PoliticusUSA (Politics)

CNN’s Republican Personalities Try to Have it Both Ways with Chicago’s Gun Violence (July 10, 2014)

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It’s been all over the news this week, as well it ought to be. A warm and festive 4th of July weekend in the Windy City was utterly marred by extreme gun violence. 82 people were shot, leaving 16 dead. Media outlets such as The Los Angeles Timeshave been quick to label it “the greatest spate of gun violence so far this year.” In a firearm obsessed country such as the United States, this is negatively notable achievement.

I am a lifelong citizen of Chicago and a current resident of the Rogers Park neighborhood, a far north side enclave that is no stranger to guns and gang activity. The Second City has been infamous for its violent reputation for many decades. In a bit of gallows humor, writer Mason Johnson of CBS Chicago observed in Fall 2013, “Thanks to recent headlines, you’d think the FBI rolled out the red carpet and handed Chicago a beautiful, hand-engraved (in cursive!) plaque that reads ‘Murderiest Murder City in Murderland.’”

It’s so funny, it actually hurts. Though the Independence Day weekend killing spree is remarkable for its extremity, the Timespiece observes “1,129 have been shot so far this year in Chicago…There were 2,185 shooting victims in Chicago last year.”

As far back as mid-2012, the Huffington Post ran an article with the lurid but true headline, “Chicago Homicides Outnumber U.S. Troop Killings In Afghanistan.” Chi-town has been out of control for years. But why exactly? We understand the city’s stratification: ongoing problems with gang activity, segregation, and gentrification juxtaposed with municipal neglect. But that doesn’t entirely account for the frustrating aggression of the holiday weekend. Who has the answers? Let’s turn on CNN and see what the channel formerly known as a serious news network has to say.

Wolf Blitzer, conservative host of The Situation Room: “Outrage and finger-pointing today after a holiday weekend bloodbath; 11 people were killed, dozens wounded in a series of shootings not in a place like Baghdad, but in a major American city, President Obama’s hometown of Chicago…this is truly shocking what has been going on.”

Newt Gingrich, former Republican House Speaker and currentCrossfire host: “I’m outraged by the degree to which we as a country have not focused on what happened over the weekend in Chicago. At least 82 people were shot, 82 — 14 of them died. It’s really troubling that the country is numb and so indifferent.”

Were these observations uttered by other people, I’d be inclined to join the head shaking. But it really stretches one’s tolerance to the limit to be asked to endure it from members of the party so deep in the NRA’s pocket, they couldn’t get behind minor, common sense reform like the implementation of universal gun sale background checks after the 2012 Newtown massacre.

What’s really behind the violence in Chicago and elsewhere? One simple word: guns. Lots and lots of guns. Though I understand that the holiday weekend carnage wasn’t perpetrated by licensed gun owners, the last thing the city needed was the implementation of Concealed Carry in 2013. If as National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre claims, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” that postulation was put to the test in the Second City last weekend. Guess what? Fail.

The faux outrage displayed by CNN’s conservative media personalities will lead nowhere, as has been the case with so many gun-infused killing sprees before this. And I’m entirely sure that Blitzer’s attempt to connect the violence with President Obama was coincidental. Right?

What’s really shocking is how often representatives from the right try to have it both ways – and expect us to allow it. Gingrich’s liberal counterpart, Stephanie Cutter did her level best to bring the conversation back to the problem of our laughable gun laws. She countered Newty by observing, “I found this report from the city of Chicago Police Department from a month ago that says they do have a gun problem but their gun problem is as a result of illegal guns coming across state lines or from the outside county into the city of Chicago because there are lax laws — lack of gun loopholes that allow people to buy guns without a background check.”

And the network’s Piers Morgan tweeted, “Imagine the uproar if 60 people were shot in a weekend in London/Paris/Rome/Madrid/Sydney? Yet most Americans will just shrug and ignore.”

The only thing that’s shocking and outrageous is using preventable, sustained murder as a headline generator. We could so something as a nation about our rampant gun violence anytime – if only half of our politicians weren’t firmly under the NRA’s thumb. Where’s the outrage about that?

Rand Paul and Charles Blow Make Strange Partners in Voting Rights Advocacy (June 23, 2014)

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Rand Paul and Charles Blow Make Strange Partners in Voting Rights Advocacy

Two men from opposing sides of the political spectrum, with different experiences of America, utilizing two divergent forums, arrive at the same conclusion: disenfranchising voters is harmful to our struggling democracy.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul appeared on last Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press for an interview with moderator David Gregory. Paul gave several statements that would appear to be at odds with Republican Party talking points, including a stubborn refusal to fault President Obama for the administration’s current cautious approach to reengaging Iraq. But we already knew that Paul is a true libertarian on this issue. He values a nation’s right to live and determine its own system of government above his party’s interest in warfare and faux domination. I am not alone in wondering if this approach renders him unelectable in a national Republican primary.

But in the same interview, Paul drew attention to another fundamental plank in his platform – ending the war on drugs. This is another issue on which the Senator takes a truly libertarian perspective. Even so, I bolted upright on my couch when he said the following:

“[The war on drugs is] the biggest voting rights issue of our day. We’ve gotten distracted by a lot of other things. We think there may be a million people who are being prevented from voting from having a previous felony conviction…It prevents you from employment, so if we’re the party of family values and keeping families together, and the party that believes in redemption and second chances, we should be for letting people have the right to vote back, and I think the face of the Republican party needs to be not about suppressing the vote, but about enhancing the vote.”

I am not in the habit of rewarding politicians for uttering statements of obvious common sense, but given the toxic state of reason and discourse in the Republican party, it’s difficult not to view this as a little brave. After all, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor just got tossed for being viewed by his constituents as too liberal.

On the same day, The New York Times ran columnist Charles M. Blow’s piece, “The Frustration Doctrine.” Blow, a dyed in the wool liberal who writes from the perspective of an African-American man come of age in the deep South, has been critical of the broken prison system as well as voter disenfranchisement. This past weekend, while evaluating the nation’s general distrust in government institutions, he observed:

“As many Americans, particularly those in the middle, throw up their hands in disgust and walk away in dismay, hyperpartisans — particularly conservatives — exert more influence…moderates are the least likely to be politically active. The ambivalent middle appears to be the cradle of apathy. And while the consistently liberal are more likely to do things like volunteer for a candidate or a campaign, consistent conservatives are much more likely than liberals to vote.”

While Paul and Blow approached the issue of the vote from two different angles (Paul indicting a penal system that disproportionately disenfranchises minority men – who incidentally tend to vote Democrat, Blow trying to incite civic spirit in the malaised middle), the message is the same. Renewed access to and enthusiasm for the ballot is the only way to repair our fractured democracy.

It’s hard to remember a time when getting out the vote was not a polarizing issue, but so it was. Merely eight years ago, then-President George W. Bush celebrated the extension of the Voting Rights Act. The compassionate conservative and former Governor of Texas would likely find himself primaried over such an inclusive approach to the polls in 2014.

I’ll go back to impugning his other dangerous policies in short order, but for now, I thank Senator Rand Paul for challenging his party to live up to its long stated core values. Freedom for all – not just the moneyed white man. At the same time, it’s equally critical that those of us on the left and in the middle chant the same mantra: Don’t like where the country is headed? Get off the couch and vote – even if they make you wait in line. No hyperbole here. It’s the only way.

Republicans Don’t Actually Need Electoral Opponents in 2014 as They Wage Public Civil War (June 20, 2014)

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Tax Refrom Presser

If midterm election years have a reputation for being tepid and boring, a typically alienating cycle where the opposition party stokes its base with a referendum on the sitting President, 2014 is bucking the script.

By now we’ve all had time to digest the “shocking,” “stunning,” “earthquake” (all terms culled from actual media coverage) that is lame duck House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s ejection from his post by the likes of Tea Party upstart Dave Brat. Brat, an economics professor at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College, is doing his level best to upend quite a few paradigms. After unseating Cantor while leveraging an infinitesimal campaign budget (you’ve heard the statistic: Brat spent $200,000 – slightly more than what Cantor’s campaign dropped on steak dinners), the most cynical of us are taking another look at the assumption that mass money buys outcomes without exception.

At the same time, Brat demonstrates that earning a PhD in a scientific discipline is no guarantee that data will have bearing on political policy development. Brat won over his conservative district with a staunch anti-immigration position that flies against the express desires of three major constituent groups:economists, business leaders and religious organizations.

But in between Cantor’s surprise overthrow and the tragic and scary events unfolding in a foundering Iraq, another story of GOP cognitive dissonance was somewhat lost in the shuffle. I am speaking of last weekend’s GOP convention in Moscow, Idaho, managed by wannabe House Majority Leader Raul Labrador. I am not sure I could provide a synopsis of the disaster more succinct and factual than writer Betsy Z. Russell of The Spokesman-Review:

“Idaho’s state Republican Party convention degenerated into a fiasco Saturday after attempts to disqualify up to a third of the delegates attending appeared to be succeeding – and the convention ended up adjourning without electing a chairman, setting a platform or doing any of it scheduled business…Far from uniting the deeply divided party, the gathering in Moscow degenerated into dysfunction – though it’s the party that holds every statewide office in Idaho, every seat in the congressional delegation and more than 80 percent of the seats in the state Legislature. It also proved not to be the finest hour for Labrador, whom many looked to as the healer for the fractured party just a day after he announced that he’s running for Majority Leader of the U.S. House; instead, he ended the convention facing jeers and walkouts from his own party members.”

I must own that I gasped audibly at several points while reading the text. June 2014 is the month of conservative schadenfreude that keeps on giving. But once the gleeful laughter recedes, an obvious question presents itself. Why does the party continue warring with itself during the primary season in the absence of any logical reason to do so?

The fallout from the silliness appears to be forcing a premature end to Labrador’s national ambitions before they have an opportunity to gain traction. Boise State University professor emeritus Jim Weatherby, a longtime observer of Idaho politics, noted, “It’s hard to blame all this on Raul Labrador, but on the other hand, this does not strengthen his credentials for a national leadership position, either.”

These increasingly common and bizarre instances of Republican infighting have clearly been a longtime coming. “Mainstream” conservatives asked for this after President Obama’s first election, when they welcomed new radical and reactionary elements to the fold that predicted long-term implosion. And anyone who paid attention to the fall 2013 government shutdown will recall that heated rhetoric was just as often Republican on Republican as it was liberal versus conservative.

The larger lesson may be that the best Democratic strategy for the 2014 midterms is no strategy at all. Sit back, take it easy. Put up your local candidates and support them, but why bother exerting yourself or spending a ton of money to go negative? Conserve your resources and watch your enemies eat other.

Thomas B. Edsall Gives Voice to Rare Breed: GOP Defectors (June 5, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

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For years now, we’ve watched the Republican Party degrade from a once viable conservative response to liberal philosophy, into an apocalyptic crazy town where thinking and humanity go to die. I do not of course describe members of the dwindling class of genuine libertarians and old school conservatives who still believe the country should function if one side doesn’t get its way. But sadly there are fewer and fewer people like former Senator Bob Dole, who famously said last year of his party, “Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, cause he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it.”

More often we see the independent leaders of GOP past, such as Arizona Senator John McCain, completely selling out to the Tea Party, Palinizing us with ill-informed decisions. Contrast this tyrannical groupthink with Bob Dole, or former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who voted for President Obama and spoke out strongly against the strain of exclusiveness running through the right, on a January 2013 episode of Meet the Press. He said, “There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities…The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?”

A dearth of this kind of logical intramural evaluation is killing the party, morally, creatively and demographically. And though it will be gratifying to witness the eventual demise of this era’s autocratic Republican chokehold on the democratic process (or lack thereof), the journey is certainly no fun at all. And it’s hard not to wonder at times why more intelligent conservatives (I swear kids, there was a time when this wasn’t an oxymoron) don’t raise their voices and pens against the death march.

Moreover, why does mainstream reporting allow the GOP’s Jedi mindtrickey to go unchecked (“The deficit is our biggest threat.” “Poor people bring poverty on themselves.”)?

Every once in a while there’s a beacon of hope outside of the Comedy Central studios. And this week, the light comes courtesy of New York Times contributor and journalism legend, Thomas B. Edsall. Edsall addresses the deficiencies in both media accountability and dissenting Republican voice in a piece this week, entitled “The Republican Case Against Republican Economics.” In it, he writes:

“[T]he conservative coalition, already facing demographic challenges from the rise of minority voters, is likely to lose core white support if it maintains its dominant anti-government ideology.

Once fissures have appeared in the conservative belief system, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain hegemony – or, to mix metaphors, you cannot unscramble a scrambled egg.”

By way of proof, Edsall offers a litany of testimony from radical lefties such as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, as well as three former speechwriters for President George W. Bush: Michael Gerson, Peter J. Wehner and David Frum. To Gerson and Wehner, he attributes the following description of modern Republican economic policy: “rhetorical zeal and indiscipline in which virtually every reference to government is negative, disparaging, and denigrating. It is justified by an apocalyptic narrative of American life: We are fast approaching a point of no return at which we stand to lose our basic liberties and our national character.”

The voices of GOP reason are out there and they’re not mincing words. When will those like them, who might also be palatable in a general election, decide to join the chorus? If and when they do, will it be too late for the party, and more importantly, our nation’s prospects of recovering middle class solvency?

Newt Gingrich and The Heritage Foundation Team Up to Fail in School Lunch Debate (May 30, 2014)

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Crossfire

I always say that if you’re experiencing a listless workout, just queue up an edition of CNN’s Crossfire at the gym and hope for a Newt Gingrich day “on the right.” You’ll be in full Rocky Balboa mode in milliseconds.

Though the former Speaker’s conservative panel counterpart, S.E. Cupp, equals her colleague in aggravation, Gingrich is in possession of a unique sort of smarm that makes one sweaty with disdain. He knows that we know that more than what half of what he says is hypocritical, factless, partisan fame chasing (I wanted to use a rougher word). But he does it anyway. Because it gets attention. It would almost be admirable if it weren’t so infuriating and bad for the country.

Gingrich added another vignette to the story of his long, hackneyed career this week, with a truly remarkable piece of insincere sanctimony on Thursday’s edition of Crossfire. It was there that he partnered with The Heritage Foundation’s Genevieve Wood to spar with co-host Stephanie Cutter and Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The topic was that day’s vote by the House Appropriations Committee to roll back school lunch nutrition standards supported by First Lady Michelle Obama.

While Politico writers Helena Bottemiller Evich and Bill Tomson described the vote as an “unusually high-profile food fight with the White House,” the implications are far more serious. And this being the Republican Party of 2014, the Committee tried to sneak the maneuver through the back door, as a rider to a larger bill.

The Politico piece notes that the assault on childhood nutrition is part of a “fiscal 2015 agriculture spending bill…that would allow schools to opt out of nutrition rules requiring more fruits and vegetables, less sodium and more whole grain-rich products if they are losing money from the healthier meals.” I smell something fishy and it isn’t cafeteria sushi. Let’s hear from freedom fighter New Gingrich, courtesy of Crossfire transcripts:

“We’re debating Washington’s latest attempt to impose rigid uniformity on every aspect of our lives. In today’s case, school lunches.”

People, haven’t you heard? The Nanny State has run amok, and not only that, a few schools are losing money on these healthier lunches because it turns out that if left to their own devices, children would rather drink sodas and eat french fries than make green vegetable decisions. Who knew? This is a shocking violation of a child’s right to choose to stuff themselves full of garbage if that’s what Big Food, I mean they, want. Republicans can tell adult women what to do with their bodies but they’ll be darned if first graders will be given healthy diet support without their express consent. It’s un-American.

Cutter and Wootan wearily corrected the duo at every turn with observations such as this:

“Based on science, if kids eat healthier, they’ll do better in school. 90 percent of schools are already doing this…And today House Republicans are using ridiculous nanny state excuse to undo the standards. We’re spending $11 billion a year of taxpayer dollars on school lunches. Let’s not spend it on junk. That leads to higher rates of obesity and higher health-care costs.”

But it was almost impossible to permeate the delusions – of persecuted grandeur on Gingrich’s part and fiscal libertarianism on Wood’s. What else would we expect but faux stewardship from The Heritage Foundation as a defense for putting corporate interests ahead of the nation’s children? Take this gem from Wood:

“Let’s be clear. What are our schools’ No. 1 priority? It’s teaching kids how to read, how to do math. They’re already failing in that category. So now Michelle Obama thinks we need to come in and tell everybody how to eat.”

Of course Republicans are falling over themselves to pass spending bills to fund public education and help those failing schools, right? Oh wait, no. No they’re not. They’re gutting budgets in a push toward charter school privatization.

It was about the time that Gingrich and Wood started railing against food stamp spending and the other hot potato (pardon the pun), the spud lobby’s push to get on the approved WIC grocery list, that I had to step off the treadmill. Literally and metaphorically. The country is just not getting anywhere listening to the modern day Republican side of well, any issue that matters. They can’t even get behind healthy children and they expect us to swallow their lame and insulting dissembling. They’ve got to go.