Glenn Beck is a Pot Calling the Kettle Black
Glenn Beck, for all his radical lunacy, has traction with Fox News conservatives and Palin Republicans. On Tuesday’s “Fox and Friends” morning show, Beck was asked about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr by a white Cambridge police officer. President Obama, who is friends with Gates, subsequently made the comment that the officer had "acted stupidly." Beck apparently believes that President Obama sided with blacks, thereby alienating all whites. And so, of course, that means President Obama’s a racist.
Everyone and his third cousin has weighed in on Gates-Gate, but leave it to Glenn Beck to just take it home: Obama hates whites. Of all the ways we could understand what happened when two people, both Gates and the police officer, acted irrationally, only Glenn Beck takes it to the level of white supremacist hatred. Now, in Beck’s twisted world designed to instigate viewers into a frenzy of distrust and paranoia, his viewers and listeners are to understand that the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of all the armed forces, the leader of the greatest country in the world, is a racist. And hates his white mother and grandparents who raised him. Right.
Thanks for clearing that up, Glenn.
Paying for the Healthcare Bill
It’s a fairly well-accepted premise amongst progressives that the United States spends far too much money on the military. The federal budget for defense spending fiscal year 2010 comes in at $618 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office. Not including intelligence funding. That’s about 4% of our GDP. Crazy, huh?
Not even close. Healthcare spending in the US dwarfs military spending at 15% of GDP.
A few facts from the CIA World Factbook, and the World Health Organization searchable database:
- The government of France, a socialist country, pays 79% of its health costs.
- The Canadian government pays 70%.
- In the US, government pays 45% of all health costs.
- For per capita spending in France and Canada, the overall cost of care, comes in at about $3,500.
- In the US, our per capita spending overall is $6,700.
- Out-of-pocket average payments for the US: $873.
- Out-of-pocket average payments for Canada: $532.
- Out-of-pocket average payments for France: $238.
Though many US citizens fear socialized or single-payer systems, they are far more cost-effective than our current public-private system. A series on Frontline illustrates the costs and benefits of public systems in the UK, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland as compared to the current US system. In the graphs, quality of care is represented by life expectancy (nearly equal for all), infant mortality (the US is shamefully high), the number of MRI machines and CT scanners per million people (we do well on equipment after Japan).
The bottom line is that we pay too much. We get quality care, but we also pay a huge price, an unsustainable price according to the Congressional Budget Office, “The federal budget is on an unsustainable path, primarily because of the rising cost of health care.”
The current system requires reform. Conservatives who object on the grounds that we’re socializing medicine, thereby restricting free market forces, fail to understand that our government already pays 45% of healthcare costs. By broadening and restricting coverage, the new system should stop the worsening cost spiral. Some conservatives have even signed on to support HR 676, a single-payer proposal.
If you’ve got the time, read the text for the Health Bil here, but for a quick understanding of why we haven’t embraced healthcare reform before now, just follow the lobbying dollars at OpenSecrets.com.:
The health sector boosted its campaign contributions compared to the last presidential cycle, to $167.7 million in 2008 from $123.7 million in 2004. The various health industries have also steadily increased their lobbying efforts, from $448.1 million in 2007 to $484.4 million in 2008. So far this year, the sector has paid lobbyists $126.8 million to do its bidding on Capitol Hill.
Why Cheney Was So Wrong
About four months ago I flew to London on a red eye. In economy. I know a thing or two about stress positions. They do make you hostile to others. And combative. Definitely combative.
Joking aside, the issue of torture and detainment is a serious one. We kept people imprisoned at Guantanamo, some of them completely innocent. We did not give them access to lawyers or even contact with their families. We tortured them. And now we learn that the CIA was operating a terrorist assassination program with the program kept secret from Congress. On Dick Cheney’s orders.
Dick Cheney alone did not reduce our country to something we don’t want to be, but he did some significant damage. Oddly, since he was not the president, he seems to have wielded extraordinary power in the executive branch. Though his signature authorizes the assassination program, Bush is as silent and complacent now as he must’ve been as president, letting Cheney throw the hardballs and make the tough decisions. For those of us who thought the Bush presidency was a low point, this seems all the more a miscarriage of American government. After all, we elected George W. Bush, not Dick Cheney, to lead our country.
And the problem is where Dick Cheney seems to have led us.
Extradition and torture, and now assassination, all seem like reasonable treatment for terrorists. Terrorist organizations operate by definition outside of the bounds of sovereign nations and are therefore not protected by the same international law or general respect. The United States cannot always request extradition from the countries who host these terrorists, especially when the host country does not have an operating judicial system or is hostile to the US. But here’s the problem: the entire purpose of the court system is to ensure justice for both the guilty and the innocent. The US response to terrorism skirted the entire judicial process and sought to carry out a vigilante program of retribution. While most of us can get behind that when we’re sure the target is guilty, how many of us can support this approach when we’re not sure? Vigilante justice is illegal because you might kill the wrong guy.
Most of us want to remain Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” We want America to represent all the good a democracy can offer: citizens ruling together in a benevolent manner with a robust justice system that protects its people and an executive branch kept always in check by the courts and Congress. I just watched a video clip of Fox News’ Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly joking about torturing Democrats, those leftist Marxist loonies who want to hurt America — and felt ill. This is not the America I want to be. This is not Ronald Reagan’s America.
America’s greatness comes from the balance of all its powers, the shifting and change between Liberals and Conservatives is part of that balance. Both are represented and the sum of the two is our democracy. It could be argued that Cheney took extraordinary measures after 9/11 to keep our country safe, that he cannot be faulted for this. I don’t agree for the simple reason that we have laws and balances in place to keep us safe from dictators. I believe in our country enough to know that no one needs to break the law of our land to ensure our safety. This is its own danger.
The rhetoric today is that Obama is using the economic crisis just like Cheney used 9/11: to expand government powers into areas the public would never accept if circumstances were different. In a robust economy would we accept the massive debt the Obama administration is taking on? Maybe not, but it is legal and approved by Congress. In our country the rulers are powerful, but they remain citizens. They are expected to remain within the lawful boundaries of their positions. This is what separates us from dictatorships. No matter the threat, this is a fundamental tenet of our country and can’t be sacrificed even when terrorists wreak their havoc. Especially when terrorists wreak their havoc. America will remain the shining beacon.
A Second Stimulus? Really? Maybe for Small Businesses
According to the NYT, calls have begun for a second stimulus (or the third, if you count the Bush/Paulsen bailout) since the first, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of Feb. 2009, has produced lackluster results. The Obama Administration told the public the stimulus should produce 600,000 jobs by summer, and create or save a total of 3.5 million jobs over two years. Job creation estimates have come in around 150,000 so far.
The debate over whether any stimulus should have been passed continues from fiscal “invisible hand” conservatives who argue that no one should expect government spending to solve a severe downturn. And from political conservatives who claim it’s all just a big grab for a massive expansion of government, which naturally is the overriding goal of the Obama Administration. (Next, they’ll just start screaming COMMIES!!)
Would it be so bad to be Sweden? It certainly would require a tectonic shift in culture.
So what is the correct response? Republicans and fiscal conservatives argue that the stimulus was a mistake and that more tax cuts are needed to free up the economy to fix itself. The White House says wait and see. A number of prominent economists thought the stimulus was too small to begin with and call for another. According to a Bloomberg report, $12.8 trillion has already been committed to date, an amount nearing the country’s GDP for an entire year. Still, on Thursday, billionaire Warren Buffet called for a second stimulus. He feels the stimulus has done too little and gone to too many politician’s pet projects. MSN Money summarized the economy today:
The unemployment rate is at a 26-year high of 9.5% and is expected to reach 10% before the year’s end. More than 14.7 million people are unemployed. The number of folks struggling to find work jumps to 25.5 million after adding all the Americans who have either given up looking for work or are stuck in part-time or temporary jobs due to the unavailability of full-time employment.
Without a recovery in consumer spending, the economy will continue its downward spiral. The GDP declined about 5.5% in the first quarter of this year, due in large part to consumer cutbacks.
The government is hoping that private money will follow its public investments. In theory, funds for stimulus projects should flow to businesses spurring them to increase spending and create more jobs, ultimately leading to a recovery in consumer spending. But, so far, the economy hasn’t seen much in the way of a consumer spending boost
If we reach the point where a second stimulus package is required, if we take the nation and our citizens even further into debt (currently at $668,621 per household and $11.5 trillion in national debt), make sure the funds go to the sector where we’ll feel the biggest impact. Not to the banks. Not to state or local governments. Fund new and small businesses in green innovation, new technology, energy innovation, and the myriad businesses that create and maintain communities. Fund the everyday people who don’t work for large corporations or government, the small businesses that make up 50% of US GDP. Spend the money where it matters.
Upcoming Posts
Hi duhpookie readers, I’ve been hanging out with the kids for a summer break, but it’s time to get back to serious around here! Look for upcoming articles on green energy policy and the evolution of Obama’s controversial spend-us-into-a-new-kind-of-hell administration. We’ll explore California’s imploding budget insanity; Gavin Newsom, and Meg Whitman’s governorship possibilities, and of course, we’ll continue to look into the macroeconomics of banking and politics, with an eye to a sustainable economic model and the possible development of a sustainability party in the United States. Could it happen? You betcha!
You can now follow duhpookie on Twitter (aren’t you so glad?), or read my more journalistic articles at Examiner.com. Send me your comments!
Cheney Claims No Connection Between Iraq and al Qaeda, You Silly People
Old Happy Face, Dick Cheney, is reminding us that – duh! – there was never any connection between al Qaeda and Sadam Hussein. Wow, to think we were sharing a public hallucination all that time! Cause I believed it! Every word… that Dick Cheney, er… never said.
First, let me begin to dissect this befuddling illumination by pointing out that every time I see Old Happy Face is on the news, again and again, and NOT Bush, it reinforces the strange intuition many may have shared: that Mr. Bush was never REALLY the president at all! Now that Old Happy Face is trying to clean up his presidential story, it becomes more and more obvious that Bush was faking it the whole time. The whole time! THAT’S WHY HE NEVER KNEW ANY OF THE ANSWERS. HE WASN’T ACTUALLY PRESIDENT. Whew! Glad that’s cleared up.
Moving on to the story of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Here’s the money quote from CNN’s story entitled Cheney: No link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11:
“I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11.”
From the same story:
The former vice president said in 2004 that the evidence was “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Hussein’s regime in Iraq, and that media reports suggesting that the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks reached a contradictory conclusion were “irresponsible.”
“There clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming,” Cheney said at the time.
Condoleeza Rice has backpedaled from asserting that their were “ties going on between al Qaeda and Iraq,” to “No one was arguing that Saddam Hussein somehow had something to do with 9/11.”
Bush’s quotes: From this extensive list from the BBC of Bush’s assertions of a connection bewtween al Qaeda and Sadam Hussein to “No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.” September 17, 2004.
And here we find a quote from McClatchy News Service in which Cheney asserts that waterboarding at Gitmo was worthwhile because it did in fact turn up the OBVIOUS link between al Qaeda and Hussein:
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq , asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn’t true.
Cheney’s 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.
And more from an extensive chronology:
“Vice President Dick Cheney’s repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration’s claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed.” Additionally, CIA officials “charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president’s office had ‘pressured’ agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam’s capabilities and intentions.” [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]
And even more:
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney’s office kept close tabs on the questioning. “Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda,” Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.
So, wow, now I’m confused. Cheney badly needed a connection so that he could, uh… deny there was a connection.
To sum up, Condi Rice, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and a gigantic Senate Intelligence report all say there was never a link between al Qaeda and Sadam Hussein. Oh yeah, and George Tenet says he was pressured to come up with any evidence linking the two so that someone, not these people, but someone elsecould invade Iraq, someone who very badly wanted to.
And not for their oil.
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