Ashley Todd: Truth in Advertising!

Ashley Todd is the little Republican field organizer who told police that she was attacked and brutalized because she has a McCain sticker on her bumper.

Such a terrible thing! McCain and Palin both phoned her to commiserate. Biden and Obama expressed the hope the attacker would swiftly be brought to justice.

The only problem is, it turns out that Ashley is a liar.

Ashley cooked up a nasty little scheme to mislead the voters, and then she blamed a Black man.

Does this sound familiar? Why, yes it does!

This is the long-standing strategy of the national GOP! First it comes up with a self-aggrandizing, destructive plan that swindles the public, then executes it, hurts itself and many others in the process, and then blames it all on people of color.

Here. Plug it in yourself. Whether the script is Iraq, or Katrina, or the home foreclosure crisis, it works! Yecht. It's uncanny when you think about it.

So here's my thought for the day. Give the poor elephant a break. Make Ashley's photo the official Republican Party logo. Now that would be Truth in Advertising.

Oh Say it Ain't So!

Andrew Sullivan on Mitt Romney's speech at the Republican Convention: "A largely content-free speech that went out on a limb, defending patriotism, attacking liberals, vowing to defeat evil and defend the family. I was somewhat surprised to hear that the GOP is about cutting spending, and restraining government, and that liberals have been in charge for the last quarter of a century - but, hey, this is the 2008 Republican National Convention. Reality is what they say it is." It's always that way, right, RWR?

I've always wanted to ask a solidly religious Bible-based Republican: As opposed to the subject of gays getting married, isn't there an actual commandment against bearing false witness? Would that be relevant at all in your world?

"No Way, No How, No McCain!"

Hillary gave the best speech of the convention so far, and in terms of her assigment, it was nothing but net! Hillary was never better, never more gracious, never more the leader than tonight.

A thermo-nuclear world riven by fundamentalists of several stripes; wars of choice and profiteering; a planet sick from human greed; a nation hemorrhaging from the blades of big cars and big oil; a government careening toward a politics of final solutions; a people being deliberately underpaid, underprotected, and undermined. These are a few of the bigger stakes.

She brought us all right back on track: It's not about the personalities. It's about the policies.

Hillary brought the energy back to the party. Now let's get going.

Remember?

A gentle reminder.

Required Reading Before the Election

It wasn't incompetence. It was systematic and it was planned.

What's happened to us and to Iraq in the last 7+ years was also predictable and inevitable given what we elected. This isn't news, but unfortunately, some of us still haven't gotten the memo, hard as that may be to comprehend.

So it bears repeating.

Naomi Klein gave exposed the stinking anatomy of so-called "free market" (Chicago School) economics. Thomas Frank now comes to help us get our minds around what happens when we elect conservatives to rule.

Well, there's a relationship between what they say they believe (shrink government and then drown it in the bathtub) and what they do when they're in a position to govern (Katrina, crumbling infrastructure at home: $85 Billion to war profiteers in Iraq).

Read The Wrecking Crew and The Shock Doctrine before the election, especially if you think John McCain is your friend. He isn't.

Kyl, McCain, GOP Blowing AZ Jobs, Oil Independence

From Andrew Sullivan:

An absorbing the dizzying series of foreign policy challenges facing this president and the next, one factor obviously stands out. Oil - the damage it does and the tyrants it enables - is the great enemy, from Georgia to Iraq. Finding a way to get ourselves off this stuff is the most urgent national security need we have. Which is why this progress on solar power is so encouraging:

At 800 megawatts total, the new plants will greatly exceed the scale of previous solar installations. The largest photovoltaic installation in the United States, 14 megawatts, is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, using SunPower panels.

Spain has a 23-megawatt plant, and Germany is building one of 40 megawatts. A recently built plant that uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight, called Nevada Solar One, can produce 64 megawatts of power.

And that, my pretties, is why Arizonans should be furious at Kyl and McCain. Not just for blocking solar advancement, which is why all Americans should repudiate them, but also for allowing their partisan fusion with Big Oil to imperil 2,000+ jobs in our state. As long as McCain and Kyl and the rest of the GOP hold renewable energies hostage to offshore oil drilling (to granting more of our offshore real estate to Big Oil, that is), AZ's impressive solar projects are on hold.

Voter Accountability

Voters should be accountable for their votes, don't you think? To that end, I have a modest proposal.

Everyone who voted for Bush in either election should be held accountable for the disasters that he and his minions have wrought on the USA and the rest of the planet.

Their assets should be seized and sold, and with their cash, the proceeds should be applied to reduce the national debt.

Or maybe there's a smarter application. I'm open minded. Maybe those assets should be directed at rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, or building a renewable, independent energy future, or educating the next generation at world-class schools.

I'm just sayin'.

Right now, there's no accountability so people feel free to vote for the US President with the same degree of attention and care they devote to grabbing the next Big Mac. Maybe if there were direct, personal consequences, they'd pay attention? Get the facts instead of the propaganda?

I don't know. This assumes that they have two brain cells to rub together.

That's debatable.

Films and Morals

I saw the film "The Visitor" today. I hadn't heard of it before. Please see it if you can. I'm not sure how long it's been out, but here in Phoenix it's showing at the Camelview 5, one of our smaller art film theatres, and it won't be around much longer.

It's about two Syrians, a Senegalese, and an American--about an odd and inspiring entanglement of lives and a rude interruption brought courtesy of the fed. If anything that side of reality illustrates the meaning of "bare lives," it's this film.

Possibly the greatest moral challenge I face personally these days is to learn how not to hate this Republican administration and all who support or appease them.

Snip of the Day

"The McCain campaign is managed by a cadre of Washington-insider special interest lobbyists. He and his current wife are estimated to be worth about $100 million. He reportedly owns eight houses. His let-them-eat-cake economic policies are based on George Bush's failed radical conservative "you're on your own buddy" philosophy. One after another he supported trade agreements that protect the rights of corporations, but ignore the rights of labor, and have devastated one Pennsylvania community after another. He gets most of his campaign cash from the wealthiest corporate interests around. And he has the gall to call Barack Obama an 'elitist'?"

UPDATE " Clueless" Comment Wiped from Republic?

Looks like it.

While dinking around here trying to tweak the site, I just accidentally lost a post titled "Clueless in the Desert," about editorialist Doug MacEachern's belated discovery that RepubliCons are in trouble in November. Someone well known to Pico posted a comment about MacEachern's Rip Van Winkel observation, and I had repeated it here.

While digging on my hard drive and on the Republic's site to find that clipped copy, I discovered that the Republic appears to have removed that comment. (It follows, in full). Curious. Last night there were 9 or 10 comments plainly visible online. This morning here are only two. Censored? I'm thinkin'. I guess the truth hurt too much?

Naw. I guess they didn't want their readers reminded.

Gee, it's too bad I had forgotten last night about AZ Republican political consultant Nathan Sproul's excellent little adventures destroying Democrats' voter registration forms before the 2004 election. I'd have made sure to mention that, too. See Blog for Arizona's summary of Mark Crispin Miller's testimony about Sproul and his Ghouls before the House Committee on the Judiciary, May 14, 2008.

Yesterday's lost "Clueless in the Desert" post in full:

Columnist Doug MacEachern, editorial writer for the ZZZZ, er, AZ Republic and stalwart Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove-Rice-Feith-Libby guy, suddenly today woke up and smelled the coffee. Not before editorialists and columnists in every leading paper and news mag had done the same, mind you. No trail blazer he. [He writes:]

"Republicans are facing hostile electorate this fall." May. 16, 2008 12:00 AM

"Republicans have every right to be panicked about their congressional prospects this fall. Absolutely all the indicators are against them, including the shocking special-election results in the South, a former GOP stronghold. The public rejection of the Republican brand may be even worse. It's not just that the public gave them their shot in 1994, which they blew. Voters may not even want Republicans who truly are committed to conservative principles. Doug MacEachern, editorial writer."

To which one someone well known to Pico responded as follows (permission to quote was granted):

Oh my! Can't think why! Well, it's not about genuine conservative principles. Those went away with Ike. It's about trashing our economy, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights. Imperial presidency. Politicized Justice Department. Eviscerated Legislative branch. Prostituted Pentagon. Polluted Judicial branch. Kow-towing to freaky fringe Christianists. Pillaging the US Treasury for crony donors and blocking investigation thereof. Illegal domestic spying. Celebrating torture. Abandoning the US working class. Destroying the US middle class. Pimping the stock market (Enron) and the mortgage/lending industry to Bear Stearns et al. Alienating the whole world. Seeding the Middle East with brand new jihadists.

My Republican Paratrooper Captain father, who lost an eye in Africa in WWII, would die of shame and rage. Only cowards torture. Only cowards bully. Only cowards give their own freedoms up to kneel in fear. Only little people lie, cheat, and steal. Only treason sums this adequately. Mad? Ya think?

Any Republican "truly committed to conservative principles" would have stood with us and demanded impeachment a long time ago. None did. What can we conclude from that? The Ike Republican died when he did. From Nixon on, it's been just a bunch of kiss-up, money-worshipping SOBs for whom absolutely no human rights violation, no screw job, and no sellout of America is too much to crow about.

Yeah. The only way the GOP can pull it out in November is to manufacture touch-screen voting machines that can be fixed by last minute repair guys at the precinct stations, require picture IDs (like undocumented workers are going to go to the polls? Are you CRAZY?), and cleanse Democrats and young voters from the voting rolls.

Oh. Wait.

Mean Loves Stupid and Stupid Loves Mean

Following disclosures that we inject deportees with mind-altering drugs, sweep up immigrants in Gestapo-style midnight raids, and unaccountably throw poor brown people willy-nilly into bottomless pits called "for-profit detention centers," editors at the New York Times today reveal another charming piece of Republican genius for us to ponder.

Apparently we're banning people who marry foreigners from getting earned tax rebate checks:

Hard-liners were so intent on keeping the cash out of the hands of undocumented workers that they restricted the rebate to people with Social Security numbers. An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, issued by the Internal Revenue Service to people who pay taxes but do not qualify for Social Security numbers, will not do. If a married couple files jointly, and one spouse is not eligible for the rebate, neither gets the money.

This hurts all manner of people who are working and paying taxes: American soldiers stationed abroad who happen to have married foreigners; high-tech immigrants in Silicon Valley and other places whose spouses are not authorized to work or have not yet had their paperwork processed. These are people who are perfectly legal, economically vital and politically inconvenient .[Emphases added.]

Does it get any dumber? Do we need clearer proof that mean loves stupid and stupid loves mean?

What Would a Smart Country Do?

A new immigration study by the Center-Right Manhattan Institute has findings with mixed implications for low-skill, undocumented Mexican immigrants. While finding that today's immigrants assimilate faster than those of earlier times, it also reported this:

The overall assimilation index also masks big differences between immigrants from certain countries. Mexicans, for example have an index of 13, while Vietnamese were at 41. And although immigrants who arrived as children tend to be nearly identical to their U.S.-born counterparts, apart from their lower rates of citizenship, those who come from Mexico are less assimilated and have higher incidences of teenage pregnancy and incarceration.

A major reason for these disparities in assimilation levels may be the high percentage of Mexican immigrants who are in the country illegally, Vigdor said. When only cultural factors are considered, Mexicans score almost as high as Vietnamese and higher than immigrants from countries such as India and China, which tend to have a high rate of immigration to the United States.

"If you're in the country illegally, a lot of the avenues of assimilation are cut off to you," he said. "There are lot of jobs you can't get, and you can't become a citizen."

Almost certainly the Right in Arizona and nationally will interpret this as reason to pursue round-ups and deportations, while the Left will interpret it as reason to allow residents to pursue legal standing. I vote for the latter.

The reasons? One, as I noted earlier, the New York Times reports today that the nation is already experiencing markedly negative economic repercussions from the Republicans' slash-and-burn approach to Latinos crossing the border illegally. That's true in spades for Arizona.

Two, the obvious implication is that the USA needs low-skilled Mexicans, and not just to perform construction, agriculture, entertainment-industry, and other jobs that native-born workers will not do--or do not do successfully.* We also need their tax, Social Security, and consumer contributions, and because they are a younger cohort than the American average, we need them to help fund our imperiled retirements. Our own self-interest says to change course.

Three, the massive detention industry that is growing fat from profiteering on Hispanic immigrants (not necessarily only undocumented ones) poses a direct threat to our constitutional way of life. But there's something already hideously embarassing and disgusting about our country's having the highest incarceration rate in the world. In fact, it beggars pretty much every cliche we bleat about our way of life.

To add the fact that it's a rapidly-growing for-profit industry that is coming under fire for predictable profit-driven and other abuses to its inmate population is revolting. More important, it is profoundly alarming for those of us who actually believe in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Why? Politicization of our churches leaves us wondering what part of the sermon is partisan agenda and what part is, well, faith-based. Similarly, privatization of prisons for profit leaves us wondering who's in charge. The very structure undermines the notion that incarceration is a function of our Justice system. It leaves us wondering exactly what percent of the inmate population, and exactly what percent of "discipline" options such as time added, have to do instead with somebody's bottom line.

We already know that humans debased by profit uber alles are not pretty creatures. Do we need more really grotesque demonstrations of just how bad that can get? Because if we do, private, for-profit prison ventures underwritten by pillaged tax dollars and unaccountable even to immigration lawyers and members of Congress, much less public watchdogs like ACLU, are just the ticket.

I don't really think we need to transform ICE and our law enforcement, judicial, and prison systems into a whole new pipeline for a whole new form of human trafficking. Plus this: Combined with our penchant for imprisoning everything that moves and the powerful Far Right's capacity to define a difference of opinion as treason (therefore imprisonable if not whackable), the prison privatization thing may well be our own demise. It's a nasty and slippery slope.

Four, corruption corrupts. We're seeing this played out now in the Iraq war, in secret US torture pits, in private detention facilities, in the person and office of the Maricopa County sheriff, in the operation of the US mortgage/credit and energy industries, and even in our elections. Reversals in economic and labor regulatory policy and abandonment of fundamental constitutional principles to forward ideological and profiteering goals just aren't working for anybody. Well, except a handful of well-connected owners and investors like BushMcCainCheneyGoodhair. The rest of us are either co-opted, or reeling with disgust and fury, or paralyzed by a parade of abuses we once thought could never happen here.

The point is that immigration is giving us a whole new way to interpret "doing unto others." We have a decision to make, now. We can either continue as we are, proving ad nauseum that being poisoned by fear and driven crazy with vengefulness and greed isn't working, or we can use common sense.

We can aim for a high-wage worker-respecting econony worldwide instead of the global opposite, and we can treat our immigrant populations for what they are: like us, they're the hearts and minds of the country's future, politically, psychically, and economically. Abuse them and lose them.

What would a smart country do?
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*From the employer's viewpoint, according to recent testimony before a House Commerce Committee hearing on immigration and the native workforce.