2010 – Page 61 – Politics Plus

How Republicans View Tolerance

Posted by TomCat at 2:31 am Politics, Religion

Aug 222010

By rights, the US should be the most tolerant nation on earth. Our Constitution gives us the right to believe and practice the faith of our choice, including faith in nothing, to say what we wish, within reason, and to do what we wish, again within reason. Given such a structure, the only sensible way to deal with people who have beliefs and behavior different from ours is mutual respect and tolerance. However, the Republican Party has made intolerance an issue. For example:

Republican Allen West is the Tea Party candidate for House in Florida’s 22nd district … said:

[A]s I was driving up here today, I saw that bumper sticker that absolutely incenses me. It’s not the Obama bumper sticker. But it’s the bumper sticker that says, ‘Co-exist.’ And it has all the little religious symbols on it. And the reason why I get upset, and every time I see one of those bumper stickers, I look at the person inside that is driving. Because that person represents something that would give away our country. Would give away who we are, our rights and freedoms and liberties because they are afraid to stand up and confront that which is the antithesis, anathema of who we are. The liberties that we want to enjoy.”

… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

West, and his Republican cronies are wrong. It is they who would give away our country, because they are the ones who are opposing the constitutional guarantees we enjoy, the rights and freedoms and liberties, by denying the to others. It is they who are the antithesis, anathema of who we are.

That said, I must confess to an intolerance of my own. I have zero tolerance for the intolerant.

Open Thread – 8/22/2010

Posted by TomCat at 2:31 am Open Thread, Personal

Aug 222010

Yesterday I finally caught up on returning visits. I expect to be able to continue that today, although I do have a religious commitment: the Broncos game is on TV. 😀

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:45. To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From CNN: Shirley Sherrod, who received an apology after being forced to resign from the Agriculture Department, will meet Tuesday with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss a job offer, a department official confirmed Saturday.

After the despicable way she was framed by Republicans and the cowardly way Democrats responded to that slander, I hope this wonan gets every good thing she deserves and more.

From McClatchy DC: Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said Friday that she would defend voter-approved Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex marriage, if she becomes governor next year.

This is yet another reason Californians should return Governor Moonbeam to the job.

From Washington Post: President Obama made four recess appointments Thursday for nominees that have waited an average of 303 days for confirmation, the White House said.

"At a time when our nation faces so many pressing challenges, I urge members of the Senate to stop playing politics with our highly qualified nominees, and fulfill their responsibilities of advice and consent," Obama said in a statement announcing the appointments. "Until they do, I reserve the right to act within my authority to do what is best for the American people."

This is about the same number that Potomac Pinocchio recess-appointed during the initial two years of the Bush/GOP Reich. I screamed bloody murder over those. The difference, of course, is that Democrats confirmed the vast majority of the Bush appointees, only stonewalling the most egregious. The vast majority of Obama’s appointees are still held up.

Cartoon: from Cagle.com

22cagle

Who is your football team?

Have Banksters Screwed Themselves?

Posted by TomCat at 2:30 am Personal, Politics

Aug 212010

I have a close friend of many years, a real estate broker, who acquired several properties before the Republicans helped banksters wreck the housing market. She’s a fighter, and has tried desperately to refinance her loans. She’s followed all the steps, and run up against all the dirty little schemes that banksters use to say they are participating in the program, but not really do so. I have shared her pain for over a year over this, and feel great anger over her experience. When I saw this, I immediately forwarded it to her, because it appears that in the midst of their predatory lending greed, the banksters may have screwed themselves.

Over 62 million mortgages are now held in the name of MERS, an electronic recording system devised by and for the convenience of the mortgage industry. A California bankruptcy court, following landmark cases in other jurisdictions, recently held that this electronic shortcut makes it impossible for banks to establish their ownership of property titles–and therefore to foreclose on mortgaged properties. The logical result could be 62 million homes that are foreclosure-proof.

Mortgages bundled into securities were a favorite investment of speculators at the height of the financial bubble leading up to the crash of 2008. The securities changed hands frequently, and the companies profiting from mortgage payments were often not the same parties that negotiated the loans. At the heart of this disconnect was the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, a company that serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, allowing properties to change hands without the necessity of recording each transfer.

MERS was convenient for the mortgage industry, but courts are now questioning the impact of all of this financial juggling when it comes to mortgage ownership. To foreclose on real property, the plaintiff must be able to establish the chain of title entitling it to relief. But MERS has acknowledged, and recent cases have held, that MERS is a mere "nominee"–an entity appointed by the true owner simply for the purpose of holding property in order to facilitate transactions. Recent court opinions stress that this defect is not just a procedural but is a substantive failure, one that is fatal to the plaintiff’s legal ability to foreclose.

That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clear — while the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not part of the something-for-nothing set and believe that people should pay for what they get, if they possibly can. However, these corporate criminals have been so underhanded, that if this pans out to save their victims, I will dance for joy!

Beach Bum Has a BIG Mouth! ;-)

Posted by TomCat at 2:30 am Blog News, Plus

Aug 212010

9500-Beach

Beach writes a blog that is largely political, and quite astute, especially since he hails from the one of the reddest states there is, but on days when I’m too busy to read them, he puts up short stories that are so good that I find myself unable to stop reading. You can find him here.

Congrats, Beach!

Can Middle East Peace Talks Succeed?

Posted by TomCat at 2:29 am Politics

Aug 212010

Whenever the Israelis and the Palestinians agree to talks, I become hopeful for peace in that region, at last. However, I am highly skeptical that any progress toward peace will be achieved for several reasons.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with President Barack Obama on September 1, before formally resuming direct negotiations the following day at the State Department in Washington.

"There have been difficulties in the past, there will be difficulties ahead," Clinton said in a statement.

Clinton added that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah also were invited to the talks, which will mark the first direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in 20 months.

"I ask the parties to persevere, to keep moving forward even through difficult times and to continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region," Clinton said.

Clinton’s announcement was echoed by the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — which issued its own invitation to the talks and underscored that a deal could be reached within a year.

Netanyahu quickly accepted the U.S. invitation and said reaching a deal would be possible but difficult.

"We are coming to the talks with a genuine desire to reach a peace agreement between the two peoples that will protect Israel’s national security interests, foremost of which is security," a statement from his office said.

After a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian leadership announced its acceptance of the invitation for face-to-face peace talks with Israel.

SETTLEMENT ISSUE

But Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, warned that the Palestinians would pull out of the new talks if the Israelis allow a return to settlement building on lands that the Palestinians seek for a future state.

Israel’s 10-month moratorium on Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank is due to end on September 26.

The invitation to the talks "contains the elements needed to provide for a peace agreement," Palestinian leaders said.

"It can be done in less than a year," Erekat said. "The most important thing now is to see to it that the Israeli government refrains from settlement activities, incursions, fait accomplis policies."

The two sides are coming together for talks after decades of hostility, mutual suspicion and a string of failed peace efforts.

The Quartet statement was aimed at the Palestinians, who believe that the group’s repeated calls for Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and accept a Palestinian state within the borders of land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war are a guarantee of the parameters for the talks.

Clinton’s invitation was aimed at Netanyahu, agreeing with his demand that the talks should take place "without preconditions" and giving little sense of any terms that the Israeli leader fears could box him in.

The Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza and refuses to renounce violence against Israel, said the proposed peace talks would do nothing to help the Palestinian cause. U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell said Hamas would have no role in the peace talks… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Reuters>

First, I see little hope that Israel will extend the moratorium on settlement building. The right wing members of the coalition have threatened to bring down the government, unless settlement building continues on schedule. They apparently have received assurances that it will.

Second, there can be no peaceful settlement without Hamas. Although I disagree with their refusal to renounce violence against Israel, Hamas remains the democratically elected government of Palestine. In addition, Israel’s violence against Gaza has been far more devastating. Of course Hamas is against the talks, since the US and Fatah excluded them.

Third, although the people of Israel want peace, the government of Israel does not. Netanyahu has bragged openly that he has undermined the Oslo Accords that guarantee a two state solution. He would prefer a fait accompli through construction.

In conclusion, I wish them every success, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it.

Open Thread – 8/21/2010

Posted by TomCat at 2:29 am Plus, Politics

Aug 212010

Yesterday I oopsed! I spent a longer time at the grocery store than I intended and bought more. The result was that I was carrying a heavier load than normal, and my oxygen bottle ran out just before I returned home. Lugging a heavy load up a double flight of stairs was no fun. I was wheezing so hard, I feared I might cough up my own butt. After some recovery time, I attached the huge backlog of comments and replied to all. Today my plan is to visit the blogroll. The only other major item I have on tap is to play with a software utility I agreed to review here in return for a free copy of the software.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:04. To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Business Week: Continued weakness in housing construction sent the Oregon timber harvest to near historic lows last year, the state Department of Forestry said Friday.

The timber industry is huge in Oregon, so the GW Bushwhacking of the housing market is one of the principal reasons our unemployment is a point above the national average.

From Alternet: Xe, the private security company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, has agreed to pay a 42 million dollar fine for violating US export regulations. [weapons smuggling]

It’s chump change. This represents less that 5% of annual revenues.

From Daily Kos: Rasmussen, Arkansas Senate, 500 LVs, 8/18 (July numbers)

Boozman: 65% (60%)

Lincoln: 27% (35%)

Rasmussen polls are notoriously skewed right, but even they couldn’t produce results like this. My prediction that it would cost us the seat, if Backroom Blanch, DINO extraordinaire, won the primary, is proving correct.

Cartoon: homegrown today

21cartoon

Enjoy your weekend!

Republican Religious Right: Our Troops Died for Nothing!

Posted by TomCat at 1:22 am Politics, Religion

Aug 202010

The Republican Pharisees and Sadducees at the AFA do not represent the same Jesus that authentic Christians do.

Just how anti-Muslim is the AFA’s Bryan Fischer?

So anti-Muslim that he is now claiming that the entire Iraq war was an epic failure [theocon delinked] and complete waste of American time, money, and lives because we did not seek to convert the entire country to Christianity.

Fischer says that the only thing that kept Iraq functioning under Saddam Hussein was that "Christians to help him run the country [because] Christians were the only decent, trustworthy, honest people he could find." When Hussein was toppled, it left Iraq in the hands of Muslims and "Islam simply doesn’t produce men with the kind of character and integrity needed to run a country."

Fischer says America has offended God by creating a new Islamic Republic in Iraq which, "without the stabilizing values and presence of the Prince of Peace," will ultimately collapse.

Therefore, all of our soldiers have died for nothing:

It grieves me to the bottom of my soul to think of the soldiers who bravely gave their last full measure of devotion in such a misbegotten cause. They served bravely and well; it was their leadership that let them down.

All this is due to President Bush’s naive short-sightedness about the true nature of Islam and what it does to the human spirit. I believe him to be an honest and decent man, but deceived and foolish when it came to Islam.

He genuinely seemed to believe that Islam is a religion of peace which had been hijacked by evil men. The truth is the other way round. Islam is a barbaric religion of violence and war. The only hijacking that’s been done is by those trying to fool people into thinking it’s something benign.

… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Right Wing Watch>

Are we to thank God that Christians were helping Saddam run the country when that bastion of piety, Donald Rumsfeld, brokered the deal for Saddam to acquire chemical weapons and provided him training in their use? Are we to thank God that Christians were helping Saddam run the country when he killed and tortured so many of his own citizens? Are we to thank God that Christians were helping Saddam run the country when he accepted the invitation to invade Kuwait from April Glaspie, the US Ambassador appointed by GHW Bush? I say no, no and no!

If US deaths in Iraq were futile, it is because we should never have invaded, not because we did not do more to convert them to Republican Supply-side Jesus. How can this hate monger claim that Islam is a religion of violence and war when it was GW Bush who claimed that Jesus told him to invade Iraq? Had we tried to force conversion on the Iraqi people, Iraq would be politically unified today… against us.

Supply-side Jesus, the Republican religious right invention, whose gospel is war, hate and greed, has nothing to do with Christ. Just as Jesus opposed the Pharisees and Sadducees, authentic Christians today oppose their modern day counterparts.

Is Grayson Net Neutral?

Posted by TomCat at 1:21 am Politics

Aug 202010

I’ve observed considerable criticism of Rep. Alan Grayson, much of it from the left, because he refused to sign on to the idea that guaranteeing net neutrality is up to the FCC. Frankly, I think he has gotten a bum rap on this. Here is his own explanation:

The Verizon-Google Net Neutrality Proposal begins by stating that "Google and Verizon have been working together to find ways to preserve the open Internet." Well, that’s nice. Imagine what they would have come up with if they had been trying to kill off the open Internet.

Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. Because that’s what this is. An effort to kill off the open Internet.

Much of the coverage of the Verizon-Google Proposal has focused on only one of the proposal’s many problems: the fact that the proposal allows wireless broadband carriers — like, say, Verizon, for instance — to discriminate in handling Internet traffic in any manner they choose. They can charge content providers, they can block content providers, and they can slow down content providers, just as they please. That sure doesn’t sound "neutral."

We’ve already seen examples of political censorship over mobile networks. In 2007, Verizon refused to run a pro-choice text message from advocacy group NARAL, due to its supposedly ‘unsavory’ nature. Yes, this happened; yes, this kind of censorship would be continue to be legal under the Google-Verizon deal; and yes, Google, this is evil.

But the Verizon-Google Proposal allows almost as much latitude to other internet carriers, like cable and DSL carriers. Under the heading "Network Management," all carriers can "engage in reasonable network management," which "includes any technically sound practice" (which means what?). And it specifically includes the power to "prioritize general classes or types of Internet traffic, based on latency." The term "latency" means delays in downloading, from carrying video files and such. So if you want video, and YouTube won’t pay Verizon to provide it, then Verizon can "prioritize" other traffic. And then your two-minute video will take two hours to see. And let’s say you want to start a new website that offers video — good luck getting through to Verizon’s customer service department, to have Verizon place it in the right ‘tier’ of Verizon’s internet service. In my experience, customer service requests have extraordinarily high "latency."

Furthermore, under the heading "Non-Discrimination Requirement" (that sounds promising!), wireline carriers cannot engage in "undue discrimination." "Undue discrimination!" What, exactly, is "due" discrimination? And even then, the presumption of non-discrimination "could be rebutted."

And if a carrier somehow manages to run afoul of these absurdly loose standards, the FCC doesn’t even have the power to act, unless someone actually finds out about the discrimination, complains about it, and can prove it. And even then, the Verizon-Google Proposal limits the penalty to $2 million.

Do you happen to know what Verizon’s revenue is every 10 minutes? It’s . . . $2 million. That’s right. The maximum fine is equal to what Verizon takes in every 10 minutes.

Do we laugh? Or do we cry?

This would give Verizon — and every other large internet carrier — the equivalent of a cheap "put" option on every company with an internet-based product or service. For a mere $2 million, Verizon could secretly block (or just mess with) the internet content of a billion-dollar company, destroying its market value overnight. And, perhaps, sending those customers to Verizon’s rival product or service.

Now, I really would like to believe that the FCC can deliver on guaranteeing net neutrality. But remember, this ‘proposal’ came after months of secret, closed-door meetings with the FCC, spurred by Chairman Julius Genachowski, that sought an industry- brokered deal along the lines of the Verizon-Google Proposal. And when the proposal was issued, net neutrality’s longtime ally, Commissioner Michael Copps, responded as follows: "Some will claim this announcement moves the discussion forward. That’s one of its many problems."

When I see our most stalwart friend on the commission coming out against a deal shepherded by the Chairman, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the FCC can hold the line against telecom and cable companies, when those companies have something else in mind.

Google’s market capitalization is $150 billion. Verizon’s is $85 billion. They don’t care about our wellbeing. Never have, never will. Even if one of them tells us it won’t "be evil."

It’s time for the FCC to step up. It’s time for Congress to step up. It’s time for all of us to step up. We need for the law to protect the internet: No discrimination in pricing or in service. No self-regulation by corporate titans. And no blessing of corrupt deals at the FCC… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

Grayson’s position has always been clear to me, and it is that we cannot depend on the FCC alone. We need the protection guaranteed by law, not just regulation. Keep the heat on Congress.

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