DemocratsForProgress

DemocratsForProgress's Journal

July 26, 2012

Take Five (Joke on the Water edition)

Jeff Rosenzweig: Take Five (Joke on the Water edition)

Following his failure to bring down the Obama Administration with the Fast and Furious pseudo-scandal, Congressman Darrell Issa found himself faced with a choice: do something worthwhile with his time, or occupy himself with more ephemeral crap. Can you guess which he chose?

Issa has gone back and revived an idea that got no traction on multiple previous occasions; he’s trying once again to persuade fellow legislators to rename America’s coastal waters, to exchange the drab moniker “Exclusive Economic Zone” for the super-duper ain’t-that-America gee-whiz red-white-and-blue hyper-patriotic name “Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.” Catchy, n’est-ce pas?

Other than sabotaging the nation’s future prosperity with voodoo economics and more than tripling the national debt, ruthlessly shutting down mental health facilities and leaving their patients to fend for themselves, trading arms for hostages and then lying about it, ignoring the AIDS epidemic, invading Grenada for the mucho macho cred, unleashing a crack plague on inner cities, and shrugging off global warming, just what did Reagan do to deserve Issa’s proposed encomium?

Well, back in 1983, he issued Proclamation 5030, which created the EEZ in the first place. The proclamation reads in part...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/26/take-five-joke-on-the-water-edition/

July 25, 2012

Walter Rhett: Romney on Foreign Policy: All Fault, No Forward

A partisan critique of the President’s foreign policy is not a foreign policy plan. Mitt Romney is conducting his review, and his VFW convention stump speech on foreign policy sounded remarkably similar to his stump speech about America’s standing. All fault, no forward. All will, no way. All blame, no shame. His grand strategy sounds like a call for global domination. We know he doesn’t practice what he preaches! He is the first major party candidate to express his faith in America by moving his money out of the country. The real question is: what does he preach?

What uses of soft power does Romney propose? Where does he stand on the UN call for nations to give 0.07% of GDP to foreign aid? What is his approach to the military and political conflicts that have destabilized and disrupted important African states? Does he see the connections between political stability and gender equality recently outlined in Foreign Policy? What are his views on international agreements on fishing stocks? How will he limit the theft of intellectual property?

Does he see AIDS treatment as an arm of American policy? Will he switch to local purchases of food aid, a model that reduces workers’ risk, stimulates local markets, and broadens the aid’s impact? Will he strengthen ties with Brazil, already a major partner of China? Will he aid in developing Brazil’s enormous oil find or expand its steel industry, redirecting energy and infrastructure trade to a hemispherical partner? Does he support greater access to education and greater economic opportunity for the world’s women?

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/25/digging-deeper-romney-on-foreign-policy-all-fault-no-forward/

July 25, 2012

Nance Greggs: A Note Home from Summer Camp

To the Parents/Guardians of Willard Mitt Romney:

As you are already aware, it was with great reluctance that we accepted your child, Mitt, into our “Presidential Campaign Camp” program this summer. From the outset, it was clear that even the members of the Very Young Republicans Club, who sponsored his entrance into our program, were unenthusiastic about his participation at best. We now understand why.

Our program was designed to give interested children the experience of creating their own “campaigns” for elected office via fun activities like speech-writing, coming up with slogans, marketing strategies, etc., in order to hone the leadership skills that will serve them in their future endeavors as adults.

Once integrated into the group of PCC participants, to say that Mitty does not play well with others would be an understatement of immense proportions. While he has tried repeatedly to rally other campers around him during playtime, the gatherings continue to be small and poorly attended – despite what you may have read in the FoxCamp Newsletter (which we at PCC have always considered to be a questionable source of summer camp news, traditionally appealing to youngsters who can’t read).

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/24/a-note-home-from-summer-camp/

July 18, 2012

Walter Rhett: Sununu’s Gallows of Hate

At first, for a fleeting second, the irony seemed delicious. A sycophant of Mitt Romney, the American candidate with foreign bank accounts, says, “I wish this President would learn how to be an American.” But this quickly turned ugly. It was worse than being called “nigger.” That word has a history, is anchored in the nation’s fabric, is a backlash that marked progress, represents barriers climbed and conquered, and sounds the warnings that those who lynch and burn are coming again. That word has hate but has a life tied to the blood and sweat spilled as a people moved from slavery to freedom. It is a racial slur but it is also a moral compass that marks the cliff, the place America has currently claimed as too far. Ironically, it was a common public word in the 19th century. It routinely appeared in newspapers and in conversation.

But there is no fleeting irony or routine sentiment in John Sununu’s view of our President’s past. His is the kind of insubordination and attitude for which those enslaved were physically whipped or put on wheels, punished within an inch of their lives, but he drew his bias with impunity:

“He has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure.”

To which a reader of the Atlantic replied, “Romney needs more Sununus.”

Hatred meet causal indifference, a hate that does not have to be inflamed, but is a snack food, a lollipop flavor, easily consumed for its comfort, embraced by its supporters with a smug revelation that the sky will not fall in their hatred of undeserving, non-American (or American!) Negroes. So hate is the new feel-good fitness track, the workout that makes others sweat, the stress reliever of American politics. It has taken on a creative life. But its purpose is the same: to strip anyone who isn’t ideologically white of any shelf space in American life. Hate is the post-date expiration for the American dream...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/18/digging-deeper-sununus-gallows-of-hate/

July 17, 2012

Nance Greggs: God is a Democrat

My long-held suspicion that God is a Democrat now seems to have been borne out by the fact that every prayer the Democrats have uttered since the Republicans chose their presumptive presidential candidate has been answered – and then some. To wit:

Please, God, ensure that their nominee inarticulately demonstrates his own stupidity in front of the citizenry.

“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.” – Mitt Romney

Please lead him to make statements that are diametrically opposed to what the voters want to hear in the current climate of blatant corporate greed, corporate malfeasance, and a total lack of corporate ethics...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/16/god-is-a-democrat/

July 15, 2012

Slouching Towards Tampa (Truckin' edition)

Jeff Rosenzweig: Slouching Towards Tampa (Truckin' edition)

If he were put on an antique diving helmet and a gorilla suit and recite the Gettysburg Address from a diving board forty-three feet above a wading pool filled with piranhas, Mitt Romney still wouldn’t be the slightest bit interesting. Except, perhaps, to Jim Wilson, a retired insurance salesman whose fascination with Romney approaches idolatry, as noted in a previous edition of this column.

For reasons known only to Wilson, his Maker and possibly his therapist, back in 2011 the man began following the candidate all over the country, something even the Romney clan – wife Ann and sons Tagg, Tugg, Borg, Blip and Fauntleroy – seem reluctant to do. Wilson’s admiration was aptly characterized by the New York Times as “fanatical” in a May profile. Among other things, the article amusingly revealed the campaign’s initial suspicions about the man:

The Romney campaign kept its distance from him at first. Aides to Mr. Romney, nervous that a suddenly ubiquitous fan might prove a liability, went so far as to vet him. Finding nothing alarming, they began to see an upside to his doggedness and free labor.

Uh-huh. The “upside” being that despite Romney’s clearly absolute dearth of charisma, the campaign can always point to Wilson as evidence that the candidate is capable of some sort of quasi-human quasi-connection. In a reassuring sign of prudence, however, Wilson seems to realize that a face-to-face meeting with his hero just might kill the magic...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/15/slouching-towards-tampa-truckin-edition/

July 11, 2012

Walter Rhett: The Cultural Case Against Mitt Romney

Athletes have it, but writers and everyday people get it too: self doubt. For athletes, it’s driven by a prolonged drop in performance. For a writer, its loss is tied to an audience that suddenly doesn’t get what once was a shared point of view and doubt leaps forward.

I’m having mega doubts. The national audience is ignoring an issue I thought was clear cut. I thought it was a clean kill. I seen three clean kills in politics: Michael Dukakis (the tank ad, not Willie Horton), Tom Turnipseed’s South Carolina governor’s race (Turnipseed having been treated for depression with electric shock, Lee Atwater declared the state “didn’t need a governor hooked up to jumper cables”), and Strom Thurmond’s takedown of Abe Fortis’ Supreme Court nomination (Thurmond set up 24-hour private Senatorial screenings of the results of Fortis’ ruling supporting community standards for decency in a case over pornography). No, four: Barack’s takedown of Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner last year.

But Romney has a bigger bulls-eye. It rivals Benedict Arnold in its nasty, anti-American duplicity. It has everything in common with sleazy, morally bankrupt, self-aggrandizing, power-mad dictators of lesser developed countries. This one, I thought, was in the pocket.

But no. The rapidly spreading news of Mitt Romney’s 12 or more offshore accounts, in dummy corporations he legally established, turned into a loud inquisition about his bypassing the tax code. That’s the main reason for opening accounts in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands! Or Switzerland. Mitt has accounts in all three. But these arguments miss the mark, and for three reasons I’m left with self doubt about America’s common sense...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/11/digging-deeper-the-cultural-case-against-mitt-romney/

July 4, 2012

Walter Rhett: Are Government Fines a Firewall?

Who thinks fines work? Large fines, in the millions and billions of dollars, do they really change the corporate culture of open corruption, criminal behavior, the rule-breaking practices, the willingness to cheat that they are supposed to punish and deter? Or are they the cost of doing business for many businesses, especially large, multi-national corporations, whose continued violations damage US security and policy and are a major theft of taxpayers’ money?

In May 2011, the Department of State levied its largest civil penalty ever, $79 million, against a subsidiary of a British firm, BAE Systems, for illegal arms trafficking, after the firm was convicted of conspiracy to violate two international laws an estimated 2,591 times. 2,600 arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Hungry, Tanzania and Sweden, among other countries, were a part of the violations. The State Department settlement was the civil case. BAE Systems paid a $400 million criminal fine.

The Department of State’s Office of Defense Trade Controls addresses civil violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the two acts most frequently violated.

After it was all over, BAE Systems issued a statement thanking the State Department for its help in bringing the company’s inventory, record keeping, and sales program into international compliance. Of course, it has “initiated the appropriate steps.” BAE System is one of the Defense Department’s Top 10 contractors...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/07/04/digging-deeper-are-government-fines-a-firewall/

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