Truth and Democracy

PGA Playing Ability Test; April 25, 2011 Concordia GC

2011-04-28T02:03:00.000-07:00

Monday morning was dreary and overcast as I arrived at Concordia GC, about 6:40am. There were already a few assistant pros (PGA hopefuls) on the putting green. When Victor, Concordia's manager, arrived around 7am, he informed the players that the driving range would be closed due to significant rains the day before. Chris Hunt, known affectionately as "The Bus" (for obvious reasons if you saw him), the New Jersey PGA Section's tournament director, followed shortly thereafter. Hunt arranged for players who chose to do so to use nearby Rossmoor CC's driving range and delayed the PAT's start until 8:30am (originally 8). But since this would require a fast dash over to Rossmoor to hit just a few balls, and then a fast dash back, I chose to stay at Concordia. Rushing around does not instill the proper frame of mind.

Facing a delayed start, Hunt decided to pair the players up in groups of only two for the morning round (instead of the usual three), thus speeding up pace of play. I was paired with a player named Colin Thomas from Westchester County, NY, and we were sent to start at hole #2 in a "shotgun start", where all players begin on different holes at the same time, also to expediate play. The 2nd hole at Concordia is a 480 yard par 5, short by our standards. The hole bends slightly to the left about 220 yards from the green, where two large fairway bunkers guard the left side of the fairway. Carry your drive over these, about 255-260 yards, and you are left with about 200 into the green.

Thomas drove first and hit a mediocre tee shot down the right hand side, leaving himself a longer second shot. At the moment you place your tee in the ground, and the ball upon it, you can experience a bit of panic. "This is it, this is what you've been building toward for months". "Don't screw it up", Thoughts tend to race, muscles tense. I had not played in a PGA event in over a decade as well. To counter this effect, I closed my eyes and made a few short, compact practice swings, then set up to the ball and let 'er rip. I ripped a long, high, perfect drive over the fairway bunkers, I did not even need to watch it fall from the sky. I knew where it would be. Having just over 200 yards to the middle of the green (the hole was "cut" in the difficult back left portion), in the cool morning air and with a somewhat downhill lie, I chose to hit a 3-iron hybrid club, which I mishit slightly, leaving myself about 15 yards short of the lefthand side of the green. To my deep chagrin, I found my ball in a ditch connected to a drainage area, but with no relief by the rules. The ball was 6 inches below my feet, nestled in deep grass. I did my best but could not advance the ball to the putting surface, eventually making a bogey 6 on the hole. A disappointment after a perfect tee shot.

Ultimately, I played fair in the first round. I found a lot of unlucky lies and the holes were often placed in the most difficult parts of the putting greens. A "hard luck" 78 was the result. Meaning I would need 77 ot better in the afternoon in order to pass. Thomas shot 86, including several penalty strokes for shots hit "out of bounds". For the second round, we were set up in the traditional threesomes. A player named Jeff (forget last name) joined Thomas and myself starting again at number 2. The sun had come out. It was warm and humid, and the wind, nonexistent in the morning, had begun to blow a little bit.

My second opening tee shot was less perfect but not harmful. I drove the ball up the right side of the fairway, leaving myself about 210 yards to the middle of the 2nd green. This time, a better hybrid shot, from an equally downhill lie, ended up just a few yards off the left side of the green, near the hole location, and in a decent lie in the rough. After choosing to "pitch" the ball onto the green with my sand wedge, I proceeded to hit the exact shot I had envisioned, and watched as the ball landed on the green and rolled directly into the hole, clinking against the flagstick as it dropped in, for an "eagle" 3. My verbal response, "You gotta be kidding me". For the first time all day, I now had to consider the very real potential of passing. Expectations began to enter my mind and body, to the tune of tension.

Having the "honor" (lowest score on the previous hole) on the next tee, I sent a perfect 5-iron over a lake into the middle of the fairway of the par 4, 3rd hole. I then waited endlessly as my two playing partners deposited a total of three balls into that same lake, "Jeff" having to play two balls through the hole due to a rules question, which gave me what seemed like forever to think about my chances, rather than focus on the here and now. I did make a routine par at the third, but began to struggle after that. My swing began to get shaky. My ball started finding lots of bad places and I began leaving myself difficult putts for pars. Since putting had been a struggle recently, even during casual rounds, the results were predictable. I hung on as best as I could for as long as I could but ultimately surrendered the strokes necessary to pass, finishing just a couple above the target score. As a matter of fact, I stood in the 1st fairway (our final hole) with about 135 yards in, knowing that if I holed out from that point, I would pass right on the number. A slim chance in the extreme, but not impossible (I have done it before). However, my ensuing pitching wedge came up a little short, despite the shot being downwind.

I am not too disappointed in the aftermath. I gave the best effort I had under some very difficult personal circumstances. Just three working assistant golf professionals, most in their 20s, played a better 36 holes than I. In my group, I was the only player with any chance whatsoever of passing. This after 11 years removed from serious play, and almost 7 years without playing at all, having started again just last September. If my play under pressure improves as rapidly as it did when I was in my early 30s, the potential will be nearly limitless. I thank Chris Hunt, for running the event on his day off. Ray Bridy, PGA Professional at Concordia, for hosting, the members of Concordia, for allowing us to intrude on their lovely course for a day, and, most of all, Dana, Mom and Dad, and everyone else who has supported me through my crazy, crazy, life. Here's hoping this is just the beginning of a new, old career.

Paul Roth, Jr.

April 28, 2011

"Keep Christ in Christmas"

2010-12-23T23:19:00.000-08:00

So, you wanna keep Christ in Christmas, huh? Funny thing is…Christ was never more than a small part of Christmas from the beginning.

“What did he say??!!”

“That’s crazy talk, right?”

Nope. It’s historical fact.

When the Roman Emperor, Constantine, declared Christianity the official “religion” of what was left of the empire in the 4th Century, his mother, Helena, wanted an official commemoration of Christ’s birth. No such prior observation existed. December 25th was chosen in order to take advantage of an already popular celebration, the birth date of the Roman God, Mithras. For the people of Rome, Christmas quickly became a time of drunken revelry and public rowdiness. Only the priests observed it in quiet reverence.

Since the date also coincided with the Pagan northern European Solstice Festival of Yule, a 12 day feast, it was an easy sell to the north of Rome as well. But the secular observation of the holiday as a time of “good cheer” (public drunkenness) only intensified there. Worse yet for the “Keep Christ...” crowd, the Europeans melded much of the Yule celebration into their Christmas. To this day, a majority of those things we associate with Christmas actually originated with Yule; the hearth flame, candles (lights later), the tree, wreath, holly, mistletoe..etc. Even jolly old St. Nick originated in northern Europe. While he did travel the countryside bringing gifts to good children, he was followed immediately by a demon who would torture the bad children (try taking your kids to the mall to see him!). It took a 19th Century NYC poet to bring us the Santa Claus we have today.

Many British still celebrate Christmas by dressing in costume or masks. The tradition of Caroling began as an effort to get free booze from your neighbors. Ask a knowledgeable friend what the phrase “Here we come a-wassailing” really means. The Industrial Revolution in America ultimately resulted in the commercializing of Christmas, as our nation’s great Capitalists sought to take advantage of perhaps the only Christmas custom which actually had its roots in the Bible, gift giving. Christmas has now become more of a year-ending business frenzy than anything else, its own sort of “Christmas bonus”, for retailers all over the world, without which our currently stagnant economies might bust. “Keep Christ in Christmas” you say? It would be more appropriate to ask if you can “find Christ” anywhere in Christmas, despite its name.

I find your little signs (and sometimes not so little) to be a personal annoyance because you seem to presume that Christ was ever a major part of the holiday, he was not. TV talking heads and fundamentalist preachers droll on and on about “liberal” secularism destroying Christmas, another one of those signs goes up in the neighborhood, and another American buys into a false narrative of human, religious, and even American history. The fact is that the secular elements of this holiday were ALWAYS more popular, right from the start.

Still want to “keep Christ in Christmas”? Fine, here’s how:

Start by throwing that pretty tree into the trash, along with all your lights, wreaths, holly, garland..etc. No Santas, reindeer, elves, snowmen, no cards, nothing. You can keep the Nativity scene; provided you acknowledge that even that is based on misreads and faulty translations of the New Testament, as well as a mish-moshing of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. House looks pretty hum-drum, huh? Now pile the whole family into the car (oh, I’m sorry, male family only) and head on down to the first church you can find that doesn’t have any of those “secular” decorations. Remain there in quiet meditation and prayer from about 6pm Christmas Eve until Midnight Christmas Day. Congratulations, you’re keeping Christ in Christmas now, just as Constantine’s Holy Men did over sixteen centuries ago. (Try selling the kids on this idea too!)

As for me, I’ll still be laughing at your foolishness. Why? Because the entire premise of the three major monotheistic religions is an absolute delusion. Imagine I have a 9 year old daughter. She’s a very imaginative child. She has literally had hundreds upon hundreds of imaginary friends ever since she was three or four, never a real one. It seems as if there’s a new one every week or so. All of them have been products of her imaginative little mind. But the new one she’s talking to right now over there on the living room floor, I’m 100% convinced that this one is really real, although I can’t see her and there’s no evidence she’s any more real than the others. This is more than faith, it is sheer lunacy. Yet the version of human history one needs cling to in order to be a Christian, Jew, or Muslim today is every bit as fantastic, maybe more.

Mankind spent thousands of years, from region to region, all over the earth, creating “God” concepts or Spirits of Nature based on their unique cultures and surroundings. Men fabricated the very notion of a God. But, in the greatest cosmic coincidence of all time, there really was a real God, just one, who chose to reveal himself only to a small and oppressed tribe in the desert, forsaking all the rest of humanity, many of whom that tribe didn’t even know existed. THEY were his “chosen people”. Kind of like my daughter is to her invisible new friend. Utter fantasy.

PS - Nearly every crucial detail in the New Testament narrative of Jesus' birth, life, and death, is plagiarized from the story of the Egyptian God, Horus, which predates the time period of the New Testament by more than one thousand years.
And don't "Keep Christ in Christmas" this Saturday. Then you're only commemorating an ancient Roman God or the Winter Solstice, remember? Better to pick a day from the calender at random, you've got a 365 to 1 chance of getting it right.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS,

Paul Roth, Jr.

Park Place becomes Hysteria Lane

2010-08-21T01:02:00.000-07:00

The following is my response, from the Facebook page "Zoo Politics", to a conservative woman who was scolding a young man for his opinion on the Park 51 Cultural Center, because he was "too young to understand 9/11" and should leave the conversation to "the grownups":

Paul Roth -

How about a person who was plenty old enough, saw the towers fall, lives 15 miles from ground zero, knew people who died that day, had his livelihood affected in the aftermath, and understands that the attacks were conceived, plotted, and executed by people who twisted their religious zealotry into justification for killing innocent people, rather than by all who practice the religion they falsely claimed?? Can I play?

Here's a quote for you:

If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul

Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the

Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul,

and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a

Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.

And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the

practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun

rasulullah is no different. It expresses the same theological and ethical principles

and values.

We are here especially to seek your forgiveness and of your family for what has

been done in the name of Islam.

Who said these words? The Imam who is being vilified in the right wing press for having "ties to terrorists", at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, killed in 2003. The Bush administration sent this man on two tours of the Middle East to promote peace between Islam and America. He is currently on a third such trip, which the right wing is lying about as well. He has been helping the US government in it's war on terrorism from the beginning.

The Center (Park 51, Cordoba, whatever) was intended to promote healing. A place where all are welcome. It was supposed to be a symbol to those who twist Islam into war against the west that Islam rejects their fanaticism. It would be a very American, western, cultural center which would include a prayer area within it's two uppermost floors. It's location would be a neighborhood which has been largely Muslim for many years, the greatest irony of the 9/11 attacks.

Instead the SIOA (Stop Islamization of America), Christian and Jewish right-wing bloggers, and all those with a paranoid fear that Muslims are trying to take over this country (mainly those who want conservative Christianity to dominate us), have convinced you that the center is meant as a "symbol of victory" over America and a great beachhead for the coming Muslim invasion. It's been a glorious PR victory for religious "warriors" all across America. But at what cost?

I've had people, who are otherwise rational, spout nonsense to me about this issue from the very start. Those who say, "Why there?", are the most misguided of all. Their intentions are good but their argument begins with the most flawed of thinking. That Al Qaeda truly represented all Islam when it attacked us that day. You cannot arrive at opposition to this center, or spout the usual slogans ("no ground zero mosque", "not on hallowed ground") without first falsely conflating 19 terrorists, and those who trained them and planned, with all Muslims everywhere. The real question is, "Why not there?"

We tend to remember, with bitter rage, images of people celebrating in the streets of occupied Palestine on that day, and with good reason. But, in our bitterness, we forget all of the Muslim voices which reacted with shock, sympathy, and outrage at what had been done, allegedly in their name. I well remember hearing a statement of condemnation of the attacks and sympathy toward Americans, that day, which came from a most unexpected Middle Eastern nation. It was from Saddam Hussien's Iraq!

"We are here especially to seek your forgiveness....for what has
been done in the name of Islam". Do you people need it said any more clearly than this? When will you cease carrying a grudge against all for the actions of those who believe God wants them to kill? Shall I blame all who call themselves Christians, for the actions of those who shoot doctors, bomb gay bars and abortion clinics, savagely beat gay young people, or pipe-bomb a Mosque?? By your example, maybe I should.

Paul: Let's call this my definitive public statement about this issue. Fascism and Xenophobia are the prefered meeting place of the American right wing. There is no one who cannot earn the moniker "Enemy of America", if it serves their best interests. But when will the majority of Americans learn better than to be sucked into their hateful cauldron?

***** The photo atop this column comes from a right wing website. The caption reads "Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11". No further commentary is necessary. *****

William A. Ferguson - poster on Randi Rhodes' Facebook Page

2010-07-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

Consider this a guest column. I found this post on the Facebook page of Randi Rhodes and received permission from the author to reprint it in it's entirety. If you're not familiar with Randi, she may be the closest thing the left has to a Rush Limbaugh equivalent, without the daily bullshitting of course. Her show can be listened to live at http://www.randirhodes.com/ each day. I met her at a weekly comedy show in NYC in 2004, while she was working with Air America Radio and I was a Press Secretary for a Congressional candidate seeking to ouster the fanatically right wing Rep. Scott Garrett, (R-NJ 5). She promptly booked my employer, Anne Wolfe (D), on her show live from the Democratic National Convention in Boston. We had something in common; she adored comedian Lewis Black and he was my former client from my Stand Up Comedy biz days. I highly recommend finding time to listen to her for the sanity of all my progressive friends (even though she was canned by AAR for getting a little too downright vicious with another of my former employers, Hillary Clinton). Please read this post. I will return to it tomorrow with some personal commentary. It's by a man named William Ferguson:

William A. Ferguson - Right now your fate has been and always will be decided by a ten percent segment of the population that controls the wealth of the other ninety.

This segment of the population has nothing in common with you. They never have to worry about being laid off, having to choose food over medicine, wonder how they'll make next month's mortgage payment, worry about ever getting seriously ill and never have to be at the mercy of a Congress that can arbitrarily decide to cut off their unemployment insurance because they can't find a job.

When they fall on hard times they can go to the government and get a welfare check in a form of a bailout to the tune of seven hundred billion dollars.

The punchline to this god-awful joke? We created these monsters. Our labor, our sweat and our toil made them what they are today.

You'd think they would be greatful for our efforts that allow them to live their lives of comfort and ease. Sadly, this isn't the case - instead, we the American workers get the shaft every time.

They tell us that times are hard and that we all must sacrifice when they don't cut anything back for themselves.

They force us to take pay cuts and reduced benefits while they reap insane, over-the-top profits.

When they make bad decisions we suffer the consequences in the form of layoffs and outsourcing.

They get paid salaries that are three to five hundred times more than what you make in your lifetime and when they get fired, they get serverance packages in amounts that would feed several third-world nations.

In some cases, it's more lucrative for them to fail than to succeed.

Given the choice between staying in this country to make several hundred million dollars and moving the job overseas to make several hundred million and one dollars, they will opt to move that job overseas just to make that extra dollar.

They gamble with our pensions and savings and when they lose there are few if any consequences for them.

And most insulting of all: they use the wealth we created for them to buy off government legislators that gladly pass laws in their favor.

What really angers me is that most of us believe their lies and have us reciting them verbatim while we wonder how we're going to come up with enough money to get braces for our kids.

It doesn't occur to them or Congress that we wouldn't need to ask Uncle Sam for help if we had decent paying jobs.

Saturday at 7:28pm ·

(Paul) I'd like to add a few comments to what Mr. Ferguson said:

"Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor" - This is how Gore Vidal once described America's version of capitalism. It could be considered a shorter version of the above comments. There's an anger here which is more universal than many recognize. A feeling that there are powerful forces, which one has no control over, which are shaping our lives against our will. It exists among the Tea Party crowd as well, but there it is misdirected, by right wing propaganda, against the power"less" rather than the power"ful". Once upon a time, during the Great Depression, rioters threw stones as cars carrying wealthy Senators passed by in Washington, DC. Those Senators got the message and passed the New Deal programs, as much to promote their own safety as to help millions of starving Americans. Human history reveals again and again that when too much wealth and power reside in too few households, especially when a majority struggle simply to survive, first anger and ultimately violence are the result.

Yet today's angry Washington protestors are screaming at, and even spitting on, the very legislators who seek to repair the imbalance of power. They are egged on daily by right wing voices who have convinced them that the real enemy is a lower middle-class woman receiving food stamps for her family or an unemployed computer tech who has practically given up trying to find decent work to meet his skills, instead of the CEOs who are gifted with tens of millions in bonuses after moving their jobs to India. If you still cling to the idea that the "mainstream" media is horridly "liberal" or that right wing media outlets offer nothing more than harmless "balance", then how on earth can you account for the current mood of the country? If Republicans should actually regain control of both houses of congress this November, in the wake of disaster after disaster as a result of their previous agenda, will you still be able to say with a straight face that it was not as a result of right wing media's ability to rewrite American history, recast current events, and author a convenient but false narrative of the world around us, with the power to mold the opinions of a majority of Americans? I think not.

Mr. Ferguson's last line is a call to arms, so to speak. If only America could hear it above the cacophony of right wing disinformation. It should be emailed by every single American, to their Senators and Representatives. The right wing would dismiss it as a call for "socialism". It isn't. Government doesn't have to create all of those "decent paying jobs" itself. But there was a time when government did foster the economic environment and the fiscal motivations which kept a majority of our people in an enjoyable and upwardly mobile way of life. Those days are long over, replaced by a supply-side, greed-centric philosophy which has failed to make America stronger.

Thank you Mr. Ferguson, for saying what needed to be said. I just wish I could make all of America hear it for real.

Paul Roth, Jr.
7/7/10

Dear Mr. President, (Grow a Pair, Quick!)

2010-06-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,

Even after working for your primary opponent, I voted for you Mr. President. I made tons of phone calls to other New Jersey voters, asking them to join me in electing you. It’s coming up on two years since those days and, quite frankly, I’m getting really frustrated with the White House I chose. This isn’t the inane ranting of some right wing lunatic; I personify your base of support. I am sick to death of watching you not stand up and fight for your principles.

You can begin later this morning by firing Gen. Stanley McChrystal. No career military officer since Douglas Macarthur has been in more dire need of unemployment. He has kicked the US Constitution to the curb and violated rule number one for an officer dealing with his superiors. It’s time for him to go. He’s had ample opportunity to privately discuss any concerns he has with you. Instead he chose to publicize them, inject himself into partisan politics in which he has no business, and possibly provide “aid and comfort” to our enemies. Trust me, if any General had been guilty of this kind of conduct while still in George W. Bush’s chain of command, FOX News and the rest of the right wing machine would be calling them a “traitor” and crying out for court-martial proceedings. Firing McChrystal is the least you can do. Do it. It would, for the first time in too long, indicate to your supporters (as well as your critics) that you are actually in charge in Washington.

I’ve watched you try to compromise too much for too long now. Enough. You sought bipartisanship on healthcare and you were accused of wanting to “kill grandma”. Then you let Senators from your own party kill much of the principled good the reform could have done. You compromised endlessly in the name of getting a bill done and it resulted in passage of a questionable law. Don’t confuse our happiness at making things a little better with a triumph. Attempting compromise with an uncompromising opposition is an unsettling pattern into which you have fallen. Republican minorities in the House and Senate are historically small. Yet, pending legislation on climate change and energy independence is dead because of their opposition. Immigration reform is dead at their hands as well, even as they blame your government for “inaction”. And financial reform still lacks the real and obviously necessary teeth.

Time and time again you have sought cooperation from a Republican Party which has been largely in partisan campaign mode since the beginning of last summer. Consider this a friendly intervention. There is an appropriate time for compromise and there are times when you have to fight for your principled beliefs to the bitter end. The GOP has shown you the path which they have chosen. What path will you choose? It’s time for clear, uncompromising and principled leadership. Will you “call the bastards out” and force them to defend their untenable ideology or will you continue to fight with at least one hand tied securely behind your back? Will you join the Republicans in partisan campaign mode from this very morning through Election Day in November? Don’t kid yourself that doing so would be “beneath” a president. They are currently slaughtering you, when it comes to defining your presidency. The only way you can wrest control of the debate away from them is to make clear to America the things you refuse to compromise on AND THEN STICK TO WHAT YOU ADVOCATE, no matter what they throw at you!

You are frittering away a golden opportunity even as I write this letter. You began it when you offered the right wing an olive branch by announcing an end to the moratorium on offshore drilling. You never begin a negotiation by compromising on principle. Now it is exponentially worse. Now, in the face of a disaster of epic proportions, one which cries out to be built into a whole new American approach to energy and a complete house cleaning of incestuous government regulators, one which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that lack of regulations and enforcement literally KILL, your approach has been lukewarm at best and downright conciliatory at worst. I watched your Oval Office Address last week. I wasn’t impressed. Your opponents are laughing at you and your supporters are no longer sure that you’re the same guy they gave their all to elect. Even the devout centrist Bill Clinton, when the chips were down and principle was on the line, stared down the GOP Congress and forced their hands. The Republicans blinked.

Take a lesson from the history books. Look at Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and even the above example of an otherwise bipartisan Bill Clinton. You own the “Bully Pulpit”. Show them where the “Buck Stops” and stare them down with Clinton’s “Eye of the Tiger”. The odds are stacked in your favor, if only you’d exhibit the backbone.

Let me leave you with a personal anecdote. Yesterday I had a knockdown, drag out debate on a political internet page with a self-described “Southern, Christian, Conservative”. I am a Northern, Atheist, Liberal. To say that he and I differ in our views would be putting it mildly. We argued back and forth for some time. I offered facts to back up my opinions and clear, concise and logical arguments. In the end we came to understand each other’s experience and viewpoints a little better but neither surrendered his core beliefs. In his last comment, he told me that he had gained a newfound understanding of my world view and respected the consistent passion I have in my beliefs. I had never compromised an ounce. The moral is that the GOP will never like you. They will probably never agree with you on policy. But if you stand firm and consistent with them, if you show them no mercy when engaged in debate, if you communicate and act with nothing short of the utmost passion in your principles, they will come to grudgingly respect you. More importantly, you will win back all of the 53% of the American people who chose you in the first place. Please heed this message.

Sincerely,

Paul Roth, Jr.

Hackensack, N.J.

The Facebook Files: Arizona, Leave it or Love it?

2010-06-15T01:45:00.000-07:00

I offer a recent exchange with an actual self-described Arizona conservative, from a friend's Facebook page; his post first (identity protected, obviously), followed by my response:

Actual AZ. Conservative - I live in Arizona and i am a conservative. I like the present law. If an indiviudual is born here then they should have all of the rights of any U.S. Citizen. If their parents are not, then they get to go home. MOST Mexicans i work with want a strong border. I do not have enough space here to fully ask all of the questions. BUT just a few. 1. If your child had a special need and the district could not afford enough aids to help WHILE spending money on ESL (English as a second Language) would you be upset. 2. If your daughter was murdered and the guy ran back to Mexico to safety would you be pissed. 3. If you only had 5K of un-insured driver coverage and your car was totalled by an illegal and you got stuck with the bill would you be pissed. This is happening in my community. Fremder is correct, immigrants provide a ton of services and are very valuable. I just need to know Who they are, why they are here, they pay taxes, FOLLOW ALL LAWS, Including MV insurance and immigration. Pretty Simple. No amnisty, Go home and come back when you do it properly. I have said this many times before, the Scumbag Republicans want the cheap labor and the Scumbag Democrats want the votes. Pretty Simple. I have given far more to help immigrants through my church than most, I pay more taxes than average, I have Spanish speaking instructors to help save lives of Mexican workers. trust me, I get it.

It troubles me deeply when our idiot president comments on the AZ law that neither he, nor his Atty General nor his HM Security sec. have read. That is completely un-acceptable.

I understand everyones heartfelt emotion to this issue. I just need all of the facts to be presented. Yes SOME Illegals pay taxes and YES that can be alot of money. However, They also send back truckloads of CASH to MEXICO. When the country of Mexico brutalizes anyone caught coming across their southern border, NEVER NEVER NEVER let them comment on a legally approved state law such as AZ's. AND then stand and apploud his biassed comments like the embarrasing display from the Dems. That was shameful. That piece of shit Calderon needs to get his own economy in shape then less illegals will want to come here.

I will vote against any measure to deny legal citizenship to ANYONE BORN in the USA. I do and will support a sealed border and deportation of anyone caught here illegally. Lets stick to the constitution and be the example for all who want to come here legally. I truly feel for all of the people. BUT unless we keep sending them back more will think that if they can just get here, then they can stay. THAT is what makes it dangerous this time of year in the desert.

Please visit us in AZ. The beers and sodas are on me.

p.s. ROCKS are DEADLY weapons. the 15 yr old fucker that got shot by border patrol while tossing rocks deserved it.

My Response:

Paul Roth - Where do I begin? First, because the recent post was done in a pretty civilized manner, I will endeavor to maintain that tone. I should say, as a disclaimer, that I don't condone people entering the country illegally any more than the next guy, even if he's an Arizona State Senator. But I can understand the reasons why they do it and I don't hate them for it.

SB 1070 was a terrible law, as originally passed and signed. It was then ammended, barely a week later, after the entire nation went apoplectic over it and many Arizona law enforcement officials publicly refused to enforce it (which would have given private citizens the right to file suit against them). Defenders of the original law now want you to forget about this.

The proposal **** linked us to here simply violates the US Constitution, as someone quickly pointed out. That is as clear as day. I want to pose some questions of my own as well and I also want to make a couple of statements. Here goes...

The three questions above are "trap" questions. They're designed to evoke an emotional response which can only lead you to agree with Mr. ********'s point. Anyone can do this. If we were debating healthcare reform, for example, I could ask you how you would feel if you had a seven year old daughter dying of cancer and could in no way afford a potentially life-saving surgery. How could you say, "I wouldn't care if it meant a government takeover of our healthcare system"? Ever since CNN's Bernard Shaw asked Michael Dukakis how he would feel if Kitty were raped and murdered, this has been politics 101. And yes, I'm guilty of doing it elsewhere.

1. ESL is not exclusively for the benefit of illegal aliens, it's for very legal ones as well. Is this a veiled argument for mandated English-Only Everywhere? Should legal immigrants be forced to speak english BEFORE entering the US? If all Arizonans are as sympathetic to others as you seem, then why the need for banning cultural studies, soccer in public parks, or devising arbitrary standards for terminating teachers with "strong accents"? Why are they writing racial slurs on newspaper websites or yelling them at a bunch of kids helping to paint a mural? What's going on down there? It seems as if an awful lot of your neighbors don't share your liberal sympathy for our fellow human beings. Hate makes for bad legislation and even worse politics.

2. Of course you'd be pissed, you'd be murderously angry! If immigration laws were based solely on these kinds of tragedies, no Scandinavian would ever again be allowed to vacation in the Islands. We could use it as justification for banning interracial dating in the US too, if we wanted (See OJ Simpson). What you describe is a tragedy. But how many cases have fit this exact description?

3. Is this even an immigration issue? Again, I have little doubt that it happens. It also happens every day involving uninsured drivers who are 100% American citizens. And, be careful, you are coming dangerously close to confirming the foolishness of states which are trying to sue the federal government to block the new healthcare law, based on the constitution. Is Jan Brewer's AG engaged in this partisan waste of your tax dollars as well?

I agree with your assessment of Bush's "Amnesty" proposal, vis-a-vis "cheap labor" (See, Republican Scumbags). However, I have done GOTV with the Democrats, including areas with large hispanic populations, and have yet to see evidence of a single illegal alien casting a vote. I believe this to be another tin-foil hat right wing, "I can't accept that Obama actually won", conspiracy theory. It places right up there with ACORN causing the global economic meltdown and those FEMA Detention Camps.

And our "idiot" president doesn't read any entire law. No more than any other politician in America. They all have staff who both write and read the exact language for them, then brief them on the details. The idiot president, his bonehead Attorney General and the dimwitted Director of Homeland Security, just disagree with you on the wisdom of the law and the agenda behind it. You should really stop pretending that the law Brewer originally (and happily) signed is the current law of Arizona (as ammended).

We're all aware that part of the story of SB1070 and also the current racial tensions in AZ., is a lack of action and leadership by the federal government. But saddling Obama, or the Democrats in general, for that problem is focusing on less than half the story. The GOP had full control for six years not too long ago and the best they could muster was Bush's "Amnesty" and the far right wing's White Elephant "Wall" idea. Obama's first year got bogged down on more urgent matters and current Repubs have made a "no bipartisanship" pledge through November. Nothing's going to happen soon on immigration, like it or not.

As for the Mexican president (and Mexico in general), that is some seriously selective outrage you have toward them. Calderon's comments, their laws, their economy? Really? If American conservatives hate Mexico so much, then why are they trying so hard to remake America into Mexico's identical twin? Let's compare our southern neighbors with the right wing's vision for us here at home:

Democracy accessible only to the wealthy and most powerful individuals and entities?
Mexico - check
Right Wing - check

Rampant corruption caused by small, poorly funded and ineffectual government institutions?
Mexico - check
Right Wing - check

Nonexistent labor and safety standards?
Mexico - check
Right Wing - check

Nonexistent environmental regulations?
Mexico - check
Right Wing - check

Little protection for accused criminals?
Mex. - check
RW - check

Brutal immigration enforcement?
Mex. - check
RW - check

No safety net for the poor?
Mex. - check
RW - check

Two standards of education/ healthcare/ justice?
Mex. - check
RW - check

One religion recognized and promoted above others?
Mex. - check
RW - check

Well, I could really go on like this for hours but I can't believe how long this post is already, even for me! A closing query; Why is it that our northern border with Canada is so darn quiet? Why aren't millions of desperate Canucks risking life and limb to come here? Aren't they dying to escape all that "socialism". Why are the residents of Mexico, your model for America's future, flooding here by the millions?

Oh, and they're sending those "truckloads of CASH" back mostly to their starving families.

Paul Roth, Jr.

The Church of Rand

2010-05-27T23:16:00.000-07:00

You’re a tourist in Manhattan, New York City. Hungry after a grueling but fun morning filled with intimidating subway rides, awesome sights and suffering a stiff neck from all that looking up at those big buildings, you decide that lunch at the world famous Carnegie Deli would hit just the right spot. After locating a cabbie who actually knows his way around the city, you are deposited in front of your gastronomical destination. However, as you approach the front door you are met with a sight which stops you dead in your tracks; in bold letters on the Deli’s front door, a sign reads “CARNEGIE DELI RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO NON-JEWS”.** You close your eyes and shake your head, believing you are hallucinating, yet the sign remains. You’re not dreaming, you’ve just entered America, as Rand Paul would have it.

Ultra-conservative Kentucky Republican Senatorial candidate Dr. Rand Paul, son of ultra-conservative Texas Congressman and 2008 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, created a firestorm this week when he criticized aspects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which deal with discrimination by private businesses. Paul claims that he “abhors” racism but worries about any infringement upon constitutional “freedom of speech” as it relates to racial discrimination. Liberals might be skeptical of a southern, uber-conservative’s commitment to abolishing racism but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Rand Paul has expressed these concerns about curbing the right of business owners to refuse anyone their services several times in recent years. Although he admits that the federal courts have settled the constitutional issue, it apparently continues to nag at his conscience. If we take him at his word, Dr. Paul’s problem is not so much blatant racism as a belief in preferential treatment under the constitution. He clearly values the constitutional rights of a racist private business owner far more than the similar protections afforded to the customers whom the hypothetical owner would reject.

Paul has also criticized the 1968 Voting Rights Act, which prevented southern states from systematically denying blacks the right to vote (some states and conservative activist groups still engage in finding loopholes to this law). He has unequivocally stated his desire to repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law by George W Bush’s father, as well. What is the source of Paul’s preference for the rights of business owners over those of their customers? Is he merely seeking justification for racism? I would suggest that he is reflecting the views of devout worshippers at the Church of Rand. No, I am not saying that Paul literally worships himself, although that theme is not entirely inaccurate in describing this particular faith.

Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum in Russia in 1905. Raised in St. Petersburg, her life was negatively impacted by the Communist Revolution. First, her father’s business was confiscated by the government. Later, she was nearly ejected from college, close to graduation, because she was a non-communist. In 1926, Rand left Russia on a visa to visit American relatives, she would never return. She went on to author several fictional stories espousing her personal philosophy, which she called Objectivism. Her entire life’s work, in fact, can be seen as an overdramatic reaction to the unhappiness of her youth in Communist Russia.

Objectivism could well be defined as self determination on steroids. It is an ideology in which intellectual reason is the only God, the individual is his or her own savior and “rational self-interest” is the ultimate moral code. This philosophy naturally aligned itself with conservative belief in unregulated capitalism. Though this alliance was originally secondary to Ms. Rand, she eventually embraced the political implications of her philosophy and founded the sarcastically named “Collective”, a small group of devoted Objectivists and Laissez-Faire Capitalists, including future Fed Chairman *Alan Greenspan. The Collective became the rock upon which the Church of Rand has been built.

The repetitive theme in all of Ayn Rand’s work is the tyranny of the mundane masses over a unique protagonist. The problem with her body of work becoming an inspiration for real world political activism lies in its common delivery method, heavy handed hyperbole. The collectivist worlds which Ayn Rand paints for us do not and probably never could actually exist. They are the paranoid overreactions of a soul bent on vengeance against unseen forces that caused personal tragedy in its youth. One only need witness the tortured performances of legendary actors Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in the film version of Rand’s “The Fountainhead”, as they grasp for realism amongst unbelievable character motivations and overdramatic dialogue, to understand the foolishness of basing real world ideas upon her work.

I was introduced to Rand at an early age, through the Canadian rock band Rush. Rush’s drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart, became a fan of Rand’s work in the 1970’s, acknowledging her in the credits for the band’s 1976 album 2112, which was based on Rand’s novella “Anthem”. In ‘78, Peart penned an allegorical statement of Rand’s ideas entitled The Trees. The trees in Rush’s forest were in crisis. The Maples resented how the Oaks stood much taller and therefore got all of the sunlight. Ultimately, the Maples “formed a union and demanded equal rights” and “the trees were all kept equal, by hatchet, axe and saw”. It is a cautionary tale no doubt but one which is no more realistic than Rand’s collectivist worlds.

In his 2005 book about Rush’s 30th Anniversary Tour, “Roadshow; Landscape with Drums”, Peart effectively rebukes criticism of both he and Rush as a “right wing band”, dismissing his earlier work as only one in a myriad of lyrical themes he has explored. I, like Neil Peart, have an appreciation of Ayn Rand’s ideas but stop well short of worshipping at the Church of Rand. Not far away from here on blogspot, an author whose pen name is John Galt (the central character of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged”), on a blog titled “Robbing America”, engages in weekly rants against Barack Obama, Democrats in general and uses Ayn Rand’s words to warn us against liberal “Statism”. This blogger’s entire worldview expresses how the work of an early 20th century author has gradually morphed into first a political ideology and ultimately, a church capable of remarkable zealotry.

I call it the “Church of Rand” for two main reasons; first, because those who follow this ideology share much in common with their theological equals and, second, because it would surely piss off the extremely atheist Rand, the church’s chief prophet. The commonality between Rand’s church and religious ones is its emphasis on beliefs over facts and results. The personal practice of Objectivism, in which every individual would essentially be an island unto themselves, would doom otherwise good people to a world of chaotic discord. The political practice of Rand’s ideas, via the Reagan Revolution and right wing domination of the last thirty years, have resulted in massive debt, industrial erosion, falling incomes, rising unemployment, environmental disasters, criminal greed in the financial sector, reduced quality of life and a growing pessimism that America’s brightest days are behind her. In modern America, it is the mighty Oaks who have instead taken "hatchet, axe and saw" to the humble Maples.

Despite this record of miserable failure, conservatives maintain that more of their Ayn Rand-inspired ideology is the only solution for what ails us. If this does not mirror the religious tendency to place belief above facts, then I don’t know what does. When Rush Limbaugh entitled his ode to Rand’s political ideas “The Way Things Oughta Be”, he was proving my point for me. If “it’s just how things should be” is the most compelling case you can make for your idea, in light of overwhelming evidence that it simply doesn’t work, you have entered the realm of pseudo-religious faith and exited the very world of reason which was Ayn Rand’s preferred residence. You have built the Church of Rand and are groveling at its altar.

This is why it is so important for liberals to be familiar with Ayn Rand’s work. It was the motivation behind Ronald Reagan’s union busting. It’s why Republicans always seek corporate freedom above the public’s health and best interests. More currently, it’s why they fought tooth and nail against healthcare reform. It’s why they continue to bow and scrape at the feet of Wall Street’s more unscrupulous high-risk gamblers and the “too big to fail” bankers and insurance giants, even after the considerable damage such entities have wrought upon us all. It’s why a Senator from Alaska unashamedly tries to limit British Petroleum’s liability to less than 10% of a mess of BP’s own making, forcing taxpayers to foot the other 90-plus percent. It’s also why the new Republican Governor of New Jersey, facing a massive budget shortfall, has the audacity to propose cutting state taxes on people making over $400,000 per year while simultaneously eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit, thus raising taxes on residents who can barely feed their families. Without such understanding, one struggles to comprehend how Rand Paul could suggest that permitting institutional racism is preferable to government interference in such matters.

By all accounts, Ayn Rand’s personal life was an unhappy one, consisting of illicit affairs, chain smoking, drug abuse and mental illness characterized by dramatic mood swings. One former student of her ideology described Rand’s later life intellectual “Puritanism” in this way, “There was more than just a right kind of politics and a right kind of moral code. There was also a right kind of music, a right kind of art, a right kind of interior design, a right kind of dancing. There were wrong books which we should not buy, and right ones which we should ... And on everything, absolutely everything, one was constantly being judged, just as one was expected to be judging everything around him ... It was the perfect breeding ground for insecurity, fear, and paranoia.". Sounds an awful lot like the old Soviet Union which Rand had fled many years before. If objectivism could not even provide the basis of a happy existence for its creator, what hope is there for an entire country which seeks to follow her mantra to the letter?

The most glaring flaw in Rand’s philosophy can be illustrated by using one of her most cherished fictional creations. Howard Roark was a brilliant and uncompromising young architect and the imaginary protagonist of Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. But no matter how brilliant and edgy his designs might be, no matter how special an individual he was, in the real world he would still need scores of others to make his dreams a reality. Without a company and its stockholders willing to buy his remarkable design, engineers to insure that his designs would remain upright, without contractors to plan and execute the building project and, yes, without laborers (possibly union) to make the whole thing a physical reality, Roark would ultimately become nothing more than a madman, with delusions of grandeur, drawing pretty pictures on a notepad. Most of these other folks may lack the unique vision Roark possesses but without their valuable contributions, our architect doesn’t amount to very much in the real world. Rand conveniently overlooks this reality in her heavy handed and contrived little stories. To her, such folk are just leeches, hangers on, the unwashed masses or worse, the mud under foot, as she charmingly described them in “We The Living”.

There is one more way in which the Rand right wing resembles a religion more than rational thinkers; it is in how they see those of us who disagree with their ideas on life and the marketplace. “We The Liberals”, are the great Satan of the Church of Rand. We are the “Statists”, the “Collectivists” or in the view of FOX News’s Glenn Beck, the “Marxist Democrats” who are “a cancer which must be removed from America”. We do not simply possess a different point of view; we are the real embodiment of Ayn Rand’s paranoid visions of a dystopian future, where all of society would be melted down to its lowest common denominator. We are to be destroyed in a life and death struggle for the sanctity of the individual mind. All of this is because we see intrinsic value in all human beings, not just the privileged or “special”. After all, the “masses” are just large amounts of…individuals. Who am I to say which individuals are more valuable than others?

I’d like to end this piece on a more positive note. All criticism aside, Ayn Rand’s story is surely a unique American success story. In what other country could an immigrant intellectualist, seen by her contemporary writers as a limited, one-trick pony author and by her intellectual peers as a philosophical hack, go down in history as the philosophical godmother of one of the most powerful political movements in human history? As another Russian-American philosopher, one whose ideas were of equal merit, once observed, “What a Country”?!

* In testifying before Congress in the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown, even Mr. Greenspan, one of Rand’s most devoted fans, was forced to admit that the kind of unfettered capitalism which he had worshipped for decades had failed in practical reality.

** My apologies to the proprietors of New York’s Carnegie Deli. Whom I am certain would never institute the kind of policy I use as an example in my opening paragraph.

## - A disclaimer - while I connect author Ayn Rand and politician Rand Paul by their common names, it should be noted that Paul has publicly denied that Ayn is his namesake. His full name is Randall, although one might speculate at his choice of abbreviations considering that both he and his father are ardent fans of Ayn Rand’s work.

Paul Roth, Jr.

A Quickie (no sex jokes please)

2010-05-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

I believe that at least half of all Americans are knowingly or unknowingly exposed to right wing propaganda on a daily basis. Even my poor 77-year old Mother is now receiving angry right wing emails from a fellow member of my Father's Senior Activities Club. Fortunately, I'm around to debunk the misinformation included. Until this state of affairs is changed, this country will continue to get dumber and dumber on the facts and our democracy will never reflect the true values of our people.

If, as Thomas Jefferson said, "information is the currency of democracy", then right wing propaganda is the cholesterol slowly but surely killing it. Turn off FOX News, click off Limbaugh, put down the NY Post or Wall Street Journal and start researching the issues for yourself! Then you and I can start having a reality based conversation on what's best for America's future. Until then, you're just wallowing in an alternate reality of stupid.

Paul Roth, Jr.

The Ultimate Straw Man: Political Paranoia, 2010 Style

2010-04-15T23:55:00.000-07:00

The picture at the upper left of this column is an image from my favorite T-shirt of the last year. There’s a new boogeyman in America and his name is Barack Obama. In some circles he represents all that is evil in modern day America. I can tell you that I briefly met, then Illinois Senator, Barack Obama in 2005. I didn’t come away from that meeting believing that he would be the long awaited savior America seemingly needed (nor do I believe this now) but I also saw no evidence that he might be the “Anti-Christ”, as fully one-third of rank and file Republicans believe he either is or may be, according to recent polls. He was simply a politician and a man; no more, no less. I found him to be less personally engaging than Bill Clinton (yes, I met him too, more than once) but more compelling than, say, former NJ Governor Jon Corzine (not a tough feat).

If you believed the right wing spin machine and its dedicated followers, though, you might be afraid to leave your house knowing that this guy is president. Since I fact check what I see reported in the news media, actually read legislation and have a pretty good working grasp of world and American political history (as well as human history, sociology, religion and pre-organized religion belief systems), I don’t suffer from the politically self-serving delusions of an increasingly psychotic American right wing. I and those like me (you can call us the “fact-based community”, as a Bush White House official once scornfully did) still cling to having a rational, well thought out response to the world around us. Watching televised news these days can make us feel like an endangered species. Perhaps we are one, at that.

I read a letter to the editor of The Record newspaper here in New Jersey recently in which a dedicated right wing activist justified all of the current Obama-hating by stating that he had promised himself he would give the new president all of the same respect which he felt that George W. Bush got from the left. He then launched into a litany of every disrespectful transgression which he felt liberals were guilty of during Bush’s tenure. His letter did give me a brief pause because there is no doubt that the left wing in this country had (and still has) very little regard for our previous president. I suggest, in response, that we investigate the grievances which the left had toward George W. Bush and determine how legitimate they were, or weren’t. Then we can examine the right wing image of and narrative about Barack Obama and how they portray his presidency thus far, as opposed to reality. This promises to be a very interesting experiment. Let’s get started.

Bush took the oath of office in January 2001 under a tremendous cloud of controversy. He had lost the popular vote by more than a half million votes, the first time the Electoral College system had contradicted the popular vote in the modern era. The circumstances under which Bush won the state of Florida, and thereby the presidency, were also bad enough without his own brother being Governor of the disputed state. Everyone remembers the alleged recount, the “hanging chads” and the US Supreme Court ruling in Bush v Gore. Fewer people know what the state of Florida did, long before Election Day 2000, which eliminated thousands of legitimate and likely Democratic, African-American voters or the lengths the Republican controlled Florida state legislature was prepared to go to if the Supreme Court had failed to rule on the case along partisan lines. And what ever happened to normal judicial standards which would have forced justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from the Bush v Gore case due to immediate family ties to the Bush campaign and transition team?

The bottom line was that the 2000 presidential election was stolen in Florida. I don’t care which suspicious aspect of that vote you choose to focus on, Jeb Bush’s administration in that state was simply not going to allow his brother to lose there. I, myself, felt my radar triggered that something was amiss very early on election night. When the networks declared Al Gore to be the winner of Florida, based on exit polls and early returns, a reporter reached Bush, who was sitting with his brother Jeb, for comment. Bush, never known for composure under fire, looked as cool as a cucumber while stating that he was absolutely convinced that he would ultimately win Florida. The expression on his face was that of the cat who just ate the canary. I called a close friend at that point, one I’ve mentioned in previous columns, and told him I suspected that something was amiss. The networks are historically very careful about their election night projections, exponentially more so since that night. They hadn’t called a state wrongly before in my lifetime.

Gore voters, being a slight majority throughout the country, and especially the more liberal among them, were stunned and furious that an election could be hijacked in such a way in modern times and in the world’s most respected democracy. This did not make for a cozy beginning with Bush. The new president then exacerbated the bad feelings by departing from his “uniter, not a divider” campaign theme and appointing right wing extremists and neoconservative foreign policy ideologues to his cabinet as well as hundreds of positions throughout the executive branch. It was crystal clear from the very start that the Bush administration would be a right wing activist one. I mean, John Ashcroft, Attorney General? I had no doubts after that appointment.

After an already shaky start, Bush’s approval rating languished somewhere around 40% by September 10, 2001. A few weeks later, as the nation rallied together in the face of shocking barbarism, his approval rating rose to somewhere between 80 and 90%, depending on which poll you looked at. Then Rush Limbaugh went on the air with a week long theme of how Bill Clinton and liberalism were really at fault for the terrible events of 9/11. No one on the right stepped up to chastise Limbaugh for tearing at the unprecedented national unity America was experiencing, not even its Commander in Chief, who could have benefited from a continued cooperative atmosphere. Instead, the right wing and Republican Party chose to run with Limbaugh’s false and partisan narrative and bashed Democrats over the head with it politically for years to come.

Throughout his two terms, Bush provoked anger among rank and file Democrats time and time again. Let’s list some examples of Bush’s partisan, non-“uniter”, initiatives:

• Choosing to “spend” budget surpluses on tax cuts aimed mainly at the wealthy rather than paying down national debt in 2001

• Using 9/11 to ram through the semi-constitutional USA Patriot Act and consolidate unprecedented power in the executive branch of the federal government.

• Diverting the “War on Terror” campaign into a wholly manufactured necessity for an invasion of Iraq, based on a “democratizing the middle east” theory born of the neoconservative think tank “Project for a New American Century”. (i.e., lying us into war)

• Then, during the Iraq War, extending more tax cuts, again aimed chiefly at the wealthy, while the sons and daughters of the working and middle class were fighting and dying “for our freedom”. (so much for shared sacrifice during a time of war)

• Standing by quietly while his supporters launched a vicious and fictitious campaign to denigrate the military service of his 2004 presidential opponent.

• Maintaining similar silence as protestors against him were routinely rounded up and moved as much as a half mile away from any appearance he made, into distinctly Orwellian sounding “Free Speech Zones”. (I wonder how the Tea Party folks would react if subjected to that kind of treatment by Obama?) “Last time I checked, America WAS a free speech zone”, I commented when I first heard about this.

• Leaving his Texas ranch in the middle of the night, when he never lost a minute’s sleep after a briefing entitled “Bin Ladin determined to attack the United States”, and flying Air Force One “red eye” in order to sign a bill passed by the Republican congress, along pure party lines, allowing the federal government to inject itself into the personal affairs of Michael and Terry Schiavo. Thereby appeasing the furthest of the Christian right wing fringe. (so much for limited government)

• Reacting with jaw-dropping slowness to a hurricane and flooding disaster in the largely minority, Democratic voter strongholds of New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast, one year after an incredibly robust intervention when a similar disaster hit the key electoral state of Florida during an election year.

• Encouraging his cabinet level departments to use taxpayer money to produce fake “news” segments promoting his agenda and then peddling them for air time on local news outlets without warning viewers that they were nothing more than government propaganda.

• Pushing for Social Security privatization which would have resulted in a third of Americans’ SS money being invested in the stock market. (Did you see where the Dow got to last winter? Wasn’t that a brilliant idea?)

• Also pushing (and later signing) a Medicare Prescription Program (Medicare Part D) which amounted to a gigantic unfunded federal mandate and which most Democrats believe, with ample evidence, was conceived to sabotage the entire program and hasten its fiscal demise.

I could go on longer but suffice to say that this is a mere taste of Bush’s own lack of bipartisanship and his penchant for instigating those who saw things differently. More than everything he did while president, Bush suffered from a larger problem with the left which Obama is also afflicted with from the right. The broader problem was personal. The left never liked Bush’s persona or what he appeared to stand for, which was everything a liberal dislikes and distrusts. Bush wasn’t very bright and those on the left respect intelligence and thoughtfulness. He admitted to not reading much, not giving serious consideration to opposing viewpoints and was more interested in belief than fact. This kind of attitude infuriates liberals. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, never exhibited any sense of humility about that fact and failed in every business venture he tried, only to be bailed out by family and powerful friends.

He also allied himself politically with the kind of Christian fundamentalists who seek to undermine constitutional church/state separation and impose their narrow set of religious and sociological beliefs on the rest of America, through legislatures and the courts. Even the most adamant followers of Jesus on the political left tend to see the church/state boundary as an important protection of personal religious freedom. Perhaps this is because the left values respect for the beliefs of others, contrasted with the right wing’s derision of “multiculturalism”. Atheists, like me, are downright incensed (pardon the unintended pun) by the growing trend toward “dominionist” government being supported by the Christian right. The bottom line is that a country music listening, O’Douls drinking (due to alcoholism, *O’Douls has some alcohol in it, duh! Truly sober alcoholics tend to drink lots of coffee instead), brush clearing, pickup driving, false populist from one of the most powerful families in the world, was just not our kind of guy.

Now what about Obama? Just how partisan has he been? Well, he was elected by a majority of more than 8 million votes, 53% to 46% (and ACORN didn’t fix anything, that’s more right wing paranoia. They reported fraudulent applications supplied by some of their contracted workers which led to exactly ZERO ineligible votes) and a more than two to one margin in the Electoral College. This hardly equals the questionable circumstances which led to the Bush presidency. Upon his election, Obama appointed a cabinet in which he first held over Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He then offered a cabinet position to conservative Republican Senator Judd Gregg, which Gregg later refused after the GOP leadership pressured him to decline. Despite these overtures, Republican Senators are still blocking scores of Obama’s nominees to various government positions. Who is not acting in good faith or a spirit of “bipartisanship”?

Obama has since pulled this nation back from the brink of a depression with a Stimulus Package and targeted industry bailouts which offered less government spending than economists from across the political spectrum had initially recommended. He did this on equally bipartisan advice that at the time and as deep as the crisis was, only the federal government was capable of injecting the kind of capital necessary to reignite economic growth (was I the only one listening when they said this?). By all unbiased accounts, it worked. An economy that was hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs per month last year is now creating them again. America’s economy has grown sharply for two quarters in a row and the Dow has nearly doubled since the day Obama took office.

What has been the Republican reaction to this? So far, Tea Party protests over “too much government spending”, which we are recently learning have largely been orchestrated by GOP lobbyists, and Republican lawmakers repeating the talking point that “not a single job has been created by the Stimulus Package”, though more than 70 of them have gone back to their states and districts and taken credit for jobs created by this measure. Is Obama the one being an extremist in this scenario? On which side is the bipartisanship and fairness lacking?

What about guns? Arms dealers couldn’t keep up with the demand for weapons immediately prior to Obama’s inauguration. Since then, the number of armed militia groups in the country has nearly quadrupled. Oklahoma legislators are even considering a bill which would form a state sanctioned armed militia to prevent enforcement of “unconstitutional federal mandates”. This is laughably ironic considering that the constitution’s provision for state militias puts those militias squarely under the authority of the Commander in Chief. (Yes that would currently be Obama) The fact is that forming an armed organization for the potential purposes of waging violence against the government is in itself a violation of federal law. Can anyone say “Constitutional Crisis”? I thought you could. Then there’s recent blogging to the effect that Obama not only wants your guns but also wants to prevent you from fishing. That sounds realistic, don’t you think?

Where’s the evidence to back up all of this feverish “constitution protecting”? Well, last year, when it was reported that right wing activists were openly carrying automatic weapons outside of presidential appearances, Obama was asked to comment. He replied that he “supported their right to do that”. How dare he? The totalitarian bastard! No wonder some right wingers fear that they’re going to be rounded up and put in detention camps (amazingly, they really do). Can you imagine George W. Bush’s response if some gun-toting lefties had been so much as trying to loiter outside his public appearances? I’m betting those “Free Speech Zones” would have been shifted an awful lot further away, like maybe another state! And hey, if Obama is such a freedom hating, anti-constitutional maniac, then what happened to those speech zones anyway? Wouldn’t he be using them much more actively than the Bush administration? It doesn’t make sense and it never will.

Then there’s healthcare reform. Boy oh boy, if Obama was ever guilty of shoving his radical agenda down Republican throats, this was the perfect example, right? Not so fast there, John Boehner, you bronzed God. Let’s look at some facts. The new health care reform law, passed last month, contained so many Republican proposals that it closely mirrored a 1993 GOP alternative to the Clinton healthcare initiative. It also strongly resembles a law signed by current 2012 Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Even more telling is the rumor (I freely admit that its only a rumor as of right now) that staffers at the conservative Washington think tank the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) were secretly rooting for health reform’s passage because it contained so many of their original ideas. There was nothing but compromise involved along the healthcare reform road, especially in the Senate, where many argue that there was, in fact, too much compromise.

Despite their fervent complaints, the GOP just never made an honest approach to the table when it came to health care. From “death panels” to “covering illegal immigrants” to “federally funded abortions” to “killing grandma” to “government takeover of your healthcare” to “rationing” to (most ironically) “gutting Medicare”, the Republican contributions to the process were many but hardly constructive or bipartisan in nature. They’re aim throughout the process was as clear as a bell, kill health reform and undermine Obama. GOP Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina put it most succinctly when he told Republicans that they would make healthcare reform “Obama’s Waterloo”. When the Senate Finance Committee went to the unprecedented length of forming a bipartisan “sub” committee of three Democrats and three Republicans to hammer out a truly bipartisan health reform compromise last summer, it was the Republicans who walked away from the table, led by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley as he began to echo the “death panels” falsehood.

Even now, in the wake of its passage, GOP Governors and State Attorneys General are pursuing legal actions against the new law. This is political pandering to their far right wing base, nothing more. Most legal and constitutional experts say they don’t have a chance in hell. This means that they are throwing away meager state taxpayer funds, as we climb out of a recession, in order to achieve nothing more than a partisan political victory this November. Once again, it is clearly Obama and the Democrats who lean totalitarian and refuse to foster good will and a bipartisan atmosphere, in an alternate reality at least.

What about foreign policy? Surely this is the place where Barack Hussein Obama’s extremist ideology is undeniable! After all, he’s patterning his nuclear policy after that pinko commie Ronald Wilson Reagan. And his supplicant use of international diplomatic strategies reminds us of one of history’s most internationally naive and foolish presidents, Richard M. Nixon. How will America ever survive while he literally hands us over to our enemies? I just don’t know, to be honest with you. When Sarah Palin invoked Reagan’s name while criticizing Obama’s nuclear policy last week, she once again proved herself to be so very clueless as to not even recognize her own irony. If she doesn’t know the difference between North and South Korea or the constitutional role which the Vice President plays in the US Senate (don’t apply for a job you don’t understand, good rule of thumb), how can we expect her to know that Ronald Reagan also signed a pact with the Russians to cut our respective nuclear arsenals by one third? Where would she have heard that Reagan often spoke of a world without nuclear weapons? Not in that crazy Pentecostal church in Wasilla that she’s so fond of, that’s for sure.

I don’t mean to suggest that there’s no room for reasonable criticism of Obama’s foreign policy thus far. Fair and fact based criticism, even of foreign policy, is a healthy necessity in a democracy, unlike what the GOP, FOX News and the rest of the right wing told us during Bush’s presidency. There’s room for rational critique of his domestic policies as well. But there is very little rationality happening on the right since Obama’s election. It’s as if the mere fact of Obama being president is slowly driving conservatives insane. And it’s not over by a long shot. As Wall Street reform looms, the Republicans have already unveiled their next line of shiny new outright fantasies. What “death panels” were to healthcare reform, “endless taxpayer bailouts” will be to financial reform.

That’s right, Senate Republicans are going to go to the mat to defend the “too big to fail” banks, finance companies and Wall Street dice rollers (the same ones who just took nearly a trillion dollars of our money and now want to keep things just as they were before the collapse they created) by claiming that a reform bill which forces those large institutions to create a fund specifically designed to prevent future taxpayer bailouts, is going to result in “endless taxpayer bailouts”. White is black, black is white, up is down and fiction is the new fact. Welcome to the right wing alternate universe. Don’t stay there too long, it could be hazardous to your mental health.

To be fair, I was not originally a supporter of Mr. Obama. In fact, I worked for Hillary Clinton in Bergen County, NJ during our January 2008 presidential primary race. We won here too, by more than 10%. I saw Obama at the time as an inexperienced political opportunist who hadn’t “paid the dues” necessary to deserve the presidency. This very attitude turned out to be the Hillary Clinton campaign’s undoing. A sense that she was entitled to the nomination, that it was “her time”. I also firmly believed that Obama would inevitably become the nation’s first African-American president, but not until it was “his time”. I supported him in the general election because I realized just how much I had underestimated him and because the Republican ticket was incredibly unacceptable. I don’t agree with him on every issue across the board and I recognize his mistakes when they happen but I believe he is moving America and the world in a vastly superior direction to his predecessor.

As I said earlier, Obama is a politician and a man, nothing more, nothing less. He isn’t perfect but he’s far from the fascist boogeyman his opponents portray him as. He’s already publicly admitted to making mistakes in his first year. Six years into his presidency, Bush was asked at a press conference if he could name a mistake he had made during his tenure, he was unable (or more likely unwilling) to name a single one. This was one of the most telling moments of the Bush presidency. Decisiveness is important but humility is a great virtue. President Obama offers both of these characteristics as well as willingness to learn and thoughtfulness. As I pointed out earlier, his intellectual nature, ethnicity, ancestry, his education, community activism and his overall confidence while happening to be black, make him everything which the right wing hates. His persona is detestable to them, even more than Bush’s was to the left.

I close by quoting my new favorite T-shirt, “Make up your mind, he can’t be all four”. A closeted Muslim, peacenik hippie, devoted communist or fascist Nazi he isn’t. And he can’t be whichever one of these things best fits your political whims, depending on which week it is. How dare you expect him or any of us in the “fact based community” to respect your ideas or offer an olive branch of bipartisanship, while you’re carrying around signs depicting him as Adolf Hitler or even worse, dressed up as a primitive African witch doctor! Give us a call when you’re ready for a return to reality. We’ll leave the light on for you.

Paul Roth, Jr.

### CBS News released an extensive poll of Tea Party supporters earlier today. It found that some 64% of them believe that President Obama has raised their taxes this year. Taxes were, in fact, cut for over 100 million Americans and average tax returns were higher than they have been in many years. A Happy Tax Day to all of you deluded pseudo-intellectual right wingers out there. You’re proving my point for me. Keep on watching FOX News and protecting yourselves from the truth. ###

Just Let Him Play

2010-04-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

“Known as a civilized game, golf is the only sport in America in which a player is compelled to call a penalty on themselves, even if no one else witnesses the infraction. Wouldn’t it be great if we could bring that philosophy into politics?” - Me

Tiger Woods is in Augusta, Georgia. Few phrases have ever evoked more excitement in golf fans. This year, however, no phrase has been cause for more controversy or more judgmental behavior, ironically coming from a gossip driven celebrity media. Tiger’s personal life is in tatters, OK? That’s Tiger’s business and that of his family and close friends, not mine and not yours either. I can appreciate the disappointment of a parent who is raising a child that idolizes Woods. But all he can ever do to mend that situation is live his life better going forward and continue to make all of us proud of him on the golf course. I heard something somewhere once about “he who is without sin” and casting “the first stone”. Tiger is a golfer, the greatest damn golfer who has ever lived. He is not, however, responsible for raising your children. In light of recent events, it may be all he can do to raise his own. Leave him alone now to do what he does best, win golf tournaments.

There is no better location or tournament in the world for Tiger to make a return to competitive golf than the Augusta National Golf Club and The Masters tournament. The level of control which Augusta’s board of directors and members enjoy over the entire event, far more than any other PGA Tour host club, will allow Tiger to enjoy relative privacy and freedom from negative attention. Augusta reserves the right to limit media access to the players and course in any way it sees fit. Tickets are not available to the general public, instead being reserved only for members of the club and those whom they wish to invite. No more protected atmosphere exists in professional golf. If you tune in on Thursday hoping to hear the crowd at the first tee booing Tiger emphatically when he is introduced, you will be sadly disappointed. Augusta National would simply never allow that to happen. Tiger’s welcome will likely be more reserved than in the past but it would never be downright rude or aggressively negative. Augusta National just doesn’t do that to its past champions, especially an historic four time champion whom the members have embraced as one of their own.

And Augusta’s warm embrace of Tiger Woods has been a great story in itself. Barely forty years ago, within my own lifetime, African-American players were barred from participating in The Masters tournament. Augusta has come a long way. When the club began lengthening their legendary course in the late 90s, after Woods had made it look a little obsolete in winning the ’97 Masters with an 18 under par finishing score, there were some who speculated that they were “Tiger-proofing” the layout because they didn’t like the idea of a black champion. But this train of thought is counterintuitive. Adding length to the course doesn’t make it harder for Tiger, it makes it more difficult for the shorter hitter instead. The real agenda behind the Augusta National redesign, a decade long project, was to update the course in such a way that it could no longer simply be “overpowered” by younger, stronger players using modern golf technology. The integrity of the original design was at stake and the course needed to be updated in order to bring it back in line with its intended challenging features. The vindication of this strategy came last year when Augusta National replaced New Jersey’s Pine Valley CC as the world’s most challenging golf course in a worldwide ranking survey.

In a press conference held on Monday, Tiger stated that he has been received back, by the Augusta fans and his fellow players alike, more warmly than he could have hoped. He also said that he believes he is going to win the championship. I would like to know why this comment raised eyebrows in some circles, as it apparently did. Anyone who knows the first thing about Tiger knows that he has never stepped on a golf course in his life without believing that he was going to win. It’s just not a part of his nature to consider losing. Yes, he is dealing with a lot of distractions which have nothing to do with golf. Yes, he has been away from competitive golf for longer than is normal for him. Yes, the odds are against him winning this time. How about that? Tiger Woods as the underdog. I happen to like underdogs myself. But whether he fails to make the weekend cut or triumphs for his fifth green jacket, the ceremonial garb bestowed by Augusta National on the winner, just having him back is enough for those of us who love the game. The Masters is a very special event for the players and the fans alike. It becomes that much more special when Tiger is in the field. Forget everything else for this one weekend, just let him play.

### When I first sat down to write this column it was my intention to open with a brief biography of my life in the game of golf. Since I am not very skilled at saying things in a brief manner, that part of the column took on a life of its own and went on for many pages. So, for those who are interested, what follows is a narrative of my own golf career (with some additional comments on Tiger at the end). I sincerely hope that boredom is not the result. ### Paul

When I was about 5 or 6, I held a golf club in my hands for the first time. There must have been something natural about it because I took to the game right away. My family didn’t belong to a fancy private club. My father had spent his life around golf, caddying at the Knickerbocker Country Club in Tenafly, NJ during World War II and playing the game ever since. I spent the first few years of my “career” playing the nine 20 to 35 yard holes of a pitch and putt course at a nearby driving range. My equipment consisted of a 1940’s Tommy Armour 7-Iron and an equally ancient putter, which almost looked more like a 1-Iron, both were hand-me-downs from my father. At age 11, I played my first real 18-hole golf course, Waukewan Golf Club in Center Harbor, NH, while on vacation. I shot a 99*. A year later I astounded my father (and my mother, who joined us to watch) when I shot a 39 on the front nine of that same course.

* I shot a 13 on one hole on the back nine. However, when I reported this fact to my Uncle Jimmy at the next tee, who was keeping score for the group, he pretended not to hear me and insisted on writing down 8 instead. I protested but he wouldn’t listen to “a little kid”. So much for golf’s integrity!

I wasn’t a particularly special talent, although the occasional onlooker might see me hit a good shot and mutter something about a “future tour player”. I knew better. At 13, I played in my one and only junior tournament. I was so nervous that I barely slept the night before. After playing the first three holes in a respectable (for 13) one over par, my nerves got the better of me and I finished with a score somewhere in the mid-90s. When I saw the top scores of that day in my age bracket, from the mid-70s to the low 80s, I knew that my dreams of the tour were more fantasy than anything. By my mid-teens I had gotten bored with golf. I wasn’t really improving much and another priority had arrived on the scene, girls. Playing golf was not exactly your ticket to teenage social coolness circa 1980, far from it in fact. I eventually put the clubs away and rarely thought of the game for more than a decade.

In the mid-90s, however, my life had reached a crossroads. I had been working in the stand-up comedy business, as an agent, for several years but I was no longer happy with the daily stress level which that industry offered. After watching the 1995 US Open with my father, I asked him if I could join him and his friends at the Haworth Golf Club, the next morning. My first tee shot in many years was eventful, to say the least. I connected with a driver on Haworth’s par 5 first hole just well enough for the ball to rocket, at an altitude of about 2 inches, directly into one of the red tee markers ahead, which mark the ladies’ teeing area. The marker was completely obliterated. Undeterred, I continued. A more optimistic sign came on the 2nd hole, when I lofted a textbook greenside bunker shot to within 3 feet of the hole and tapped in the ensuing putt for a par.

That summer, I played as often as I could. Obviously, I was much stronger than I had been as a child and technology had advanced far enough that I could now hit the ball to lengths which I had only dreamed of as a child. More and more I was going out to play on my own, at public courses. Strangers were watching me play and, when they would discover that I hadn’t played regularly in over a decade, many were quite impressed. One afternoon, on a course operated by Bergen County, I busted a drive of over 280 yards on a long par 4 hole. As my group walked down the fairway from the tee, one fellow asked me, “Why don’t you try and become a pro”? This hadn’t occurred to me before. Why not try? The tour was well out of the question but maybe a club pro, a teaching professional. I was unhappy in my current line of work. What could it hurt to devote my life to getting better at the game and seeing how far I could take it? After all, in just a few weeks back I was regularly shooting in the low 80s. Just a couple of weeks later, I broke 80 for the first time in my life, shooting 77 at a not very difficult course in Parsippany, NJ. This strongly reinforced my budding dream.

Early in 1996 I took a job at a golf retail store in nearby Rochelle Park. I can’t bring myself to provide details on just how significant the effective pay cut was. Suffice to say it was truly humbling. But I was neither a homeowner nor raising a family, so the sacrifices were my own. I played every day, practicing before and after each round as well. Before long I was playing below a 5 handicap. Ask the nearest golfer in your life if you don’t know what this means, I’m explaining too much detail already. There was a problem though. Because of my lack of experience under pressure, my scores would rise dramatically whenever I would enter a tournament. In ’96, I attempted to qualify for both the NJ Amateur and Mid-Amateur Championships. In both cases, I thoroughly embarrassed myself. However, unlike at age 13, I didn’t give up. I kept playing and gradually got better at controlling my nerves.

By 1999 I was ready to declare myself a professional, meaning that I could no longer play in amateur events. I could however accept prize money, lesson fees (I was not ready to teach at this point though) and seek work as an Assistant Golf Professional. These days, most golf pros reach this point after college, in their early 20s. I was 32 years old. After a few interviews, I was fortunate enough to be hired at one of the most prestigious private clubs in the entire northeast. The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, NJ is an historic location. Its 27 holes, divided into East, Center and West nines, were designed by the legendary A.W. Tillinghast. It had played host to the prestigious Ryder Cup competition between US and European pros as well as several US Amateur Championships. In 2008, after a redesign and lengthening to bring it up to current tour standards, Ridgewood hosted The Barclays Championship, one of the final four PGA tour events of the season which now determine the season long winner of the FedEx Cup. Phil Mickelson won the event.

Being an assistant at Ridgewood also meant a very humbling link to the past. In the mid-1930s, one of the greatest golfers of all time, Byron Nelson, had been assistant professional at Ridgewood. I now held the same title as once had “Lord Byron”, as Nelson was known. Imagine the impact of that on my father. An assistant golf professional, however, does not gain automatic entrance into the PGA (Professional Golfers Association). In order to become a PGA Professional, one must first complete years of training. In order to enter into that training you must first prove that you possess adequate playing ability to represent the PGA. The PGA’s Players Ability Test (PAT) was designed to weed out possible wannabees from those who are the genuine article. Barely 10% of those who take the test ever pass it. In fact, the PAT is not so much a test as it is a tournament of sorts, and a challenging one at that. The PAT, held by regional offices of the PGA throughout the year is 36 holes of golf (2-18 hole rounds), usually played on the same day (morning and afternoon), with a “target score” requirement in order to pass. In other words, you aren’t playing against other competitors; you are playing against your own scorecard. Any serious golfer can tell you that knowing what score you have to shoot before even teeing off is a serious mental challenge.

On March 27, 2000 I entered the PAT through the New Jersey section of the PGA. This event was held at the Stanton Ridge Golf & Country Club in central NJ. Despite the early season date, the weather conditions were fairly favorable. It was unusually warm (in the 60s & low 70s) and sunny, although there was a significant wind out of the west (15-25 mph). The target score for this PAT was 154. A pair of 77s would therefore equal passage. While this may not sound overwhelmingly difficult to the highly skilled golfer, I reiterate that the real challenge is in knowing that you have to shoot this score right from the start. Out of nearly 60 entrants that day, only 4 players passed.

After playing the first nine holes in a somewhat lackluster 38 and gaining a par at number 10, I arrived at the 395 yard, par 4 11th hole. The 11th at Stanton Ridge is flanked on the right by forest running its entire length, which is marked as a hazard (for non-golfers, really bad place where you don’t want to go). After using a fairway wood off the tee to safely place myself on the left side of the fairway, I was left with about a 165 yard second shot to the hole. I hit a 7-iron a little bit thin (a little too low on the clubface) but watched as the ball landed on the front of the green, bounced once, and proceeded to roll into the hole for an “eagle” 2. I was now just 1-over par for the round. I finished the first round with a score of 74. Meaning that I would need to shoot 80 or better in the second round in order to pass. While hastily eating a brown-bagged lunch on the hood of my car in the parking lot, I recommitted myself to not thinking about score again on that day. I would play my 2nd round one shot at a time and one hole at a time, forgetting the previous and ignoring the next, in line with fundamental golf psychology.

I proceeded to play the opening nine holes of the second round in a two under par 33. Five strokes better than I had played it in the first round. I coasted on the second nine to a score of 38, not playing extremely well but avoiding any disasters which could cause me to breakdown mentally. The final results; 74-71-145, I had passed the PAT by nine shots. I did not own a cell phone at the time and my resulting search for a way to inform my family of this achievement bordered on the comical. It was early evening by the time we finished play, the clubhouse was now closed, the pro shop empty and locked, and the lone remaining PGA of New Jersey official running the event did not have a phone with him either. I had to drive into the nearest town and search for a payphone. Upon finally finding one, I decided to play it cute. When my mother answered the phone, I informed her, in as dejected-sounding a voice as I could muster, that “It wasn’t even close”, implying that I had badly failed. After reiterating that “it wasn’t close” I followed with, “yeah, 74, 71, 145, I passed by nine shots”. My mother howled with approval and my father picked up an extension within seconds. My father, who had spent his life in the love of the game, was audibly crying as I recounted the details of the day which had made me a qualified candidate for PGA membership. He repeated each detail back to me in amazement when I finished describing it.

Later that summer, in July, I posted my best finish in a PGA tournament. In addition to holding the PAT throughout the year, regional sections of the PGA also sponsor tournaments for the pros and assistant pros in their area. Usually held on Mondays, when private clubs close for course repair, these events offer “teaching” professionals an outlet for competition. The prize money naturally pales in comparison with tour golf but the pride of competition and the chance to augment one’s salary a bit make it a worthwhile pursuit. At Harkers Hollow Golf Club in northwestern NJ, on a day also marked by significant winds, I shot a one under par 70 to finish a close second in that day’s NJPGA tournament. I won about $600, a pretty OK day’s wages, for playing golf! I hadn’t even played that great. I had just managed to make several crucial par putts, varying in length from 6 or 7 up to 14, 15 feet. This was not unusual for me; my best rounds of golf had more to do with short game superiority than tremendous ball striking. I was far from a “perfect ball striker”, as some golfers are known.

My professional golf career got sidetracked when, in 2003, another lifelong obsession supplanted it, politics. Golf has since become secondary but not forgotten entirely. Although I once again have not played regularly in several years, I am still possessed of an understanding of the game, even at its highest levels, so that watching a PGA Tour event with me can make listening to the TV announcers unnecessary. I can still identify the strategies, thoughts and concerns of a tour player, struggling for a victory, in a fashion which enhances even a non-golfer’s understanding and appreciation of the game.

I had many great experiences and fascinating encounters along the way in golf. The lowest 18 hole score I ever shot was 67. I did it twice, once at High Mountain GC in Franklin Lakes, NJ and also at Overpeck, a county run course in Teaneck, NJ. My skill at the game peaked in early 2003 when I carried a plus 1 handicap (again non-golfers, ask someone, it’s too complicated to detail here). I played golf with local sports heroes like former NY Giants Howard Cross, Phillippi Sparks and Phil Simms (a member at Ridgewood CC). This is rather ironic because I’m a lifelong Jets fan! I had the opportunity to meet former Cleveland Indian Larry Doby, the first African-American player in baseball’s American League shortly after Jackie Robinson broke in on the National League circuit.

Other sports heroes like Yankee greats Gene Michael and Yogi Berra were regular faces at Ridgewood CC along with other sports legends like Bobby Thompson (the shot heard round the world) and college basketball announcer Dick Vitale (yes, he’s really that enthusiastic off camera too).There were non-sports personalities as well, like singer Michael Bolton or actor Joe Pesci (you try telling him that his girlfriend’s outfit doesn’t meet the club’s dress code! I refused to sacrifice myself). One of the most unique moments, though, was sharing Ridgewood’s driving range with music legend Willie Nelson. Just Willie and me, out there all by ourselves, hitting balls together on a misty, overcast afternoon. He was wearing beat up blue jeans, black boots, an oversized raincoat, a bandana and had a pony tail all the way down his back. Talk about dress code violations, nobody cared though. Then there was golf legend Jack Nicklaus.

I grew up worshipping Nicklaus. When I was 13, my father took me to see the third round of the 1980 US Open at Baltusrol GC in Springfield, NJ. I followed Jack around the entire course as he set himself up to win the Open the following day. I almost didn’t find my dad when it was over (I wouldn’t have much cared after the day I had). In May of 2001, Ridgewood CC played host to the Senior PGA Championship. I was able to speak with Nicklaus for just a moment between holes during the final round. To my great shock, I was slightly taller than him (he had seemed a giant when I was 13). I told him that I had become a professional at the very club where they were playing and that my entire life in golf would not have happened but for his example. He thanked me and moved on to the next tee, leaving me hoping I hadn’t disturbed his focus any (I doubt it, knowing him).

I’ve never had a hole in one. Ironically, the closest I ever came to one was on a par four hole, rather than the usual par three. The 7th hole on the Pines course at nearby Blue Hills GC is a 300 yard par four on which both tee and green are slightly elevated, with the fairway running below. One summer afternoon I blasted a driver toward the green which landed on the front and rolled right past the hole, nearly falling in, before settling three feet to the other side. There’s a lot of luck involved in a hole in one no matter what the golfer’s skill level. My father played his entire life before finally scoring an “ace” while in his seventies. He has since been sidelined for several years now by arthritis and injuries to his hands and wrists. He is approaching 80 in just a couple of months and I know that he misses the game a great deal. I wish that I could find a way to help him play again, I have made overtures to this effect but he stubbornly refuses. He may never play golf again.

I run into a lot of people on the political left who can’t understand how I managed to thrive in a golf atmosphere which they see as being dominated by rich, fat, white Republicans. I admit there were times when I had to keep my mouth shut, which is against my very nature (in case readers hadn’t noticed). However, golf is not as one-sided or one-dimensional as some people may think. For example, it has been at times erroneously described as a game of man against nature. This is a fallacy. The true definition of the game of golf is in cooperation with nature. The best golf course designs, for example, do not destroy nature’s beauty but rather enhance and protect it. Many of today’s newer courses are being designed and constructed in a manner which intentionally protects and promotes the indigenous plant and animal life therein. Furthermore the game itself, when played properly, is not a struggle against nature’s elements but rather an effort to play within the elements and even use them to help one reach the game’s goal of using the least shots possible from teeing ground to hole. It is not man against nature; it is man cooperating with the landscape and weather conditions to produce the best result he can. That is the timeless beauty of the game of golf.

The vision of golf as being dominated by old, wealthy, white republicans wearing funny looking pants and hats, a decidedly American stereotype of the game to begin with; has become obsolete in recent decades as well. Today public courses, rather than their exclusive private counterparts, are swelled beyond capacity with very down to earth players while new public and municipal venues proliferate throughout the country. Young people, unlike what I described in my teens, are taking to the game of golf like wildfire. Gifted young athletes, who used to focus primarily on sports like baseball and basketball, are promising to make the next generation of professional golfers unlike any we have ever seen. A single person, more than any other, is responsible for the recent mainstream growth of golf. That individual, of course, is Tiger Woods. Only Arnold Palmer in the 1950s and 60s ever did nearly as much to remove the American stigma of golf as an elitist game. And only Tiger has ever influenced such an explosion of young people, excited to partake in this game. It may take up to 50 years or more for golf historians to truly appreciate what Tiger has meant for golf as a whole.

So just let him play. He will still have to deal with the damage he’s wrought in his personal life. But this is golf. This is more than just golf; this is The Masters, a rite of spring which means more to golfers than the opening day of baseball season. Having Tiger Woods there and competing elevates what would already have been one of the season’s highlights into the stratosphere of history. If he should win this Masters it will be talked about forever, right along with the rest of his incredible career. Tiger’s presence in a tournament makes the event exponentially more exciting. Tiger in The Masters is the stuff of which dreams are made. So sit back and enjoy. Forget the TMZ, gossip and scandal driven news culture for a weekend. Instead, focus on the greatest golfer of all times attempting to overcome yet another obstacle to his lofty place in sports history. For the first time, it’s an obstacle of his making. I, for one, in my lifelong love of golf, am going to be suspending personal judgments and rooting for him with all my energy.

Paul Roth, Jr.

Why The Coffee Party Movement Could Fail

2010-04-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

OFF TO A DELIBERATELY SLOW START

When Annabel Park launched into a Facebook tirade, in January of this year, about how the Tea Party movement seemed to be portrayed as the only grassroots voice of political change, she struck a gigantic nerve. The onetime Obama “Campaign Operative” (right wing reality-speak for unpaid volunteer) soon launched the well-intentioned, if somewhat awkwardly named, Coffee Party USA movement. In barely two months this idea has attracted nearly 200,000 Facebook fans, some 50,000 more than the Tea Party has gathered in over a year. Bearing in mind that the Tea Party crowd isn’t a very Facebook-friendly demographic, this is still quite an accomplishment.

Ms. Park, her filmmaking partner Eric Byler and those they have gathered to steer this national movement, have been given a tremendous opportunity to facilitate a great political shift in this country. They awoke the liberal giant in America which seemed to be napping ever since the Inauguration of Barack Obama. They could have shown this country the size and power of a reality based American majority which has become lost in the cacophony of right wing disinformation and extremism. It was probably too late for them to move health reform legislation in a more progressive direction. However, they could still provide the Democrats in congress with a visible demonstration of this majority, one which Democrats clearly need in order to hold firmly to their principles on upcoming legislative issues like financial reform, immigration and the environment.

Instead, Ms. Park offered this on Tuesday as a blueprint for the future: “We are working around the clock to figure out what the best process and available tools are for deliberating issues and voting on collective actions. While we will continue to meet regularly in coffee shops, at least half of our activities will take place online. E-democracy is still an experimental field ...with many promising developments, but no obvious precedents. We are taking some time to research which tools would best serve our needs as a growing, bottom-up, grassroots community. Within a matter of weeks, we should be able to share with you some effective offline and online tools so that we 1) Facilitate open, civil dialogue, 2) Engage in informed deliberation, and 3) Vote on our actions and proposed solutions using a secure, transparent process. In short, we will practice democracy together as a community, as fellow Americans and our voices will be heard across the country and in Washington.”
--- Annabel Park, 3/30/10, www.Facebook.com/JointheCoffeePartyMovement .

Rather than assemble a real political alternative to the Tea Party, they have chosen instead to settle for some kind of touchy-feely, national political E-group therapy session, where right wing propagandists are encouraged to freely dump their garbage anytime, with the assurance that no one will be able to call them out for just who and what they are. After all, that would be uncivil. Once again, the great liberal majority in America has raised its massive head, surveyed the nationwide damage being wrought by right wing zealots and offered its ferocious battle cry, “Can’t we reach some kind of consensus here? Can we just be a little nicer to each other, OK?” You’ll forgive the conservative movement for not exactly shaking in their (Jack) boots.

THE FACEBOOK ISSUE

Three weeks ago the Coffee Party’s Facebook page was a beautiful thing to behold. With only a sliver of national media attention, a couple of reports on CNN and one mention on MSNBC, people were pouring in to the tune of more than 10,000 per day, clearly giddy that they had found an outlet which would surely stand up against the right wing nonsense and Tea Party vitriol they were being bombarded with every day in the media. They were dying to take part in such a crusade.

Look at Coffee Party’s Facebook page today. Go ahead, look at it. This column will still be here when you’re done. www.facebook.com – Join the Coffee Party Movement, under “Just Fans”. This page is still the movement’s main avenue for member communication. It is looking more and more like just another political Facebook page every day. Right wingers link to disinformation sources, incite debate and then deny every fact that’s presented by rational people, until said rational folks just give up and go away, leaving the righty behind to claim ideological victory. Engaging in internet debate with a right wing activist is not unlike trying to swim in quicksand. Eventually you tire of the whole experience because you realize that, no matter what you say or how well you present fact or argument, you are debating with a brick wall.

Here are a couple of examples of what I dealt with on that page within just the last 72 hours; One disingenuous individual posts a story about the AAPS’s (American Association of Physicians and Surgeons) intention to file a lawsuit seeking repeal of the new healthcare reform law. He asks if the idea of doctors opposing HCR concerns anyone. Then, a couple of fair minded but apparently poorly informed folks discuss their concerns about a dwindling medical profession and what it might mean? When I and someone else, who are a little better acquainted with political activist groups, point out that the AAPS is actually a front group for right wing activism, one which also seeks to end Medicare; it is WE who are accused of poisoning the discussion. “They’re still doctors! Doesn’t their professional opinion count? Why do you dismiss them just because they’re conservative?” Actually, most of them aren’t doctors and even those that are clearly have much higher political priorities than, say, the well being of their patients. But is there any point in my even saying these things?

Another exchange begins when someone posts a link about gun rights activists planning an armed march on Washington later this month. I notice a comment by someone from Tennessee who seems mystified by the controversy because he’s “never heard anyone say that Democrats might take away people’s guns.” This sounds innocent enough, right? Maybe he lives in a shack in the middle of nowhere, has never been exposed to mass communications of any kind, just bought himself a computer yesterday, logged on to Facebook right off the bat and started plugging away at political discussion. It’s possible, right? When I respond by saying that gun rights advocate groups and conservative Republicans have been using such scare tactics for many years, a fact which anyone, right or left, who pays nominal attention to politics will admit without hesitation, the original questioner demands that I offer proof to back up my statement.

After one 45 second Google search, I provide three separate links for him. The first being a 20 minute video of a CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) conference on the “current anti-gun rights climate in Washington”. (Who’s in charge in Washington right now?) Second, a FOX News report on a massive surge in firearms sales in the days leading up to President Obama’s Inauguration. And last but not least, a widely read blog post under the title, “First Obama wanted your guns and now he wants to prevent you from fishing”. My confused friend from Tennessee, rather than acknowledge that this was, indeed, a common theme in politics, responded in the following manner: first he said that he didn’t have the necessary software to watch the video link. Then he insisted that the second and third links were not satisfactory proof (in less educated terms than I use) and that I would have to provide him with physical proof that an official NRA spokesperson had ever said the exact words, “Democrats are going to take away your guns”. At this point, I belatedly understood that I was not engaged in an honest exchange and so I withdrew in order to preserve what was left of my sanity.

In my third example, it was I who was did the posting. I posted a photo of the first eight Hutaree Militia members (there was later a ninth) to be arrested recently for hatching an apocalyptic plot in Michigan. I then pointed out that the same Republicans and right wing media personalities who condemn African-American rappers for songs like “Cop Killer” and blame liberalism and even violent racial tendencies for such a musical expression of violence, astoundingly maintain deafening silence when an all white group of anti-government, religious extremists plan to actually kill police officers and then bomb their ensuing memorial services. I further pointed out that the right wing displays such silence on this kind of story because anti-government extremists and religious zealots make up a part of their political base, one which they are afraid to alienate. Was this post potentially inflammatory to Republicans? Yes. But it was something more also, it was the TRUTH! It wasn’t very long before a seemingly impartial fellow from Colorado read me the Coffee Party “riot act” about civility and accused me of “propaganda”. Really? I was just pointing out a glaring hypocrisy which anyone who’s been paying attention to the political give and take in this country for a while can confirm. I’m so sorry to have offended anyone.

The last straw came when, in frustration with all of the deliberate disinformation being allowed on this page, I posted an Amazon link to the book “The Republican Noise Machine” by David Brock. Brock is a former right wing attack-author (The Real Anita Hill) and Washington Times reporter who was rejected by his conservative patriarchs after writing what ultimately became a very fair biography of Hillary Clinton, too fair for the right wing and so they banished him. After recounting his unusual career twists in his tell all “Blinded by the Right”, he used “...Noise Machine” to detail the more than forty year history of activist right wing media in America. He explains, with a former insider’s understanding, its origins, patrons, its power to undermine democracy by misinforming the public and the equally crucial parallel strategy of denouncing mainstream media as “liberally biased”. Brock has since gone on to found Media Matters, a watchdog group which specializes in debunking false right wing reporting.

I offered the book as a way for liberals to understand just what they’re up against. An explanation of why their right wing counterparts seem to live in an alternate universe, one with a very different set of facts and a completely different narrative of world and American history. I closed my comment by observing that this right wing media movement was “the most organized effort to deliberately dis-inform a nation since Joseph Goebbels’ Third Reich Ministry of Information”. Now was that a little harsh? Maybe. Especially in light of how people get whenever you bring up the whole Nazi thing (See those right wing Obama/Hitler posters). As if I was somehow accusing them of genocide. Yes, it was harsh. But, once again, it was also TRUE! Not backing down on that, no sir. It took less than 90 seconds for my post to be removed. Dis-information is fine but information about dis-information, we can’t have that!

MORE TROUBLES

Look, I come from the James Carville School of Democratic politics. In June of 1992, a friend was reading to me from a New York Times article about, “this guy who’s running Clinton’s campaign”. Carville was quoted in that article as saying, “Your opponent can’t lie about you when he’s got your fist down his throat”. My friend and I both agreed that, after campaigns like those of Mondale and Dukakis, it was about damn time a Democrat was going to hit first and hit harder. I’ve never forgotten that quote and I never will. And that was from a time when Republicans were an awful lot less…well, awful. Back before the days of FOX News Channel, when Rush Limbaugh was much more unique in his right wing radio crusade, when congressional Republicans were offering a healthcare reform alternative to the Clinton reform package which looked eerily similar to the “socialist, government takeover of healthcare” just passed by Obama and Co. Long before anyone thought of holding these seemingly white-supremacist Tea Parties or demanding the president’s birth certificate (and then refusing to accept it when offered).

The point is that when you are engaged in political discourse with today’s right wing, you’d better be prepared for a serious battle. People are spitting on US Congressmen, calling them nigger and faggot. They’re carrying signs about watering “the tree of liberty” with “the blood of tyrants”. What do you suppose they mean by that? Just this week, a 70 year-old man deliberately smashed his truck into the rear end of another car because it sported an Obama/Biden bumper sticker. The second driver’s 10 year-old daughter was in the back of that car, by the way. And if you’re waiting for the current crop of Republican lawmakers to demand an end to this behavior, don’t go holding your breath. They’re too busy accusing Democrats of partisanship because they have the audacity to complain about it.

In taking a pacifist attitude into the current political arena, the Coffee Party may as well bring a feather to a knife fight. The results will be much the same. And the Facebook page is not the only area of disappointment which needs to be covered. The timid nature of the Coffee Party was also revealed during national conference calls, in which leaders of the movement talk directly with organizers from all over the country. The leaders who participated in these calls were obviously far more terrified that one of us would say something negative about the Tea Party than they seem to be about right wingers taking over their Facebook page. They offer little support for suggested concrete actions, even on a local level. Worse yet, when their national “media” people would send out a press release template, which local organizers can then modify for their own area, they were so filled with spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors that I spent more time correcting than personalizing them.

SOME SERIOUS SUGGESTIONS

If I’m going to complain (and I think its pretty clear that I am) then I’d better close by offering some helpful suggestions as well. So here’s a little message directed at Annabel, Eric and whoever else is left helping them put things together…..Get off of your **collective butts and do something big, visible and meaningful, now, while you’ve still got a fair amount of progressives left who will join you! Every time you’ve managed even a little national focus in the media, the hibernating left wing in this country has poured onto your website and Facebook page chomping at the bit to join in. There are untold millions out there who still don’t know you exist. Less than half the attention the Tea Party is getting would bring them all right to your doorstep. Find a way, quickly, before you lose traction altogether!

And if you seriously believe that you can alter the nature of American politics by asking a few right, left and center leaning folks to sit down together every so often in their local coffee shops, I’ve got this awesome bridge over in Brooklyn that I’ll sell you dirt cheap. Just don’t ask for the deed, my dog ate it. You’re never going to fix what’s wrong in America by some kind of political osmosis. You’re going to have to act and you’ll have to draw attention to what you’re doing along the way. You’ll need a more pragmatic and practical strategy as well. For all of their faults, the Tea Partiers already understand these basic principles. You’d better incorporate them too, and fast.

For example, if you truly want to bring honesty and civility back to our national conversation, you’re going to have to loosen the right wing’s stranglehold on our news media. Right now, 30% of rank and file Republicans believe that President Obama “could be the anti-Christ”. Two-thirds believe he is a “socialist” (US socialist party denunciations of this notwithstanding). There is a tremendous dis-information problem here. To change this, you have to push for re-regulation of media ownership and possibly the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Republicans will be of no use to you on this issue; it will be a partisan effort all the way. You can provide Democrats with the will necessary to make this happen by showing them how large a voting base you can deliver for them.

One more example; In order to change the corrupted political culture in Washington (and many state capitols as well) there must be a tremendous push for real campaign finance reform. This one can be a little more bipartisan in nature. I’d actually be surprised if many among the Tea Parties wouldn’t join you in pressuring congress to quickly find a way to overturn the recent Supreme Court ruling, in Citizens United. That’s only the first step though. Finding a way to make elected officials more accessible to all of their constituents while somehow constitutionally limiting the obscene amount of influence wielded by special interest money will be a fight for the ages. It may make healthcare reform look easy, by comparison. It must be done, however, in order to return our representative government to its rightful owners.

More immediately, none of this will ever happen if the Republican Party is rewarded at the ballot box for their heinous behavior in the 111th congress. Such a victory will only further empower the far right wing and embolden the Republicans to continue their partisan warfare with the president. You’re going to have to make fighting against potential GOP gains in November priority number one for the remainder of 2010. Are you afraid that someone’s going to call you an “Obama front group”? Guess what, they already have. So what? Let them say whatever they want. Never apologize for your beliefs. Stand up for what you believe in and the good people you’ve inspired to get involved will line up with you.

I don’t mean to pretend that I would automatically have all of the means or the practical knowledge necessary, if I were ever to accidentally spark a movement this large or with this much potential. What I can say for certain is that I would damn well make the most of it if I did. This opportunity is too precious; don’t let it get away from you. If its advice you need, find the best available. If money is the issue, go ahead and ask progressive people for it. Do you really think the Tea Party is funding all of its national and local activities from grassroots? Now that you’ve stumbled upon the power to shape the kind of change you’d like to see in America, do everything you have within you to lead us in that direction. I’m sure I’m not the only progressive who has become disenchanted lately. But we’re still out here watching and hoping you’ll come around.

Paul Roth, Jr.

PS – Tell your Facebook administrators to start doing something about all of the right wing propaganda. Enough is enough. “Honesty”, remember?

** - And stop using that word in all of your literature, you’re making it too damn easy for the far right.

The GOP: PowerPointing Out The Marketing Of Politics

2010-03-08T00:11:00.000-08:00

Lest you think that I am just going to jump on the Democratic party bandwagon and take advantage of the publication of a very embarassing Republican party fundraising strategy document, think again. There’s a lot more here than just a partisan opportunity to drive a wedge between the GOP and it’s biggest sponsors. So far, the Democrats are doing a pretty good job of that anyway, as well as using the document to give their own base a much needed stirring up. I would prefer to explore the larger issue here; the development of direct marketing in political fundraising.

When I meet with political cynicism, all too common these days, I invariably respond by pointing out that I know a lot of politicians personally. Most of them, both republicans and democrats, venture into the political arena with the noblest of intentions. Once in the game, however, they are soon corrupted by what it takes these days in order to get (and stay) elected. The average member of the United States House of Representatives, for example, will spend more than half of their efforts on raising money alone, every day of their lives. Being that they must run for reelection every two years, they remain in a near perpetual state of both campaigning and fundraising. They are forever speaking to either those individuals who have enough money to make a difference or to the representatives of large organizations which pool their finances in order to wield massive influence.

The notion that a few regular Americans who attend a few “town hall” meetings during Summer recess in order to voice their feelings can ever compete with the larger organized interests is absurd. Most of America feels drowned out of our national political conversation. They just don’t stand a chance. A potential remedy has emerged to this situation. Fundraising through the internet. But internet fundraising has a glaring negative side. Since you are no longer meeting donors face to face but rather reaching out to an anonymous and unseen throng, a strategy must be used to make your efforts as effective as possible. Enter, the science of marketing.

I read somewhere recently that thirty years ago the average American saved nearly 9% of their yearly income. Today that number has plummeted to just over 2%. I will be the first to blame this on the dominance of right wing economic policies which have frozen real incomes while the cost of living continues to climb. However, this is not the entire story. Advances in the science of parting us from our money must also be considered. If you’ve ever worked in retail you know exactly what I’m saying. If you’ve ever joined an organization of any kind only to find yourself inundated with mailers from twenty similar groups, then you’re familiar. Heck, if you’ve recently seen a television commercial or any other advertisement, you know there’s been major advances in this science. With their constant need for more and more organizational and advertising dollars, is it any wonder that the two major political parties in this country have availed themselves of marketing experts? The only mystery is why it took them so long to catch up to private industry.

As with most innovations in politics lately, Democrats lagged years behind Republicans in utilizing this valuable tool. From the development of “wedge” issues to the narrowing of presidential campaigns down to specific “swing” states, the Democrats have always been second across the finish line. Despite this, it is clear now that the GOP has fallen behind in the race to raise large sums of cash through modest contributions from masses of internet donors. Federal Election Commission numbers as of Feb. 25, 2010, as reported on opensecrets.org, show that the Democratic party has 50% more “cash on hand” than the Republicans and has been outraising the GOP by almost 2 to 1.

If such numbers seem like a direct contradiction to the current “liberal” news media narrative that Democrats are running for the hills, as a Johnstown-like flood of conservatism bears down upon them, you can join me as a skeptic of Republican certainty of majority status next year. More money does not always result in more votes, as Ross Perot can tell you. It is a pretty good indicator, though, of which party has the more motivated base, a crucial factor in the mid-term election year. It was in this atmosphere of GOP frustration, where their fundraising numbers don’t even come close to expectations, that Republican Finance Director Rob Bickhart set out to redefine their entire strategy. His presentation may now seem both offensive to liberals and condescending to conservatives but this is just how marketers see and attempt to motivate their target demographics.

Marketers must view people in broadly defined groups. There is no room for individuality in marketing. A marketer never sees your face, doesn’t know your kids and is only concerned with your core values as much as they can help him/her successfully connect your money with his/her client. Political marketing is no different and you really can’t expect it to be. If there’s a Tea Party activist out there who believes that anyone from the staff of the RNC Finance Dept. would even consider joining them and carrying a sign about Obama’s birth certificate, let me deliver the disappointing news now; not happening. These are paid professionals, not true believers. Democrats should not imagine that things are much different on their side either. I may not currently work for the DNC but, if my email inbox is any indication, there’s probably an equal amount of crass marketing strategy going on there as well.

There is an upside to this story. While internet fundraising may be the domain of marketers who couldn’t care less about your causes, the rise of internet organizing and activism have put a little more political power back in your hands or, more precisely, your fingertips. Activists from both left and right can claim recent victories as the result of such immediate communication. For example, the left used the internet to kill a 2004 attempt by the Sinclair Media Group (an activist conservative company which owns a network of hundreds of local TV stations) to air a film smearing then Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry under the guise of a “special news report”. The right can point to the rising momentum of the Tea Parties. If you’re a believer in civic participation and representative democracy, as I am, then this use of the internet is a welcome part of the evolution of our democracy.

My partisan feelings did cause me a moment of sheer delight at first sight of this story. Politico.com reported that an unnamed Democrat, who said that a hard copy of the presentation had been “left in the hotel”, had provided the internet news service with said document. This fact leaves me to wonder if there isn’t a left wing counterpart to ACORN “Pimp” James O’Keefe running around out there. Political espionage is so much fun! Less fun in this case for the RNC who, upon being asked a question about the fundraising presentation, immediately fired off a preemptive email to their regular donors. The Politico story also quoted a major GOP donor as describing current relations between the party and their financial sponsors in a single word, “disastrous”. So much for “putting the fun back in fundraising”, the presentation’s title. Not only has this further upset their formerly reliable “country clubbers” but it could serve to alienate the more socially conservative grassroots as well. Both subgroups were treated more callously in this strategy session than the RNC would ever want to see the light of day.

In less than twelve hours from publication of this story, I received emails from the Democratic party (DNC), Democratic Senatorial Committee (DSCC) and Democratic Congressional Committee (DCCC), each using the Republican document in order to raise money for Democrats. When the other party gets to use your own fundraising strategy ideas to boost their donations while the presentation of this strategy will likely turn off your donors, it can be considered a screw up of collossal proportions. Permit a liberal to smile, if only for a moment. After all, for now it is but a tempest in a teapot. It won’t alter the debate on health care. It won’t jump start job growth. It won’t defeat terrorism and it won’t cause any of those rabid right wingers to suddenly treat President Obama with a single ounce of respect. The curtain has only momentarily been lifted on the cynical nature of political marketing. What we do with this information will determine whether this story gains importance over time or simply fades into historic anonymity.

A Follow Up: Politics Daily is reporting tonight that a major GOP donor, Atlanta’s Mark DeMoss, who is also founder of The Civility Project, a bipartisan group dedicated to restoring an atmosphere of mutual respect between political rivals, has written a publicized letter to RNC Chairman Michael Steele in which he states that he will no longer contribute to the Republican party directly.

Maybe this story will have more long term impact than I expect?

Paul Roth, Jr.

"The Compassion Thing" - from Facebook

2010-03-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

The following are excerpts from a "debate" I had with a right wing true believer on the Facebook fan page of Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. I will not identify him (thus possibly inviting one of those "frivolous" lawsuits) but his words, which I was responding to, appear in quotations before my remarks:

" May I remind you that many "wealthy" individuals penalized by this legislation work very hard and are business owners, both small and big,and who are not living extravagantly."----

Problem is you and I have different definitions of the word "wealthy". I grew up in Bergen County, NJ. One of the wealthiest counties, per capita, in the United States. Where I come from, the wealthy don't own small businesses. I am talking about the top .01% of Americans who reside in towns like Alpine, Franklin Lakes or Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. They can flick your "small business" off of them like swatting at a mosquito. I am friends with many of them.

And "penalized", no. Most of them understand the problem well enough to know that you can't solve any one health care issue without taking on the whole. If you don't understand that you, and everyone you think you're defending and everyone I'm defending and everyone in the United States who HAS insurance and is either on the verge of being "priced out of it" or just watching it eat up more and more of their money, federal and state governments included, ARE ALREADY PAYING MORE NOW FOR THE "MOOCHERS" YOU FOLKS REFER TO THAN YOU WILL BE OVER THE NEXT 20 YEARS WHEN, NOT IF, THIS BILL PASSES, then I give you more credit by responding to you than you deserve.

"Government run healthcare has been the moniker for the bill in Washington" -------

Correction, "Government Run Healthcare" has been the moniker for the bill ON THE RIGHT WING AND AMONG ELECTED REPUBLICANS ONLY! Why? Because the phrase tested negatively in some Frank Luntz focus group somewhere. "Death Panels" tested even worse, so IN IT WENT! Then someone whispered, "If we tell people they'll have to pay for illegal aliens, they'll hate it even more! IN IT GOES!!

Now it's "Let's say that passing addendums to the Senate bill through reconciliation is the Nuclear Option, it sounds so ominous, even though that was the name WE gave to ABOLISHING THE FILIBUSTER ENTIRELY just a few years ago, WHEN WE WANTED TO DO IT! Hey, remember when we hated the filibuster? Back before WE USED IT FOUR TIMES MORE OFTEN than any minority in Senate history!

Read: The Republican Noise Machine by David Brock
Your propaganda arm is really quite skilled. I can't deny that. The fact that it's all BULLSHIT, however, makes things here far too easy for me. I shake my head in disbelief at those who really absorb and repeat their crap. And you claim that I AM THE ONE parroting what someone else is saying?! Yeah, right.

"If you would like to get down to brass tacks, government-interference in the insurance industry is more appropriate." ------

I know, I know. Why don’t we big liberal meanies just leave those poor little insurance companies alone?! Here’s the problem. In 2009, health insurance profits rose by 56% while nearly 3 million Americans lost their coverage. If this was a coincidence it would be one thing. But these two phenomena are not mutually exclusive. They are quite closely tied. When your industry’s profit margins are based on how many sick, or previously sick, people you can screw over, there’s a little bit of an ethics problem in your business model.

Why is it that the right wing seems okay with the fact that we as individuals live under a Constitution which prevent us from harming or otherwise screwing over our fellow Americans and yet, at the same time, feel that once you put together enough individuals working toward the same purpose (See Socialism) to incorporate yourself, you should just be able to do whatever the hell you want with no legal responsibility?! Therefore regulation, which you see as so darned evil, does nothing more than hold businesses to the same moral responsibilities our founders preserved for the individual.

Can you provide examples where regulations go too far? Of course you can and I don’t pretend that it never happens. But, in health insurance, among other industries (credit cards for one), I can provide more examples of why regulations are needed. It’s because the entire industry’s profit motive turns any definition of business ethics upside down. Don’t conservatives believe in “old-fashioned values”? What, only in the bedroom? Not when it comes to business? Is a monopoly a “free market” now? Is telling a woman that she can’t partake of your vitally necessary product because her husband used to beat her, an expression of “moral values”? Do you see the point in paying health insurance premiums for years only to have the company drop you when you actually need their services? This is ethics in reverse and about as immoral as you can imagine.

During his Healthcare Reform Address to Congress last September, President Obama rightly observed that “Insurance executives don’t do these things because they’re bad people”. (In less than one hour, FOX News’s Sean Hannity turned this quote into, “I was shocked to hear the president call insurance executives “bad people”!) Nice one, Sean. They do it to turn a profit. That’s what businesses are supposed to do. However, when Americans are dying as a result of the pursuit of your bottom line, then life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been turned on their ear. This is exactly what government is for, to provide protection to Americans when no other force can do so. Can you tell me with a straight face that the insurance companies will fix all this if we just give them more power to do whatever the hell they want? Don’t bother trying; I’ll just crack up in your face anyway.

I guess it all comes back to your point of view. American conservatives see health insurance and health care in general as no more than another good or service from which as much profit as one can get away with should be derived. Whereas nearly the entire rest of the civilized world has recognized that, while profit is an important motive, the preservation of a “commodity” like your personal health should also be motivated by some level of human compassion. Maybe you’ll catch up with us liberals some day on the compassion thing? I’m not holding my breath though.

Paul Roth, Jr.

Racism 2.0

2010-03-01T05:07:00.000-08:00

“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did," – Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA)

"people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House." – Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col)

"When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds…I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American.” – Former President Jimmy Carter

Welcome to racism 2.0. In 21st Century America, it defeats your purpose to go parading down main street in white robes and hoods. Burning a cross on a neighbor’s lawn will get you thrown in jail for a hate crime. Racism has unquestionably diminished in the last 50 years but to suggest that it is gone would be incredibly naïve. It has merely sunk deeper into the guts of those who still embrace it as they struggle to find more “socially acceptable” ways to express their sentiments. Tom Tancredo found his way, calling for a return to so called civics/literacy exams for prospective voters, in front of an approving and virtually all white, conservative audience. If challenged, he can try feigning ignorance as to how such tests were previously employed by southern states in order to prevent blacks from voting. He can claim that he envisions the test being used indiscriminately among all Americans. But since anyone with even the slightest knowledge of how voters break down by education level can tell you that such an evenly applied testing system would guarantee more elected liberals, it seems a very weak explanation. This is racism by implication. Stealth racism, if you will.

Rep. Baker also found his voice. He combined eye-opening insensitivity for residents of his own state with evidence that he also clings to the old testament view of a wrathful interventionist deity, a concept still very popular amidst the more religious right wing. Baker’s comment leaves plenty of wiggle room from which to deny any racist intent. He doesn’t use the “N” word or any other ethnic slur. It’s the attitude behind what he says, one which finds some of his fellow Louisianans to be far less important than others, in which you can feel racism bubbling just beneath the visible. As with Tancredo, you must first acknowledge other facts, such as the population of New Orleans’ public housing being largely minority, before racial motivation becomes obvious. Once again the racism is clearly there but hidden under the words actually spoken on the surface.

The accusations of racism which follow these kinds of remarks are inevitably fended off by turning the tables on the accuser. Since the racial intent lurked beneath the surface and you had to look deeper in order to identify it, it becomes you instead who are motivated by race. You are “playing the race card”. Baker could say, “I didn’t say anything about race, just public housing”. Tancredo might argue, “I only want American voters to understand the ballots and how their country works before they cast their vote”. But there’s an old saying, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. The recent revelation that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), an early Obama supporter, commented on the Illinois Senator’s electability by observing that he is “light-skinned”, “non-threatening” and has a good command of the english language, shows that racial insensitivity has not been copyrighted by conservatives. Though Reid’s words and intent lacked the malignancy which emanates from the right wing, they do indicate the fact that all of us have yet to rid ourselves of certain ingrained stereotypes. We’re not perfect and we probably never will be. We’re only human.

A friend I have known for some 25 years moved to central Florida about a decade ago. His political convictions are similar to mine but he likes to play “devil’s advocate” and debate me on public issues. He has a tremendous grasp of both domestic and international issues and a legal education and background. Because of this, he makes an extremely good sparring partner for someone who discusses politics as much as I do. Over the last decade a frequent topic for these “throwdowns” was Affirmitive Action programs, with him taking the opposition. This back and forth would always boil down to the current state of race relations and whether such “preferences” were still of any necessity. In early 2008 my friend called me to announce that he had decided to support Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential primaries. This led to a debate for the ages since, at the time, I was helping run a Bergen County, New Jersey office for Hillary Clinton. One major agreement was arrived at during that epic conversation. By vocally supporting Obama in the largely white, and right, northern suburbs of Orlando, Fl., my friend had learned first hand the fallacies of his previous anti-affirmitive action stance. He was horrified by the extreme racial hatred he encountered. This from a midle-aged man who was raised Jewish and yet feels the need to hide this fact from both friends and strangers where he currently resides.

I have also seen in-my-face examples of how and where unapologetic racism still flourishes. Between 1998 and 2002 I made my living as an Assistant Golf Professional at different private clubs in northern New Jersey. The examples of two of those establishments point out a misperception which most of us still might carry about race in America. One club, located in the town where I grew up, was occupied mainly by folks of a certain heritage (See Goodfellas) who were no more than one generation removed from blue collar roots. Another, one of the most prestigious facilities in the northeast, was populated with some very old money, prominent family names and hosted celebrity guests so often that one got used to seeing famous faces. This club has since been included in the yearly circuit of courses which host PGA Tour events. The knee-jerk assumption might well be that racism and arrogant, ignorant attitudes would be predominant at the latter club. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

It was at the former establishment, among the far less privileged, that I encountered overt racism. For example, every caddy at the first club is white. Others are quietly turned away as is still legal for a private membership organization. The membership is obviously just as uniform. One quiet afternoon I was sitting at the pro shop counter of the first club, when an older member entered and observed the television, which was perpetually tuned to sports. He watched a tennis match on the TV for a moment and then turned to me and said, “You like her?”, refering to a young Venus Williams. When I responded that I don’t really follow tennis (this was true, although I could also sense the gist of what was coming), he replied, “I think she looks like a fuckin’ gorilla!” I simply retreated into the back office while our resident zookeeper made his way to the men’s locker room. I was momentarily taken aback but hardly shocked. I knew exactly where things stood at the club which I’d love to name here but prudence prevents me. I never once remember sensing that kind of hate among the far more upper-crusty members of the extremely prestigious other facility.

Overt racism, though, is increasingly relegated to places of privacy, such as that small pro shop, where the unashamed racist knows that they won’t be called out publicly for their hatefulness. The more militantly liberal among you are likely angry at me right now for not telling off that “gorilla” individual. Suffice to say that it too would have been inappropriate as well as pointless. Most public expressions of racism these days resemble the remarks from the opening of this piece. The type which force you to read between the lines. Those who sympathize with such remarks fully understand the meaning behind them as well. If the speaker were to give an overly dramatic wink to his audience just as he made such a statement, the message could not be made any clearer. In the political world, stealth racism is far more prevalent on the right. It may not be an exclusive domain, as I pointed out, and yet, from Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck to folks like Savage, Coulter or Dobbs, disapproval of different cultures has long been and still is a top priority of America’s right wing. “Multiculturalism” is as much a Tea Party taboo today as socialism, budget deficits or taxes.

When Jimmy Carter, in his above quote, insinuated that some of the most severe opposition to the new president stemmed from a place of racism, right wing voices portrayed the former president as nothing more than a foolish old jackass spewing a tired liberal mantra for which they no longer have patience. Methinks the teabaggers doth protest too much. If they’re capable of a guilty conscience, they were exhibiting one loudly. When former Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) clumsily attempted to compliment Strom Thurmond on his birthday by stating that if Thurmond, the 1948 Segregation party Presidential candidate, had only been elected, “we wouldn’t have all of these problems we have today”, he provided preemptive proof of the veracity of Carter’s remarks. That most on the right were all too ready to defend Lott only adds to the evidence. A quick search of Google Images or YouTube will net you enough ammunition to adequately affirm Carter’s thoughts on right wing racism.

The fact that an African-American with a name like Barack Hussein Obama has been elected President of the United States by no small margin, shows us that we have come a very long way from where we were in the early 1960’s. We have indeed come far and make no mistake about that fact. However, the way that too many conservative Americans view Mr. Obama and his presidency indicates that we still have quite a way to go. From conspiracy theories about his place of birth to internet postcards depicting him as a monkey to t-shirts and bumper stickers from “religious” sources which offer up prayers for his imminent death, some on the right appear unable to even accept as reality that this man is their president. It is this extroardinary level of personal contempt and disrespect for the man himself which indicates that racial undertones may be to blame. As I’ve said elsewhere, the right has no one but themselves to blame for this perception. Not TV pundits from that “liberal media”, not political correctness, not nefarious multiculturalist plots and not even liberal old me.

I’m not going to bore readers with statistics like how many young black males are in prison as opposed to college or the striking differences in likely causes of death among whites and blacks. There will be no comparisons of median income levels here. No tales of crumbling school systems or gang violence ensnaring kids who have yet to see their 10th birthday. We all know these things, though some on the right prefer to live in that alternate universe I often speak of, the one in which there is no longer any need to increase opportunity for some because everyone already has the same chance at success. That attitude, in itself, is just another excuse to hate or, at the very least, dismiss someone else. “It’s their own fault. It’s how they choose to live. Look at me, I wasn’t born rich either but I worked hard and made something of myself.” The twisted logic necessary to convince oneself that opportunity is equal between a white male from even a humble middle class upbringing and a black male from the projects of New Orleans, for example, is further indication of ignorance.

I grew up in a predominantly white, upper middle class suburb of New York City. My neighborhood was extremely safe. Our school system had the best of everything. I was never pulled over by the police for no apparent reason. No one has ever viewed me suspiciously because of how I look. No woman has ever clutched her purse with both hands when she saw me walking toward her. I have been interested in politics all of my life but I never had to swallow that none of the historic leaders of my country looked anything like me. They all looked like me, until now that is. If I tried to claim that I had no advantages in life as a result of these facts, I would be guilty of tremendous ignorance. I, like Tom Tancredo, Rush Limbaugh or any of those other right wing activists, must admit ignorance as to the experience of African-Americans as well as other minorities in this country.

What sets left and right apart, in regard to race, is a willingness to examine yourself and your attitudes and try to progress. There is also a genuine desire on the left to treat others with respect. The right wing choose to mock these principles as political correctness and multiculturalism. How can they demand respect that they are not willing to give others? I know that I carry with me certain stereotypes about those who are different from me, I acknowledge it and I try to evolve as an individual. If this makes me a “bleeding heart” then so be it. I would rather have a bleeding heart than a dead one. From literacy tests to regretting segregationist losses to angry Tea party crusades against immigrants, America’s right has chosen to see our differences as a threat rather than a continuation of a beautiful American legacy. They have enjoyed decades of political triumph from this stance but, as American attitudes continue progressing in the decades to come, it will only serve to further isolate them from most of this country. It’s going to take more than the laughably crass GOP appointments of folks like Michael Steele or Sarah Palin to remedy their ailment. Talk about affirmitive action! Some very deep soul searching is in order before the right wing can move forward on the issue of race, if they ever do. If Mr. “Gorilla” is still alive and kicking then, I doubt he’ll ever join them in advancing down that path.

Deal With It

2010-02-25T22:01:00.000-08:00

“The Republican party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry”. With these twelve words yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) created what could be considered, at least for C-SPAN viewers, an action packed couple of minutes. The GOP leadership insisted that his words were too offensive or, more likely, too true not to be stricken from the record immediately. After revising his remarks only slightly, Weiner closed with the following well-chosen phrase, “deal with it”. His opening statement may not have fostered many bipartisan feelings in advance of today’s White House Healthcare Summit but his closing words will come to define the outcome.

The Democratic majority IS going to use reconciliation in order to pass healthcare reform legislation which combines the bill the Senate has already passed and some adjustments the White House recently put forward. It will be a done deal in a matter of weeks. Republicans are already wailing that this would be an “unprecedented” violation of Senate rules. The right has even adapted the moniker “Nuclear Option” to describe this plan, alluding to what was originally a GOP idea to amend Senate rules and eliminate use of the filibuster in certain circumstances. They proposed this because Democrats, in the minority at the time (2005), had the raw nerve to filibuster a few of George W. Bush’s most extreme judicial nominees. The kinds who believe it’s in their job description to enforce biblical law, rather than apply the US Constitution to modern legal disputes.

Passing this reform package through reconciliation may be “unprecedented” in terms of size and scope but it leaves Senate rules intact and allows the body to determine whether or not to amend or even eliminate the filibuster separately. It is most definitely not the Nuclear Option. If the Republican minority were not using the filibuster in such an “unprecedented” fashion, attempting to kill nearly every piece of work in the Senate at a time of national crisis, perhaps the Democrats would not be so likely to buck tradition, without truly going nuclear. Until their best chance at revenge, the mid-term elections this fall, the GOP will have no choice but to “deal with it”.

Ask yourself why the Democrats should consider any other alternative, given the GOP track record since Obama’s inauguration. Why should the majority believe it can scrap all of the previous year’s work, start over from scratch with the minority, during an election year, and expect a different outcome? In less than one year, the GOP disinformation machine turned end of life counseling with trained medical professionals into “death panels”. A clear provision forbidding federal funds from being used to cover illegal aliens became “You Lie!” followed by false assertions that taxpayers would indeed cover such aliens. When a proposal originally championed by Republicans, a private health insurance exchange, replaced the public option, the GOP immediately turned against their own idea and it replaced the option as the dreaded “government takeover of healthcare”. Bipartisanship? Perish the thought.

Every time, during today’s meeting, that a Republican representative cited polls showing that a majority of Americans oppose the current plan, I found myself yelling at the screen, “Of course they do, look at what you’ve been telling them all year”! The above were just a few examples. There are many more. It’s a wonder that anyone is still for it. The weakness of the GOP’s propaganda is only revealed when you poll the public on individual parts of the plan. Then you find that Americans overwhelmingly support the nuts and bolts of this package. It’s just the wrapping they’ve been poisoned against. Bipartisanship is, by definition, a two way street. If Republicans aren’t going to meet Democrats halfway, and it is crystal clear that they will not, then why should Democrats ever consider “starting over”? I have heard insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The White House and congressional Democrats have repeatedly adopted GOP amendments and proposals along this long and winding road. Each time they reached out they have had their political hands bitten off. Now we should all start over? Utter insanity!

Republicans went to great lengths today to try and paint themselves as being concerned for “ordinary Americans” and “working for the people”. A variation of an age old saying, one which a friend recently taught me, is an appropriate response to their hollow words, “Your actions are speaking so loud that I can’t hear what you’re saying”. The two chief health reform ideas Republicans have remaining, caps on lawsuits and interstate purchasing (their version), put the lie to their pretty posturing. The former would cap ALL lawsuits and not just “frivolous” ones, thus denying the rights of legitimate victims (this from the same folks who refuse to CAP the dumping of poisons in our air, water and land). The latter idea has potential in theory, provided that you have minimum federal insurance standards in place (as the Democrats’ version proposes). Why? To burden the states with a bunch of new regulations just for kicks? No. Because, without them, insurance companies would simply relocate in states which impose the least minimum insurance practices, firing the starting pistol for the “race to the bottom” in terms of industry business ethics which the president alluded to this afternoon. So much for “ordinary Americans”, unless those Americans happen to own an insurance company.

So, here we stand. It is February 26, 2010. America has been talking, and yelling, about health care reform for almost a year. Our politicians have been trying, and failing, to enact comprehensive reform for more than a half-century. For the first time in all those years, both houses of congress have passed this kind of reform. But for one up or down vote (remember that winning slogan?), a president sits in the oval office who will sign it. Meanwhile, Republicans sit on a throne made of double standards. “We did it but you just can’t” (16 times GOP majorities used reconciliation to avoid filibuster, Democrats just 6). “But this is different, health care represents 1/6 of our economy, it’s too big”. Yes, it is different. But so is using the filibuster more often than Simon Cowell gets booed on American Idol. Watching seven GOP Senators who co-sponsored a bill authorizing a bipartisan debt reduction panel turn 180 degrees and vote to filibuster the bill they helped write, simply because President Obama said he would enact it, now that’s different.

One standard must apply to all. If the Republicans can use the filibuster more than four times as frequently as any previous Senate minority, thus damaging the very institution they represent, then Democrats can circumvent their obstructionism in an equally unprecedented manner. And if you acknowledge that Republicans are doing all of this with an eye toward shoring up their political base on the far right, in hopes of massive election gains come November, then you must allow Democrats to do the one thing most likely to motivate their own base. Pass comprehensive healthcare reform through the reconciliation process. Do it now. Get it over with so that we, as a country, can finally move on, pun intended, and deal with the many other issues we still face in the aftermath of one of the most difficult decades in American history.

Paul Roth, Jr.

Can We Even Agree On This?

2010-02-22T23:06:00.000-08:00

I received an email from a local grassroots organization today. While their political roots are more liberal, they focus mainly on the effort to clean up government corruption here in New Jersey. Today's email centered on a NJ political activist and former congressional candidate (NJ-4) named Carol Gay. It seems she is proposing an idea which, it struck me, might unite both liberals and conservatives who are sick and tired of a legislative branch which operates above and beyond the very laws which it creates. While couched in the format of an ammendment to the US Constitution, a formidable undertaking to say the least, I can't help thinking that the principle behind it would be one way to promote real "bi-partisanship". The kind that takes place outside of Washington, DC. Here, then, is the idea, lifted from today's email. Perhaps not entirely new but valuable nonetheless:

"For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that Congress members could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn't pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered...in all of its' forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come."

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ".

The letter then goes on to request that readers each send to 20 new recipients (and so on...) as a means of spreading this about the country. A simple question then to those on the right and those on the left, in light of the current state of political war throughout our great land, can we even agree on this?

*** Special note to John Galt of RobbingAmerica, who proposed us sharing each others' blogs via comment to me recently. If you read this, and agree with it in principle, post this idea to your blog and see how your readers react. If you do so, I will be glad to be the strangest of political bedfellows, as they say. And thanks for the compliment. ***

Paul Roth, Jr.

A Liberal's Questions For The Tea Party Movement

2010-02-16T12:33:00.000-08:00

These are traumatic times in America. Unemployment tops 10%. Homes aren't worth what we paid for them. Personal debt (and public debt) are at record levels. Many Americans' personal savings took a dramatic hit in the last year and a half. We are still engaged in two wars and live amidst the continuing threat of terrorist attacks. The overall standard of living for the average American is not rising, as it once did, and has not risen for many years. The American dream of raising children who, if they work hard and educate themselves, will likely live a better life than we did, is dying out. Our political system, originally designed to respond to our individual voices, has instead become hijacked by special interest groups from all sides of the political equation, which use their monetary advantages to drown out our voices. All of this and much more has created an environment in this country of tremendous fear and anxiety which can sometimes border on outright panic.

In this atmosphere of dread and uncertainty, there has emerged an activist political movement which seems, for some, to offer an outlet of self-determination amidst all of the current turmoil. They call themselves "Tea Party Patriots". It is a decidedly right-wing movement. However, liberals may be wise not to simply dismiss such activists as uneducated, illiterate, racist and xenophobic conspiracy theorists. We know that nothing is ever that simple. Conversely, if Tea Partiers want to avoid being stigmatized as nothing more than "proud right-wing extremists" (as their own t-shirts signify) and get past the perception that they are nothing more than a tool of the cannibalistic conservative wing of the republican party, they are going to have to take a long, hard look in the mirror and satisfactorily answer a few tough questions.

Why now?

Government has been growing for many decades. The responsiveness of government to the average American has been declining for just as long. Debt has been piling up for even longer. More recently, the Bush administration accelerated all three of these core Tea Party complaints dramatically, turning inherited surpluses into deficits, revving up government intrusion into our private lives and creating many new bureaucracies. Yet, the Tea Party movement was not born until just weeks after a black Democrat took office as president. Why? Doesn't the timing seem more than a little suspicious? Especially when coupled with all of the aid which right-wing corporations, policy groups, talking heads and other activists funneled into the movement in it's inception. There are a lot of "grassroots" members now but the movement's origin was hardly one of spontaneous populism. Why now?

Why all of the Conspiracy Theories?

Most mature Americans realize that internet blogs are hardly a source of solid information. I, myself, don't pretend to report news here as much as express my opinions. When some extremist liberals advanced the notion that the Bush administration cooperated in the events of 9/11, all of right-wingdom derided the notion as paranoid ravings. Yet, just a few years later, many of those same people and media outlets are all too willing to promote such disprovable theories as Barack Obama not being born in this country, his being a "closet" muslim extremist and that he is preparing to enslave America to communism (even to the point of possibly setting up internment camps for the unwilling). I've even seen a discussion on an anti-Obama Facebook page about the government using the H1N1 vaccine nasal spray to implant a chip in the heads of unsuspecting Americans. This reversal of incredulousness is remarkable.

Begging the "Why Now" question again, where were the outraged right-wing cries of fascism when Bush supporters were telling us that "if you don't support the president, you're against the troops"? When government agents were infiltrating anti-war activist groups? When Sinclair Media, which owns over 20% of the nation's TV stations, forced it's on-air news personalities to inject statements supporting Bush into their broadcasts? Or when former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay crowed that he had rigged the political scales so as to guarantee Republican majorities as far as the eye could see? Yet, let one overzealous schoolteacher in New Jersey teach her pupils a song commemorating Obama's election and the entire right-wing is gearing up for civil war while images of the new president morphing into Adolf Hitler seem to pop up wherever you look. That fact-starved internet is once again fueling much of the anti-Obama, anti-Democrat paranoia. Why do so many in the Tea Party crowd seem to rely almost solely on such an untrustworthy information source?

Why no minorities?

In a recent special comment, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann noted the glaring lack of diversity among Tea Partiers. He asked if there weren't African-Americans who feel over-taxed or hispanics and asians who fear that government is too big. Olbermann's comments shed light on a larger question. Why is it even more of a challenge to find a minority face in a Tea Party crowd than it is at the Republican National Convention? I suspect that the knee-jerk defense of the movement would be that they don't discriminate or turn away anyone who supports their causes. I also suspect that this would be technically correct. The larger questions, then, become; Why do minorities not feel welcome to attend Tea Party events? Why is it such a predominantly white movement?

An opening night speech at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tn. reveals an answer to both questions. Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo used the Tea Party platform to call for the return of so-called literacy tests before Americans can register to vote. Worse, he put forth the theory that such tests would have prevented the election of Barack Obama. Since anyone who pays attention to voter demographics is aware that better educated voters sway Democratic more often, one can only conclude that Mr. Tancredo is calling for such "literacy" tests to be used again as they were in the south prior to 1964's Voting Rights Act, when they were expressly manipulated to prevent blacks from becoming enfranchised.

Given that Tancredo's remarks were enthusiastically welcomed by the crowd that night, the reason why an African-American, of any political persuasion, might feel uneasy among the Tea Party crowd becomes crystal clear. It is the movement itself, with it's virulent hatred of President Obama, militant anti-immigrant language, it's over the top stance against "multiculturalism" and it's warm embrace of a very thinly veiled racism, like that of Mr. Tancredo, which will ultimately result in a reputation for being nothing more than a haven for closeted white supremacists. Tea Partiers have no one to blame but themselves if this happens.

What is the true nature of the movement's relationship with the Republican party?

You don't have to be smarter than a 5th grader to understand that the national GOP intends to ride a wave of Tea Party activism to take over congress this November and possibly into the White House in 2012. However, you need look no further than a special congressional election in NY's 23rd district last year to identify the potential pitfalls in this strategy, both for republicans and Tea Partiers. When local republicans chose a somewhat moderate candidate in the district, the right-wing and Tea Party activists, revolted and backed the Conservative party candidate instead. When the national GOP joined in supporting the conservative, the local republican choice withdrew, frustrated, from the race and endorsed the Democrat. The result is that the 23rd district of NY is now represented by a Democrat for the first time in over a century.

The question of "who's going to use who and to what ends?" remains unanswered in this sometimes tenuous relationship. In fact, some local Tea Party chapters have already distanced themselves from their local republican establishment. Tea Partiers themselves frown upon the idea of a "from the top down" centralized movement. This will make it harder for the GOP to design the kind of national gameplan necessary to take over congress in the mid-terms. Will the Tea Party movement pull enough republican candidates so much further to the right as to open the door for more Democratic wins? Thus negating much of the GOP's expected gains? With most Tea Partiers fervently opposing the Senate re-election bid of 2008's republican presidential candidate, John McCain, the chances for a harmonious relationship seem very poor.

There are more questions which I could pose here, like, "Why so much talk about violence?", but this is a good start. Right-wing activists would undoubtedly respond to this column by insisting they don't have to answer such questions for a liberal. Fair enough. But they will have to answer them for themselves and for the future of the movement. Most political uprisings in this country ultimately fan themselves out. Angrier uprisings, like the Tea Parties, usually turn off more people than they turn on. Recent polls show that a majority of Americans who have a preference, view the Tea Party movement unfavorably. This will enable Democrats to use extremist speech, signs and incidents from Tea Party events against republican candidates this fall in much the same way that televangelists use seemingly shocking clips from Gay Pride parades to frighten and motivate their audiences against a "radical homosexual agenda". The question of the Tea Party role in politics, now and future, will not truly be answered until I can no longer reasonably pose the above questions. Only time will tell.

Fair and Balanced.....

2009-08-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

Fair and Balanced....

Barack Obama seemed to reach across the political aisle in his 2004 speech to the democratic convention. Again in his 2008 presidential campaign, he extended a hand to those who disagree with him. Throughout his career he has made a point of articulating respect for conservative views. This behavior undoubtedly won him votes in unusual places for a democrat last year but I'm not sure he gained any practical political advantage in the process. If you've seen the kind of things the right are accusing him of now, you may have reached the same conclusion.

Despite Obama's sometimes congenial tone, the divide between right and left in this country remains as wide as ever. It even seems to be widening. The healthcare reform debate has put a microscope over the situation, crystallizing just how far apart we are. The month of August, 2009 has become an angry one indeed, with people all over America screaming at each other in town hall meetings. What mature adult Americans actually believe that other Americans are trying to force upon them is unsettling, at least, and downright frightening in reality. At such a town hall "listening" (ironic word) event I met two somewhat rational looking grownups who had used an obviously dying pen to scrape something about "Obama's Death Squads" into a piece of foam board. If this is what we've come to, then where do we go from here?

For their part, the right seems to see an agenda on the left which includes slavery to pure communism, euthanasia, taking all their guns away, taxing them until they have nothing left, banishing the practice of religion and otherwise depriving them of any personal liberty. Probably surrendering to all our enemies too. They call it "evil". Knowing the left as well as I do, this seems like extreme paranoia. There are a couple of way out radicals I've met who might like one or two of these ideas but to see this as the motivation behind the entire democratic party is a stretch of monumental proportions.

Observing their paranoia, I must also assess my own beliefs about the right. I see an "evil" agenda within the GOP as well. An agenda which seeks to eliminate the constitution and institute a theocratic government based on christian fundamentalism, install a fundamental christian version of sharia law, make the government responsive only to the rich and powerful, allow large corporations to operate with no concern for individuals or public safety and return us to a socio-economic scenario not unlike the late 19th and early 20th centuries where most people work hard for next to nothing with no legal rights while a few wealthy families reap the windfall. In my more "fair and balanced" moments I have to consider the possibility that most republicans don't support this agenda either.

So, where from here? Good question. Our ever proliferating news media is not about to bridge the gap. Even as the left plays catch-up in the "opinion as news" arena, we are still only likely to believe the voices that tell us what we want to hear anyway. The internet news boom offers only more partisanship and an awful lot of disinformation to boot. I don't have the answer and I'm not altogether sure there is one. There's nothing wrong, of course, with an ongoing robust debate between right and left as to the future of America. It just seems like that debate would be more constructive if both sides saw a little less hidden agenda and trusted each other a bit more.

Four years later.....

2009-08-13T01:45:00.000-07:00

What a difference a few years can make! This blog has been dormant for a very long time. I've just now rediscovered it. I haven't been writing much in the interim and it will probably show. Reviewing the material here it strikes me that while I occasionally struck gold and even showed some prescience, for the most part I was just blowing off steam (anger at the right).

The political landscape has altered since then in ways I didn't dare dream. In '06 the democrats took back control of congress and two years later America elected an African-American president while giving him an historic legislative majority. Barack Obama redrew the electoral map in '08, increased the number of so-called "purple" states and probably solidified some new "blue" states in the process. I would be remiss here if I didn't acknowledge the inspiration and contributions to this political sea-change made by the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean. Kudos, you screamin' genius!

The radical right hasn't been this powerless in the political arena since the mid 1970's. Of course, they recovered pretty quickly back then. You might even say with a vengeance. Remember Ronnie Reagan anyone? I'm sure you do. As I write this, right wing forces are gearing up to bring down president Obama and sweep the mid-term elections much as they did to Clinton in '94. The first item on their agenda is to kill health care reform, thereby embarassing the president on one of his fondest wishes. A couple of the more honest, or foolish, republicans have actually publicly admitted to this strategy. And so, opposition to health care reform is based on political strategy, not principled disagreement. The good of the party before the good of the country. At least the republicans are consistent.

Tomorrow evening I will be attending a town hall meeting in Hackensack, NJ hosted by democratic congressman Steve Rothman. The stories of paid organizers and chanting and yelling "dittoheads" are numerous enough that I don't have to review them here. I look forward to personally shaming the right wing activists who make the unfortunate mistake of attending this meeting for the sole purpose of disruption and discord. They're in for a big surprise. I will write about it in the near future. Thanks to anyone who might accidentally read this. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Paul Roth
Hackensack, NJ
8/13/09

At long last, Forrester, have you no decency?

2005-11-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

A similar group of words to this one was once directed at the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, as he chaired Senate Committee hearings which routinely destroyed lives and reputations. Today, I am directing these words to New Jersey Republican Gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester, he richly deserves it.

In the last week, the Forrester campaign has begun broadcasting an ad which features his wife saying, "Doug never let his family down and he won't let New Jersey down either". It sounds harmless enough until you understand that the underlying message here refers to his opponent, Democratic US Senator Jon Corzine, and his divorced marital status. Forrester is not only so pathetic as to stoop this low but he is also cowardly enough to put these words into the mouth of his own wife, rather than do it himself.

Worsening this sick controversy was a comment later made by Sen. Corzine's ex-wife to the New York Times in which she essentially stated that she had seen the commercial and yes, in fact, she believed Corzine would let New Jersey down, just as he had her. Although Corzine's ex-wife is certainly entitled to her opinion and divorces aren't always congenial, the political overtone within her comment sounds awfully fishy. The entire chain of events literally stinks of a far, far too convenient coincidence.

With less than a week until the election, Forrester has found himself trailing badly in the polls. If nothing were to shake up the race dramatically, and soon, he would lose his second statewide election in less than four years and his career in Garden State politics would probably be over. Is Doug Forrester willing to exploit not only his opponent's divorce and his own wife, but also engage Corzine's bitter ex-wife in a last chance effort to save his career? I hope not. As I said before, though, the whole thing seems just a little too convenient, for Doug Forrester anyway.

On Primary day back in June, I happened to meet a Forrester volunteer who was out putting up lawn signs on public property. When I told her that I thought her guy was going to win that evening but would have little chance against Corzine, she immediately fired back that they had plenty of "dirt" on Corzine and they were going to "get him". Little wonder then that this has become the entire theme of the Forrester campaign. As far as I'm concerned, any New Jersey voter who walks into a polling place next Tuesday intending to pull the lever for Mr. Forrester, will have to check their humanity at the door first.

Paul Roth, Jr.

Wanna be Vice President? Send resumes now.

2005-10-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

For over two years I have been telling my friends that, if George W. Bush won re-election in 2004 (at that time), Dick Cheney would never serve out the full second term as Vice President. Why not? Because it doesn't benefit the Republicans politically and that's all that matters in this White House. Were Cheney to remain, as someone who obviously will not seek the White House himself in 2008, it would force every prospective GOP candidate to begin running for president from scratch and without a national stage.

Today we find out from the New York Times that soon to be indicted Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, actually learned the identity of a covert CIA agent from his boss over a month before her identity ever became public. This is the proverbial "other shoe" I have been waiting to see "drop". This according to Libby's own notes, which are now in the possession of the Prosecutor. Of course, this does not amount to a crime by itself. However, it does mean two very important things. The first is that it indicates that the prosecutor probably intends to go after Libby for Perjury and possibly Obstruction. Libby testified to the prosecutor that he first learned Valerie Plame's identity from a journalist.

The second important thing this new information establishes is the level of desire on the part of this administration to attack anyone who criticized its Iraq policy. It shows that the highest level people in the White House were exploring how to discredit and possibly intimidate former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's Husband and an Iraq War critic, even before he wrote his New York Times editorial column entitled, "What I didn't find in Africa". This White House is surpassing even the Nixon administration in terms of how it deals with political opponents.

This revelation also constitutes an opportunity for the administration. Although Cheney will most likely not be indicted in the matter, Bush did say early on that he would fire "anyone involved" in the leak case. Though he has since flip-flopped on this and changed it to "anyone convicted of a crime". Once indictments are handed down, by the end of this week, this will become the hottest political story in America. The level to which Cheney's name will now be directly involved in this scandal, on a daily basis, will be the perfect opportunity for him to step down gracefully, possibly citing his well known health problems.This would allow Bush to choose the individual he most wants to replace him in the Oval Office in January 2009. With the White House in complete turmoil and his job approval numbers plummeting, a fresh start and chance to leave his mark in the Oval Office should be very appealing to Bush.

Now we can get on with the specualation. Just who will Bush pick? Right now, if I had to guess, I would narrow it down to Virginia's George Allen or Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, both of whom appear to be running for the office already. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, also eyeing the job, has opposed the president's stubborness on Stem Cell research. This will probably kill him with the Christian fundamentalists, a necessary constituency in order to win the Republican nomination. Sen. John McCain has been critical of Bush in the past and also could never garner the religious right's support.

In the post Harriet Miers era,the Supreme Court nominee will likely withdraw herself before she ever gets to the confirmation hearings, Bush will have to be very careful on the "Crony" issue. This all but eliminates speculations about Condoleezza Rice, Bush's brother Jeb from Florida or any one of a number of surprise possibilities within the administration. Dark horses would probably be Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas or Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, both of whom would be very acceptable to the president's born again Christian base, as Miers was not. Any one of a number of Republican Governors could also qualify as a dark horse candidate as well, perhaps from a key electoral state?

No matter who ends up occupying the VP position, Mr. Cheney will not simply disappear. He will still be very active in the administration and its policy making, in an unofficial capacity though. Just remember that I said this now and remember my most likely picks. I've been saying this privately for a long time, as my friends can attest. I'm going to look like a genius!

Paul Roth, Jr.

A New Letter to the Editor

2005-10-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

The following letter was printed today in the Record newspaper. However, it was edited. This is my unedited version:

In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, President Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith and worship… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion… thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” Our Congressman disagrees. Well, Scott Garrett, you’re no Tom Jefferson.

Rep.Garrett claims that acceptance of the Intelligent Design theory is “growing in scientific communities and academia.” This is an outright lie. ID has gained acceptance only among the right wing religious zealots in America who cannot stand our constitutional separation of church and state. A theory must offer evidence to be considered acceptable. ID offers none. ID is a matter of faith and as Jefferson pointed out, matters of faith are best left to the individual, the family and the church, not the government. Do you want your school board making decisions affecting your child’s religious beliefs?

Due to my work last year, I had to learn a great deal more about Scott Garrett than most of his constituents know. I know him to be a right wing “Christian” who prefers moving toward Theocratic government. I strongly suggest that the 58% of my neighbors who voted for Garrett last fall do some more research on him. You’ll be shocked by what you find.

Yet another good letter which the North Jersey Media Group has ignored

2005-09-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

Garrett Must Go

Regarding Mr. Fallon’s Sept. 10th article on Scott Garrett http://http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2NzY2NzIw; Congressman Garrett is one of the most radical right-wingers in the US Congress. Garrett is only a fiscal conservative when it comes to matters of human need, as you rightly pointed out. When it comes to war spending and tax cuts for the super wealthy he is as liberal as the day is long. He has approved over One Trillion Dollars in deficit spending in just three years.

He is part of a far right-wing ideological movement in this country which, while winning elections, has proven itself incapable of running our government in either foreign or domestic matters. When ideology matters more than results, America is heading in the wrong direction.

Garrett is a darling of the radical right-wing Christian crazies such as Robertson, Falwell and Schlaffly. He receives large contributions from Schlaffly’s Eagle Forum, the ultra-conservative “Club for Growth” and various militant anti-abortion groups. When Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker recently commented on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina by saying, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did”, believe that he was echoing Garrett’s feelings on an issue like public housing. Garrett, though, is too savvy to say that kind of thing out loud. He also sports the worst environmental voting record of any politician in American history!

Whether in the Republican primary or in next November’s Mid-Term Election, we’ll have the opportunity to rid ourselves of Garrett’s radical brand of representation and replace him with a moderate who shares our values and our desire for results, not hard line ideology.

Paul Roth, Jr.
River Edge, NJ

A Failed President and a Failed Movement

2005-08-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

This is less a column and more of a symbolic funeral. It is a funeral for the failed right wing movement and their failed President. That is not to say that the right wing movement has not been successful. They have taken over the courts, the news media, dominated the White House and for the last twelve years they have held control of the Congress. All of these, though, are only political successes. At the same time they have, at every turn, proved themselves completely incapable of governing this country and especially running it's foreign policy.

The current Presidential approval rating of 36%, according to a recent American Research Group poll, when combined with an even lower national approval of Congress, shows that Americans now see just how far out of the mainstream the Republican leadership of this country is. They also see very clearly that they have been lied to repeatedly when it comes to the most crucial issues we face.

In 2008, Republicans will have run our federal government for twenty of the last twenty-eight years and twenty-eight of the last forty. They have stacked our courts with right wingers, cut taxes for the wealthiest while raising the burden for the rest of us, limited free speech, broken down the separation of church and state, built up mountains of deficit spending which we may never get out from under and run militaristic foreign policies which first support such enemies as Saddam Hussein and later used him as a scapegoat for further war.

Their 1980's Middle East policy was disgraceful. First they cut and ran when attacked in Lebanon. Then they played both sides of the fence illegally in the Iraq/Iran war. Meanwhile they literally created Osama Bin Ladin by funding his Pan-Islamic movement's war in Afghanistan. Bin Ladin proved to himself that he could bring a superpower to it's knees and now he wants to do it again, to America.

On the domestic front they have fared no better. While the economy performed well for a few years in the 80's, the real deficit spending also began. As the 80's turned into the 90's, the economy again suffered and the deficits spun out of control. When a Democrat entered the White House in 1993, he inherited a domestic mess so severe that most wondered if he could make any real difference. Eight years later, when he left office, our budgets were in surplus, our economy had grown more than in any modern period, small businesses were booming all over America, fewer people went without health care, a more comfortable middle class was growing for the first time in four decades, we were largely at peace throughout the world and more Americans were optimistic about the new century than ever before. In 2001, however, the movement right wing took complete control of the federal government for the first time.

This indeed marked the first time that the ideological right wing "movement" conservatives really held all the cards. Many prior Republican leaders had been of the older guard and less gung ho about the radical right wing. The GOP was now the party of DeLay, Brownback, Santorum, Frist and George W. Bush and they held all the power. Foreign policy would be in the hands of global military dominationists from the Project for The New American Century, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle and Bolton, who all came to their new jobs foaming at the mouth to re-invade Iraq. America would clearly not be at peace much longer.

The glaring ommision in the new national security/defense strategy? No priority given to global terrorism whatsoever. So when global terrorism found us on 9/11/01, it simply became time to blame the Democrat who had left office eight months earlier and whose administration had prevented several attacks on our shores during the late 90's AND first made Osama Bin Ladin a wanted man internationally.

9/11 also gave the failed movementeers an opportunity to justify the Iraqi invasion they had so desperately craved during those eight long years out of power. There were just two obstacles. The first was the clear evidence that Osama Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda were responsible for 9/11 and that they were being sheltered by the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Which meant that a half-hearted military operation in that country must supercede Iraqi invasion in order to maintain public credibility. The second and bigger obstacle was the truth. The truth was that although Saddam Hussein had been a terrible tyrant, he had been largely under our control since the first Gulf War (as both Condoleeza Rice and former Secretary of State Colin Powell had publicly stated in 2001), that there was only questionable evidence of Iraqi WMD programs at best and that Hussein's government had no links to Al-Qaeda.

The solution for the second obstacle was the biggest and most dishonest public relations campaign in American history. In September 2002, our failed movement President, his failed cabinet and the right wing media began an incredible PR push to link Iraq with 9/11 where there was no evidence, convince Americans that Saddam was resisting inspections and paint Iraq as a nation on the verge of selling nuclear and biological weapons to terrorists. At one point, one could actually watch the failed ideological movement President on TV saying that Saddam would not let inspectors do their job and split screen live footage of Saddam's Al-Samuud missiles being destroyed by those very inspectors. As they say, "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it". The problem is that we wanted to believe it. Americans had hated Hussein for over a decade. It was an easy message to digest. It was also, unfortunately, a pack of lies. War based on lies is never "a noble cause".

The end results of the Iraqi invasion have acted as the smell of fresh brewed coffee and sound of sizzling bacon Americans needed to wake them from their dreamlike trance. We now see an Iraq on the verge of two outcomes, civil war, an Islamic state or both. Civil war would keep our military mired there in a hornet's nest worse than the one which already exists. A Shiite dominated Islamic state would naturally align itself with the Shiite dominated Iran and create a far more formidable enemy than Saddam Hussein ever was. An Islamic state in Iraq would also continue to be the kind of breeding and training ground for anti-American terrorists it has now become. All of these outcomes share one common idea, they couldn't be more beautiful to Osama Bin Ladin and the leaders of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The failed movement President and his failed neocon ideological foreign policy team have handed Bin Ladin his greatest wish, another Islamic state in the Middle East and one that will soon align with other terrorist sponsors. America's enemy number one couldn't possibly be any more pleased. For this our sons and daughters have died in the desert. Unlike in the Vietnam era, however, the troops are not being held to blame or hated, even by the most vocal opponents of the Iraq war. That awful experience has shown Americans that our soldiers simply do the job which they are sent to do. They are surely not to blame. Instead it is the leaders who send them so eagerly who must answer for their actions. This is truly a failed President, a failed foreign policy team, a failure in the war against terrorism and a tragic blow to America's standing in the world. A failed right wing movement indeed.

On the domestic side the failed right wing movement again did what they always do, thay cut taxes on wealth while turning a blind eye toward the working poor, lower and middle classes. This did not work because it never works. Unless the American economy is broadening as it grows it will always be doomed to sluggish behavior at best. Unless more and more people are contributing to our economic growth the economy is not truly expanding, money is simply shifting upward to those who already have lots of it. This is exactly the kind of economy the failed movement right wingers want anyway. So they are perfectly happy with it. The rest of us must tread water in an economic riptide which will eventually pull us under.

Trillions in tax cuts for the wealthiest have had yet another bad effect for America. They have ripped a gaping hole in our once desirable budget situation. We have slid from a $250 Billion budget surplus back into the black hole of $500 Billion deficits in just a few years time. Our total debt now nears $9 Trillion. No, 9/11 and the Iraq war are not the chief causes, although they haven't helped any. Five million more Americans have no health insurance in the last few years. More abortions have been performed in this country every year under our failed movement President and failed Congress. Every year under the Democrat, the number declined. The failed movement President's education programs still remain unfunded which sends property taxes up. Meanwhile too many of our children are still not receiving the best education possible. The failed movement President's energy policy has offered Americans only unconstitutional secrecy, rolling blackouts, higher bills, tax cuts for already massively profitable corporations (more than 60% of which pay zero income taxes, driving our taxes higher) and $3.00 plus prices for a gallon of gas. Those gas prices now threaten to jolt our economy back into recession in the near future.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich told America that if we gave his party control of the Congress they would enact sweeping changes which would restore our government's openness and make us proud of the institution once again. Twelve years later, what we have instead is the most corrupt US House in modern history. It is a bizarre story with all the aspects of the allegorical "Animal Farm". Yes, the pigs have indeed become the men, only far, far worse.

K Street lobbyists pour in and out of Congress at an historic rate. Corporations pony up for legislation under failed and corrupt Majority Leader DeLay as though they were customers at a Deli counter. Ethics rules are a thing of the past as the movement leadership has tied up the Committee meant to oversee such matters. The voices of the Minority are regularly silenced as are any ammendments they offer. Voice votes which clearly favor a Minority position are ruled as being the opposite. Process is often used as a weapon to keep the Minority from influencing or even understanding the legislation which they are voting on.

Laws which are unconstitutional regularly pass this failed movement US House, in Bill form, until perhaps the courts finds them to be such a violation. Even worse, this failed movement Congress shows no desire to fill it's constitutional role as a check upon our failed movement President's administration. Meanwhile the failed movement Congress does everything it can to undermine the power of the judicial branch, which is not ideologically "movement" enough for them.

Our government is now the most secretive government in American history. The ordinary American no longer has any voice, not when an ideological movement is at work. The recent Terri Schiavo affair proved to this country that the failed movement Congress is only interested in pleasing their political base and advancing their narrow agenda, not in representing all of the people as our founders intended.

In a recent poll, just 19% of Americans said that this failed movement Congress shares their agenda and is pursuing the right path for this country. This number speaks volumes about the failure of the right wing movement. As does our failed movement President's 36% approval rating. Further proof of the death of the right wing movement comes from the right wing itself. When such a well-heeled and dedicated right winger as Pat Buchanan is writing books with titles like "How the Right Went Wrong" and moderate Republicans such as our former Governor and Bush EPA Head Christie Todd Whitman pen tomes entitled "It's My Party Too", you know there's trouble in the right wing ideological paradise. It literally stinks of failure. As elected Republicans around the country rapidly jump off the Social Security and Iraq war bandwagons, Democrats are showing signs of pulling together in order to offer the American people a real and lasting alternative to the movement right wing's ideological fanaticism.

The Democrats have a tremendous opportunity in 2006 and 2008. The failed right wing movement and it's failed President have indeed failed miserably to deliver on any promise or "contract" it has made with the American people. It is not just a political opportunity, however, but also a tremendous responsibility. Americans do not want an ideological left wing movement to replace the failed ideological right wing one. America needs instead to protect it's democracy, to expand and not retract civil rights, to protect it's homeland and make the world a safer place. We need all of this and more while growing our economy and making the American dream available to more Americans all the time. A Democrat, against heavy odds, acheived these lofty goals not too long ago. The failed right wing movement and our failed movement President have failed miserably on every single count. A failure as President and a failure of radical right wing ideology.

Real governance means allowing and not stifling opposition, not calling it treason. Real governance means open government that seeks to represent all Americans, not just a radical few. Real governance also means a President who will listen not only to those who agree with him but more importantly to those who don't, because they are Americans too. Real governance ultimately means that the President, Senators and Representatives all must answer to the people for the actions they take, especially in time of war and never just on Election Day. If Democrats can succeed not only politically but more importantly in governance itself, where the ideological right wing has so badly failed, then the new century may yet hold the shining future for which we all hope.

The Failed Ideological Right Wing Movement is Dead, Long Live America.

The Bush Disconnect? You'd better believe it!

2005-08-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

What's the latest from that radical left-wing media? This week they're trumpeting the latest Bush White House talking point, which is, "There's a Bush disconnect because despite the wonderful economy we're enjoying, Bush isn't getting credit for it in the polls". Wow, they're really getting tough with this President, huh?

No, while there is a definite Bush disconnect, it definitely ain't that. The Bush disconnect is, in fact, a clear and visible disconnect from the truth. George W. Bush has suffered from this problem all of his life. At long last most Americans are catching on. I knew this ten years ago. As Bush began to position himself for the 2000 Republican Presidential nomination, I watched in disbelief. Anyone who knew a little bit about the Bush family, knew that George W. was the least of the "shrubs" (as Texas columnist Molly Ivins refers to the Bush children).

This was a man who spent the first forty years of his life tearing down every advantage into which he was born. Drinking, fighting, drug abuse and selfish arrogance were all he could make out of his priviliged life. Though he cleaned up his personal life to an extent, his professional life was simply atrocious. Born into tremendous money, he squandered millions on phony speculation and sank more into bad ideas. His only business "success", if you can call it that, was to buy a tiny percentage of the Texas Rangers (as the public face of a large consortium), build up the team's worth by blackmailing the city of Arlington, Texas into building a new, luxury stadium, selling out his shares to the tune of a 3200% profit, all with an eye toward public relations and running for political office.

As Governor of Texas, Bush did less than nothing. He did harm, just as he has done to America. In 2000, Bush ran for President by touting intitiatives which he not only didn't create but he had actually vetoed when they came from the state legislature. After the legislature overturned his vetoes, I guess he figured he may as well take all the credit. Worse yet, Bush "wrote" (if the man doesn't read books then he surely doesn't write books) an autobiography during the campaign entitled "A Charge to Keep". Any knowledgeable person who has read that book knows that it is a bigger work of fiction than any Anne Rice novel or the latest Harry Potter story. The only reliable information in that book may well be that:

A. His name is George
B. He has a wife named Laura
C. They have twins

After those factual tidbits, you'd better be on your guard, you're being propagandized. Bush took office in 2001 telling Americans things like, "I'm a uniter not a divider" and "by far the majority of my tax cuts go to those at the bottom". His early political agenda, his cabinet appointments and the fiscal reality of those tax cuts, proved him to be a liar but the "liberal" media said nothing. Remember, though, that most of the national media heavyweights live in Bush's economy, not in the real one. In Bush's economy, you could call it The Beltway Economy, "those at the bottom" means anyone making between $100,000 and $250,000 per year. They have more limited stock portfolios than Bush's buddies and they may not have a Summer home anywhere fashionable yet.

In the real America, the one that more than 90% of us live in, people are working harder and for more hours, at worse paying jobs, with less benefits, spending less time with their children and facing a less secure future. We don't have a stock portfolio at all. Some of us may have dabbled a little bit in the market but we can't afford anything more. We don't own a home and we're not too sure how we're going to make it through this life. When Bill Clinton was President, life was getting a little bit better for us. Since Bush, we're right back where we were before, only worse now.

Bush lied us into war. Pure and simple. All the evidence is there for anyone who is able and willing to face the truth. Look back to the Project for a New American Century and the agenda with which Bush's entire foreign policy team took office. Look at the Downing Street minutes, they tell the full story more than a year before war in Iraq began. Look with your own eyes as the justification for attacking Iraq changes every six months depending on the effectiveness of the current sales pitch. The entire argument does not need to be repeated here. It's already been well documented. Gradually the American people have grasped this reality as their President continues to waffle and waver on reasons why we attacked a largely unarmed country and questions about the administration's poor strategy repeatedly go unanswered.

If just once in the last two years Bush had stood humbly before the nation and told us that, in fact, he had been mistaken about Iraq but that he had been convinced from the beginning that it was necessary (true or not), that he was heartily sorry for the loss of life and that we now owe it to the Iraqi people to stay until they can properly keep their nation together, he might have recaptured a skeptical public. Now it is too late. America has written off Bush. For too long he has spoken to them in slogans and with a defensive arrogance that infuriates them. They have now seen too clearly that the evidence in front of their own eyes is completely opposite what their President and his administration are telling them daily.

When Bill Clinton was caught lying to the American people about his private life, he went before the nation on prime time television and admitted his faults and told them that he was sorry. Clinton is still more popular than Bush has ever been. This lesson has been lost on Bush. He just does not have the personal confidence necessary to make such a humbling statement. He protects himself instead with a false arrogance which only masks a complete lack of character. His inability to acknowledge reality and deal with it has been his biggest undoing. All his life it has been his worst character flaw. He has never in his life had to take responsibility for his mistakes, he always had a free pass because of his last name. From drunk driving to business failure to a failing foreign policy, it's all the same to Bush. No responsibility, unless something ever goes right. Then it's all trumpets and mountaintops.

So yes, there is a very real Bush disconnect. Whether it is the mythology of an ineffective and foolishly prosecuted war against terrorism, the fairytale of a strong and vibrant economy or the ridiculousness of the "plain, average joe, guy you'd like to have a beer with" President. Bush's wife recently and unwittingly exposed the lie to that last part. While publicly kidding her husband at a function, Laura Bush referred to her husband's "ranching experience" by reminding the audience that Andover Prep and Yale don't exactly offer the finest "brush clearing" programs.

Finally, the Bush disconnect will be lasting and complete. Americans, thankfully, now understand that the President is lying nearly every time he opens his mouth. I'm so thrilled that all of you have caught up with me at last. Before 2000, I told many, many people that if Bush became President he would prove to be the worst President in the history of our country. Damned if I wasn't right. Sorry but I told ya' so.

Jesus '08

2005-08-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

Jesus/Santorum - Jesus/Frist - Jesus/J. Bush, does it really matter anyway?

OK, so now we've started looking for the perfect Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates for 2008. Well, the Democrats do have Hillary Clinton, maybe. If not, then perhaps Joe Biden? * Gulp*

What about the Republicans? We should really start calling them what they actually are, anyway. The Inquisicans. They are looking for a perfect candidate for '08 and yet they keep coming up a little short. Bill Frist looked good for a while but then he decided to support Stem Cell research. Well, that just won't do. Jeb Bush showed some promise at first but then he didn't order the Florida State Police to shoot any hospice worker or judge who showed an aversion to keeping the lifeless alive. Plus, he's a Catholic and you know how they are!

True believers like Santorum, DeLay or Brownback may look good now but DeLay may well be in prison by '08 and neither Santorum nor Brownback look really impressive enough in the long white robe, long hair and beard. So I say how about it? Let's just go all the way this time and encourage the GOP to nominate the guy they really want after all. Why not? *Jesus '08*. Heck, you don't even need a Vice-President, after all, even if the big guy should happen to kick off he doesn't tend to stay dead very long anyway, right? Just imagine if we didn't need Dick Cheney, for example? Well, it's really the other guy who's actually unnecessary, I know, but.....just think, President Jesus.

For nearly forty years a cult movement has been gripping this country in it's vice. Like any other movement, it started slowly, at first, and was roundly ridiculed. Remember those bumper stickers which read, "The Moral Majority is Neither". I do. You don't see them too much anymore. They've been replaced by stickers like this gem I saw the other day, "A real Catholic cannot be Pro-Abortion". It was affixed securely to the back of a big ugly SUV, right above a Bush/Cheney '04 sticker. Yes, they've even begun recruiting Catholics based on abortion and gay rights issues. As if it's just fine for American Catholics to support a war that Pope John Paul II publicly called immoral and unnecessary. Where was that bumper sticker I wonder? They've seduced many Jews as well. How? By using their hatred of terrorists, of course. Because, you know, Democrats love the terrorists. Oh, the times they are a changin', indeed.

Persistently, "born-again" Christian activists have been taking up positions in the GOP. At the federal, state and local levels, these activists have spent many years learning how to organize, finance and coordinate political campaigns. Staffers regularly jump back and forth between state anti-abortion organizations and their local Republican party chapters. As the number of born agains in America has swelled into the millions they too have become the majority of "foot soldier" volunteers working on Republican campaigns.

Their churches often literally become campaign headquarters. It can now safely be said that no candidate for President with an (R) after their name can win nomination from the party without their complete support. If one ever should somehow, they would be resoundingly defeated by their Democratic opponent, as Christian conservatives stayed home. Anyone remember George H. W. Bush or Bob Dole?

Four decades ago these people entered a party which was mainly interested in conservative, pro-business policies, lower taxes and smaller government. They've injected a new aspect which now completely dominates the party, as their numbers grow from within it, "moral conservatism" is it's current public label.

Moral conservatism to the "moral" conservative means two parent households only (male and female that is), Christian law, a complete lack of tolerance for any deviation from "normal" behaviour and a healthy respect for human life (at least up until birth, apparently). How conservative Christian leaders and Republican politicians have managed to mingle traditional conservatism with Christian conservatism and hold the party together for so long has been a modern marvel and perhaps the eigth man-made wonder of the world. The marriage of these two entirely opposite principles may not exactly be a gay marriage but it sure as hell ain't a straight one either.

Two words have helped greatly in this political miracle, one is Socialism, the other, Communism. You see, now that the Cold War is over, liberals had to become the new enemy. I know, I know, terrorists too but let's stick to one issue right now. Besides, terrorists are an actual enemy. Not an imagined one, like liberals, who, as we've already recognized, are also with the terrorists anyway. If you've ever wondered why all these neocon talking heads have taken to calling libs or dems "communists" over the last ten years, now you know. Because it works really well. It keeps traditional conservatives all whipped up and it gives Christian conservatives nightmares about Godlessness. The fact that we have recently seen so many elected Republicans calling Democrats "Godless" is simply a panicked reaction to their dwindling poll numbers. It's a preview for 2006. Believe me, the 2006 House and Senate races will be all about God, Jesus and the bible, at least on the Republican side. They have absolutely nothing else left to run on.

So why not simply run Jesus as a candidate? I understand that he's not physically available right now, you know, right hand of the father and all that, but these radical conservative christian zealots believe that he's coming back very soon. Why not by the Summer of '08? It's worth a shot, no?

I have some bad news for every Republican I've met here in New Jersey (as in, civilization) who has told me, with great certainty (and some arrogance), that their 2008 Presidential nominee will be either:

That "moderate" Senator from Arizona, you know him South Carolina, who is certifiably insane, went over to the enemy after 6 years in prison camp, has a drug addict wife and an illegitimate black child.

or

The Governor of Massachussetts (they hated the Senator, you know) whose religion is considered blaspemy by the zealots.

or

The Governor of New York who is Pro-Choice on abortion.

or

The former Mayor of New York City who is ethnically Italian, Catholic, also Pro-Choice on abortion and had his mistress share his wife's bed while she was out of town.

I think not, rational Repubs (the few, the proud). No, instead, your party's nominee will likely be someone from below the old mason-dixon line, who looks like Jimmy Swaggart and sounds a lot like Cooter from the old "Dukes of Hazzard" TV series. Am I the only one that's sick to death of listening to Presidents drawl at me? (yes, even him too)

Wouldn't Jesus be a better pick? Come on, let's imagine for a minute:

**** WARNING **** Any humor remaining in this column may require actual familiarity with the Bible's New Testament **** (this will leave out most conservatives)

It's January 20, 2009. President Jesus stands at the Inaugural podium. He's just been sworn in by the US Supreme Court's new Chief Justice, Randall Terry. In November he defeated Hillary Clinton by the greatest landslide in American history. In fact, Clinton received only a single vote nationwide, her own. Yep, even Bill voted for the other guy. How could you vote against Jesus? What, an effective negative ad campaign did him in? I don't think so.

Christ looks down as the new First Lady, Mary Magdalene ( YES platonically, relax!), stoops to annoint his feet with tears. Near him is the new Ambassador to the United Nations, Paul (you know, Saul). He has John Bolton in a rather nasty headlock. Next to Paul (Saul) is the new Secretary of Defense, a lone white dove, flapping it's wings as it begins to ascend skyward.

Jesus approaches the microphone as the crowd hushes in anticipation, "All that I ask of you, America," the saviour begins, "Is that you follow the example I left you by my apostles, my teaching and my love." As the Lord further explains what this means, the conservatives seated right up front begin looking around in confusion. They realize, with great shock and horror, that God's only son is telling them to sell all of their wordly possessions and give their wealth to Simon Peter, Secretary of Re-Distribution, a new cabinet level post created by Jesus, who will apportion it to all the desperately needy of the world.

Now the conservatives begin to recognize the predicament of John Bolton. "Why would Paul treat one of the true faithful in such a way," they ask? At this, the earth begins to open and fire shoots from it's cracks. Suddenly Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell, Randall Terry, Tim LaHaye, Jimmy Swaggart, Benny Hinn, Phyllis Schlaffly and many more, along with several Catholic Bishops and Osama Bin Ladin cry out in mortal pain as their bodies are hurled into the fiery pit by unseen forces. This sends the conservative Christians into hysterics. They cry out, "Lord Jesus, why are you doing this to our leaders. Didn't they bring us to you"? Christ answers, "Did I not warn you that near the end there would be those who would come among you and pervert my teachings? That these were strangers to me and my father? Did you not hear with your own ears what blaspemy they told to you"?

With these words the conservative Christians fall into the pit as well, doomed to fry for all eternity on an enormous burning pile of sixty million copies of the "Left Behind" book series. Jesus turns to Dick Cheney and the outgoing Bush cabinet next. With a flick of his finger, they are all gone into the fire as well. The former Vice-President will spend eternity trying in vain to cash cancelled Halliburton dividend checks!

Nearby where Cheney had been seated, George W. Bush, ever alert and at the ready, begins to suspect that maybe something might be wrong. The Lord turns to him finally and says,"And you", Bush interrupts," h-h-h-hey now, Jesus, what's all this. Didn't I serve you well. D-Didn't you tell me twenty years ago that you were calling me to be President"?

With a look of pure pity on his face, Jesus answers," No George. I bore you into one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in all creation. This good fortune you squandered for forty years on every last wordly desire you could find. When you were called to a war that you said you supported, you used your family to keep you safe from the fighting. The man who went in your place has been with my father and I for many years now. Then, you called my name one night and asked me to cure you of drink and save your marriage. These things I willingly gave you and you turned from me again.

First you cheated millions and broke the law in order to make more wealth. Then you, again motivated by greed, condemned the property of thousands and blackmailed the people who I told you were my brothers into building a baseball stadium for you. A baseball stadium, George! Then you entered politics. You bore horrible false witness against everyone you ran against and encouraged others to do the same. You became President, the most powerful leader in this world and you used that power to enrich your friends, slaughter thousands of people who never attacked you and torture thousands more, some were completely innocent, George. Did you know that or did you know that a couple of those you put to death in Texas were innocent as well?

Bush is trembling with terror now. Jesus continues, "Now you stand before me and you ask me, "Didn't I serve you, Lord"? "No, George, that wasn't me you were serving and it wasn't me who called you to be President, either," the Lord finished as he glanced down into the fiery abyss. The reference, unfortunately, was lost on Bush. But not what happened next. Jesus showed Bush the face of every innocent Iraqi civilian, as they died horribly, bombs dropping upon them. Then he cast the ex-President into the pit with all the others where he found himself chained to a horned Karl Rove, who poked him with a pitchfork for all eternity for nicknaming him "turd-blossom".

Then Jesus began ascending once again toward Heaven. Following him were all the good people of the Earth. Some were Jewish, some Christian, some Catholic, some muslim. In fact, all faiths seemed to be among them. These people had lived their lives as Jesus had asked. The fact that they had not professed, "I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour" hadn't been so important to Christ after all. He'd just never had that big of an ego. Yes, some were good, honest Republicans and many were also good, honest Democrats and even Liberals. After all, what most Liberals had really wanted was to leave America and the world as better places than they had found them. AMEN.

Bring me the head of Karl Rove...and while you're at it, Robert Novak too!

2005-07-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

"Treason doth not prosper. Why not? Well, if it prospers, then none dare call it treason." -Kevin Costner in the motion picture "JFK"

Few truer statements have ever been made.

I have watched the "mainstream media" over the last two weeks with a mixed reaction of shock and horror (not to be confused with "shock and awe"). I have seen reporters and TV talking heads rave endlessly about the right of a journalist to protect their anonymous sources. I have also seen them wail and gnash their teeth about how revealing this source would "have a chilling effect on potential future government whistleblowers". Most have actually compared this situation with Watergate..("What if Deep Throat had been betrayed by Woodward?").

Excuse me, did I hear them right? Did they actually compare someone who told the truth against an administration that attempted to shut down whole branches of government that were investigating them, considered murdering journalists who were too tough and used covert, black ops style espionage against their loyal opposition WITH SOMEONE IN A CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION who used the identity of a covert CIA Agent, charged with protecting America from WMD's, to punish a real "whistleblower" who told the truth about us being led into war by lies. In the process, the leaker put many lives at risk, including the agent herself, and damaged our efforts in the war against terrorism. We know that the administration has paid reporters millions to state it's case on issues before. I wonder how much they paid out for this bizarre little spin fest.

Now it turns out that the leaker was, in fact, Karl Rove. The President's closest advisor. What an incredible shock, huh? What is really at stake here is the future of American politics. If Rove and Novak (who is the only individual who went ahead and printed the info given to him) actually get away with this kind of crime against America, then all future bets are off. Anything can now be acceptable in our politics if even treason goes unpunished.

As for the Democrats, they are once again failing to be nearly tough enough. They are calling on Bush to fire Rove immediately. Wow, so a President who never has to run for office again loses his big political advisor, ooooh, chilling. No. They should instead be pressuring the special prosecutor to extend his investigation into the area of full-blown treason against the US government. A crime punishable by death.

The Republicans, on the other hand, have all received the White House's talking points for this issue. Probably written by Rove himself. They say, 1. "Rove did not know he was doing something illegal", 2. "Wilson lied by saying that the Vice-President's office requested him to take the trip, it was his wife instead that sent him" and 3. "Rove was actually protecting a reporter from getting a "wrong story". Once again, their bullshit is so deep that you can barely see over it, but let's try anyway:

1. The odds that Rove didn't know the name of Valerie Plame or that she was covert are almost impossible. A. He attends the same church in D.C. as Wilson and Plame. B. Any source by which he obtained the info would certainly have included her CIA status.

2. Joe Wilson never said that the Vice-President's office specifically asked him to go to Niger, they are dishonestly putting words in his mouth. Wilson actually said that the VP's office requested that the CIA send someone on this trip and that his wife recommended him. This is completely true. Also, his wife did not hold a Director's position with the agency that would have given her the authority to "send" her husband. She merely recommended him and someone else made the final decision.

3. All one needs do to debunk this whopper is take a brief glance at Karl Rove's personal history. Rove has never, ever done anything in his life to protect a reporter. In fact, quite the opposite. Rove is the new king of "dirty trick politics" since Lee Atwater thankfully died and Roger Ailes left for the greener pastures of the Fox News Channel. He specializes in destroying opposition. During his very first campaign, he printed and distributed leaflets to hookers, homeless people and drunks in local bars inviting the folks to attend a drinking and sex party at the opponent's campaign headquarters. This was a frat boy prank compared to more recent actions.

The "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" campaign against John Kerry had Rove's grubby little fingerprints all over it. As did reports, in the first days of the Bush White House, that outgoing Clinton staffers had defiled the West Wing with garbage, feces and so called "Porn Bombs", whatever that is. Both of these smear campaigns turned out to be totally false but that doesn't matter to Rove. It's all about winning for him. Every time in the last four years that you've seen a Bush detractor or former Bush official out spilling their guts and they get vilified by the right wing media, you are watching Rove's handiwork in action.

According to published reports, Rove was also the first individual in the White House to voice the point of view that 9/11 was less a national tragedy and more a political opportunity for Republicans. From the blaming of 9/11 on Clinton to the abhorrent 2002 election strategies to the locating of the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City, the least appropriate place on earth to hold a Republican anything, in order to capitalize on 9/11 imagery and emotion. So what on earth would make us think that Rove was a choirboy in the Plame outing affair? Nothing. The mere suggestion is downright laughable.

As for Robert "The Dark Prince" Novak (his own colleagues actually named him that, not me), the case is much more simple. When presented with the Plame information, whether by Rove or another nefarious character, Novak called the CIA and asked for advice. He was bluntly told not to print this information and he responded by printing it anyway. For Bob Novak, the Republican Party is just much more important than America's national security. This is treason and treason holds only one penalty.

The case of the New York Times' Judith Miller is nothing like what the "mainstream media" makes it out to be. This is not a heroic, selfless journalist sacrificing her freedom in order to protect some brave, fearless government source. She is, instead, protecting a traitor against the appropriate prosecution for their crime. Miller, incidentally, was also the NYT's reporter who printed the administration's case for war in Iraq almost word for word in the buildup. She is considered by many to be nothing more than "a White House Stenographer". So much for what loyalty gets you.

You would think that the Republican Party leadership would have learned by now. Learned that putting the good of their party ahead of the good of the country is a dangerous and dirty road on which to travel. Amazingly, they have not. It is as though they simply cannot help themselves. As if it is an addictive habit they just can't tear away from.

In the 70's, they gave us Nixon, Liddy, Haldeman etc. and showed us that they were willing to nearly tear down the federal government in order to hold on to power. The 80's brought us their willingness to subvert the constitution and lie to Congress in order to get their way. Many of them lied directly to the Congress in order to protect President Reagan and Vice-President Bush. For the 90's they decided to spend 80 million dollars of taxpayer money in order to investigate every crack of a Democratic President's life. When they caught him mincing words about his personal life, they went to the length of a process held only for the most extreme circumstances, Impeachment, which had only been broached twice before in America's entire history. Several Republicans involved have since admitted that the Impeachment motivation was political, not legal.

Now, in the new century, it is this. Lie us into war for political gain and destroy anyone who opposes us or gets in the way. Damn the consequences for the country. Heck, we are the country! Those others aren't real Americans anyway. This is the attitude of Rove, Novak and for that matter Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and so on. The time has come for them to pay the ultimate price for their cowardly and evil politics. If the Bush White House and the Bush Justice Department are unwilling to place country before politics and put these traitors where they belong for their crimes (which they undoubtedly will not do), then someone else must do it for them. Perhaps an act of God?

In other words and borrowing liberally from my favorite right wing hack, Ann Coulter (that's right, I said borrowing LIBERALLY from Ann Coulter): Karl Rove and Robert Novak must be killed in order to physically intimidate right wingers. To make them realize that, if they can't stop advancing their radical agenda even to the point of compromising America's national security, they can be killed also.

Another Letter to the Editor - This time, once again, the Rapture Right is the Target

2005-06-21T16:36:00.000-07:00

I penned this letter earlier this afternoon. It ties together Congressman John Hostettler's (R-Ind.) offensive comments that "Democrats are waging war on Christians" with my Congressman, Scott Garrett (R-NJ5), and his religious right affiliation, which flies in the face of the district he represents. Last year, I was Press Secretary for D. Anne Wolfe, his Democratic opponent. Mrs. Wolfe has already announced her intention to run again in 2006. Her strong showing in '04, in a heavily Republican district, has brought attention to the district as having some swing potential and it has also brought Garrett opponents, including from within his own party, out of the woodwork.

Congressman Hostettler’s offensive remarks before the US House on Monday were only the latest example of the radical fundamentalist takeover of the GOP and their war against separation of Church and State. Viewing the disgusting manner in which the President, Congress, Governor Bush, the “religious right” and right wing media outlets have torn open and intruded on the Schiavo/Schindler family tragedy, reveals the great political power of this small minority of Americans.

Howard Dean’s recent comments were too unspecific. The GOP has, in fact, become the Party of mostly White Fundamentalist Christians, who believe that the “Rapture” will occur in our lifetime. Read the “Left Behind” book series to understand who these folks are and that, if you’re not the right kind of Christian, you are useless to them. In 2003, I left the GOP, myself, to work for Gen. Wesley Clark.

Most troubling for us in Bergen County is our own Congressman, Scott Garrett. His 100% ratings from extremists like Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlaffly, along with support from radicals at Operation Rescue and the John Birch Society show him to be exactly the WRONG kind of Republican for us.

I offer a solution for this situation to my truly mainstream Republican neighbors. Vote for D. Anne Wolfe of Mahwah next November. I know Anne Wolfe. Although a Democrat, she shares more bedrock Republican principles with you, such as fiscal responsibility and smaller, more open government (anyone remember those?) than Garrett ever will.

Additional info on Lt. Louis Allen

2005-06-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

It turns out that, after an investigation into the incident, the military has concluded that Lt. Louis Allen (the subject of my letter to Randi Rhodes) was killed along with another officer by a Staff Sargeant in their unit. I have heard, although not through the media, that this individual, now in custody and charged with murder, may have been upset over being recently disciplined.

This aspect of the story makes it no less tragic. If anything, it makes it more so, if that is possible. Nonetheless I simply wanted to update my original post. Thanks for reading (for those few who do).

Letter to Randi Rhodes

2005-06-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

The following is a letter which I wrote to Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes last week. It details some events regarding a very heartbreaking week for my niece Julianne and her upstate New York classmates:

Dear Goddess Randi,

Paul from New Jersey here, the one you met last Summer at Rocky Sullivans while I was working on a Congressional campaign. Thank you so much for everything you do. I call you from time to time, usually in a more lighthearted mood and take shots at the radical right wing. However, today I am deadly serious. I have to share with you the story of Louis Allen. I have felt for a long time that, as Democrats, we are sometimes too fond of making our point with statistics. The story of Louis Allen puts a very human face on the terrible cost of war and why we must never be eager to start war.

My sister Mary, her husband and two children live in Greenwood Lake, NY. On Wednesday morning, after dropping my 15 year old niece, Julianne, who is one of the top students at her school, off at High School, Mary received a very strange message on her answering machine. It was the voice of a young woman so choked up with hysterical grief that Mary could not understand what she was saying. She thought it must be a wrong number until at the very end she caught the words, "Please call me back Mommy, I love you very much." At that, she reached for her phone and called Julianne's cell phone.

You see, earlier this year Julianne's school hired a new science teacher. His name was Mr. Allen. It didn't take his students long to realize that this was a very special teacher. It is a rare High School teacher indeed who is admired, respected and loved by every single student they teach. I think I only experienced this once or twice in all my years of schooling. He obviously was a very special teacher. As time went on the students learned that, although young, Mr. Allen was married with four wonderful children and that he was a national guardsman who had already served a tour of duty in Iraq.

A couple of weeks ago Mr. Allen informed his class that he had been called back for another tour of duty in Iraq. My niece, not being a fan of our current President (as few in my family are), was devastated and outwardly angry at Bush for taking away the best teacher she's ever known. Who could blame her?

When Julianne arrived at School on Wednesday morning she and her class were informed that 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen of the 901st Cavalry Bravo Unit had been killed in action near Tikrit. It was for this reason that my little niece was hysterical with grief when she called her Mother. Mr. Allen leaves behind a wife and four children, that alone is tragic enough. He also leaves behind a school full of mourning children, who have lost the kind of special teacher that rarely comes along in a child's life.

This is why we hesitate before launching war, even upon a dangerous enemy, let alone an unarmed one. This is the obscenity which has come with every war in human history. This is why war is only a last resort. For every one of those 1700 Americans and those 100,000 plus Iraqis, there is a similar story. I hereby defy any one of those right wing, group-thinking, Bush apologist freepers who seem to love to call your show on Friday afternoons, to acknowledge this story and tell you and I, and more importantly my niece Julianne, that this is just the comfortably acceptable cost of "liberating" Iraq.

With all that we know about the Project for a New American Century, Bush's failure to return to the Congress or the UN having exhausted all diplomacy first, his failure to adhere to sensible war planning and now with the Downing Street Memo proving that the administration never wanted any option but invasion, I defy these right wing drones to continue to defend this President and his horrible foreign policy team. By doing so, they show themselves as what they are, lacking in a human soul.

Sincerely,
Paul Roth, Jr.
River Edge, NJ

Republican Shame in Bergenfield, New Jersey

2005-06-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

The following is an unpublished letter to the editor which I recently sent to The Record newspaper in northern New Jersey. It is a response to the thoughtless and disrespectful antics of Bret Schundler and Doug Forrester, two Republican candidates for Governor in the Garden State. While marching in a Memorial Day parade the two engaged in a political argument with each other regarding their TV advertising campaigns. The Mayor of Bergenfield had to separate them and remind them of the solemn nature of the occasion. Since I originally wrote this piece, Forrester has won the GOP Primary and will face US Senator Jon Corzine in November's Gubernatorial Election:

I am writing in response to your article of May 31, regarding the shameful actions of Bret Schundler and Doug Forrester at the Bergenfield Memorial Day parade. If these two fools are indeed the Republican frontrunners for Governor, I feel very sad for New Jersey Republicans.

It’s bad enough that these politicians worm their way into such commemorative events and use them for campaign purposes. The idea that Schundler and Forrester have so little respect for the meaning of Memorial Day that they would engage in political bickering with Bergenfield’s war veterans as a backdrop is disgusting. In the process they also terribly embarrassed Bergenfield’s Mayor, who doubtless invited both.

During my tenure as Press Secretary for Anne Wolfe, I coined the unflattering nickname “Photo-Op Patriot” for Congressman Scott Garrett. This was in response to Mr. Garrett’s bad habit of getting himself photographed with every veteran or service member possible and saying all the right words about our soldiers while voting in the House to over-extend our current troops and under-fund veterans’ health care. As hypocritical as I believe Garrett is, he at least sometimes manages to show appropriate respect. Apparently Schundler and Forrester are incapable of even this much.

Being a partisan Democrat, I am already certain that I will vote for Senator Corzine in November. However, I hope that North Jersey’s Republicans will also strongly consider rejecting these pathetic excuses for candidates in favor of an individual of the character and integrity of Jon Corzine.

Update

2005-06-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

Life has temporarily prevented me from posting here. I will return soon! Thank you to anyone who still bothers to check. Paul

Ms. Wrong

2005-04-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I met up with an old girlfriend. She had difficulty in trying to explain her new job to me that evening. You see, she was involved in a new type of PR strategy which targeted news coverage for their clients. Basically, it was "product placement" of people and products within hard news settings. I was somewhat amused at the idea. Little did I know that just a few years later I would be sickened by this morally bankrupt practice. I will always love that girl very much but I can now honestly say that I detest what she does for a living, if she still does.

Enter Ann Coulter and Time Magazine. Time Magazine being the hard news source, Coulter being the rather odious product being pitched. For anyone unfamiliar with the exploits of Ms. Coulter, she is the current reigning High Priestess of the ultra-conservative, bleached-blonde, mini-skirted, psuedo sex-kitten pundit brigade. They grow them on a farm somewhere outside Topeka, I believe. It's said to be one of only three family farms left in the midwest.

Coulter first entered the public arena as a right-wing activist lawyer representing Paula Jones in her bogus sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. She often used arguments against Clinton couched in feminism/sex abuse terms which is odd considering that her political convictions, if they are real, are decidedly anti-feminist. She also called the President a "rapist" and wondered whether "he should be impeached or assassinated". This initial gem was just the first in a long litany of "Coulterisms" which could be considered as crossing the line of decency by a wide berth.

Coulter has since become a darling of right-wing punditry throughout the cable news market. She consistently attacks the "left-wing media" for trying to marginalize her and keep her down. She does this as a featured guest during shows on all of the "left-wing media" outlets. I guess they're not "keeping her down" hard enough? In the last few years she has authored a number of right-wing screeds which she calls "books". She opened her "book" "Slander" with a seemingly honorable series of words which went something like "the tone of political debate in America has become completely intolerable". She has since backed up this noble conviction by calling all liberals "traitors", suggesting that, in regard to Muslim countries, "we should kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity" and by humbly opining that American Taliban fighter "John Walker Lindh should be killed in order to physically intimidate liberals, to make them realize that they can be killed too". She certainly has raised the level of political discourse, huh?

Not satisfied with these gems, she has continued to assault the senses with further wisdom such as saying that Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh chose the wrong target (he should have chosen the Manhattan headquarters of the NY Times instead). When confronted with the outlandish notion that US troops in Iraq were intentionally targeting journalists her knee-jerk response was to dismiss it by saying that she "only wished that it were true". She also referred to the White House's Senior Correspondent, Helen Thomas, as "that old arab".This is the kind of thing Ann Coulter contributes to our world. Aren't we lucky to have her to protect us from that "intolerable tone"?

The Time piece seeks to soften Coulter's hard-edged image with childhood photos and more current shots of a somewhat sexy nature. That is, if you consider a tall, bony, forty-something woman with an adam's apple larger than Ivan Lendle and more makeup than Katherine Harris and Tammy Faye Baker combined to be sexy. Coulter's lack of character can also be divined by addressing how she conducts her life in relation to what she writes. She recently told Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera that she has no misgivings about going out for the evening, picking up strange men and sleeping with them. She is also known as a heavy drinker who used to live on Manhattan's exclusive Upper East Side (you know, that bastion of elitist eastern liberalism) and socialize almost exclusively with homosexual men (you know, fag hag). Clearly, the Coulter message is "do as I say, not as I do" (you know, hypocrisy).

While it is true that Time Magazine does have a storied history of right-wing bias, I do not believe that this is their sole intention in attempting to rehabilitate Ms. Coulter. What's going on here is PR as news. It works and it sells. No doubt we are on the verge of either a new Coulter "book" or some other career move for which her PR machine is now revving up. I am disappointed. Disappointed that a hard news organization like Time would devote it's pages to a downright awful human being like Ann Coulter. Was it that slow a news week? Didn't the Pope die? Didn't insurgents begin a scary new resistence strategy in Iraq? Didn't another earthquake hit southeast Asia? Is Ann Coulter really the big news? Of course not.

As for Coulter herself, I can only say this. I strongly considered calling this column "Ms. take, Ms. erable or something like "Ms. Right or Mister Wrong?". Finally I decided on the simplest path, "Ms. Wrong". Coulter is perhaps the single most reprehensible human being in our media and media driven culture today. If she ever receives meaningful payback for all the awful and negative discourse she has put out into the world, she will never survive it. Perhaps, one of these nights, one of those strangers she so likes to go home with will turn out to be a bad choice and put her out of our collective misery. One can only dream. Good night, Ann.

Pope John Paul II

2005-04-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

On the occasion of the burial of the late Pope, it is important for Americans to remember just how progressive this leader was, on some issues. John Paul II is said to have lectured our current President on his use of the death penalty while Texas Governor. He was even more distressed by the President's decision to invade an unarmed nation. He put the Catholic church squarely behind organized labor worldwide and used his moral authority over Eastern European Catholics to expediate the fall of communism. Last year, conservative Catholic Bishops (you know, the same ones who tried to hide sex abuse scandals under the rug) released a political document entitled "A Voter Guide for Serious Catholics" which ignored some of Rome's highest priorities in a selective effort to encourage Catholics to vote against abortion and gay marriage alone. In response to that dirty little political piece, I wrote the following entitled "A Voter Guide for True Catholics" which will be featured in my forthcoming book, The Case FOR Two Americas: Why it may be time for progressive America to secede.

A Voters guide for True Catholics

The devout Catholic, when considering for whom to vote at election time, may have a difficult time indeed deciding which candidates represent Catholic values but even a more difficult time in determining which candidate is likely to reflect real Catholic values by their representation. The following is a guide suggesting truly Catholic positions regarding many of the difficult issues of our time.

Abortion:

There can be no question that the Catholic Church opposes the practice of abortions. Catholics believe that only God has the power to give and take life. The issue, however, can be more complicated than it appears on the surface. Illegal abortions, those performed outside safe medical conditions, not only take the lives of innocent babies but too often put the lives of the young women seeking them at risk as well. In the days before the legal practice of abortion in America, thousands of young women were mutilated and even killed when seeking out such nefarious abortion practitioners.

The True Catholic has a very difficult choice to make, therefore, on this issue. On the one hand a Catholic cannot support the practice of abortion but on the other hand a Catholic cannot personally support laws which endanger human life as well. The True Catholic might consider one alternative which is to actively support choices other than abortion. After all, simply being against something is never as powerful as being for something as well. Adoption is a choice. A child given up for adoption by a mother who cannot care for them is given a new lease on life and a family who so want a child that they are willing to seek one out. Supporting causes which aid young, single mothers in raising a child also encourage the choice of life over that of abortion.

The True Catholic must weigh these issues very carefully and decide a course of action which they feel best represents their values.

Gay Rights:

On this issue also, the True Catholic faces a quandary. Homosexuality is certainly not ordained as a practice in the bible, far from it. On the other hand our faith tells us to hate the sin and not the sinner. In today’s society it is more than likely that our own personal experience determines our attitude on this issue. The Catholic who knows people who are gay or perhaps even has a gay family member is likely to have a very different view from one who does not personally know a gay person. The practice of fearing or even hating what we do not understand is called prejudice. This is a sin for the True Catholic.

The issue of gay marriage is simple enough for the Catholic. A Catholic believes that the institution of marriage is ordained by God. Therefore, as Catholics believe that God would not ordain such a union, Catholics cannot recognize gay marriage. However the issue of civil unions and the legal rights in a committed relationship are a different thing entirely. As Americans, we believe that all of our citizens are entitled to equal legal protection. As Catholic Americans, we often see such things as a moral imperative as well. Once again the True Catholic faces a personal decision based not only on their faith but also based upon their attitudes towards other people.

The True Catholic can choose, if they see fit, to admit that a gay man or woman, as an American, should be protected by the same laws and protections as other Americans without ever having to endorse the institution of gay marriage. Once again, this is a personal choice.

The Death Penalty:

While many Americans approve of the practice of the death penalty, the True Catholic simply cannot. “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord”. This means that Vengeance belongs only to God, not to mankind. While it is true that some crimes are so heinous and inhuman that they seem to cry out for such powerful justice, it is also true that God holds the ultimate and infinite justice in his own hands. When we seek to dispense such justice for ourselves here on earth, we are saying that we no longer trust in God to dispense his almighty power in the hereafter.

More than this we are finding out today through the use of DNA technology that some convicts on death row are actually innocent, wrongly convicted. While it is true that still many more are guilty, how can Catholics, who believe in the sanctity of life, approve putting some innocent people to death in order to punish the guilty also?

The True Catholic, in good conscience, cannot support any candidate who supports or wishes to further promote the practice of the death penalty.

The Environment:

The Catholic believes that God gave mankind dominion over the earth and all its creatures. One can hardly imagine that God did this in order to allow mankind to destroy what he had so lovingly created. America has been blessed by God with much of the world’s most breathtaking natural beauty. A Catholic does not need to be a radical environmentalist and yet, at the same time, by allowing industry and government to destroy our air and water, a Catholic denies the responsibility we all share to God, our creator, and towards our future generations to preserve our earthly home and keep it healthy and clean.

A review of current environmental news tells us that we are failing to keep faith with God when it comes to cherishing the home he has made for us. The True Catholic cannot support candidates and politicians who do not share the principle that we must be good stewards of this planet which God has made our home.

Separation of Church and State:

In a letter to the Danbury, Ct. Baptist Association in 1803, Thomas Jefferson defended his opposition to a national day of fasting to mark a religious holiday by pointing out that matters of faith were deemed too personal and sacred by our founding fathers to be controlled or influenced by the powers of government. In that letter he coined the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state”.

In recent years much has been made of this separation in American politics. It is important to remember that in much of the world there is no separation between religion and government. In many such places there is hatred and bigotry against what one might term “minority religions”. In some places it is Catholics who fall victim. In America, Catholics live next door to Protestants, Jews live next door to Muslims, Hindus live next door to Sikhs and, for the most part, they all live in peace. This is a rare condition in our world and even rarer throughout human history.

While the faithful rightly lament that American society could sometimes use more in the way of Christian values, it is vital to remember what can result from the mixture of government and religion. The Catholic, therefore, should remain wary of the politician who seeks to place religion at the forefront of government. What seems like a good idea today could easily turn against the faithful in the unseen future.

War and Peace:

The True Catholic is appalled by war. It is a truly wasteful and vile practice in which people set their minds to killing each other in order to settle what are sometimes the most foolish of differences. Throughout human history mankind has fought wars and millions upon millions have died. Those who died left behind families and children whose lives were changed forever by their loss. Today’s Catholic prays daily for those who are sent off to fight and for an end to the violence and death of war. It is a moral imperative for us.

As an American, however, the Catholic must temper this disgust for war with a practical understanding that when we are attacked we must defend ourselves or lose all that we hold dearest. In America’s history many Catholics have fought to preserve our freedom and our way of life. Whether or not this kind of killing has been a sinful act is for God to decide, not an issue for mankind. As Americans we tend to look with sorrow only at US casualties of war. Since as Catholics we believe that God created all men, however, we must always remember that all were made in his image and all deaths are considered tragic by God.

The Catholic must once again balance their faith with their allegiance to country in a very personal manner. However, one thing is perfectly clear. When war is fought unjustly, when somewhere in the world one makes war on another without just cause, the Catholic must fervently oppose this action with all of their belief. How this principle applies to America’s current military involvements is up to one’s beliefs about such justification. It is important to note, though, that Pope John Paul II, our spiritual leader, has spoken out publicly against our current war in Iraq. The True Catholic should bear this in mind right now.

An Overview:

The Catholic Church in America has seen very difficult times in recent years because of scandal and also a growing perception that the official church has grown far too out of touch with its own flock. During the 2004 general election this became even more apparent when Catholic priests gave politically charged sermons and many Diocese distributed a booklet titled “A Voters Guide for Serious Catholics”, which seemed to be nothing more than a thinly veiled effort to get more Catholics to vote for Republican candidates.

My “Guide” should be seen as a Catholic grassroots answer to that political piece. This is an appeal to the Catholic conscience, pure and simple. Rather than conveniently focusing on one or two issues designed to render a skewed result, this work seeks to broaden the discussion of just exactly how Catholic teachings intersect with today’s political climate. The True Catholic should ultimately know that neither their Archbishop nor the author of this work should tell them how to cast their vote. We can simply make suggestions and offer insight into the issues they face. The most important thing the True Catholic can remember is that their vote should always be cast after considering all of the issues, not just a couple which someone else chooses for them.

Were Jesus to return to earth tomorrow it seems highly unlikely that he would be interested in attending either the Democratic or Republican conventions. It is far more likely that he would seek to promote peace on earth and to heal those who are suffering anywhere in the world. While we, as individuals, can never completely accomplish the work which Jesus would, we would be well advised to seek out leaders who represent these principles in the work which they do. This is precisely how the Catholic can best bridge their faith and their love of America.

America's Taliban

2005-03-31T16:46:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the horrifying attacks of September 11th, our nation mobilized in union to eliminate a government many thousands of miles away which harbored and encouraged those who attacked us that awful day. Afghanistan's Taliban government stood squarely against American principles of democracy, freedom and equality (especially where the fairer sex was concerned). Very few anti-war activists took to the streets to protest war against the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda which they sheltered because most Americans understood that this was the place from which 9/11 was launched and that this was a dangerous enemy with which we had to deal immediately.

Islam has been a faith torn asunder for decades as radical fundamentalists have seized more and more power by preaching a twisted message of "Jihad", a word meant to depict internal personal struggle which, when twisted politically, instead describes war against "the enemies of God". For Americans, however, the most troubling developments in world religion should be just how eerily similar the troubles of Islam are to what is taking place in American Christianity over recent decades. Yes, America too has its own Taliban. Its own brand of religious fanaticism which threatens to undermine the very foundations on which this nation was built.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column detailing the Terri Schiavo case and just exactly how the radical religious right wing would attempt to use it to their political advantage. I hate to say I told you so but....I told you so. In the process the US Congress attempted to subvert the constitution, the same President who slept soundly in his bed after receiving a PDB entitled "Bin Ladin determined to strike in the US" boarded a red-eye Air Force One flight from Crawford, Tx. straight to Washington, DC to sign an unconstitutional bill, which he could just as quickly have signed in Texas, his brother, the Governor of Florida attempted to send state officials to kidnap Schiavo from her hospice center (until local Sheriffs made it clear that they would not back down on enforcing their court order) and the right wing media spread blatant disinformation on the case for the better part of two weeks. All to no avail. The American people finally smelled the rat and most of them being decent, honest folks, they rejected this nonsense for the pure and disgusting politics it was.

That being said, I must note that the Schiavo case is crucially important for what it points out in this country. There are radical religious groups here in America that are bent on destroying our government and constitution and replacing them with their narrow brand of militant Christianity. For the last week, Randall Terry has been standing beside Schiavo's family and claiming to speak for them. Terry's political group advocates murdering doctors who perform abortions. People like Terry, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson whip their supporters into a fighting frenzy by offering them crusades against abortion, homosexuals, "activist" judges or "anti-God" politicians. It is no accident if their rhetoric sometimes sounds an awful lot like that of the Islamic "Jihadists". It is an awful lot like it.

Ask yourself this question; is there any rational motivation for a mother to tape shut the mouth of her 7 year-old daughter while helping her draw signs calling a man they never met a "murderer"? No, of course not, but these people are the furthest thing from rational. Like the thousands who danced in the streets of the Middle East on 9/11, celebrating our tragedy, these people have been told that they are being horribly oppressed by people who represent nothing more than satan on earth. Never mind that they live in the freest nation in which to worship that has ever graced the earth. No, as long as our laws and our culture do not completely adhere to their strict (and fiercely paranoid) interpretation of Biblical law, they will never rest.

These people represent roughly 15-20% of Americans now. Politicians are using them (and vice-versa) while the news media are scared to death of them. The media now report on them as being representative of Christianity in America while ignoring many millions of more moderate voices. If anyone wondered about the power they hold within the Republican Party, the last two weeks have answered those questions for good. They dominate and own it, completely. Republican leaders and right wing media outlets, such as Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, took up their cause with incredible zeal, despite extensive polling which showed that 80% of Americans disagreed with their extra-constitutional agenda. Even loyal "small government" Reaganite Peggy Noonan weighed in on the "Culture of Life vs. Culture of Death" ridiculousness. Now that's what I call pandering with a capital P!

It is being said a lot lately that radical Islamists are beginning to lose their grip on the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. I rather think that the attacks of 9/11 showed most Muslims what the radicals were really all about and they are turning away from that brand of religion. Hopefully the Schiavo case will begin to turn the tide in the same direction in the Christian world. In the last two weeks we have seen those fanatics who claim to be Christians bear false witness against their neighbors, mistreat their own children and call into question the very constitutional protections which guarantee us all liberty and family privacy.

A Christian fundamentalist reading this column would surely point out that his or her religious sect is not nearly responsible for that same level of violence as the Islamists. This is true, so far. However, they are violent. They have killed doctors who perform abortions, they have bombed Planned Parenthood clinics, they have threatended the families of such doctors and they have beaten homosexuals to death on many occasions. Michael Schiavo has received a flood of threats on his life recently. All this while they live in complete religious freedom. Imagine for a moment that they really lived in the kind of squalor and oppression in which many Islamic fundamentalists thrive. How much worse would their violent tendancies become? Remember, once you have established that those who disagree with you are enemies of God, anything is possible. Killing in the name of God has been all to common throughout human history, haven't we had enough of it yet? Let us hope so and let American Christians reject politicized fundamentalism here and now, before it's too late.

A Sorry Current State of Affairs

2005-03-22T15:21:00.000-08:00

In the age of "for profit" news media, Americans have become more poorly informed than a great deal of the rest of the world. Sixty percent of us will tell you that Saddam Hussein helped plot 9/11. Even more cannot tell you who is the Vice-President, their US Representative or Senator. Twenty four/seven cable news channels act almost as adjuncts to the Republican Party, "ditto" for nearly all of talk radio while the mainstream media (if that even exists anymore) buries stories which are negative for the right-wing and slants the stories they do report in agonized terror of that "liberal bias" label.

Equally as troubling is the tendency toward sensationalism, style over substance and poorly informed reporting. American news media, let's face it, has gone to hell in a handbasket. Now, however, a gleaming light seems to be breaking over the horizon. Yes, perhaps the tide has turned and at last we will see a new age in American journalism based on facts, honesty and objectivity rather than style, good looks, shock factor and fear tactics. What is this possible savior, you ask? This Island in a sea of darkness? What could this great white hope be? Why it's..........it's............it's, A CURRENT AFFAIR!!! (A collective groan follows)

That's right, Rupert Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting has resurrected the little half-hour "news" show which gave birth to every single stylistic image you've ever seen on his Fox News Channel. It's enough to make any reasonable person go looking for a rope and a tree, an oven and a match, a bath and a hair dryer, etc. etc. Having watched tonight's episode, I can confidently announce that hard news finally has a new home. I don't know exactly where that new home is, maybe the BBC?

Tonight's installment featured a story about a pair of teenagers who apparently murdered one of their friends. This boy and girl, who only stand accused at the present time, were depicted as "freaks" by their classmates and the girl was labeled a "sexual deviant". The slain girl was, of course, depicted as being as innocent as Cinderella complete with video of her singing in a pageant as a young child. All of this took place in a quiet little "family values" kind of town. The message here, keep your wholesome children away from those weird kids who are "different" or they just might end up dead! Great reporting.

Another story featured that incredibly hot looking 24 year-old teacher who is accused of sleeping with a teenage student. The story described the young woman as "emotionally disturbed". Really? What a scoop! The feature also included a horribly chopped up interview with the teacher's soon to be ex-husband. He's concerned for her, you know. After all, she faces up to 30 years in prison for her offense. Now, while I would never endorse teachers sleeping with their students, I've got to say, as far as I'm concerned this was a victimless crime. That kid is now undoubtedly the most popular guy in school! All the boys want to know what it was like not to mention why they didn't hit the jackpot like him and all the girls are completely intrigued by what that woman might have seen in him. Heck, he's larger than life. He really did strike the mother load. Why wasn't I that lucky at that age? I mean, just look at her!

While "A Current Affair" is obviously not the sort of bald-faced Republican propaganda you see elsewhere in Murdoch's media empire, there is a much more subtle form of influence happening in the half-hour show. All of the swoops, swooshes, graphics, bad production values and sensationalist reporting aside, the consistent message weaved throughout the stories it presents is one of moral outrage. It's the kind of "I'm better than all those nasty deviants out there" scapegoating message which always wins over in those "Red" states or as radio host Randi Rhodes has taken to calling them, "the persistent vegetative states", good one Randi.

I'm not entirely sure but I do believe the bible lists the return of "A Current Affair" to television as one of the seven signs of impending apocalypse....or is it the rapture? I've gotten confused between the two lately. I'm pretty sure that the apocalypse was when the Republicans took over control of the Congress and the rapture, as we all know, is the only way the Democrats will ever get it back.

Anyway, if you're looking for real news these days, you'd better open up a newspaper. I think I'll go get one right now, USA Today maybe...or the New York Post? Nah, just kidding.

Column Schedule - As of 3/19/05

2005-03-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

From now on I will be posting a new column every Monday, Wednesday and Friday along with an occasional weekend commentary. Today's comments can be read below.

The Sickness of the Republican Leadership

2005-03-19T09:45:00.000-08:00

Nearly 15 years ago, a woman named Terri Schiavo fell into a vegetative state. She cannot live without artificial assistance. For many years, her husband and her parents have been fighting a legal battle over whether or not to let go of her. The legal matter involved has been settled several times but each time it has, opportunistic politicians have gotten in the way. They are capable of absolutely no shame whatsoever.

Here is what will happen if the final chapter in this battle is played out this week. When Terri Schiavo passes, the "religious" right wing will lash out violently at what they will call "liberal activist judges" who allowed Michael Schiavo to "murder" his wife. Wherever you turn your dial, you won't be able to escape this pathetic and purely political message. Being Easter week, the references to Jesus will be copious. Here's the problem, though; no one stuck any feeding tubes down Jesus' throat when he was lowered from the cross. If they did, I don't remember hearing about it.

The poor woman is gone, let her go! If there are any stupid, bleeding heart liberal do-gooders involved in this case, it is the religious fanatics who make vigil outside the Schiavo home on their knees in the sidewalk. Do they want what's best for Terri Schiavo? No. They refuse to listen to what the doctors say. Hasn't she suffered long enough for them? I thought they believed that God chose for us when it is our time to go, not man? Apparently not. Now they suddenly believe in science with great fervor.

As for the politicians, they are the lowest of the bottom feeding low lifes this country has ever seen. For several years one of the lowest of these, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the man who brought you his slow-witted brother as President, has been aligning himself against the courts, the doctors and apparently the personal wishes of Terri Schiavo herself. Bush has taken political advantage of the suffering of Schiavo's parents, who clearly and somewhat understandably refuse to let go of their daughter, in order to gain votes and position himself to run for President in a Party where you now need serious "Christian credentials" in order to win.

Florida legislators, "Christian" activists and even the US House of Representatives have since joined this ghoulish bandwagon. When right-wing politicians use the term "liberal activist judges", here's what they really mean, "judges who base their decisions on legality and constitutionality rather than the will of a few religious zealots". Now, when you hear this term bandied about on topics like abortion or gay marriage, you will be able to do the translation for yourself.

There's a special place in Hell for politicians who look at a private situation in which all involved are suffering terribly, see the narrow political gain they can reap and ride that gravy train as far as it will take them no matter what the consequences are for those at the heart of the matter. The above rule applies to "Christian" activists, Legislators, Governors, Congressmen and women and even Presidents! Let's hope they remember this and think first before opening their mouths in the coming week.

The future of Christianity in America

2005-03-15T13:49:00.000-08:00

Will it move forward or backward?

Liberals today have many fears in the face of modern American Christianity. Some are very well founded. At a time when Christianity seems represented only by people such as Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and conservative Catholic Bishops, many Americans feel threatened that these voices of religious intolerance will ultimately break down the separation of church and state. The result could be a return to the kind of puritan fascism unseen in this land since the Salem witch trials.

The Republican Party has agressively pursued and actively helped shape the politics of the fundamentalist Christian movement for decades now. At the current time, these religious extremists claim to hold operative power in 44 of the 50 Republican State Committees. In State Legislatures all over America, Republicans are introducing and passing bills designed to eliminate separation of church and state, thus bypassing the judicial system and its mandate to interpret constitutional protections. Frightening indeed.

However, before non-Christians begin hiding in their basements in fear, worshipping by candlelight, I'd like to offer some reason to hope for the future of religious tolerance in America. The source of this hope? Young people. More and more young people today are confused by the messages they hear from so-called Christians. Most young people do not hate homosexuality or homosexuals for that matter, even if they don't approve of or agree with the lifestyle. They don't see a terrible conspiracy to destroy marriage or the family, they just see people asking for the right to have a relationship. When someone like Rev. Dobson steps forth and condemns a cartoon character, young people see it as the ridiculous joke it is and nothing more.

Thus, modern American Christianity is gradually losing any ability to communicate honestly with young people. Increasingly, young people list their political priorities as social justice, environmental protection and peace between nations. Ironically, all of these were once serious Christian priorities which now seem lost in a country where religion has been ever more politicized and seems to have become more about "what we are against" rather than "what we are for".

More good news stems from the recent trend of young people away from intolerant Christian institutions toward newer congregations which preach Christianity's hopeful message in a more pro-active and tolerant manner. By preaching the more optimistic message of Jesus' life and teachings, alternative Christian denominations have become very appealing to younger Americans who simply cannot relate to what they see in fundamentalism or the current Catholic church.

The United Church of Christ (UCC) began an advertising campaign last year, in preparation for their 50th anniversary in 2007, which plays exactly to their message of inclusive Christianity or as they call it "extravagant welcome". A recent television ad the UCC released hammers home not only their inclusive message but also what is so wrong with too much of modern Christianity.

Entitled "Bouncers" the ad depicts the entrance to a church surrounded with ropes, like a nightclub, while t-shirted "bouncers" decide who can and cannot enter. A caption which reads "Jesus didn't turn people away..neither do we" follows. The ad closes with a voice-over explaining that the UCC welcomes all people of all ages, colors, genders and sexual orientations by saying "whoever you are and wherever you are on life's journey, you are welcome". It is a powerful ad which can be viewed at www.ucc.org. Recently, the head of the church held a press conference while sitting across his desk from a stuffed doll of Spongbob Squarepants, ceremonially welcoming Spongebob to the church.

In today's Bergen Record newspaper, the second largest circulation daily in New Jersey, religion reporter John Chadwick reports on Liquid, a booming new congregation in Basking Ridge, NJ which targets young Christians and offers them a more positive, uplifting and introspective message and style of worship. The church relates to young people through music and a very different message from most of what's out there today in evangelical circles. In the article, pastor Tim Lucas comments, "In order to engender a sense of spiritual superiority....we pick an issue or a cause with which we have no personal experience." "That's one of the reasons why it's so easy for [straight] heterosexual church leaders to highlight the sexual brokeness of gay people". Lucas adds, "The divorce statistics show that we're not doing a good job on straight marriage, so why are we using all our resources to attack a lifestyle we know little about"? A very good question indeed. One which more self-proclaimed Christians should be asking themselves.

There is no question that there is still much intolerance to overcome in today's Christian circles. President Bush very successfully used the issue of a constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage to inspire statewide ballot initiatives and rally millions of Christians to his side. Worse yet, the Catholic church released a document titled, "A Voter Guide for Serious Catholics" which did nothing more than convey positions on only a few carefully selected political issues (abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia...) clearly to influence Catholics, who historically vote with Democrats due to social concerns, to vote Republican. Thus, the church itself says to Catholics, "ignore peace, brotherhood, social justice or our environment,which God created". In the end, Republicans claim that churchgoers decided Bush's victory, maybe so.

Ultimately, the great weakness in the Republican Political/Christian strategy lies in all those young people. The strategy relies heavily on prejudices, something most of the younger voters lack. Right-wing Christianity serves to twist the message of Jesus into something which, as Pastor Lucas observed, inspires feelings of spiritual superiority while galvanizing followers with something "evil" to be against. In this manner, it closely mirrors the method by which Islamic "Jihadists" twist the faith of Islam to engender hatred of outsiders. It is a seductive potion but it may eventually cave in on itself, just as we hope radical Islam will do.

In 2004, whatever their spiritual inclination, younger voters chose Kerry and Democrats by a sustantial margin. The theme of the UCC's campaign is "God is still speaking". Let us hope that they are right. Perhaps God is still speaking through the young people of America today. If so, it seems that God is saying that there is another way for Christians to honor the life and message of his only son, one which offers compassion and understanding rather than self-righteousness and damnation of others. Thy will be done.

End Government Run Media Now

2005-03-14T17:24:00.000-08:00

First the Bush administration paid columnists hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote their agenda, a fact the “journalists” involved did not make public. Then we learned that a non-journalist, partisan Republican named J.D. Gukert, was provided daily press passes by the White House (normally very hard to get) for nearly 700 consecutive days, under the fake name Jeff Gannon. It was soon uncovered that “Gannon” was also a gay male prostitute.

More recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ordered the Bush White House to end the practice of producing fake “news segments” supporting Bush’s policies and disseminating them to local TV stations where they are aired without the public’s knowledge of their source. The administration has refused to comply. So far, they have spent more than $250 Million in taxpayer money on propaganda.

If you haven’t heard these stories, relax, it’s not your fault. So-called “mainstream media” has been bullied into submission by the Republican Noise Machine, as author David Brock calls it. Fox News Channel, right wing cable pundits, radio talkers and hundreds of expressly right wing newspapers and periodicals put forth misleading and often downright false, partisan propaganda daily while lashing out in virulent outrage when one of the networks report something they don’t like!

You’ve heard about Dan Rather and those memos, no doubt; but have you heard that FDR’s grandson has called for the resignation of Brit Hume at Fox after Mr. Hume deliberately misquoted FDR in an effort to claim the former President supported Social Security “privatization”? I doubt it highly. Independent surveys have repeatedly shown that regular Fox viewers are the most poorly informed citizens of this country. Without reliable information, our Democracy will wither and die. I urge all Americans to tune out government run propaganda before this can happen.