So this is what it has come to

At this week's Rebuplican debate, Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul (R.Tx) whether a previously-healthy 30-year-old man who chose not to buy health insurance, but who goes into a coma, should be left to die in a hospital emergency room.  After Paul opined that government should not be involved, that "that's what freedom is about, taking your own risks," the audience erupted in cheers and laughter. 

So this is what the GOP has come to.  The crowd at last week's debate cheered mention of the 234 people that Rick Perry has put to death in Texas--never mind that in at least a few of those cases there was serious doubt about guilt, in some about the mental capacity of the condemned and in others still grave doubt of the competence of defense counsel.

I can't help but contrast this new, mean party with the Republicans of the past.  I've written before about Capt. Tom Philip, of the USS Oregon, who cautioned his men at the Battle of Santiago, "Don't cheer, boys, the poor devils are dying."  

I don't  know whether Capt. Philip was  a Republican, although I have read that he was a serious Christian and the nation was overwhelmingly aligned with the GOP in 1898.  Even if the Captain was apolitical, it seems to me that the call to his men, who had just helped decimate the Spanish fleet, embodies part of a conservative but essentially decent spirit that is associated with traditional Republicanism.  And, of course, there was Lincoln, one of the first members of the party, "Let us go forward, now, to bind up the wounds..."


Since the GOP became the party of big business and, later, of nativism, there has always been a strain of inhumanity.  Think of the use of troops to break the railway strike of 1894, the Homestead Massacre and other incidents.  And, let's be honest, those on the left have also been willing, on occasion, to celebrate violence and even death.  There was the Haymarket Bombing, the bombing of the Los Angeles Times, and even Woody Guthrie's banjo, which was inscribed, "This machine kills   fascists."  


Still, it's unsettling to think that the kingmakers of one of our major parties may wear such callousness about their fellow humans as a badge of pride. 

3-Way Deal

Tim, T-Paw, Pawlenty has endorsed Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination.  Romney, in turn, has endorsed Orrin Hatch (R.UT) for re-election.  We understand that cash and future consideration are also involved in the 3-way deal.  

Where did it go?

Ten years after, it is hard to recall the unity that pervaded the nation--and most of the world--following 9/11.  I remember seeing firefighters in Budapest lined up to honor their colleagues in New York, and to recognize their courage and sacrifice.  In those days it was common to hear that we were all New Yorkers.

Tonight on NBC News, there was a piece in which people were asked how 9/11 had changed their lives.  If you had asked me, in the days following the attack, how the world would change, I should never, ever have said that ten years on we would be beset with partisanship that focuses on trivial issues, or that the national interest would be a minor factor in our leaders' decisions when compared with narrow political advantage.  

After 9/11, one of the mottoes we heard, over and over, was "Never forget."  And yet most of us have forgotten the most important lesson of that awful day.  

Where do we get people like this?

This weekend, the nation is stopping to remember 9/11, those who lost their lives and those who tried to save others on that day.

In the latter category are then-Lt. Heather Penney and Col. Marc Sasseville.  They were the pilots of the two F-16 fighters scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base to intercept Flight 93.  As everyone knows, before the fighters could do that, the passengers and flight crew of that doomed plane fought back against the hijackers and stopped the plan to crash into the Capitol, at the cost of their own lives.  

What few people knew until now is that those two Air Force fighters that were sent to intercept the doomed flight had no ammunition.  No bullets.  No rockets.  No way to bring the airliner down.  Except to crash into the plane.  And that's what they planned to do.  As Penney told The Washington Post, "We wouldn't be shooting it down.  We'd be ramming the aircraft.  I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot."

Where do we get people like this?  People not only willing to chance death in the service of our nation, but who will volunteer to die in its defense.  I mean to take nothing away from the people on Fight 93, but the choice they were given was to die in a horrible crash orchestrated by the hijackers and fighting back, almost certainly at the cost of their lives.  Lt. Penney and Col. Sasseville were engaged in something even more brave:  a willful and willing act of self-sacrifice.

We do not pay our service members enough for that kind of courage.  But they don't do it for the money.

Best HST story ever?

From Maureen Dowd in Wednesday's NYT, writing about an incident witnessed by her brother, Martin, when he was a Senate page:

As a page in 1952, Martin watched on the Capitol steps as my dad, a police detective in charge of Senate security, greeted Harry Truman as "Mr. President."  

"Mike," Truman chided him.  "Call me Harry like you always did." 

Tonight's Speech

Here is the message I sent the President tonight:

As I watched your speech tonight, I asked myself, "Where has this President been for the past two and one-half years?" 

Tonight, you were the President we thought we elected in 2008.

Thank you, but don't stop now.  Keep it up, Mr. President!  Don't look at the polls, don't look at the pundits.  Look at the people for whom you spoke tonight--the unemployed, the dispossessed, the millions who have taken it on the chin for decades.  Speak for them, Mr. President, right up to Election Day, and after.  Be our President, not our campaigner in chief.

Oxygen

Truth, distilled.

I heard this comment on the BBC's coverage of Libya.  Unfortunately, I was driving at the time and did not catch the name of the man who said it:

"Democracy is like oxygen.  When you have it, you don't enjoy it."

'Nuff said

What the President forgot

Back in the 00's, we liberals chortled at supporters of the Bush administration who derided members of the reality-based community.  And we might well still laugh at those on the Right who believe in faith-based answers to problems susceptible to solutions based on actual knowledge.

President Obama is certainly a member of the reality-based community.  As a general rule, that is a good thing in a President.  But Mr. Obama seems to have forgotten that one function of a leader is to change reality.


I had a professor in law school who said, "If you don't like the facts, change the facts."  He did not mean that we should falsify, but that when the situation was still evolving, we should try to influence the course of events in our client's favor.   In many instances, president's can do that, through appointments (including recess appointments), executive orders, the issuance of regulations and simple presidential leadership.  


The president can change the terms of debate.  That is, he (or she) can change perceptions of reality--which in many instances is to change reality itself.  He (or she) can speak to Congress or directly to the people.  If s/he makes an effective case, the voters will tell members of Congress what to do.  And the members ignore such a message at peril to their careers.  


One of the requisites for effective leadership is measured boldness--an appreciation of what the public will accept that proves superior to that of others--in Congress or the punditocracy.  Think of FDR's 50,000 airplanes and the New Deal or JFK's promise that America would reach the moon in 10 years.  No serious person thought that such goals were possible before the presidents expressed them.   Indeed, serious people said that FDR and JFK  were crazy.  And they were right--while FDR said that the United States would produce 50,000 aircraft in  four years, we produced more than that number in 1944 alone.  Kennedy's 10-year time span turned out to be just over eight.  Those were instances of leaders who changed reality.   


To this point, Mr. Obama's leadership has lacked boldness.  He has had a good grasp of what can be achieved--let's not forget health-insurance reform and the Dodd-Frank Act (among other measures) were given little chance.  But many of us have the nagging feeling that the President's grasp has exceeded his reach.  


This week, Mr. Obama will have a chance to show more boldness and more effective leadership in the way that he attacks the problem that threatens a new economic crisis.  It's an opportunity he has to grasp, not just for his presidency, but for the good of the nation.

Obama blinks again

Yesterday, the President formally requested to address a joint session of Congress on September 7th.  Apparently because that would conflict with a televised debate of Rebuplican nonentities, a/k/a the GOP presidential candidates, Speaker Boehner refused.  As far as I can tell, it is unprecedented for Congress to refuse a presidential request for a joint session.  And it's not as if there's nothing important to talk about.

As you have probably heard by now, the President blinked and agreed to talk to Congress on September 8th.  Instead of competing with the Rebuplican debate, he will be opposite the opening night of NFL football.  Just guessing, but the reception he gets from the GOPhers might be rougher than some NFL defensive lines present.  

I think the President made a mistake--not that the timing is a major issue.  Still, if Mr. Obama had asked me, I would have suggested that he go ahead and make his speech on September 7th, and if Congress does not want him in the Capitol that night, he should do it from the Mall out front.  Set up a stage, and lights, and invite the voters.  He's going to be talking over the heads of Congress and to the American people anyway, why not do it openly?

The GOPhers think this is a good thing

The New York Times reports that at least 25 CEOs earned more than their companies paid in federal income taxes last year.  These are not small or obscure companies.  The list includes Boeing, eBay, Verizon, and GE (whose CEO, Jeffrey Imelt, is the chair of President Obama's council on competitiveness).  

Yeah, we know, "Corporations are people, too."  No, they're not.  Verizon may be run by human beings (I know a bit about how that company is managed and one might question that), but to say that it is people is like saying that a huge earthmover or crane is simply the person at the controls.  No.  At some point, size takes over and the organization loses all but the most tenuous connection to the people it employs, its officers, directors and its stockholders; the connection is even more muted because of the differences among those groups.  As one of my professors said, a long time ago, at some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.  

And don't bleat about how high our corporate taxes are and how they discourage American competitiveness.  That's Eco 101, but in the real world things are a lot more complex.  The fact is that the US is still by far the largest economy--and market--in the world.  International corporations need to be here.  Let them pay for the privilege.  Make them pay more for the privilege.  One of the first things we should do is to tighten rules that let companies use slick accounting to keep profits offshore.  

One idea that I have had is to tax companies according to their size.  Small, efficient companies would be taxed at a lower rate than large, inefficient ones.  (And at the same rate as large, efficient ones, although efficiency tends to go down as size goes up.)  The concept--I haven't got beyond concept--would be to give companies a choice:  their tax rates would be set by their return on investment or their gross income, although the tax would be levied only on net income.  Companies could change their election, but only after a period of years.  

I'm not an economist, and can't calculate exactly how all this would all work out.  If there ARE any economists out there, let TONE know and perhaps we can explore the idea.

More S&P looneyness

Not content with downgrading the United States, S&P has downgraded a number of cities and counties.  

Why?  Because these governmental entities have too much of their money in US Treasury securities.  

Now let me get this straight:  These cities and counties are being penalized for investing in the safest securities in the nation.  So if they had invested in riskier bonds, debentures, stocks, etc., that would have been better?

Does that make sense to anyone?  Except S&P, of course.

(Remember that after S&P downgraded the US, nervous investors fled the markets for...U.S. Treasuries.  And we trust these people to provide guidance to investors?)

Gold bubble

The price of gold is now more than $1800 per ounce.  (That's a troy ounce, which is a little heavier than a conventional ounce.)  

An ounce of gold is a cube about 2/3 of an inch on each side.  More than $1800.

Gold is going to prove to be a bubble.

You heard it here first.

What's different this time

William Black, litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the S&L crisis and now a law professor, tells NPR why no one is going to jail as a result of the financial melt-down, and what the regulators' strategy should be.  Listen.

Another boondoggle

Yet another obvious waste of the taxpayers' money.  The New York Times reports that the Justice Department is investigating whether Standard & Poor's improperly rated dozens of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Well, of course they did.  Isn't it obvious?  Indeed, it's been clear for years that S&P and the other big rating firms, Moody's and Fitch, were either totally incompetent, willfully blind in the service of the bottom line or corrupt in certifying as AAA investments that were junk.

So why do we need an investigation?

The greatest line

Wolf Blitzer interviewed President Obama and reminded him that he got his daughters a dog as a present after winning the 2008 election.  What, Blitzer wanted to know, would he get them if he wins reelection next year? 

When I'm reelected, what I'll be getting them is a continuation of Secret Service so that when boys want to start dating them they are going to be surrounded by men with guns.  That's their gift. 

Thanks to TalingPointsMemo for the report.

 

Why Mitt Romney cannot be elected President

Mitt Romney might well be the strongest Rebuplican nominee against President Obama, at least on paper, but he cannot be elected.  Why? I hear you asking.  In one word--or one name--Seamus.  

You don't remember Seamus (pronounced like the private eye in a Black Mask mystery, shamus)?  He was the Irish Setter that the Mittster tied to the top of the family car before the Romney's drove 600 miles to a vacation in Ontario.  

No one can be elected President who is cruel to dogs.  There are too many dog lovers who vote.  

If Mitt locks the GOP nomination, I, for one, am going to order a whole bunch of bumper stickers that say:

ASK SEAMUS

ABOUT MITT

I'll let you know where to order yours when--and if--the time comes.

A useful yardstick

Michele ("The Madwoman of Minnesota") Bachmann is touting her success as a small-businesswoman to show that she would be effective at restoring the economy if she should be elected President.

Seems to me that's like saying your experience coaching a pewee football team fits you to replace Bill Belichick.  

If he debated a post it would be hard to say who won

Rick Perry has joined the contest for the Rebuplican presidential nomination.  Down in Texas, where he's from, they have a saying about people who try to appear bigger than they have any right to be:  "All hat and no cattle."

In Perry's case, it's all hat and no brains.  Listen to him.  The man is dumb as a post.  He makes Michele Bachmann sound like a brain trust.

In his announcement, the governor pledged that if elected he'll spend every day trying to make Washington as inconsequential in our lives as possible.  

How would he do that?

Maybe he'll eliminate FEMA, so that the federal government won't get involved in natural disasters.

Maybe he'll eliminate the FDA, so that the federal government won't certify the safety of drugs before they go on the market.

Maybe he'll eliminate the Department of Agriculture, so that federal inspectors won't check the safety of meat before it reaches our tables.

Maybe he'll cancel the FAA, so that airline schedules won't be regulated and pilots won't have to take orders from federal bureaucrats.

Maybe he'll wipe out the Federal Highway Administration so that we don't have to look at those boring signs, all the same, on interstate highways.  Maybe he'll stop spending our tax dollars on interstate highways.

Surely, he'll cut back on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and assure that each of us can own the assault rifle, shoulder-fired missile and IED of our choice.


We know he'd gut the EPA, because private industry has done such good job at assuring clean water to drink and air to breathe.


He'd certainly try to nail the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, because ordinary citizens don't need protection from predatory lenders or credit-card issuers.

Yes, there are limitless opportunities to pare the federal government, as long as you don't care about the health, welfare and safety of the American people

Back by popular demand

I thought we had pretty well seen the end of TONE, but here we are, back through the demands of our regular readers (both of them) who clamored (very quietly) for its return.

No promises on how long we'll stay, but for now at least, we're back!