Month: June 2015

Did President Obama Really ‘Miss an Opportunity’ by Avoiding Sochi? (February 18, 2014)

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sochi-winter-olympics-2014-main-image

During a cab ride home this evening, I spent the first part of the trip sort of balefully and resentfully staring at the continued downpour of yet another Winter 2014 blizzard upon Chicago. However my bitter reverie was interrupted by a different irritant of the rhetorical variety. Several local public radio panelists were tearing into President Obama for relatively undefined “missed opportunities” with regard to his absenteeism from the Olympic Games in Sochi. Notably, these commentators were of a liberal bent, which put me in the interesting position of disdaining the meat of the discussion not for its ignorance, but because these individuals ought to know better.

It’s been a feature of the last five and half years of the Obama Presidency that even those media types who ostensibly sit on the left side of the political spectrum have chosen a “fair and balanced” approach that can easily be interpreted as an irresponsible dereliction of duty. In attempting to placate everyone, they ultimately please nobody, and furthermore contribute a distortion of facts every bit as damaging as the reckless demagoguery of Fox News.

So it is with the POTUS’ abstention from Sochi. In mid-December 2013, the website LGBTQNation displayed a comprehensive understanding of the President’s compelling social motivations for snubbing Putin and his arrogant, expensive and delusional display of Russian exceptionalism. Reprinting an Associated Press piece by writer Eddie Pells:

“President Barack Obama sent Russia a clear message about its treatment of gays and lesbians with who he is – and isn’t – sending to represent the United States at the Sochi Olympics.

Billie Jean King will be one of two openly gay athletes in the U.S. delegation for the opening and closing ceremonies, Obama announced Tuesday. For the first time since 2000, however, the U.S. will not send a president, former president, first lady or vice president to the Games.”

We live in a nation where the majority of registered voters support equality, where 17 states and counting have legalized gay marriage. We are a society in which even members of the Republican Party, once dependably able to use the issue as a wedge to avoid serious policy discussion, no longer wants to touch the topic. Homophobia just doesn’t play in Poughkeepsie like it once did.

But let’s move beyond the fact that Putin’s Russia is a human rights trainwreck that leaves the White House’s subtle refusal to legitimize this month’s grandstanding with a personal appearance entirely commendable. Syria anyone? A Reuters report from early this week quotes U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as saying, “The regime stonewalled. They did nothing except continue to drop barrel bombs on their own people and continue to destroy their own country. And I regret to say they are doing so with increased support from Iran, from Hezbollah and from Russia.” It seems those among us who feared that Russia might have us chasing our tails with a 2013 offer to broker a diplomatic end to the long-running conflict in the troubled Middle Eastern country, may have been onto something.

If this isn’t enough to make Obama’s removal from Sochi comprehensible, let’s talk about a consideration that has enjoyed bipartisan appeal lo these last 13 years – national security. NBC News’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel appeared on last Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press, where he observed:

“The most threatened Olympics in modern history has so far been safe, and that’s not just because of the ring of steel around Sochi. We traveled 500 miles from Sochi to the North Caucasus, the heart of Russia’s Islamic insurgency, and saw how Vladimir Putin is using a combination of crackdowns and payoffs to secure the games.”

Safety via temporary efforts of corruption and intimidation don’t really set my mind at ease. I don’t know about you, but for me as a viewer, this is a rare instance where I’ve been unable to divorce what I know about the host country from the objective magic of the Olympic Games. To offer a comparison, I had a lot more luck with the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and we’re talking about China. Would I really stand behind a leader who decided to put on a happy face and pretend that all is as it should be, in a nation that appears to be nostalgic for the Cold War?

My point is there are a lot of issues about which we as liberals can quibble with President Obama. Many of us feel health care reform can never be truly realized without a single payer revolution. Others feel that the emboldened and reckless Tea Party might not have become the force it is without Obama’s misguided attempts to negotiate with hostage takers. And just why is it that former President Bill Clinton has been so much more successful at articulating the Obama vision then the elected man himself?

But the White House’s decision to let the athletes do their thing while avoiding overt support of a regime that has been a veritable thorn in America’s side on so many fronts? Perfectly advisable.

Why Aren’t More Republican Politicians Following Charlie Crist’s Example? (February 10, 2014)

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Charlie-Crist-to-run-as-Democrat-for-Florida-governor

Last week our own Justin Baragona wrote the insightful piece,Democrat Charlie Crist Continues To Hold Commanding Lead Over Rick Scott In Florida. My first set of reactions approached something like tentative relief that Floridian voters are showing an early preference for a left-leaning Governor in an otherwise dependably red state. My second thought was something along the lines of “Charlie Christ is looking pretty handsome for a man of 57.” (Sue me.) And in a shamefully distant third, the obvious questions finally occurred to me: Charlie Crist went Democrat? When? Why?

The politically-minded writer tries to canvass every issue of importance. But we often have day jobs, we have chores and errands, we have families. Still, I remain astonished that this one got by me. And apparently, it’s old news since Crist converted (religious language deliberately invoked) in early December of 2012, after he endorsed President Barack Obama in his successful re-election campaign. There was a lot going on at the time besides the newly-minted, second-term Obama Presidency. The Northeast was in early stages of Sandy recovery, and just one week after Crist’s announcement, the nation was jolted by the Sandy Hook Elementary school mass executions.

Yet and still this ought to have generated more buzz, back then as well as today. If only for its novelty. After all, Ranker’s list of Notable Republicans Turned Democrats has to reach for former NBA star Charles Barley to come up with 20. And though I didn’t just fall from the turnip truck and assume there’s more than meets the ideological eye to Crist’s metamorphosis (like say, lingering anger at Tea Party usurper Marco Rubio, who turned Crist into an unsuccessful third-party candidate in Florida’s 2010 Senate race), much of what Crist says about the change is worth hearing. In fact, given his newfound political relevancy and pop cultural ascension, the only remaining question I have is this: Why aren’t more genuine civil servants of the Republican ilk following suit?

Last week, Crist appeared as a guest on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher to promote his new book, The Party’s Over: How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat (so we can also scratch altruistic reasons off the list of Crist’s  party-switching motivations). During the appearance, the once-and-hopefully-future-Gov paraphrased a well-worn quote that he’s offered to various media outlets as a catalyst for the transformation:

“I think I’ll quote my friend Jeb Bush. He said it better than I ever could…Today’s Republican Party, at least the leadership, is perceived as being anti-women, anti-minority, anti-immigrant, anti-education, anti-gay couples, anti-environment.”

Though the party is indeed perceived as largely the refuge of old, wealthy white men afflicted with an acute fear of change, this has not been enough to scare off the usual suspects. Rather than search for a new platform (even an independent one) that might serve to widen their individual appeal at the ballot box, most of these lemmings seem more than content to go over the cliff with their cohorts. When that lemming takes the form of a female or an ethnic minority (for now anyway), it just instills that much more scorn and pity.

The real question as I see it does not revolve around why Crist fled into the more inclusive arms of the Democratic Party. Rather I wonder why more Republicans of any social conscience, not to mention survival instincts, haven’t done the same. Just look at what breaking the chains of GOP messaging bondage has done for Mitt Romney’s image. That said, everyone across party lines like a winner and if Crist prevails this coming November, especially in a conservative state like Florida, the fair weather friends may just flock to the left en masse.

CVS Ending Sales Of Tobacco Offers Conservative Media Dual Dissembling Opportunity (February 5, 2014)

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CVS_pharmacy

Unfortunately, nicotine addiction knows no political affiliation. I can report anecdotally that I am acquainted with as many liberal, free-thinking chain-smokers as those whose right-wing beliefs tend to set my teeth on edge. Be that as it may, the image of the big plantation tobacco farmer is inextricably linked to the Republican Party, and as long ago as 1998, GOP leadership began to understand that the inflow of lobbyist funds was not worth the long-term PR hassle.

During the month of March, 16 years ago, Washington Postwriters Ceci Connelly and John Mintz published a piece entitled,For Big Tobacco, a Future Without GOP Support. This trip through 20th Century history is fascinating for many reasons, not the least because former House Speaker-turned-CNN Crossfirehost Newt Gingrich seemed to declare the end of an era.  While ironically hitching a ride to California aboard a Big Tobacco plane, Gingrich is quoted putting his benefactors on notice:

“‘You guys have screwed us…The Republican Party has been saddled with tobacco.’

This time, said Gingrich, he wouldn’t allow President Clinton to demagogue Republicans on the tobacco issue in the same way he had outmaneuvered GOP leaders on the budget in 1995.

‘I will not let Bill Clinton get to the left of me on this,’ he said.”

And yet…

When CVS/Caremark announced its decision this week to cease the sale of tobacco products in its retail stores by October 1, it wasn’t the liberal media that seized on a perceived opportunity to protect donor dollars while creating another tenuous rebuke of Obamacare. I am fairly certain at this point that the GOP platform consists of blaming every conceivable worldly ill on health care reform. Shaun White withdraws from the slopestyle snowboarding competition at the Sochi Olympic games? Thanks faulty exchange rollout!

Though the tactics may have changed, conservative media figures have wasted little time spin doctoring, in sort of a shadow defense of the tobacco lobby. USAToday Contributor Katrina Trinko (also Managing Editor of Heritage Foundation publication,The Foundry) writes with evidence in hand (none) that the chain’s decision will have no impact upon the nation’s smoking patterns. She observes, “There’s no doubt that cigarettes are unhealthy — and that second-hand smoke has exposed non-smokers to health risks as well. But CVS’ decision doesn’t affect second-hand smoke, and won’t necessarily make a steep dent in overall smoking rates. Other chains, such as Target, haven’t sold cigarettes in years.”

So really then, CVS, why bother?

And in what I’m sure is 100 percent coincidence, wouldn’t you know it, The Foundry (yes!) ran its own piece attempting to tie CVS’ business decision with the desire of conservative-run corporations to exclude female employees from Obamacare’s contraceptive coverage mandate. Writer Amy Payne offers:

“Businesses want to provide products and services that customers want to buy. If they don’t, they go out of business. But CVS’s move to change the products it offers shows that plenty of business leaders consider more than just the bottom line—they consider the values they want their companies to reflect. This is another freedom they should enjoy in America—though it has recently been denied to businesses like Hobby Lobby that are trying to defend their right to do business in accordance with their values.”

Yes, the obvious connection between CVS’s decision to adhere to carefully cultivated healthy brand standards, versus Hobby Lobby’s assertion of religious freedom rights equal to American citizens. I don’t know how we missed it! White males seeking to deny female employees a full range of reproductive health options is exactly the same as a national chain deciding to discontinue harmful products that a customer can just go to another store to obtain.

So if you ask conservative media, CVS’s landmark decision is either a pointless public health move or an assertion of corporate entitlement that undercuts Obamacare. Sometimes you just have to step back and admire the other side’s contortionary skill.

GOP Can’t Lay Down Arms in War Against Women (January 27, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

mike huckabee

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

–          William Shakespeare

I opened with this specific quote for two reasons. In the first place, it’s highly appropriate given the context. And in the second, I hate to miss an opportunity to leverage a little irony. The “lady” to whom I allude in this instance is everyone’s favorite backward looking political party. That’s right…the GOP!

It’s been difficult to ignore the Republican Party’s insistence, subsequent to its November 2012 shellacking at the national ballot box, that it offers modern appeal to female voters. 68 percent of single lady votes went Obama’s way, as did a plurality of the married variety. In an electorate where slightly more than 50 percent of the ballots cast are done so by people with uteri, it should not have taken the statistical genius of Nate Silver to predict a major defeat for Team Romney. And yet we were still treated to the spectacle of a stunned and sputtering Karl Rove melting down on Fox News in front of the entire nation.

The loss of feminine support in the run-up to 2012 was an entirely unforced error. As writer Allan Karlin observed the day after the election, “The Obama Campaign did not create Richard Mourdock or Todd Akin. Nor did the campaign employ ventriloquists to fill their mouths with stupid, insensitive, and misogynistic sound bites about women and rape. The campaign did not force Romney to challenge the inclusion of birth control in the Affordable Care Act or to persist in his cloistered silence on equal pay. To the extent women favored President Obama over Mr. Romney, their preference was grounded in facts.”

But then in March 2013, we read the now-infamous Growth and Opportunity Project report (affectionately known as “The Autopsy” in media circles), the GOP’s professed come to Jesus moment (pun intended). In it, researchers observed, “Women are not a ‘coalition.’ They represent more than half the voting population in the country, and our inability to win their votes is losing us elections.” In conjunction with this dose of common sense, a concerted effort was undertaken to train party incumbents and their aides in speaking to female voters. Comical, but apparently necessary. And yet the effort has completely failed – spectacularly so.

Our own Sarah Jones wrote last week of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s bizarro “Uncle Sugar” remarks pertaining to universal female access to birth control pills. Rather than opening the door to female moderates disgruntled with Democratic leadership, Huckabee may have shoved additional Republican women through the exits.  But this is just one high-profile example of the GOP’s continued struggle with policy, messaging and the women who make up over 40 percent of household breadwinners.

In July of 2013, the website Addicting Info published a list of the 40 all-time dumbest Republican quotes about rape. This “greatest” hits compilation was a difficult piece of work given the enormous body of foolishness available, leading writer Stephen J. Foster Jr. to conclude, “Republicans are obsessed with rape…The foot-in-mouth disease carried by the party has revealed much about the current beliefs of conservatives and it has spread like a plague…and as Republicans have continued to attack rape victims, they have united women like never before against their extreme anti-abortion agenda.”

Facing such an overwhelming, continuing load of self-defeating sound bites, has party leadership ordered an immediate moratorium on public appeals to those carrying two X chromosomes? You know, until representatives find something intelligent to say? Nope. Instead, they have adopted a tactic rather similar to the right’s efforts to recast income inequality discussions as “class warfare” rhetoric from the left. This is why we have to put up with Rick Santorum appearing on CNN in a lame attempt to deflect responsibility.  He told the hosts of the network’s Crossfire, “I think what Governor Huckabee was saying is we’ve seen an unprecedented assault by the Democrats against Republicans claiming there’s a war on women.”

The idea here is that if one denies a course of action loudly and often enough, perhaps the right people can be convinced that what they’re seeing and hearing is just an illusion. The Republican National Committee has held a series of very important meetings designed to consider ways to narrow the party’s gender gap. Unfortunately, they persist in inviting high-profile caucus leaders to speak at these events. And the cycle of repugnance and alienation from female voters continues.

I have learned the hard way over the years that when a person or group reveals something about themselves, repeatedly no less, you must believe them. There is simply no other logical option. Conserve your oxygen, Santorum. The jig is up.

Polar Vortex Underscores Frozen Congressional Activity (January 23, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Deep Freeze Washington

Oh the weather outside is frightful this winter, and this year there are very few places to hide. Last weekend as I boarded a flight to Nashville, visions of 50-degree temperatures danced in my head. The normal January range in the Music City is between 28 and 47 degrees, infinitely more tolerable than the climate in my hometown of Chicago. Alas, I deplaned in a disappointingly similar environment, where the thermometer struggled to reach the freezing point. Mother Nature is bitter and unforgiving all over.

Maybe she’s taking her cues from the inert members of Congress, who at the close of 2013 dared to make us consider the possibility of action. Briefly scared straight by the public backlash over the fall’s disastrous and ill-reasoned government shutdown, intransigent Republicans in the Senate (and to a lesser degree, the House) suddenly seemed in the mood to get things done. This led to the production of a bipartisan budget agreement, followed by feckless House Speaker John Boehner’s better-late-than never repudiation of right wing groups such as the Heritage Foundation, which have egregiously encouraged GOP games of chicken over the last six years. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid finally found the political courage to change the broken chamber’s filibuster rules so that an enormous backlog of Executive Branch appointments could begin to be cleared. It was a heady time when actual work once again seemed possible.

But the spirit of compromise didn’t last. Early into the New Year, thousands of long-term job seekers were cut off from sorely needed unemployment insurance benefits. No sooner did the holiday bills and winter’s cruelty roll in than the Republican Party doubled down on the suffering of the jobless. Despite the fact that respondents to a Fox News poll (!!!!) overwhelmingly favor the extension of benefits, to the tune of 69 percent, Congressional Republicans have continued to ignore the will of the people. Washington Post writer Aaron Blake rather charitably reports that “Congress is deadlocked over whether and how to continue funding unemployment insurance beyond that 26-week period.”

I would offer that there’s no deadlock about it. Democrats maintain some human empathy for the Great Recession-ravaged unemployed while Republican Party standard bearers like Kentucky Senator Rand Paul leverage pretzel logic to avoid helping that wretched 47 percent of “takers.” Paul famously said, “the longer you have it [unemployment insurance], that it provides some disincentive to work, and that there are many studies that indicate this.”

I am betting that these “many studies” were conducted by conservative research groups. As someone who has been on the layoff dole more than once in the course of a relatively short career, I can safely say that six months of roughly 30 percent the usual take home pay did not result in leisurely champagne and caviar consumption.

Only the party that brought us two budget and deficit busting wars, tax cuts and an unpaid for Medicare prescription drug benefit under the Bush II regime could have the absolute, unmitigated gall to demand fiscal responsibility when it comes to helping suffering workers. And naturally, the GOP has brushed aside numerous credible reports that extending the benefits actually creates jobs and saves the government money in the long run.

But let me not consume the entire column railing against Republican opposition to helping once hardworking Americans survive. As the great Gail Collins of The New York Times wrote today on her end of “The Conversation” with David Brooks: “to be honest, if the president told a reporter that he had great confidence this would be the year we’d see immigration reform, better gun control, tax reform and a hike in the minimum wage, I’d probably be less excited than worried about his mental health.”

Anyone who believed that late fall’s sudden flurry of activity would extend past the New Year, or counted upon the Republican obsession with opposition to die along with the party’s shutdown approval rating, is discovering that the polar vortex is both metaphorically and literally in charge.