A little historical perspective, please

A little historical perspective, please

One of the talking points that conservatives have been using in order to deny credit to Obama for killing bin Ladin is to say that some if not all of the credit belongs to Bush and, therefore, Obama is a jerk for not recognizing that fact. They give different reasons as to why Bush deserves the most credit. The Fox morning crew has been among the most energetic in pushing this interpretation but no one has push the envelope as far as Condoleezza Rice did on their show last week.

BRIAN KILMEADE: The president in his speech — did a great job on his speech Sunday night — talked about coming together like we did on 9/11, he wants to see it happen again. Do you think a nice gesture would be to invite President Bush out on Thursday when he comes down to Ground Zero to greet the families?*

RICE: Well, obviously, I'll leave that to the two of them and to the administration. But President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment maybe in American history. It was when this wounded nation watched their commander-in-chief** stand on that rubble and say that they will hear us, we are going to avenge this.

This woman has a PhD in history, although, in her defense, I should point out that it is not in American History. If she had studied American history, she might have been familiar with some other important moments, such as:

• The British surrender at Yorktown
  
• Pearl Harbor
  
• The signing of the Declaration of Independence
  
• FDR's "fear itself" speech
  
• Palmer raids and the first Red Scare
  
• The Confederates firing on Ft. Sumter
  
• The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
  
• The Louisiana Purchase
  
• The ratification of the Constitution
  
• General Butler exposing the coup plot against FDR
  
• VJ Day
  
• The Haymarket massacre
  
• Passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
  
• The stock market crash of 1929
  
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
  
• Texans winning their independence at the Battle of San Jacinto
  
• The Big Blow Up of 1910
  
• Women getting the vote
  
• Marbury vs. Madison
  
• HUAC hearings and the second Red Scare
  
• Lee's surrender at Appomattox
  
• Teddy Roosevelt accidentally becoming president
  
• The Trail of Tears
  
• Nineteen guys flying airplanes into buildings a few days before Bush's speech

Bush gave a nice speech at Ground Zero, but the speech itself was not some kind of world historical moment. I'm not going to spend any time beating up on Bush or hunting for reasons to hate the speech. Rice's crush on her former boss is well known--if a little off putting (I mean, eewww)--so her ridiculous hyperbole is not surprising. What I do find a little surprising is how many times I have heard variations of that idea from other people.

On the day 9/11, even before the second tower had fallen, one of my co-workers said "thank God Bush is president and not Gore." Because of the moment, I didn't what the hell she was talking about. Just last week in a Facebook thread of an old friend, someone commented, "Imagine if it would have been al gore (sic) dealing with 9/11. That would have been a real nightmare." What do these people think Al Gore would have done? Surrendered and turned the entire country over to bin Laden. They seem to believe that any Democrat would have said, "aww, he just needs a hug and we should give him a great big apology for making him feel bad."

That's complete and utter crap. Al Gore would have done exactly what Bush did. Or McCain would have done. Or Bradley. Or Hillary. Or you or I or any president in the history of the republic or anyone who isn't brain damaged. He would have gone on every news channel and made a speech saying the American people will rise above this, we will track the people responsible to the ends of the earth, heads would have rolled at the CIA, and we would have invaded Afghanistan to get at bin Laden and punish those who protected him.

Here are some things that might not have happened. Gore probably would not have sat frozen, reading "My Pet Goat" for eight minutes after hearing about the planes hitting the World Trade Center. He probably would have issued his first statement from Air Force One rather than leaving the American people without reassurance while he flew around for nine hours and spent another ninety minutes at the White House. He certainly would not have called off the search at Tora Bora. He would not have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives waging a war in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

He probably would not have tolerated wholesale violations of international and domestic laws such as creating a bogus category of "enemy combatants" to avoid the Geneva Conventions, using torture, or gutting habeus corpus. I know he wouldn't have completely respected all of our rights the way I would have liked. There still would have been a slide toward a surveillance state with wire tapping and eavesdropping. The same conservatives, who spent the Bush years justifying the erosion of rights would have cried "tyranny" and raised holy hell.

Actually, those last few points would have been moot, because I know for a fact that the Republicans would have tried to impeach Gore for allowing 9/11 to happen. There would have been none of the coming together in good faith that the Democrats offered throughout 2002. But this brings us to a final point, under Gore, there might not have been a 9/11 because he might have actually have read the August 8 security briefing. Remember, he was VP when Clinton tried to get bin Laden in 1998. Terrorism was a front-burner issue for him, whereas Bush only cared about tax cuts for the rich before 9/11.

Rice's comical overstatement is not limited to the "thank God it wasn't Gore crowd." As last week developed, the "Obama deserves little if any of the credit" message was taken up all across the spectrum of conservative politics.

• Sarah Palin refused to even mention Obama's name several times when doling out credit: "We thank President Bush for having made the right calls to set up this victory."
  
• Former Bush Chief of Staff Andy Card: "[Bush] made sure everything was in place so that President Obama could have an opportunity to get Osama bin Laden."
  
• House Majority Whip Eric Cantor: "I commend President Obama who has followed the vigilance of President Bush in bringing Bin Laden to justice."
  
• Washington Times editor Brett Decker: "Bin Laden's death is more Mr. Bush's victory than Mr. Obama's..."
  Fox News personality Sean Hannity: "There was no way this would have happened, but for the policies Of George W. Bush."
  
• Fox Business host Eric Bolling on Twitter: "Andrea Mitchell just said 'this is a game changer for Barack Obama'..WHAT?? Thank GWB for this not BHO!"
  
• Former Bush adviser Karl Rove: "I think the tools that President Bush put into place –- GITMO, rendition, enhanced interrogation, the vast effort to collect and collate this information — obviously served his successor quite well."
  
• Torture guru John Yoo: "Without the tough decisions taken by President Bush and his national security team, the United States could not have found and killed bin Laden."
  
• Media critic Brent Bozell" "It's because of those [torture] techniques that George Bush was crucified over that Osama bin Ladin is dead today. Hip, hip, hooray to George Bush. ... It's high time that [the mainstream media] started apologizing to him."
  
• Former Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum: "9/11 families and everybody else in America should be furious at this president that he’s walking abound taking credit for, you know, getting Osama bin Laden. He didn’t get Osama bin Laden!"
  
• National Review blogger Jim Geraghty (under a picture of GW Bush): "VINDICATION: When the loudest critic of your policies achieves his greatest success because of them."

Many of the "the real credit goes to Bush" crowd are making a self-serving effort to justify their own indefensible support of torture and all of them are engaged in a petty and partisan driven refusal to give Obama credit for anything. They rather pathetically grope for any excuse to find fault with any action Obama (and by extension any Democrat) takes. If Obama did it, there must be something wrong with it. All they ask is a little time to figure out what that fault is. Such pettiness has always existed in American politics, but, in recent years, pettiness has become almost an article of faith on the right.

* Just for the record, he did invite Bush and Bush declined. Not that that will stop conservatives from attacking Obama over the non-existent slight.

** I've said this before, and Rice should know this, the President is commander-in-chief of the military, not of the civilian population. The President is our employee, making us his commanders-in-chief. One of the founding principles of this country was civilian control of the military and we should all strongly resist any effort to militarize our society or to bring civilians under control of the military. Again, the President does not command us; we command him. If he leads us, it is because he has convinced us that he has earned that privilege. One good speech by Bush did not make us his subjects.

Everyday should be Mothers' Day

Tomorrow is Mothers' Day here in the States. For over a week now, we've been listening to ads from people telling us to show Mom our appreciation by buying their stuff. Of course, for those of us of a certain age, the only way we can actually show Mom our appreciation is to raise her from the dead as a shambling zombie. I'm not sure Mom would go for that. She always liked to look her best and probably would not think having rotting bits of her face fall off was her best. On the other hand--the one that hasn't fallen off yet--she did have a flair for the dramatic and she would be a big hit at the Fremont Market where, coincidentally, I will be spending the day selling stuff that I'm sure your mother would love.

Of course, I won't be raising her from the dead as a zombie. That's impossible; we had her cremated. Fortunately, there are other ways to bring her back to life. All week, over at Facebook, people have been putting up pictures of their mothers as their profile pictures. I'm a sucker for that kind of sentimental gesture.

Mom, mid 1920s.
Here is Mom demonstrating the family squint. This squint is a precious family heirloom, passed down for generations. My sisters and I all share the squint. The squint is believed to have originated with our Scottish ancestors who, every spring, would emerge from ther mud hovels and squint at the ball of fire in the sky that they had not seen in months.

Mom, early 1930s.
Mom, as a Campfire Girl. Campfire Girls, with their great uniform, may have been a gateway drug to Mom's love of the theatrical. Because my grandfather was a camera buff, I have dozens of pictures of Mom standing on the porch or in the yard of whatever house they lived in that year showing off a costume.

Mom, mid 1940s.
Mom, (far right) undercover, fighting crime. We may never know the full extent of my mother's crime fighting activities because I haven't made them up, yet.

Mom, late 1940s.
If you can't figure out what this is picture of, you are a communist and should go back where you came from. When we were married, Tessa carried that fan and I wore that suit (the green one, not the white one). As to what that means, you can keep your dirty mouth shut, Dr. Freud.

Mom, mid 1960s.
As a mom, one of Mom's duties was to take us camping and make sure we got our recommended annual allowance of carbonized marshmallows and mosquito bites. Dad also came on these outings to act as chauffeur, native guide, and photographer.

Mom, mid 1980s.
After Mom booted that last of her freeloading kids out of the house (that would be me), she looked around for new ways to stay active. She had already done crime fighting, so she settled on roller derby.

Mom, early 1990s.
Mom, at a wedding, with some dirty hippie.

Wednesday is Dad's birthday, he'll get his retrospective treatment then.

Compassionate conservatives

Typical.

In response to the worst state budget crisis since World War II, the [republican dominated] Texas House has proposed slashing $27 billion from the budget, including huge cuts to education, nursing homes, and health care for the poor. Yet last Friday, the Texas House Ways and Means Committee approved a tax break for those who want to buy yachts costing $250,000 or more.

My predictions

Starting Monday, the conservative talking points will be:

1. Osama really isn't that important anymore,
   
2. the special ops troops deserve the credit, not Obama, and
   
3. how does this lower the deficit and/or gas prices?

Really Rand, is that the line you want to take?

Rand Paul, questions whether Donald Trump is Republican enough to head their ticket. This would be the same Rand Paul whose father has changed party affiliations twice and who once ran as a Libertarian against the Republican nominee for president and who is competing with Trump to be the Republican nominee next year.

"I’ve come to New Hampshire today because I’m very concerned," Mr. Paul said. "I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump’s Republican registration."

[...]

"I’m going to believe it when I see his embossed seal to his Republican registration," said Mr. Paul, a rising figure in the Republican Party who is visiting New Hampshire this week during the Congressional recess. He spoke with a smile, but his words marked one of the first times that a leading Republican has challenged Mr. Trump’s ties to the party.

Jeff Zeleny, the author of the NYT article, completely missed the irony.

Time for a guest post

Clever Wife has something to share.

Because he loves me (and possibly because he has a warped sense of humor) my hubs has agreed to post my latest creation. So don't blame him, okay?

Sung to the tune of "Streets of Laredo." Apologies to folk singers everywhere, but most especially to Allan Sherman* and the Smothers Brothers**.

It goes like this:***

The Hobo Song

As I was out looking for someone to hire me,
not having much luck, feeling kind of bereft,
I spied a young hobo that I used to work with
before we became the "Professional Left."

CHORUS
I see by your outfit that you are a hobo.
I see by your outfit that you're a hobo too.
We see by our outfits that we are both hobos.
If you lose your job you can be a hobo tooooooooooooooo.

That's it. Giggle.***

* This.
** That.
*** This, too.

History was not his best subject

Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia was elected to Congress last year with support from local Tea Party groups, the Club for Growth, and disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Like most Tea Partiers, Graves is a bit history challenged. Yesterday, while being interviewed by Contessa Brewer, he said this:

BREWER: They've had the lowest tax rates under the Bush-era tax cuts in years. How come we haven't seen massive job growth?

GRAVES: Well, what we've seen is massive job loss that began in about 2008, and I believe that was under Barack Obama.

BREWER: One. 2001.

GRAVES: No, not two — the job losses began in late two thousand and —

BREWER: Yes, sir. The numbers support what I'm saying.

Graves believes Obama was president in 2008. Most people with properly functioning memories or an elementary school knowledge of history or civics will know that George W. Bush was president in 2008. However, he is correct in saying there were massive job losses that year. As to when the job losses began, they're actually both right--in their ways. Bush presided over two recessions, one at each end of his presidency. Bush began his presidency with massive job losses and ended his presidency with even more massive job losses. In between, the Bush "recovery" didn't produce enough jobs to keep up with growth in the population. Let's look at some numbers.

Just so our conservative friends don't cry foul, let me lay out a few conservative assumptions. I'll crunch my numbers according to their rules. First, only private sector jobs count. Government jobs are not real jobs. Those pay checks brought home by soldiers, sailors, teachers, politicians, and civil servants aren't real pay checks. And government employees can't lose their jobs, because they never had "real" jobs to start with. Second, presidents are responsible for every jot and tittle of the economy from the day they take office. If Obama can't blame Bush for the recession at the beginning of his presidency, Bush can't blame Clinton for the recession at the beginning of his presidency. That's only fair. Because presidential terms begin in Late January, I'll give January 2001 to Clinton and January 2009 to Bush.

After Bush became president, the private sector lost jobs for sixteen straight months (Feb. '01 to May '02), a total of 2.82 million jobs, one of which was mine. Over the next fourteen months (June '02 to July '03), only three months showed private sector job gains and the rest showed losses, a net loss of another 583 thousand. That's a total of 3.403 million jobs lost in his first two and a half years in office. Following that catastrophic beginning, the private sector gained jobs for forty-eight consecutive months, had one bad month (Aug. '07), and five more good months, for a total of 7.379 million new jobs. The economy lost jobs for the remaining twelve months of the Bush presidency (4.629 million)--once again, my job was among them--finishing up his presidency 653 thousand in the red.

At some point in June '05, the economy had replaced the 3.403 million private sector jobs lost during Bush's first two and a half years. However, by then 5.537 new workers had entered the labor force. Some of those people got jobs that don't count with the government, but most of them were hoping, but unable, to enter the private sector. During the rest of the Bush recovery, the private sector put on 3.976 new jobs. During that time, the labor force grew by another 4.822 million. During the last year of the Bush presidency, while the economy hemorrhaged 4.629 million private sector jobs, the labor force grew by 561 thousand. The final count is that the Bush years lost over a half million private sector jobs, while the labor force grew by over ten million.

That sounds like massive job losses to me. These losses and failure to keep up with population growth happened while the Bush tax cuts were being made and were in effect. It's Republican and conservative dogma that putting more wealth into the hands of the already wealthy--in the form of tax cuts--will result in them investing in ways that will benefit all Americans. The rich will create jobs and the benefits of making them richer will trickle down onto all of us.

Since Rep. Graves wanted to talk about job losses under Obama, let's talk about them. The single worst month for private sector job losses (841 thousand) was January 2009, the last month that Bush was in charge. As soon as Obama took over, the losses slowed. There were still huge losses, but they got smaller and smaller until March 2010 when the private sector created more jobs than it shed. One million eight-hundred thousand new jobs have been created since then. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force actually decreased during Obama's first two years in office, by 180 thousand. Almost nine million private sector jobs were lost during 2008-09.

Total employment is far below what it was when Clinton turned his record budget surplus over to Bush. The labor pool has increased by almost ten million in that time. Even with big tax cuts and loopholes for the rich and for large corporations, the private sector hasn't been able to absorb all of these people who are able and want to work. The public sector had absorbed some of those people, but Republican majorities in state houses and the House of Representatives are trying to lay off as many of those people as possible. Of course, according to the conservative assumptions I laid out above, none of those people had "real" jobs to start with and the the it's Obama's fault they aren't bringing home paychecks any more. Those same conservatives tell us that the only reason those millions aren't bringing home pay checks is that they're all lazy, drug-addicted hobos. But that's a topic for another post.

Sources for figures:
Private sector job creation and losses.
Total civilian labor force.

Tennessee rep. lies about Einstein

Tennessee is one of the dozen or so states where Republican legislatures have proposed bills this year to force creationism into public school science curricula. Some of these bills have already failed while others are on their way to almost certainly pass. Tennessee is one of the latter.

The Tennessee bill, which also takes aim at climate change, is of the "teach the controversy" variety. The bill passed their House last week in a three to one vote. During the debate, Rep. Frank Nicely (R-Strawberry Plains), made the ridiculous argument that Einstein would have supported teaching creationism.

I think that if there’s one thing that everyone in this room could agree on, and that would be that Albert Einstein was a critical thinker. He was a scientist. I think that we probably could agree that Albert Einstein was smarter than any of our science teachers in our high schools or colleges. And Albert Einstein said that a little knowledge would turn your head toward atheism, while a broader knowledge would turn your head toward Christianity.

This would Albert Einstein, the Jewish agnostic who frequently stated that he did not believe in a personal God, one of the prime tenets of Christianity. The quote that Nicely attributes to Einstein is, in fact, a paraphrase of something Francis Bacon wrote in the sixteenth century: "a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion." You will note that even Bacon, who was a Christian, didn't specify Christianity as the place that knowledge would lead one, only religion in general. I haven't been able to find out where Nicely picked up the idea that Einstein ever said such a thing. If anyone does know, I'd love to hear from you.

Nicely's confusion is, by itself, entertaining. It's something better informed people can laugh and point at. However, the far more important point in mentioning Nicely's statement is that he makes clear the real motive for pushing this "teach the controversy" bill. Nicely says "knowledge [will] turn your head toward Christianity." The bill has nothing to do with giving kids a better knowledge of science so that they might be more competitive in the job market, so that might produce advances that would benefit America and the world. For Nicely, that purpose of the bill is to turn kids toward Christianity. He wants to use the taxpayers' money and government institutions, in the form of public schools, for the purely sectarian religious purpose of converting kids to his religion. Nothing could be more unconstitutional than that.

A Christian nation

When conservatives tell us that the US was founded on Biblical principals, this is the part of the Bible that they have in mind:

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Proverbs 22:7 (NIV)

An open letter to Rachel Maddow

"I'm not a hippie but..."

In the early days of your show, you used that phrase enough times for me to see a pattern of derision and be disappointed. Then, it seemed like you stopped using it. I though maybe someone had gotten to you, but, Tuesday night, there it was again.

What is about hippies that you find so contemptible? Is it that we protested against segregation and an unjust war in the sixties? Is it that we protested for environmental protections and gay rights in the seventies? Is it that we tried to create a more diverse culture where different lifestyles were freed from a pervasive pressure to conform? Is idealism something to be despised? Is it that we grew older and had to pay attention to things like raising the next generation and providing for our old age? Do you just generally find everyone over fifty laughable or is it because we failed to realize some of our ideals and, like most Americans, you have no pity for failure?

Almost without exception, you avoid using the names of groups as terms of praise or derision on your show. You don't say "that's so gay" for something you disapprove of or "that's very white of you" for something you do approve of. Even though you disagree with most conservatives and Republicans, you try to be respectful and gracious when they appear on your show. So, I'll ask you again, what is it about this one group that you dislike so much that you use their very name ias a synonym for ridiculous?

What did we ever do to you?