Skip to content

Archives for politics

See all posts in the network tagged with politics

Sour Milk

1 comment

Cream rises to the top.  Many are aware of the saying, often delivered in a smug tone, to explain the inevitable emergence of a person into a position of leadership and power.   The words are delivered with an inflection that implies the certainty of the occurrence as well as our daftness for not seeing it coming.  Cream DOES rise to the top, you know.

Politics, in the case of the 2012 election, is about to upend another cherished idiom as the field discloses a jug of largely curdling milk.

Beginning in 2008 with the nomination of the Wonder Woman from Wasilla,  Americans have embraced personages whose enthusiasm is unquestioned but whose grasp of  issues is lacking.  Governor Palin’s deft understanding of foreign affairs is best illustrated by her quote, “But obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies.”  I’ll bet that got their attention in Seoul.  John McCain’s aging warrior candidacy faltered partly on the issue of his “embrace” of an attractive, if wacky, teammate.  Some choices are inexplicable and not much appears to have been learned in the ensuing years.

 

And speaking of attractive but wacky, this cycle we have Michele Bachmann, whose serial gaffes make Palin look like a sure-fire Nobel Laureate.  Bachmann has blithely mis-spoken about her wealth, the president’s policies and sundry other topics so often that it is amazing she retains a shred of credibility.  Here’s Bachmann in New Hampshire speaking on the beginning of the American Revolution: ”You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.”  Nice quote, wrong state.  Her grasp of contemporary history is every bit as shaky.

 

Then comes Herman Cain whose agonizing effort to answer the Libya question was reminiscent of a third grader trying to spell “ennui”, an emotion not much in evidence this political season.  At one point he said, “I got all this stuff twirling around in my head.”  He also did not know that China has had nuclear weapons for decades.  So much for the Taiwanese vote, Herman.

 

 

Finally, there is Rick Perry, who, while touting himself as everyman’s fiscal conservative, couldn’t even think of three agencies he would ax on taking office. (Since most agencies are three-letters, he failed a nine-letter assignment.) He also coyly sucks up to the birthers by making cagey remarks about Obama’s origin.  The squalid swamp of American politics is currently the province of  birthers and their ilk affording Perry a comfortable home among those who thrive on innuendo, conspiracy and rumor.

 

Our only hope is that the electorate, as in 2008, will once again conclude, (this brew of buttermilk in the making notwithstanding), that substance and experience are key requirements for (at least some) public offices.

Only time will tell.

 

Posted by on November 30, 2011 • Filed under: Firefighter Politics • Tagged: , , ,

Buckeye Bull’s Eye: Unions Score a (Defensive) Win

3 comments

It is a measure of our times when the hoopla over a very important union victory is really grounded in the fact that we managed to simply reclaim ground lost in a recent brazen attack on collective bargaining rights in a key state.

This week’s 61-39 vote to overturn the draconian Ohio anti-union bill championed by Governor Kasich and the Republican Presidential nominees is potential evidence of a “middle ground” electorate that could be an important component in future elections.

While hundreds of local governments are struggling to make ends meet, with some of them ankle deep in red ink, it appears that the electorate can still spot brazen over-reaching when they see it.

It is a crucial fact the Republican presidential nominees had (at least) a rhetorical hard-on in support of Ohio’s Senate bill 5.  They savaged Mitt Romney when he appeared to be “soft” on his support of the measure.  Romney “manned up” and was back in the worker slaying orgy, expressing “110 percent” support for the attempt to strip public employees of their rights.

Senate Bill 5 was classic, hard core Republican (and tea party) tactics to strike a death blow to an enemy when the time seemed perfectly right.  The enemy was (and is) middle class Americans even if they are seen first and foremost as members of unions.

The Tea Party Right has been ascendant in anti-worker political action and they have done well in pushing their agenda under the guise of the death of big government.  Union members have been on the retreat, if in an orderly manner, and the Ohio vote could be a sign that the retreat is about to end.

If you are a worker and not a union member and all decked out in your pretty tea party costume feeling horny for the end of worker’s rights, you would do well to remember that it is the union movement that keeps a constant upward pressure on worker pay.

You may hate unions (stupidly) but you should pray for and vote for them (fervently.)

Posted by on November 11, 2011 • Filed under: Firefighter Politics • Tagged: , , , , ,

Politics Afield: Brits Eat Young, Too.

No comments

Immigration is the current “hot tamale” in US politics with states passing restrictive legislation faster than Herman Cain can say “I reject all those charges.”

We hear so much about our “open” border that we think we own the issue and it’s nice to learn we don’t.  It’s also nice to realize that amidst all the cut throat political maneuvering here in the US that we are still just a colony where real political tit-for-tat is concerned.

David Cameron’s fraying Conservative/Liberal coalition government is being rocked again this week by a new “scandal”, involving the relaxation of border screening regulations in the UK.  The UK Border Agency,  with the agreement of  cabinet-level Home Secretary Theresa May, instituted a pilot program to speed up entry during the summer rush.  It deserves to be mentioned that no incidents, criminal or otherwise, have been identified as a result of the program.  In fact, the Guardian reports that the arrest rate increased by 10% as a result of the targeted approach.  It seems that no good deed goes unpunished.

The British Press seems to show an amazing and dogged capacity to take up an issue and flog it until it dominates all public discourse, which sometimes is a very good thing.  The MP spending scandal and the demise of Murdoch’s News of the World because of phone hacking are the most recent examples of their ability to markedly control Parliament through relentless coverage and reporting.

When you like the outcome, as in Cameron on the hot seat again, it’s hard not to cheer but this latest attack appears to have gone very much awry as May, the Home Secretary, has tactlessly blamed a senior civil servant for the alleged offenses and Labour appears to be piling on.  The long term results could be most unfortunate.

It’s reminiscent of the current situation here in the US where Representative Darrel Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley are conducting a scorched earth policy with the US Justice Department over the ATF’s “Operation Fast and Furious.”  Perhaps here such grand-standing  shenanigans are muted by the size of the federal enterprise.

But, here or there, the effects are the same–professional civil servants come to realize that at the end of the day they are nothing more than pawns in a political game, able to be sacrificed at the drop of a hat.  That may work as a political tactic at Westminster or on the Hill but it’s a rotten way to protect the public interest.

Posted by on November 9, 2011 • Filed under: Firefighter Politics • Tagged: , , , ,

Candidate Cain: Coulter’s Quisling

No comments

Ann Coulter, uber-conservative doyen and right wing grenade thrower is doing her best to infuse the current discussion about the suitability of Herman Cain to be president with calculated race-baiting commentary, which is most odd.

Since we already have an African-American president the idea of raising the issue of race is bizarre outside the context of an ulterior motive.  Birthers and milito-terrorists  notwithstanding, the citizenry accepts our president and believes he has the intellect, if perhaps not the stick-to-it-iveness, to do the job.

Playing the race card (RC) is illogical even if the goal, as it appears to be, is to sow emotional discord among African-American voters.  The  RC could have worked in a match-up with any other candidate except an African-American.  Suggesting that Obama supporters  dislike conservatives because of the color of their skin is tortured racial incitement.

Never one to shy away from a controversy, Coulter, in her sly mission, watched the other day as her recently lobbed grenade,  long since live, rolled back into her foxy hole as she referred to Cain and his legions as “our Blacks.”

Students of history will recall that Adolph Hitler, mass murderer and maniacal rhetorician, was famous for trumping up ridiculous and illogical rationales for the invasion of neighboring countries.  Perhaps his most far-fetched and absurd lie was invading Norway while informing them he was doing so in order to protect them from the allies.  They didn’t buy it.

Hitler would then install a puppet leader whose job it was to be the mouthpiece and accomplice of the conquering armies.  In Norway he sent Vidkun Quisling, a Nazi protege,  to convince his fellow Norwegians that he was there to help them see the light.  What they saw instead was a Norway rat.

Quisling rapidly became an enduring linguistic metaphor for a person who sets out to fool his tribe only to be fooled, and forsaken, himself.

Does Ann Coulter really think that a majority of working Americans of whatever color or creed, who are cast adrift in a GOP inspired economic calamity, are going to cozy up to a candidate who wants to cut the capital gains tax, potentially raise their income tax and gut the programs the long term unemployed are using to survive?

Or in a move that Hitler would admire, does she see an opportunity to potentially obfuscate a sector of the electorate in their moment of historic triumph by bizarrely injecting race into an otherwise straightforward discussion about experience and thoughtfulness?

I’m not from Norway but I know a rat when I see one, even if her legs are shaved.

 

 

Posted by on November 7, 2011 • Filed under: Firefighter Politics • Tagged: , , , , , , ,