would take many months to arm them up, that it would create a country filled with battle-scarred kids with a lot of weapons, and that prolonged conflict would create hard feelings that would be difficult to address. I think that the militias are going to be one of Libya’s biggest challenges. There was definitely a cost associated with doing this the slow way.

But there are many benefits, as well. It’s only fair to acknowledge them. First and foremost, it was much less expensive to restrict our military activities to air, naval, and intelligence assets. It’s also very important that the Libyans can claim this victory as their own, even if it was only possible because of NATO’s assistance. It was important to demonstrate that the U.S. can work with multilateral and international organizations like the United Nations, NATO, and the Arab League to accomplish specific and complicated goals. And the fact that we suffered no casualties is a major plus.

Finally, the president was able to maintain support for the mission for many months because of the small footprint and low budgetary impact of his strategy.

I recommended that the president not get directly involved in the Libyan civil war. I also believe his abused his power by not seeking Congressional authorization for the mission, which would have been forthcoming. And, I still remain concerned about how things will turn out in Libya. But the president smartly limited our role, showed patience, and now can rightfully take credit for the removal of one of America’s historic archenemies.

I’m gracious enough to give him credit, even as I am not happy about him ignoring the War Powers Resolution and remain worried about Libya’s capacity to end this war.

.

Was Muammar Gaddafi executed in custody? UN rights office wants to know

GENEVA — The United Nations Human Rights office called on Friday for a full investigation into the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and voiced concerns that he may have been executed.

Separate cellphone images showed a wounded and bloodied Gaddafi first alive and then later dead amidst a jostling crowd of anti-Gaddafi fighters after his capture in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about what happened exactly. There seem to be four or five different versions of how he died,” UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters Television in an interview.

“If you take these two videos together, they are rather disturbing because you see someone who has been captured alive and then you see the same person dead.”

ARRESTED ALIVE, KILLED LATER

It is a fundamental principle of international law that people accused of serious crimes should be tried if possible, he said. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in June for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief for crimes against humanity.

“Summary executions are strictly illegal under any circumstances. It’s different if someone is killed in combat. There was a civil war taking place in Libya. So if the person died as part of combat, that is a different issue and that is normally acceptable under the circumstances. But if something else has happened, if someone is captured and then deliberately killed, then that is a very serious matter,” Colville said.

Gaddafi was fatally wounded by a bullet in his intestines following his capture, according to a doctor who examined his body, amid conflicting accounts of how the fugitive former Libyan leader met his end at the end of an eight-month uprising against his 42-year rule.

“Gaddafi was arrested while he was alive but he was killed later. There was a bullet and that was the primary reason for his death, it penetrated his gut,” doctor Ibrahim Tika told Al Arabiya television. “Then there was another bullet in the head that went in and out of his head.”

International news headlines on Libya and Gaddafi’s death

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

I can’t say that I am an expert on Arkansas politics. What I know is that the state has remained friendlier to Democrats than the rest of the Deep South. Until last year, it enjoyed a special status, with a popular Democratic governor, two Democratic senators, and a Democrat-majority congressional delegation. In 2010, Sen. Blanche Lincoln barely survived a primary challenge and then was thumped out of office. Meanwhile, the Democrats lost two congressional seats and are poised to lose another next year. Maybe the legacy of the Clintons is starting to wear off.

It seems to me that the state has now started to behave like other Deep South states, which means that Democrats are at a major disadvantage. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) must be a little worried. He was fortunate in 2008. Because the Republicans expected Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination and to have major coattails in Arkansas, no Republicans filed to run against Pryor. His only opposition was from the Green Party. Pryor knows he won’t be so lucky in 2014. He also knows that President Obama is unlikely to do well in Arkansas next year. As a historical matter, the president’s party doesn’t do well in his sixth year in office, so Pryor had plenty of reasons to be concerned about his prospects when he faces the voters three years from now.

I understand his predicament, but I wonder if he has a good plan for weathering the storm. Part of his strategy is to maintain some distance from the president and from the national Democratic Party. That’s why he was one of just two Democrats (along with Joe Lieberman) who filibustered the president’s bill yesterday to fund teachers, police officers, and firefighters. Even if Pryor had supported the bill, it would have come up nine votes short of the magic sixty needed to pass anything in the Senate these days. So, essentially, it was a free vote for Pryor. In voting against ending debate, he did little more or less than pad his record of disloyalty. I guess he hopes this will help him somehow three years from now.

But I think he’s got it all wrong. If his state is generically inclined to support a conservative candidate, they need some reason to vote for a Democrat instead. Pryor can try to solve that problem by being very conservative himself, but then he has to distinguish himself on some issues or people will prefer the more conservative candidate to the lesser one. Where better to make that distinction than on economic populism. He can be socially conservative, like almost all Arkansas politicians, but simultaneously stand up for the little guy against the big New York banks and the East Coast elite. Here was a bill that put a small tax on millionaires to put more teachers in the classroom, and more firefighters and police officers on the beat. It seems like the perfect bill for someone like Pryor to support to demonstrate to the people of Arkansas why a Democrat is preferable to a Republican. And, yet, he voted against it.

Perhaps he is looking at polling that shows that stimulus spending is unpopular in his home state. Or, maybe, he’s seeing that the president is very unpopular in Arkansas, and he wants to maintain his distance. My argument against that is that it’s all relative. The worse the president polls in Arkansas, the harder Pryor will have to fight to be reelected. When the president is making an argument that can actually sell well in Arkansas, Pryor should hop on the bandwagon and push that argument as hard as he can. Poll results are affected by how the questions are worded, and even if stimulus spending doesn’t poll well in Arkansas, taxing millionaires to fund more teachers, firefighters, and police officers surely does. Sen. Pryor should be out there “wording” the debate in his own favor.

But, instead, he’s falling in line with the conservative narrative. For the life of me, I can’t see how that helps him.

Catching up on some pre-(municipal) election reading, and came across this nugget from ThinkProgress:

A ThinkProgress review of the media coverage of the last week of July found that the word “debt” was mentioned more than 7,000 times on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, and “unemployed” was only mentioned 75 times.

Yet now, things have changed… A ThinkProgress review of the same three networks between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16 finds that the word “debt” only netted 398 mentions, while “occupy” grabbed 1,278, Wall Street netted 2,378, and jobs got 2,738.

The ThinkProgress report credits the Occupy Wall Street movement and the broad public support it enjoys for shifting the narrative and focusing the media on unemployment, and there’s a lot of truth to that. But I suspect it’s a little more complicated. After all, this is not the first enormous left-of-center protest in this country. Just in the last decade, we’ve had dozens of medium-to-very large anti-war rallies, a number of other large one-off events, and multi-issue protests at seemingly every major party convention and political summit.

All of them, regardless of how their issues polled (and on issues like reproductive choice and the invasion of Iraq, the public was partly to largely on the protesters’ side), were treated dismissively by corporate media, just as OWS initially was.

The first catalyst for the shift in tone of the OWS coverage was several incidents of NYPD overreaction – but, again, preemptive arrests and cop thuggery have been standard operating procedure at big progressive protests for at least the last decade, and media usually looks the other way.

I suspect three things made a difference here: the sustained (and eventually expanded) nature of the OWS protests, their location a few dozen blocks from the headquarters of most of the country’s major TV networks, and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that Beltway politicians started responding to the protests and talking about jobs.

Our country’s political news corps is staggeringly myopic; if neither major party is talking about an issue, that issue disappears. Period. That’s why nobody was talking about jobs in August, and why everyone was talking about curtailing federal spending even though it wasn’t a high priority at all for most Americans.

The Obama White House also deserves credit (and I’ll grudgingly even extend that to Harry Reid) for continuing to talk about Obama’s jobs plan even after it got a DOA reception in Congress and a collective yawn from both the media and most of Obama’s base. The latter were suddenly too busy embracing a new movement that has conspicuously rejected the efforts of Democratic Party politicians and operatives to make common cause. OWS activists saw the co-optation of the early Tea Party efforts by the Republicans. They saw Democrats, led by Obama, allow the financial criminals who plunged tens of millions of Americans into misery not only skate free for their past crimes, but continue their amoral behavior unchecked. They want no part of the Democrats.

But they need them. Because without the continuing Capitol Hill focus on pieces of Obama’s jobs plan, and without the reaction by both Democratic and Republican elected officials to the protests, protesters wouldn’t have gotten the media critical mass they’ve achieved. Conversely, the Obama package would be just another Beltway squabble, tuned out by most Americans, without a very visible grass roots movement demanding that something meaningful be done. Obama needs the Occupy Movement, too, even though it’s not a reaction to his initiative.

The media narrative would not have shifted without both efforts reinforcing the other. Will it be a prelude to actual policy change? Not likely; the Republican House will block anything meaningful enough to accrue public credit to Obama in an election year. But the effort helps Obama’s political goals of identifying Republicans as the problem in time for 2012, just as the media coverage helps the protester goals (in the U.S., anyway – this is now a global movement) of undermining the legitimacy of any financial or political institutions that don’t address the real and immediate needs of what’s now known as The 99%.

For OWS, Obama and the Democrats, at least for the moment, aren’t the enemy; for Obama, neither are the protesters. They won’t work together, but they’re inadvertently helping each other anyway.

I literally know nothing more about our new Commerce Secretary than I learned in this article about his successful confirmation in the U.S. Senate today. I’ve never heard of him. I see he has sat on the board of directors at Walt Disney and Boeing. I don’t find that very endearing. I see he used to run Edison International, which is a major utility holding company. That’s not giving me a warm, fuzzy feeling. But then I read that he’s something of an environmentalist. He’s the co-founder of an organization called Natural Resources Defense Council. What can I learn about them?

The selection of [John Edgar] Bryson shows that Obama “has no intention of backing down on his job-killing war on affordable energy,” said Republican Sen. James Inhofe, one of Bryson’s fiercest opponents. Inhofe called the Natural Resources Defense Council “one of the most radical, left-wing, extreme environmental groups.”

Sen. Inhofe of Oklahoma was one of twenty-six Republicans to oppose Mr. Bryson’s confirmation. They didn’t care that Bryson was supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers.

The NRDC was co-founded in 1970 by John Adams, Gus Speth, John Bryson and a group of concerned law students and attorneys at the forefront of the environmental movement. The organization lobbies Congress and other public officials for a public policy that promotes conservation of the natural and built environment. The NRDC works against urban sprawl, pollution, and habitat destruction, and promotes actions to mitigate global warming and increase the use of renewable energy. It also sometimes files suit in federal court against corporations and government agencies for violations of the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. Other operations carried out by the NRDC include public education and sponsorship of scientific studies.

Imagine that. How did he rise up to run a major utility corporation? You mean you can provide people with energy without being an asshole?

Maybe he’s not such a bad pick to be Commerce Secretary after all.

Multiple-Choice Mitt isn’t giving the president any credit for the downfall of Moammar Gaddafi. This is in spite of the fact that Romney lost a friend on Pam Am Flight 103, and despite him having criticized Obama for doing too little (and also too much) to take Gaddafi down. There hasn’t been any substance to any of the five positions Romney has taken on the war in Libya. I think this is pretty accurate:

Writing in the American Conservative magazine, Daniel Larison observed at the time ”Romney seems unable to stake out a foreign policy position until after the Republican consensus has formed, and he then adapts himself to whatever that consensus happens to be…This does save him from the acrobatics required to maintain an anti-Obama position when Obama switches from restraint to starting a war, but it is just another reminder that Romney doesn’t hold foreign policy positions so much as he mimics those who do….For someone who is so fond of mocking Obama’s leadership or lack thereof, it is revealing that when Romney has to stake out a position one way or the other on a controversial question he is unable to show any leadership at all.”

I have some major concerns about Obama’s foreign policy and his record on civil liberties. But I at least can articulate what I think without waiting to hear what progressives are going to say.

Dear Readers:

Since I started this blog in early 2005, I have had one overriding focus. The GOP is the problem. The GOP was ruining our country on every level, and things have gotten progressively worse at every point along the way. The Great Awakening of the progressives in this country, represented by the emergence of the blogosphere, has accomplished a great many things. We helped win back Congress in 2006 and elect the first black president in 2008. We’ve provided a counterweight to the corporate media and even groomed a few voices to be participants in the corporate media. In many ways things have improved. More importantly, things could have been much, much worse. Just contemplate a McCain-Palin administration, for example.

But the condition of our country is still unacceptable, and it’s still almost entirely the fault of Republicans. Republican-appointed judges legalized unlimited and unaccountable corporate funding of campaigns. Republicans created so much fear around Guantanamo Bay that Congress decided to forbid the president from closing the facility, moving the prisoners to a maximum-security prison in the United States, or even putting them on trial in civilian courts. They’ve basically undermined our system of justice. Under Republican leadership, Wall Street was allowed to ruin the economy and countless people’s lives, and then the Republicans refused to support the president’s efforts to fix the problem. They almost unanimously opposed the Stimulus Bill, negotiating its size down to an inadequate amount. They refuse all efforts to create jobs, going so far now as to try to organize a hiring freeze. Republicans unanimously opposed the health care reforms. They nearly-unanimously opposed the Wall Street reforms. They killed efforts to deal with climate change. They’re engaged in a nationwide voter suppression effort that mainly disenfranchises blacks. They demonize Latinos at every opportunity. It’s gotten so bad that they have a presidential candidate talking about electrocuting border-crossers. The same candidate has openly opposed Muslims’ right to build their own centers of worship and has promised repeatedly not to employ any Muslims in his administration. Republicans continue to demonize gays and have opposed every bit of progress made for gay rights under Obama’s administration. They’re engaged in a relentless war on women and children.

Before Obama was even inaugurated, the Republicans decided on a plan of maximum obstruction unlike anything seen since the lead-up to the Civil War. And that, you know, ended in civil war. As a result of Republican influence, ideology, and action, our electoral system is worse than ever and our federal government is paralyzed.

You can, of course, blame the Democrats for some of this. They aren’t the best organization in the world. And there are many problems facing this country in which the Democratic Party is fully complicit. I include the president in that criticism. It may seem like I have blinders on sometimes, where I only see what’s wrong with the other side. If you pay closer attention, you’ll notice that I do not fail to be critical of the president or the Democrats when I think they deserve it. But my focus remains the same as it was when I got started as a blogger. The GOP is the problem. Upset about the war on drugs? The GOP is worse, and this administration finally did away with crack/cocaine sentencing disparity. Upset that the health care bill didn’t include a public option? Every Republican candidate for president has pledged to destroy the health care reforms. Upset that the Dodd-Frank bill wasn’t stronger? Only three Republican senators voted to do any Wall Street reforms at all.

Our country used to work. It had its problems, but it limped along. Now it’s so dysfunctional that we lost our AAA credit rating. And, in almost every case, the Republicans hold the primary blame. In every case, they’re on the wrong side of the issues and are pushing us in the wrong direction.

So, that’s why I blog, and that’s why I blog the way I do. I know I don’t see eye-to-eye with a lot of progressives, and I feel like the progressive blogosphere kind of splintered and lost focus on the big picture after Obama was elected. I hope my perspective isn’t too unique, but it seems to be a bit unusual. If you value my perspective please consider making a donation towards the upkeep of the Frog Pond. I can only continue to blog through the support of people like you. We had a very rough summer financially, and we’re still trying to recover. Anything you give will be immensely appreciated.

Best,

BooMan