Justin's Political Corner

But is it true? Let’s take a look at several issues and how both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives respond. I will be adding links to the conservative side to forestall the usual “Straw man” complaint.

1. Abortion: Can a woman abort a fetus and if so, up to what stage of development?

Liberals – Currently, there is no way to know when a fetus/zygote becomes a  person with the same moral weight as a “post-uterine” individual. In the absence of anything more solid than, “That’s how I feel about it,” liberals are willing to let the choice belong to the woman up to the point of viability. No one is comfortable with a 30 week abortion except under dire circumstances.

Conservatives – Not only have they declared that a single celled zygote is the same as a 10 year old child but have tried to pass laws to allow civilians to kill abortion providers and arrest women suspected of trying to induce a miscarriage.

Who is more extreme?

2. Religion in school – Should religion be promoted in school through teacher-led prayer and religious iconography or should schools be “religion neutral?”

Liberals – They would prefer to keep religion out of schools so no one religion is promoted over others in a country with literally hundreds of different faiths and sects (or none at all). This way, no one is ostracized or pressured.

Conservatives – They want Christianity, only Christianity and a particular brand of Christianity (No Catholics or Mormons!) taught in schools. At the same time, they do not want objective and verifiable science taught because it runs counter their very specific brand of fundamentalist Christianity. No evolution and no six billion year old Earth.

Who is more extreme?

3. Banning religion – Should the United States pass laws against unpopular religions in direct contradiction of the First Amendment?

Liberals - Militant atheists, not all of whom are liberals, talk about banning religion but they are a minority and no lawmaker has tried to seriously do this.

Conservatives – Conservatives talk about banning Islam all the time and have passed several “anti-Sharia” laws.

Who is more extreme?

4. Guns – Does society have the right to limit certain kinds of firearms and accessories like semi-automatic assault rifles, extended clips and fully-automatic machine guns while requiring all purchases of guns to be subjected to a background check to weed out criminals, the mentally ill, potential terrorists, etc.?

Liberals - Militant gun control proponents would like to ban all guns like many other industrialized countries have done with no ill effect. They are a minority and no lawmaker has tried to seriously do this. Liberals, in general, believe that background checks will reduce gun crime and banning certain kinds of guns and accessories will reduce, but not eliminate, the ability of killers to commit mass murder.

Conservatives – They have suppressed gun control laws so much that anyone can buy almost any gun at anytime with no oversight whatsoever and want to continue to do so. Conservative lawmakers have pushed laws to allow guns in churches, pre-schools and bars that serve alcohol. Some towns have mandated that every household MUST have a gun. They even want people just released from mental health facilities to immediately be able to buy a gun as well as convicted violent felons. They believe more guns make them safer in direct contradiction to evidence that show states flooded with guns have a high level of gun violence.

Who is more extreme?

5. Marriage – Can the definition of marriage be expanded to include homosexuals? 

Liberals – Considering marriage used to be prohibited between blacks and whites and nothing bad happened when we changed it, liberals would like for people to be able to marry the person they love regardless of their sex.

Conservatives – They insist that marriage has remained unchanged for centuries despite all evidence to the contrary. They also insist that same sex marriage is no different than bestiality and pedophilia despite it being between two consenting adults.

Who is more extreme?

6. Voting – Should we require citizens to obtain special ID in order to vote?

“Big government” Liberals – Everybody should be able to vote with a minimal amount of interference.

“Small government” Conservatives – Everyone should be forced to have “Voter ID” that costs time and money to get in order to fight wide-spread (but strangely impossible to find) “voter fraud.” Curiously, if you ask these same people if guns should be subject to the same kinds of rules to combat the well established tens of thousands of gun deaths and hundreds of thousands of gun crimes a year, they get very upset at this “infringement” on their “freedom.”

Who is more extreme?

7. The President – Does the office of the President of the United States deserve unquestioning respect and obedience in a time of war?

“Totalitarian” Liberals – No. No president should have carte blanche to wage war in our names or be immune to criticism. The right to to petition the Government for a redress of grievances is in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. Yet, anyone that criticized President Bush in any way, including about about non-war related policies, was labeled “traitors” by conservatives for “not supporting the president in a time of war” as if he were the God-Emperor of Arrakis.

Conservatives – During the very same war in which Bush was not allowed to be criticized, President Obama has been accused of being a secret Muslim from Kenya, a Nazi, a Communist, a Socialist, a homosexual, a gangsta, a traitor, a terrorist and racial slurs have been tossed around like confetti at a KKK gathering. The calls for impeachment haven’t stopped since almost his first day in office.

Who is more extreme?

8. Taxes – How should the broken tax code be fixed?

Liberals – We want tax loopholes closed for the rich and corporations and for them to pay what they actually owe. Hiding money in tax havens should be aggressively discouraged with confiscation and jail time (just like the rest if us face when we dodge our taxes). A modest tax hike on billionaires wouldn’t be so bad, either but not terribly necessary if the previous steps are taken.

Conservatives – They want to pay no taxes at all (but not a penny to be taken from their Social Security and Medicare) because they’ve been taxed enough already despite having lower taxes than at any point in the last 30 years..

Who is more extreme?

9. Rhetoric – Whose rhetoric displays a disconnect from reality and/or violence?

Liberals – We yell about the banks stealing our money with bailouts and being “Too big to fail,” getting money out of politics, the rich not paying their taxes, no more warmongering, no more rape, no more discrimination, respecting women’s rights, feeding the poor and hungry, stopping Climate Change and freedom of, and from, religion.

Conservatives – While they happen to agree with liberals about the banks, getting money out of politics and no more warmongering, they also say that liberals are violent thugs that are planning on putting conservatives into concentration camps, regularly talk about secession, revolution, Second Amendment remedies, shooting liberals and pray for Obama’s death.

Who is more extreme?

10. Rape – Is rape…rape?*

Liberals – Yes. It doesn’t matter if violence, drugs or coercion were used. If the sex was not consensual, it’s rape.

Conservatives – Well, it depends. Was it legitimate? A Gift from God? Did she get pregnant? Was it forcible? Was her vagina shredded by the rape? If not then it wasn’t “real rape.”

*I’m leaving out all of the slut shaming and “she was asking for it” because that is a product of rape culture and is almost entirely independent of political affiliation. While it is more prevalent among conservatives it’s not remotely confined to them. I’m not even sure they represent a majority in this regard.

Who is more extreme?

Now, conservatives will complain that I’m “misrepresenting them” or “using straw man arguments.” This is why I included all of the links to actual quotes from actual mainstream Republicans or conservatives. These are not fringe beliefs for the right. This is what their elected officials and media representatives say. When a conservative uses the most extreme of left wing positions (They want to ban all guns!), they have to find a blog no one has heard of or random Facebook comments to support their accusation. It certainly isn’t a part of mainstream liberal ideology.

h/t: Justin Rosario at AddictingInfo.org

Perpetually fuming about President Obama, Sean Hannity widened his rant Wednesday night on Fox News and condemned the “lapdog, kiss ass media” that allegedly lets Obama have his way. Echoing the same attack, Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week that ”Mr. Obama is a once-in-a-generation demagogue with a compliant press corps,” while the anti-Obama Daily Caller pushed the headline,  ”Lapdog Media Seeking Lap To Lie In.”

Complaining about the “liberal media,” has been a running, four-decade story for conservative activists. But what we’re hearing more of lately is the specific allegation that the press has purposefully laid down for the Democratic president, and that it’s all part of a master media plan to help Democrats foil Republicans.

The rolling accusation caught my attention since I wrote a book called Lapdogs, which documented the Beltway media’s chronic timidity during the previous Republican administration, and particularly with regards to the Iraq War. I found it curious that Hannity and friends are now trying to turn the rhetorical tables with a Democrat in the White House, and I was interested in what proof they had to lodge that accusation against today’s press.

It turns out the evidence is quite thin. For instance, onenever-ending partisan cry has been the press has “ignored” the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last year; that they’re protecting Obama. Yet theNew York Times and Washington Post have published nearly 800 articles and columns mentioning Benghazi since last September, according to Nexis.  

What the lapdog allegation really seems to revolve around is the fact that conservatives are angry that Obama remains popular with the public. Rather than acknowledge that reality, partisans increasingly blame the press and insist if only reporters and pundits would tell ‘the truth’ about Obama, then voters would truly understand how he’s out to destroy liberty and freedom and capitalism.

Sorry, but that’s not what constitutes a lapdog press corps. And to confuse chronic partisan whining with authentic media criticism is a mistake. The Hannity-led claim also isn’t accurate. Studies have shown that during long stretches of his first term, Obama was  hammered with “unrelentingly negative” press coverage.

By contrast, the lapdog era of the Bush years represented nothing short of an institutional collapse of the American newsroom. And it was one that, given the media’s integral role in helping to sell the Iraq War, did grave damage to our democracy.

Looking back at his tenure as Washington Post ombudsman, Michael Getler wrote in 2005 that the mainstream media’s performance in 2002 and 2003 likely represented the industry’s worst failing in nearly half a century. “How did a country on the leading edge of the information age get this so wrong and express so little skepticism and challenge?” Getler asked.

Meanwhile, given its current primetime lineup, sometimes it’s hard to recall that in 2003 MSNBC was so nervous about employing a liberal host who opposed Bush’s ordered invasion that it fired Phil Donahue preemptively, just weeks before war began. An internal memo warned that Donahue presented “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” (He was MSNBC’s highest rated host at the time of his firing.)

Months worth of chronic timidity and newsroom bowing-down to the White House’s war culture clearly helped pave the way to war.  

Laying out the reasons for an unprecedented invasion during his final, pre-war invasion press conference on March 6, 2003, Bush mentioned al-Qaida and the terrorist attacks of September 11 thirteen times in less than an hour. Not a single journalist that night challenged the presumed connection Bush was making between al-Qaida and Iraq, despite the fact that intelligence sources had publicly questioned any such association.

The egregious, look-the-other-way coverage continued long after the invasion. The U.S. media’s collective disinterest in Britain’s Downing Street Memo represented a perfect example of dogged lapdog behavior.

On Piers Morgan Tonight earlier this evening, Tea Party wingnut Dana Loesch seemed to have trouble defending her position that the Obama administration should be crucified over the Benghazi scandal. When other panelists reminded her of similar situations under the Bush administration (most notably the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq lie that lead us into a bloody and senseless war). While both Morgan and fellow panelist former Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley agreed that serious questions need to be addressed concerning the current inquiry, the current bouts of misogyny and finger-pointing by conservatives like Rand and Loesch only detract from the seriousness of the situation.

Typical of her lack of debate and communication skills, Loesch refused to concede that both Rice and Clinton faced similar scenarios, and her outrage now seems hypocritical in light of her refusal to admit their proven wrongdoing. Her hyper-partisan speech once again proves she’s not interested in actually learning the truth of what happened during that deadly September 11th attack; no, she’s only interested in furthering her own (flailing) political career at the expense of others. 

From the 01.23.2013 edition of CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight:

h/t: Peacock Panache

In the lead up to the 2000 presidential election, Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a private company to create an error-laden “scrub list” of so-called ineligible voters, eventually wrongly purging as many as 7000 voters from Florida’s rolls — or 13 times George W. Bush’s post-Supreme Court margin of victory. Moreover, because Harris’ list “invariably target[ed] a minority population in Florida” that was overwhelmingly likely to vote for Al Gore, it is likely that her voter purge gave the presidency to Bush. Four years later, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell engaged in similar shenanigans to suppress the vote in his crucial swing state — including at one point saying he would reject voter registration forms if they were not printed on 80-pound thickness cardstock.

This election, the role of Kathrine Harris and Ken Blackwell is played by Ohio’s new Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted. Here are just a few of the steps Husted took to try to swing Ohio’s crucial electoral votes to Mitt Romney:

• Trashing Provisional Ballots: In a last-minute directive that directly conflicts with Ohio law, Husted ordered all voters who make a mistake when filling out a form accompanying provisional ballots to be disenfranchised. As the majority of provisional ballots are cast in Ohio’s five largest counties — all of which favor Democrats — and because low-income and transient voters are also more likely to vote provisionally, Husted’s directive will likely disenfranchise many more Democrats than Republicans.
• Restricting Early Voting: Husted fought tooth and nail to limit opportunities to vote early in Ohio, although most of the restrictions on early voting Husted advocated were eventually blocked by a federal appeals court. Nevertheless, Husted still limited the number of hours available for early voting even after he lost in federal court, and he told an election law symposium last month that the court decision restoring early voting periods was an “un-American approach to voting.” Early voters in Ohio overwhelmingly support President Obama. As the federal court restoring early voting explained, “early voters have disproportionately lower incomes and less education than election day voters,” and thus are less likely to work flexibility to take time off to vote on election day.
• Defying Court Orders: After a federal district court declared Ohio’s efforts to suppress early voting unconstitutional, Husted openly defied this order — ordering local elections officials not to comply with it. Husted eventually backed down after federal Judge Peter Economus ordered Husted to personally attend a court hearing concerning his refusal to comply with the law.
• Retaliating Against People Who Oppose Him: Husted fired two Montgomery County board of election members after they voted to allow early voting on weekends when Husted opposed it.

It does not have to be the way.

H/T: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

At this point in time, it’s difficult to think of the Romney campaign as anything but badly burnt toast. It’s not just Democrats and previously undecided voters who are turning on Romney and his never-ending series of gaffes and inartful glimpses into the psyche of the financial elite, it’s Republicans. Rachel Maddow talks about it here:

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. Richard Nixon - Who can tell a story of dirty Republican election tactics without first mentioning the modern day grandfather of slimy politics; “Tricky” Dick Nixon?

While Watergate is the most famous of GOP election scandals, it’s arguably the least interesting. Some of Nixon’s operatives broke into the Democratic campaign headquarters. They got caught. Some went to jail. Nixon was forced to resign in shame. By today’s standards, it sounds downright pedestrian, but at the Presidential level, it’s the only such scandal that had real accountability.

Nixon didn’t manage to steal that election, but not for lack of trying. Oh, but not so fast. In 1968, during the height of the Vietnam war and predating Watergate, Nixon committed a small crime we call treason. The achilles heel of then President Lyndon Johnson was the war. Nixon negotiated with the South Vietnamese to stay out of peace talks, at least until Nixon was in charge. They succumbed to his pressure and the war went on longer than probably necessary.

For those of us who are Obama supporters and political junkies, it’s tempting to grab the popcorn and watch an implosion that could be the envy of Hollywood action directors, but as in Hollywood, it wouldn’t be drama if the hero (or villain) didn’t have a last-minute plan, and if Republicans are known for anything, it’s their 11th hour, 59th minute talent for electoral shenanigans.

Just in case you or your friends are thinking this election is in the bag and are tempted to stay home, allow me to regale you with a cautionary tale, one of theft, manipulation and even international intrigue and–dare I say–treason. Just because the GOP chose a yawner of a Presidential candidate doesn’t mean they aren’t entertaining.

2. Ronald Reagan – The GOP’s poster boy for all that is good with America. He was charming, clean cut, handsome (all this according to my then swooning grandmother). He was full of optimism, hope, and boy, could he give a speech. 

1980 was a tough year for Democrats. President Jimmy Carter was viewed as weak and ineffectual. The economy was suffering a double whammy of high unemployment and high inflation. By the time voters hit the polls, prices were rising at a rate of over 13% a year. Currently, our inflation rate is very low, at less than 2%.

Perhaps even more importantly, almost exactly a year before the election, the American Embassy in Iran was taken hostage by students.

3. George W. Bush – Bush 43 might be our most illegitimate President ever (and I’m including Gerald Ford, who was never elected to either Vice President or President). In 2000, the Supreme Court overrode the state of Florida to install Bush as President. Even if the five conservative justices hadn’t decided that Bush should become President, the Republican party was busy making sure that Democratic votes didn’t get counted.

You would think an incumbent wouldn’t feel the need to cheat, but if there was one thing that the Bush administration learned from the Nixon administration, it was that they should always buy insurance. In this case, it was Ohio in 2004. Before the election, Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold (one of the electronic voting machine companies) said he was, ”committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” O’Dell and Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State colluded to lock other voting machines out of the election. Exit polling showed that Bush’s competitor, John Kerry, should have won Ohio. Its 20 electoral votes would have given Kerry the election.

4. Barack Obama – No, he’s not a Republican and I’m not implying in any way that he stole the 2008 election, but there is absolutely no doubt that Republicans will be screaming “ACORN, ACORN – they registered Mickey Mouse!” Well, they did register Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and every other name that people outside of grocery stores pulled out of their smart asses, but Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck never got to vote. All organizations that registered voters are required by law to accept every registration. They are also required to report suspicious registrations, which ACORN did. The false registrations were quickly eliminated.

The real problem behind ACORN, of course, wasn’t about fictional characters who never made it to the polls, it was about the legitimate voters they were registering, African-Americans; people who vote Democratic. In the end, the GOP Mickey Mouse scheme worked. ACORN’s funding was pulled and they were forced to close their doors.

5. Mitt Romney – Obviously, we don’t know all the tricks up the GOP’s sleeve in this election, but they are numerous and undemocratic. Republicans are doing everything in their power to ensure that minorities, the poor, the elderly and the young are going to have a difficult time voting. Tactics range from requiring only certain photo IDs at the voting booths to restricting voting times and locations. The Brennan Center is reporting that the changes could affect up to five million people and up to 127 (out of a necessary 270) electoral votes. While some of the affected states will vote Republican, down ballot contests, like Congress and local legislatures, are at risk. Some of the states, like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, are considered swing states.

A quarter of a billion dollars have been spent so far in this election, the vast majority of it geared toward defeating Obama. Anti-Obama pockets are deep. The Koch brothers wouldn’t be throwing money at a candidate without at least a possibility he would win. At this point, all official polls, especially the all-important electoral polls, show that Romney has little to no chance. What do the Super PAC donors know that pollsters don’t?

As a last resort, there’s always treason. Was the release of the now infamous anti-Muslim movie trailer coincidental? Perhaps we’ll never know. Were the attacks on the US Consulate in Libya truly planned by Muslim terrorists? Again, we may never know. It might be far-fetched to pose the events in the Middle East as conspiracy theories, but Republicans have proven that they aren’t above sacrificing human lives and national security, all to win an election. As a game changer, if the unrest can be traced to a cynical ploy to try and sway an election, it has had little effect on Obama but Romney’s premature criticism of the Obama administration seems to have given him a lasting scar. With October just a few days away, it’s not difficult to imagine another pre-election surprise.

h/t: Wendy Gittleson at AddictingInfo.org/

The Bush administration was told, as early as May 2001, about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda.

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.

Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.

h/t: Kurt Eichenwald at The New York Times