1 Boring Old Man

In Today’s Viral World, Who Keeps a Civil Tongue?
Washington Post
By Ann Gerhart
October 11, 2009

^{Late last month, Charisse Carney-Nunes fired up the computer at her home in Northeast Washington to check her e-mail. Her brain already was on morning drive time: breakfast for the kids, her day’s work at a government agency. She glanced down at her screen, then froze.}

^{"Ms. Carney-Nunes," began the e-mail from Michelle Malkin, a best-selling and often inflammatory conservative writer with a heavily trafficked Web site. "I understand that you uploaded the video of schoolchildren reciting a Barack Obama song/rap at Bernice Young elementary school in June. I have a few quick questions. Did you help write the song/rap and teach it to the children? Are you an educator/guest lecturer at the school? Did you teach about your book, ‘I am Barack Obama’ at the school? Your bio says you are a schoolmate of Obama. How well-acquainted are you with the president?"}

^{Carney-Nunes looked at the time stamp – 6:47 a.m. – and closed the file without replying. She knew Malkin had driven criticism of President Obama’s back-to-school speech, streamed nationwide, as an attempt to indoctrinate students. Now Malkin was asking about a YouTube video of New Jersey public school children singing and enthusiastically chanting about Obama from a Black History Month presentation.}

^{By nightfall, Carney-Nunes’s name was playing on Fox News and voice mails on her home phone and cellphone were clogged with the furious voices of strangers. The e-mails kept pouring in, by the hundreds, crammed with words spam filters try to catch: She was a "nappy-headed" traitor; she would lose her job and go to jail; she was Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker who glorified Hitler…}

^{Carney-Nunes, who writes children’s books and was a year behind Obama at Harvard Law School, watched as strangers posted her personal information on the Internet. She read, "You’re a dirtbag commie propagandist trying to infect children with your failed Marxist ideology." And "your Obama chant is right out of Africa." And "get ready for a massive attack!!!" And "my friend GLENN BECK will also shove this in your face until justice is served." She made copies [which she shared with The Washington Post] and then deleted the messages, hoping the tornado would set her back down.} 

^{Carney-Nunes spends a lot of her free time teaching children how to bridge divides, but she has no idea how to build a dialogue with those who attacked her. "How can I talk to those people?" she said. "These are people who persist in believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim, that he isn’t a citizen of this country. You tell me: Where is the beginning of that conversation?}

If the health care reform debate were about health care or the crisis in the delivery of heath care in America, it might be interesting, something to keep up with in the news. Americans might sit down at the diner and talk about the choices available and their relative merits. The guy across the table might explain over the counter that the "public option" is a nonprofit medical insurance program that would keep medical insurance companies honest by entering the competition. If no one takes that option – fine. But that’s not what the health care debate in Congress is about – either the problem or the issues. Sadly, it’s about something else.

Alan Grayson [D-FL] has emerged a powerful voice in framing what’s happening to Congress:

I don’t really know how to frame the real topic of the current state of our Congress, but it almost doesn’t matter what one thinks the Republicans are doing right now, or why. The reasons, or what they’re thinking  is hardly the point. The best way I can personally frame it has to do with a folksy version of systems theory that once occurred to me: "A system is only composed of parts when it’s not working." So, as far as I’m concerned, my car is a magic carpet. I get in it and it takes me places without any attention to how it works. The, one day, it sputters, and I begin to think about it in a different way. Is it the carburetor? the fuel pump? a chip? Am I out of gas? is it over-heating? The system is failing, and I start deconstructing my magic carpet to figure out what’s wrong.

The system "Congress" is not functioning as a body to get the work of running the country done right now. We don’t read about things like, "Today, Congress passed the …"  because there is no noun "the Congress" right now – just Democrats and Republicans. We read stuff about the Republicans, or about Socialism, or Communism, or Fascism. Democrats who don’t go along with the party are called "blue dog" Democrats. Senator Arlen Specter [R D PA] who voted for the Stimulus plan changed parties because he was so maligned for his vote. The system has broken down [or has been broken down], brought to its knees by reflex opposition to President Obama. The why of that doesn’t even matter.

Health-Care Bill May Not Get Single GOP Vote in the House
Washington Post
By Ben Pershing
October 10, 2009

The House is inching closer to voting on a comprehensive health-care bill, even as the chamber appears so divided that the measure may not attract a single Republican supporter.

The final vote, likely in late October, is impossible to predict, but lawmakers and aides from both parties said this week that there is a strong chance the GOP will be unanimous in its opposition. Such a result would mark the second time – the first came on the economic stimulus package in February – that the entire House minority rejected one of President Obama’s top domestic initiatives…

I don’t think it’s "impossible to predict." Actually, it’s pretty easy to predict. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, they say. So no Republican was moved by the need for the economic stimulus package? And no Republican sees any merit in the comprehensive health-care bill? And I bet no Republican in the House will be voting for any Obama initiative in the future. One might, in fact, propose that there is a Republican Syllogism, "all Obama inspired initiatives are wrong." I would bet money that if you asked a Republican Representative if "all Obama inspired initiatives are wrong," it would be denied. Like in the famous Epimenides paradox, Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars." I expect if you asked Epimenides if he were lying, he would have said, "No!" too.

^{"The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action."}

Black NFL players crush prospect of playing for a Rush Limbaugh-owned St. Louis Rams

BY Ohm Youngmisuk

DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

October 9th 2009

Mathias Kiwanuka loves his former defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, but the Giants’ defensive end says he will never play for Spagnuolo’s Rams if Rush Limbaugh purchases the team. Kiwanuka and the Jets’ Bart Scott made it clear Thursday that they would never play for the Rams or any team owned by the controversial conservative radio host.

"All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in [President] Obama’s America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting ‘right on,’" Kiwanuka told The Daily News. "I mean, I don’t want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."

"I am not going to draw a conclusion from a person off of one comment, but when it is time after time after time and there’s a consistent pattern of disrespect and just a complete misunderstanding of an entire culture that I am a part of, I can’t respect him as a man"…

Reagan’s scheme gave the wealthy a "bye" [still does] and it just didn’t raise enough money. Clinton was closer to right, but it’s hard to evaluate because he was also good at cutting spending. Bush [I & II] made arbitrary tax cuts just to be cutting taxes based on no actuarial evidence that I can see – vote buying I think. So, with the data in these posts and a my ouija board, I arrived at the following scheme – graduated, lite on the bottom, not too heavy on top, not vengeful, would raise the money needed:

But whether President Obama heeds my advice or not, there’s one thing for sure. The Republicans and their media auxillary will jump on whatever he does with a ferocity that will dwarf their reactions to his Stimulus Program, his Health Care Reform, or his Nobel Prize. The taxation issue will be a real noisy debate.

Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
New York Times
By WALTER GIBBS and ALAN COWELL
10/09/2009

In a surprise move, the Nobel Committee honored President Obama less than a year after his election “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”…

Obama will say it’s a prize given to the American people or something like that. I expect that’s right. Personally, I feel proud of us and of him. Now listen to the Republicans and the monkey-media howl…

says Obama:

Let’s Get Our Stuff Back
Open Left
by: Chris Bowers
Oct 07, 2009

… The best bet is for Progressives to target the budget next year. Specifically, they should demand a substantial, probably 10%, increase in taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Here is why:

1. Increasing taxes on the rich is pretty popular. In fact, it is one of the most popular things the federal government could do:
   CBS News/New York Times Poll. April 1-5, 2009. N=998 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (for all adults).

   "Do you think the tax code should be changed so that middle and lower income people pay less in taxes than they do now and upper income people pay more in taxes than they do now, or don’t you think the tax code should be changed?"

   Should be changed: 65%
   Should not be changed: 29%
2. The messaging has tons of populist potential, and would be easy to win. Sell it as "let’s take our stuff back," while pointing out that the top 1% of income earners took two-thirds of the benefit from the last economic expansion:
   
   They took our stuff from us, and we are taking it back. How can the top 1% argue that they are the only people who add wealth to America? This is the sort of fight that can help Democrats regain the populist mantle heading into 2010.
3. People are worried about deficits, and this would be a lot more popular than cutting spending.
4. It is a clear bright line, an undeniably must-pass piece of legislation, and guaranteed to have 100% Republican opposition.
5. No question about Senate reconciliation for a budgetary measure like this. So, we wouldn’t have to deal with the 60-vote Senate.

This seems like a winnable campaign and could shift the balance of economic and political power in this country. After health care, I hope the Progressive Block pivots toward addressing income inequality through a big, progressive change in the tax code.

Given the circumstances, we need to look at the receipts side of the equation. We’ve been forced into a spending bind that isn’t likely to change for some time. And its obvious from the graph that the place where there’s wiggle room right now is INCOME TAX. So I’m out of retirement after a whole day of being graph-free, with a graph and tables that relate to Chris’s point [the top 1% of our wealthiest]. Here are the tables of income levels and taxation results for reference [from The Tax Foundation]:

This first table showed the bottom cut-off for the different percentile income levels. Just looking down the columns in the Bush years, it’s easy to see what every other graph shows. The wealth inequity is increasing at a very rapid rate. Besides putting us in a world of debt, the net result of the Reagan years and what has followed  is that the rich are not just getting richer, they’re getting way richer. That’s what Chris means by "getting our stuff back." What the rich would say is that they are getting their stuff back – the stuff that FDR and the Democrats have been taking away from them all these years. You decide who is right…

This second table shows the growing wealth inequity in even more dramatic terms. The lower 50% of Americans live on 12% of the money, which happens to be the same amount made by the top 0.1%. Notice the falling share in the lower groups and the rising share in the upper groups. It makes it kind of hard to sell the idea that we’re taking their stuff…

The third table is the stuff of Republican Talking Points. Rush Limbaugh’s recent version, was "The top 5% of wage earners are already paying 95% of the taxes." The correct version would be that "the top 5% of wage earners are now paying more than the bottom 95% of wage earners." If you look at the numbers and ponder what that means, it simply says that the wealth inequity in America is rapidly increasing, but we already knew that. There is a point to note. If you look at the last two tables together, the wealthy really are paying a greater share of the taxes than their share of the income.

[These numbers of what have actually been paid are strikingly less than the published tax brackets.] In every group, the percent of the income being paid in taxes is falling. Since the National Debt is clicking right on up during this period, I personally see this as a Reagan/Bush vote getting technique – only an illusion.

This is a table of the Tax Brackets [corrected to 2008 dollars] from the end of Carter, Reagan/Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II showing widely variant approaches to raising [or not raising] the money to finance our government.

Iran: More accomplished in one day of negotiations

than in 8 years of threats
Salon
by Glenn Greenwald
Oct. 2, 2009

Here are two stories from the last 24 hours which provide an interesting and glaring contrast:

McClatchy, reporting on yesterday’s meeting with Iran in Geneva:

^{Iran also pledged that within weeks it would allow the inspection of a previously covert uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, announced that he’d head to Tehran to work out the details.}

Eli Lake, The Washington Times, this morning:

^{President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said. … Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May. Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.}

In addition to agreeing to allow full inspections of its Qom facility, Iran yesterday also did this:

^{Iran agreed in principle Thursday to ship most of its current stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim, measure to ease concerns over its nuclear program…}

^{Under the tentative uranium deal, Iran would ship what a U.S. official said was "most" of its approximately 3,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be further refined, to 19.75 percent purity. That is much less than the purity needed to fuel a nuclear bomb.}

^{French technicians then would fabricate it into fuel rods and return it to Tehran to power a nuclear research reactor that’s used to make isotopes for nuclear medicine.}

Steve Hynd explains why Iran’s willingness to agree to this process was both so surprising and so significant.  As is true for any tentative agreement with anyone, there is always the possibility that something could happen prior to compliance, but this was a deal reached after a single-day meeting. Just consider that, as Hynd said on Twitter, the "Obama WH already got more from one buffet lunch with Iran than Bush WH did in 8 years of saber-rattling"…

I don’t know about you, but I’m finally beginning to feel a little room to breathe at last. When we elected Barack Obama, we had such high hopes, but, I for one, was not prepared for the circus coming to town. The oppositionalism and misinformation campaigns of the Republicans, the rise of the clowns in the right wind media, and the disasterous state of our economy combined to dampen any relief we might have felt after the torrential Bush years. I expected some disappointment in that Obama is a consensus builder and a moderate, but I had no idea he’d run immediately into an ambush. But recently, it feels like there’s a break in the clouds. It’s nothing specific – more the tone of the evening news, the flavor of the op-eds,  and some obvious successes like the one Glenn is writing about. Reminds me of that movie title, "a patch of blue." During the campaign, the buzz word for Obama was "unflappable." It looks like that is beginning to play out at last. Frankly, I don’t know how he’s gotten up in the mornings to face the barrage. Cross fingers, throw salt over shoulder, pray for a break in the  clouds…

… U.S. rises to most admired country in the world.
ThinkProgress
10/08/2009

Reuters reports that a new global survey has found that the United States is the most admired country in the world. The U.S. nabbed the top spot of this year’s National Brand Index (NBI), which ranks countries by how admired they are globally, up from number seven last year:

^{The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll. It climbed from seventh place last year, ahead of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan which completed the top five nations in the Nation Brand Index [NBI]. “What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009,” said Simon Anholt, the founder of NBI, which measured the global image of 50 countries each year.}

When asked about why he believes the United States shot up to the top of the list, Anholt explained that it likely is because of the election of Barack Obama. “There is no other explanation,” he said.

Then, we jumped off of a cliff in 2000. We became religiously intolerant, pugilistic, expansionist. We started a War on fictitious grounds. We let a great city of our own drown. The American demeanor changed – became more like ancient Rome than ancient Athens. But now, in spite of a bunch of problems that are huge, and against a continuing tide of conservatism, we seem to be clawing our way back to where we belong – as a beacon for the world that in spite of our diversity and size, we’re still in the game that got started with "all men are created equal." We may not be there, but at least we’re back to trying.