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WHEN IT COMES TO OPPOSITION TO THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS….
THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW!!

I wasn’t planning to comment on the State of the Union address. Lord knows there’s already been enough punditry to keep political wonks busy reading well into February. But looking back, I see that I commented on the Bush State of the Union Address in 2007, so I feel an obligation to acknowledge at least one of Obama’s efforts. I will admit that just as I indicated in my 2007 comments, this years address didn’t have my full attention either.. I was sort of half watching and half listening while doing other things. But it was hard to miss what I have observed in the past - that people in some other countries must look at the "rock star" reception these events lavish on our Presidents with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment. When I see it, I sometimes think that we really need a King - or maybe an elected Chief Executive - and a non-political President - someone who presides over ceremonial events and is the living equivalent of the American Flag.

I wasn’t counting but at least this year there seemed to be less applause and a lesser number of standing ovations than usual. Someone probably kept count of the number of times John Boehner teared up or broke into an audible crying fit - but I haven’t seen any numbers reported. The speech itself has been praised and criticized by the usual suspects, so I won’t bother to join in that chorus. I will instead muse about the whole idea of a State of the Union speech. I’m not sure exactly what the founders had in mind when they included this requirement in the Constitution . Even though the language is pretty clear, the Constitution is always being interpreted - "original intent" and all that kind of stuff. "From time to time" has obviously been interpreted as once a year, usually in January. But the rest can be interpreted in more than one way. Giving "information on the state of the union" would seem to me to be pretty straightforward, calling for something like a bank’s balance sheet or a corporation’s annual report. I’m not sure that any President in recent history has actually given a report on the state of the union other than to say - somewhere in their (often lengthy) speech that "it’s strong." Nothing about how much we’ve got in the bank, how much we owe, how our roads and bridges are doing, how our kids are doing in school. Just "strong"

The rest of the requirement of the President - that he "recommend to their (Congress) consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient" has been interpreted as the dog and pony show that we see every year - a combination of a campaign rally and an American version of a British King or Queen opening Parliament. "Here’s what the government has in store for you for the next whatever period." Except over there it’s a statement of what will be while here it’s a laundry wish list - that may or may not be. That irritating divided government thing often gets in the way.

But it’s when the President has finished speaking that we differ dramatically from the way our British cousins do their version of The State of the Union. Or maybe that’s us doing our version of a royal opening Parliament. Never in a thousand years would their annual solemn ceremony be followed by some nut getting on television to proclaim - "The Queen is full of beans and what she’s just told you is a load of bull crap."

A lot of people over the years have made names for themselves by claiming to know the "intent" of the writers of various parts of the Constitution. I’m not going to make any such claims but I’m absolutely certain that there was no "intent" to turn the occasion of the State of the Union report into a three ring circus of political campaigning. Note I called it a "report" and not an "address" because it wasn’t always delivered by way of a speech. Maybe if the framers had been able to predict the advent of television and the Internet they would have added something to the effect that "no special audience shall be given to those who oppose the spirit and substance of the President’s report to Congress." But never mind the framers. Who in modern times - say three or four decades ago, could have predicted the foolishness that is now attached to this annual event in the form of "rebuttals." Plural!!

In the first place, why do we need a "rebuttal?" The President is fulfilling one of his constitutional duties. There is no constitutional requirement for his report and his recommendations to be coupled with a rebuttal, broadcast to the world over the same radio and television stations and Internet sites that follow immediately - virtually affording the rebutters the same stature of the President of the United States. Here’s what the President has to say and here’s what a designated rebutter has to say. All in one long continuous broadcast. Except this year, as I’ve indicated and as the world knows, we have multiple rebutters. One President with his report and two to get on the airways and tell the world that he’s all wrong and leading us down the path to ruin.

Yes I think some people in other countries who are friends of ours and who normally admire us, must scratch their heads in wonderment as they watch Michelle Bachman stare off into space and attack the President - after the designated rebutter has done something similar - albeit looking into the camera that displays a red light. Evolution is supposed to be a forward movement with generation after generation showing improvement on the generations that preceded them , physically, economically and intellectually. If the founders could have watched and listened to the Congresswoman from Minnesota, they might have thought that some terrible disaster had interrupted the forward flow of evolution and had reversed it - half way or more back to the stone age.

The framers didn’t call for an opposition response to the State of the Union address. Neither did they call for some of the crazy rules of the Senate that we’ve had to learn to live with. Similarly, the opposition "response" to the State of the Union has become a modern tradition that we have learned to live with, even if it detracts from what the framers intended. (See - I can interpret with the best of them). But adding the doubly whammy of Michelle Bachman with all of her nutty ideas and outrageous claims and statements is a little too much to bear. The business of State of the Union response isn’t a matter of law. As I’ve said, it’s a matter of tradition - albeit of fairly recent vintage. But if there’s a chance that a new tradition has been born and we’ll be faced with a Bachman type of "after market" response in the years ahead - maybe even more than one of them - all I can say is heaven help us. But just as a back up to heavenly intervention, maybe we need Congress to tackle the problem and pass a law that enhances the Constitutional requirement by requiring a response by a single designated member of the opposition party. They can call it the State of the Union Anti Bachman Act.
posted by Jeff Smith at 1/28/2011 09:27:00 PM

 
MAYBE KEITH OLBERMANN FANS OWE COMCAST AN APOLOGY
But only maybe…..

The Internet is a wonderful tool, but in the last couple of days I may have been personally involved in promulgating one of it’s downsides - the ability of just about anyone with a computer and a network connection to spread false information. The subject matter of this possible error on my part is the sudden departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC. From his first line of his closing comments on his last show...

I think the same fantasy popped into the head of everybody in my business who has ever been told what I have been told. This will be the last edition of your show...

I got the impression that he had been asked to leave - and of course I, probably along with many thousands of others who watched his show - sprang into action - in my case with an e-mail to Brian Roberts, CEO of NBC’s about to be new owner - Comcast.

In five days since the approval of Comacast's acquisition of NBC Universal, you have managed to tear out the heart of MSNBC's evening programming, alienate practically all of the cable network's viewers and become cause for nightly celebrations at Fox "News." According to the book of Genesis - it took God seven days to create earth. You only took five to begin dismantling MSNBC. Congratulations. You're the new champ. What's next? A list of prohibited subjects and/or words for your remaining hosts? We will support Olbermann wherever he goes and it will be your loss.

I’ve sent e-mails to CEO’s in the past to which I don’t always get a response - but when I do, it’s usually an automatic acknowledgment with an answer to my comments or questions - if any - to follow later. Obviously Comcast had anticipated a flood of complaints because in this case there was an immediate response.

Good afternoon Mr. Smith,
On behalf of Brian Roberts:

Thank you for sharing your views with us on this issue. Please understand that Comcast does not currently manage NBC Universal and has no operational control at any of its networks including, MSNBC. Our deal to purchase NBC Universal has not closed and legally we are not able to make any business decisions involving NBC Universal's businesses or programming at this time.

We pledged from the day our agreement for NBC Universal was announced that we would not interfere with NBC Universal's news operations. We have not, and we will not in the future.

Thank you,
Cynthia Asbury

Of course at that moment, I was still reasonably sure that Olbermann had been forced out and that Comcast’s acquisition of NBC had to be behind it somehow and so I penned an "unbelieving" reply to Cynthia Asbury

Well Good Afternoon to you too Ms Asbury. I appreciate hearing from you. If only poor misguided Keith could have heard from you too and seen your pledge to not interfere with MSNBC's news operations. He thought you wanted him gone. Where could he have got that idea from? But seriously Cynthia, after your deal closes, wouldn't Comcast want Keith back at his post, anchoring the evening line up, strictly from a business point of view? I don't think it would violate your non interference pledge to make that view known. Unless of course it's not your view and Keith is right about you not wanting him there. Or maybe it's all just a coincidence. Comcast takes over and Olbermann leaves in the middle of a four year deal. Such a complicated world - this world of communication.

Oh, I was being so smart. No way could Comcast fool me into believing that they wouldn't exercise any control over their newly acquired toy. But then information - not confirmed but having the smell of truth - began to trickle in.

MSNBC may have wanted to dump Olbermann - but the stories trickling out from various sources implied that he has wanted out for some time - but in the middle of a four year contract, couldn’t just walk away. The unconfirmed story so far is that he had been negotiating his exit for an unknown period of time and those negotiations resulted in a mutual agreement just before his January 21, 2011 broadcast. I still think that he was pushed off the air before he was ready to leave. I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t want to warn his audience and to have prepared a series of retrospectives and "special comments" - perhaps at least a week’s worth before saying goodbye. But I can believe that he wanted out. According to reports of his past broadcast career, this was the longest job he’d ever held. And if the story about his agent asking NBC for more than his seven million dollar annual salary is true, it makes him a little less of a sympathetic character. Seven big ones not enough? For a champion of the common man?

For an unknown period of time, Olbermann won’t be able to appear on television. I would assume that for an unknown period of time he won’t be able to talk about the details of his departure. And I get the impression that the remaining MSNBC hosts are restricted from saying anything either other than the kind of bland comment that Rachel Maddow has made about Olbermann being gracious in his departure. So it will be a while before we know for sure why one of the very few liberal voices on the air has been silenced. It may well be that Olbermann and the bosses at MSNBC couldn’t see eye to eye and decided that he would rather quit than stay some place where he was uncomfortable - even if it meant abandoning his loyal audience. After all, liberal broadcasters aren’t any more saintly than their conservative counterparts. They’re all in it for the money. If it were otherwise, Olbermann wouldn’t be asking for more than his seven million a year. He’d be donating half of it to liberal causes.

At some point in the future there may be more statements emanating from Comcast and perhaps from Olbermann about this affair, but whatever either may say, even though I may have jumped the gun in my assumption that Comcast was directly responsible for Olbermann’s departure, I think it is reasonable to assume that the impending NBC takeover was an influencing factor. The acquisition has been pending for some time and among the stories being circulated from seemingly knowledgeable sources is that the Comcast people considered Olbermann a "loose cannon" and wanted him gone and that Olbermann saw the writing on the wall and decided to leave before being fired.

But there’s another issue here that should be of concern whether Comcast influenced an on the air personality’s exit or not - and that’s the issue of the ever narrowing group of corporations that control more and more aspects of our lives. Is it a good idea for Comcast to own NBC -or Disney to own ABC? Or for corporations large and small to be gobbling up each other the way they’ve been doing for years to the point where few of us know who owns who or what? It was a work of fiction by Paddy Chayefsky of course, but I’m reminded of the words spoken by the Arthur Jensen character in the chilling 1976 move Network.

There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Erxxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

We may not quite be living in the world envisioned by Chayefsky 35 years ago - but I think it’s fair to say that the corporate world is doing a pretty good job of life imitating his work of art.
posted by Jeff Smith at 1/24/2011 08:29:00 PM

 
WHY I CAN NEVER VOTE TO SEND A REPUBLICAN TO CONGRESS

Since the election of Barack Obama, I have watched and listened to Republicans in the House and Senate with a mixture of amazement and disgust. I am comfortable with the idea of an opposition party to the party of a president playing the role of the "loyal opposition" and holding his feet to the fire on matters of policy and principle. But that is not what members of this opposition party have done for the past two years. Their actions have been a reflection of their stated objective soon after Obama assumed power - to destroy him. To make sure at all costs that he achieves little or no successes and that he is defeated in any effort to secure a second term. And what sticks in my craw - what strips me of any respect I might have had for Republicans in Congress - and I have had respect for many in the past - is the phrase that I have included above even if it has never been publicly expressed by Mitch McConnell or any other Republican leader - at all costs.

Modern day Republicans have never been champions of the common man. If it had been up to Republican lawmakers, we wouldn’t have Social Security or Medicare or other safety nets for those of us who don’t clip coupons for a living. They’d like to see these programs go away or at least handed over to private companies. They’d like to see a work place without unions and indeed they’ve had success in weakening the union movement. In the past, these have more likely been positions - misguided in my view - of principled belief. But in the current Congress, there seems to be little in the way of principled belief guiding Republican members - just total obstructionism - much of it mean spirited. Efforts to help the unemployed have been blocked and delayed as was the effort to provide help for 9/11 first responders with health problems. I realize that all of this - the endless filibusters - the individual senator "holds" - have been part of the overall strategy of assuring Obama’s "failure" - perhaps following the dictum of their de-facto un-elected leader, Rush Limbaugh - but in so doing, they have abandoned all pretense of representing those who elected them to govern or to participate in government. They have seen their job - and continue to see their job as to be against anything that the President and the Democrats are for. And in order to hurt Obama they have been willing to hurt ordinary people and that is unforgivable - and though none of their obstructionism has hurt me financially or medically, it has hurt me in another way.

What the actions and rhetoric of Republicans for these past two years have done to me is to make me reach a position that I had not envisioned would ever be possible. While my politics tend to lean left, I have never hesitated to vote for a Republican when it seemed to be the better choice. At the local level I still would not hesitate to do so. But I cannot envision the circumstance under which I would vote for a Republican for the House or Senate for the foreseeable future. I consider the Republican actions/non-actions and rhetoric over the past two years to be reprehensible. The lies about "death panels." The fanning the flames of doubt about Obama’s place of birth. The name calling of Obama as something other than a "true American." Taking the opportunity of the current debate in the House on the proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act to attack and demean the President as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has just done. And now the deliberate snubbing of the President of the United States by the new Speaker of the House, refusing two invitations in a row to join him in the White House on matters of governance and to accompany him on Air Force One to the memorial service in Tucson where a Congressional colleague lay fighting for her life. The only word I can attach to such behavior is the one that I have already used to describe the past two years of Republicans in Congress - reprehensible. And that’s milder than a word that I’m tempted to use, but I’m trying to follow the urgings from people from the President on down to tone down the rhetoric.

While these comments are about Republicans, Democratic members of Congress are also not without fault. When they have been in the minority they have from time to time used hard nosed tactics to attack and delay Republican legislative efforts. But they have never, in my memory, used delaying tactics - filibusters and the rest - that resulted in harm to average Americans, including the middle class and those on the low end of the economic scale. I can’t imagine any Democratic minority holding up an extension of unemployment benefits in the midst of the kind of recession we are experiencing - even if the delay would in some way hurt a Republican majority and/or a Republican president who they bitterly opposed.

I am sure that there are good people in the Republican caucus - some who may look in their bathroom mirrors at night, shake their heads and ask themselves what on earth they are doing. But in the morning, on the floor of the Senate and the House they continue to do it. Which is why I conclude these thoughts with the reason they are being written. I will continue to cast my vote in local elections for the candidates that I think will best serve my interests regardless of party labels. But for the foreseeable future - perhaps forever, I cannot and will not vote for a Republican for Congress. Not for the House. Not for the Senate. However good they may look or sound. No matter what their background or reputation. Because I have seen what they can and have become when they get there and I do not trust that they will not do so again.
posted by Jeff Smith at 1/21/2011 02:18:00 PM

 
A COUPLE OF BRITISH VOICES ABOUT JEWS AND ISREAL

On April 18, 2007, I asked the question here - Is the U.K. becoming a dangerous place for Jews? At that time and since that time, world sentiment was growing in favor of the Palestinians as though they and their fellow Arabs bore no responsibility for the impasse that has existed in the region since 1948 and before. But recently, there have been two outspoken speeches in support of Israel - from a member of Parliament and from a Cambridge University law student that are making waves. You may have read the speech by historian and British M.P Andrew Roberts, delivered in the House of Commons. Different dates are cited by different sites for the event but what is important is the content whic I think is worth repeating here for anyone who reads this blog and may have missed it.

From the British House of Commons...
Andrew Roberts, Member Parliament

I would like to speak to you today as an historian, because it seems to me that the State of Israel has packed more history into her 62 years on the planet than many other nations have in six hundred. There are many surprising things about this tiny, feisty, brave nation the size of Wales , but the most astonishing is that she has survived at all. The very day after the UN declared Israel a country in 1948, five Arab countries attacked, and she has been struggling for her right to life ever since. And that is what we are here for today, to reiterate Israel's right to self-defense, inherent in all legitimate countries.

From Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to Aden, the 5.25 million square miles of territory belonging to members of the Arab League is home to over 330 million people, whereas Israel covers only eight thousand square miles, and is home to seven million citizens, one-fifth of whom are Arabs. The Jews of the Holy Land are thus surrounded by hostile states 650 times their size in territory and sixty times their population, yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution, the State of Israel has somehow survived. When during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Medal for bravery; today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. ;

Jerusalem is the site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod. The stones of a palace erected by King David himself are even now being unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem . Everything that makes a nation state legitimate-- bloodshed, soil tilled, two millennia of continuous residence, international agreements ,argues for Israel 's right to exist, yet that is still denied by the Arab League. For many of their governments, which are rich enough to have economically solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago, it is useful to have Israel as a scapegoat to divert attention from the tyranny, failure and corruption of their own regimes.

The tragic truth is that it suits Arab states very well to have the Palestinians endure permanent refugee status, and whenever Israel puts forward workable solutions they have been stymied by those whose interests put the destruction of Israel before the genuine well being of the Palestinians. Both King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt were assassinated when they attempted to come to some kind of accommodation with a country that most sane people now accept is not going away.


"We owe to the Jews," wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, "a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together. The Jewish contribution to finance, science, the arts, academia, commerce and industry, literature, philanthropy and politics has been astonishing relative to their tiny numbers. Although they make up less than half of one percent of the world population, between 1901 and 1950 Jews won 14% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for Literature and Science, and between 1951 and 2000 Jews won 32% of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, 32% for Physics, 39% for Economics and 29% for Science. This, despite so many of their greatest intellects dying in the gas chambers."


Civilization owes Judaism a debt it can never repay, and support for the right of a Jewish homeland to exist is the bare minimum we can provide. Yet we tend to treat Israel like a leper on the international scene, merely for defending herself, and threatening her with academic boycotts if she builds a separation wall that has so far reduced suicide bombings by 95% over three years.

It is a disgrace that no senior member of the Royal Family has ever undertaken an official visit to Israel , as though the country is still in quarantine after more than six decades. Her Majesty the Queen has been on the throne for 57 years and in that time has undertaken 250 official visits to 129 countries, yet has not yet set foot in Israel . She has visited 14 Arab countries, so it cannot have been that she wasn't in the region. Although Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice, is buried on the Mount of Olives because of her status as Righteous Among Gentiles, the Foreign Office ordained that his visit to his mother's grave in 1994 had to be in a private capacity only. Royal visits are one of the ways legitimacy is conferred on nations, and the Coalition Government should end the Foreign Office's de- facto boycott.

After the Holocaust, the Jewish people recognized that they must have their own state, a homeland where they could forever be safe from a repetition of such horrors. Putting their trust in Western Civilization was never again going to be enough. Since then, Israel has had to fight no fewer than five major wars for her very existence. She has been on the front line in the War against Terror and has been fighting the West's battles for it, decades before 9/11 or 7/7 ever happened. Radical Islam is never going to accept the concept of an Israeli State, so the struggle is likely to continue for another sixty years, but the Jews know that that is less dangerous than entrusting their security to anyone else.

Very often in Britain , especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would have done placed in their position? The population of the United Kingdom of 63 million is nine times that of Israel . In July 2006, to take one example at random, Hezbollah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed eight patrolmen and kidnapped two others, and that summer fired four thousand Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further forty-three civilians.

Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what we would do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire thirty-six thousand rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 87 British civilians, after killing seventy-two British servicemen in an ambush and capturing eighteen. There is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. Why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?

In the course of researching my latest book on the Second World War, I recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. Walking along a line of huts and the railway siding where their forebears had been worked and starved and beaten and frozen and gassed to death, were a group of Jewish schoolchildren, one of whom was carrying over his shoulder the Israeli flag, a blue star of David on white background. It was a profoundly moving sight, for it was the sovereign independence represented by that flag which guarantees that the obscenity of genocide which killed six million people in Auschwitz and camps like it -- will never again befall the Jewish people, to whom the rest of civilization owes so much.

I said at the start that I was speaking to you as an historian, and so I say: No people in History have needed the right to self-defense and legitimacy more than the Jews of Israel, and that is what we in the Friends of Israel Initiative demand here today.

And if you have the time and the interest, you might want to read what a young law student at Cambridge University had to say recently at a debate at the Cambridge Union Society, arguing FOR the proposal that "This House Believes that Israel is a rogue state." He managed to make those in attendance actually think about what the proposal said and in doing so, helped to defeat the motion he was defending.
posted by Jeff Smith at 1/17/2011 11:38:00 AM

 
GUNS AND MADNESS IN TUCSON

It seems that some thoughts I wanted to record here about Republicans will have to wait. Instead, today I will join the hundreds of thousands of fellow bloggers who have written about the tragedy in Arizona. I have read and listened to much of the punditry that this event has spawned. Some of it I agree with. Some I don’t. And there are things I thought were missing and that I will present here.

First of all we have to understand that we live in a violent country. Not in the sense of third world countries that are in a state of constant chaos. Not in the sense of Islamic theocracies. Vast portions of our American way of life would be criminal behavior in those countries and often punishable by death. But violent nonetheless. Among western democracies, our per capita crime numbers are unmatched. We have more deaths by gunshot than that of the combined numbers of two or three other democratic nations. And our love affair with guns is a national sickness, fueled by the gun lobby and the irresponsible Supreme Court interpretation of words in our constitution that referred to conditions in the fourteen states of our nascent nation in 1791.

And why do so many Americans have guns - rifles, shotguns, pistols, semi automatics - assault weapons? Most of the reasons one hears is that they are needed for "protection." As if police didn’t exist in every town and hamlet of the nation. As if this was the wild west of the 1800’s where a man’s gun was often a substitute for law. But while there may be some convoluted amount of logic for the idea of needing guns to protect our property and person - there is little or no logic to the other reason one hears expressed - if not directly then by implication - and that is fear of government and the idea that we one day may need weapons to do battle with government. The sickness of the twenty first century masquerading as the spirit of 1776 .A few nights ago on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow reeled off a stunning list of mass murders in the United States committed by madmen with guns. What was so disturbing was her interjection between each description - "a few weeks later" or "a few months later" or I believe even "so may days later."

To which we now add the case at hand. Without easy access to guns and the crazed law that allows virtually anyone to buy an ammunition magazine holding 30 bullets, the Tucson tragedy may never have happened. There will be efforts to once again to enact legislation to restrict the sale of .certain weapons and certain ammunition - doomed to failure. We are a nation addicted to gun ownership and - regrettably - all too often to gun use.

I was not too surprised but nonetheless disappointed at the reaction of liberal pundits to the tragedy - immediately linking it to the toxic talk that has permeated the airways and the halls of Congress for years. They weren’t direct linkages but they might just as well have been from the reaction they spurned. Some were complaining that Sarah Palin’s "silence" was "deafening." Really? I for one was relieved that there were no idiotic statements to be quoted from the Alaskan half Governor. Who wants to hear from this idiot other than her admirers who probably could answer questions on quiz shows that would totally floor me. Who or what is a "Kardashian." What does Lindsey Lohan do? Etc. I’m sure you get the idea. But they pushed her and she responded with a ridiculous rambling video complaining that a "blood libel" was being manufactured against her. So now we know that Palin is descended from generations of Jews who have been accused of kidnapping, killing and extracting blood from Christian children to make Matzos for Passover and a pogrom is imminent in Wasilla, Alaska. It does make you think though - what kind of blood did Jesus use for the Matzos he ate at "The Last Supper" which of course was a Passover Seder meal. At that time, there was no such thing as a "Christian."

But seriously, while there may be people who are so influenced by the toxic talk they hear that they will commit violent acts - there is zero evidence that Jared Loughner is one of them. We have so far zero evidence of what or who may have motivated him other than his own madness. Of course we should condemn toxic talk whenever and wherever we hear it, but doing so at a time like this is more than counter productive. It’s just plain wrong.

What I would more readily condemn - if that’s an appropriate word - was the representation of our sick gun problem in the person of Joe Zamudio who has been listed as one of the heroes in the aftermath of the shootings who emerged from a nearby store, took in the scene and approached with his hand on the butt of a gun with the safety catch off and ready to shoot someone who he perceived to be a criminal - a person holding Loughner’s gun. Fortunately, someone identified Loughner as the perpetrator and he finished up helping to subdue him, thus earning his "hero" status. But listen to what he said to the news media. He carries a gun with him at all times!! Presumably with the safety catch ON at all times. But he is not a policeman or any other kind of official required to be armed at all times. He is a civilian who feels the need to carry a gun wherever he goes. And he came close to murdering an innocent fellow civilian.

Some time ago I made some comments here about a couple of cases where the outcome was unfortunately more than "close." In one case, a man accidentally shot his fiancé the day before they were to be married. In another case, there was no accident. A man saw what he presumed to be burglars emerging from a neighbor’s house, called 911 and announced that he was going to go outside and shoot them! The 911 operator tried to persuade him to stay in his house - but he had a gun, he saw two people who he thought were committing a crime and killed them.

The Loughner case isn’t in the same category of these two incidents. They didn’t set out to commit mass murder. But if neither had perceived the need to possess guns to "protect" themselves, three people would be alive today - though two of them might be serving a jail sentence.

So what to take away from this case beyond the horror of a nine year old child experiencing perhaps her first taste of our democracy and how it works having her life snuffed out by a madman? The picture of that horror haunts me even as I write. I think what is to be learned from the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords and the deaths and injuries inflicted by Loughner is that there are likely more mentally ill people among us than we know about, against whom there is almost no barrier to obtaining guns and ammunition legally - if not at a gun store then at a gun show and that as long as such conditions persist, the massacre of last Saturday in Tucson will be repeated and added to the list that Rachel Maddow reeled off on her MSNBC show the other night. And while there is no known evidence that Loughner was influenced to act by the toxic talk of Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck or Michael Savage or Neal Boortz or Sarah Palin, there is little doubt that mentally ill people can be influenced to commit irrational acts by such talk.

The President’s appeal to all of us to talk to each other in ways that heal and not in ways that wound during his eloquent speech at the memorial service on Wednesday will unfortunately fall on deaf ears of Limbaugh, Beck et al. They will continue to inflict their toxic talk on the less intelligent among us because that is how they earn their millions. If they were to suddenly become reasonable in their discourse, they would lose their listeners - and they know it. So the toxic talk will continue - guns and ammunition will be readily available to practically anyone with the money to buy them - and mental illness and the simmering anger of so many of us that border on mental illness will persist unrecognized - until another "incident" occurs.

I hate to end these comments on such a mournful note - but I have lived a long time observing the American "passing parade" and I know that in certain aspects of our society - as I have said here on several occasions "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same. Except that with some issues, nothing seems to change other than the date. The proliferation of guns and their use to kill fellow Americans will persist and our nation will be the worse because of it - the second amendment to the constitution notwithstanding.
posted by Jeff Smith at 1/14/2011 07:18:00 PM

 
RACIAL AND ETHNIC POLITICS ALIVE AND WELL IN CHICAGO.

A personal note to begin the year. Typing will be difficult for a while and may result in very few commentaries until the difficulty is resolved. I have managed to tear my right shoulder rotator cuff and will probably need surgical repair. But I’m struggling through for today.

I am going to make some comments on Republicans as hinted the other day and perhaps on the horrible tragedy that took place in Tucson over the weekend , but for my first post of the new year, I have some thoughts that I’ve been wanting to record about Democrats - the Democrats who are trying to become the next mayor of Chicago. Chicago’s mayoral election is supposed to be non partisan - but who are we kidding? The day a non Democrat becomes the city’s mayor, Gabriel will appear to perform a trumpet solo at State and Madison and announce the end of days. The list of candidates is getting smaller so perhaps the nonsense about who will be listed first on the ballot won’t be much of a factor. It seemed that it was a factor when the lottery was held to determine where each candidates name would appear. There was discussion in the city’s newspapers and on radio and television news shows of the perceived "advantage" of being the first name on the ballot and candidates were jockeying to improve their chances of winning the favored position.

But what does this say about the voters of Chicago and what does this say about what candidates for the office think about the voters of Chicago? The so called advantage of being the first name on the ballot is based on the belief that some - maybe many - voters will enter the voting booth knowing little about any of the candidates and not having reached a reasoned conclusion about who to vote for, will simply cast their ballot for the first name on the list. So the answer to my question is that some - maybe many - Chicago voters are just plain stupid and that candidates want their names at the top of any ballot to take advantage of that stupidity. Unfortunately, the stupid voters don’t realize that candidates are anxious to take advantage of their stupidity, so they will never feel insulted and will continue to help candidates lucky enough to have their name listed first to boost their vote totals.

But in the election scheduled for February 22, the lottery winner for position number one is no longer a candidate. Congressman Danny Davis, who observed that it was a good start when his name was drawn first, is no longer a candidate. Instead, he is part of a group led by Reverend James T Meeks that is turning back the clock to an ugly period of Chicago politics when racial division ruled in the Council Chambers of the city. The two of them, who started out as candidates, have now withdrawn their names in order to create a "consensus" African American candidate and have settled on former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun. There is another African American still in the race, but not one well known and unlikely to pull more than a fraction of the vote. So what are Meeks, Davis and Braun saying to the voters of Chicago with their idea of a "consensus" candidate? They’re saying that blacks will vote for a black candidate, simply because they share the same skin color and that rather than "split" the "black vote" among several black candidates and give a "white" candidate an advantage, it’s better to have a single black candidate.

The candidate leading in the polls is Rahm Emanuel, former adviser to President Clinton and more recently, President Obama’s chief of staff. President Obama has given Emanuel his blessing if not his direct endorsement. President Clinton however has endorsed Emanuel for the office and plans to campaign for him. This upsets Congressman Davis who warns that the "black community" will react negatively to such an endorsement. Clinton should stay out of a local race he says - I guess a new Democratic doctrine - no endorsements of Democratic candidates for a local office by fellow Democratic politicians. Unless they’re endorsing an African American candidate. Davis was asked while he was still on the ballot if he would welcome a Clinton endorsement. Is the Pope a Catholic? That wasn’t his response but close enough. But now the plot thickens.

There are two prominent Hispanic candidates on the ballot, Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle. There has been no talk of a "consensus" Latino - but Congressman Luis Gutierrez has endorsed Chico and plans to record commercials with him, particularly Spanish language commercials. I’m waiting for Danny Davis to suggest that this will have a negative reaction in the "Latino community" but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m not a great fan of retiring Mayor Richard Daley. I live in a Chicago suburb so I’m not directly affected by his politics and policies - but during his reign, he has managed to avoid a repeat of anything resembling the racial division that tore local government apart in the early 1980’s. Now the years of relative absence of "racial politics" are in danger of coming to an end with fairly obvious appeals by candidates or their supporters to race and ethnicity - with the exception Rahm Emanuel. Maybe that’s because he’s the only Jewish candidate - and maybe because Jewish voters can’t be counted on to vote for a candidate simply because of shared ethnicity.

I don’t expect any openly "racial" comments to be made by any of the candidates as the campaign gets under way - though there’ll likely be "code words." But I do expect this race to be more racially and ethnically divisive than any election of the past 25 years. I hope I’m wrong and that we won’t see news pictures of Carol Moseley Braun in church settings surrounded by black clergymen and black elected officials and radio and television commercials for Chico on Spanish language radio and television stations - but I doubt it. There are many who will see nothing wrong about blacks and Latinos appealing to "their own" in an election - and I know it’s been common in the past - but if it happens again - as it appears it will for the next two months - I think it’s a step backward for Chicago - into the kind of past that I thought the city of broad shoulders had left behind.
posted by Jeff Smith at 1/10/2011 03:23:00 PM