What's a good alternative to constantly rattling our swords and threatening Iran? Talking to Iran. Opening up a dialogue. Making it clear that there is an alternative to needless, destructive counter-productive and expensive war. Allowing Iran to save face by making sure that it is our country that takes the first step to a constructive relationship. This video illustrates one of the main reasons why I voted for Barack Obama.
For the last eight years, the fear and doubt crowd have had one of their own in the head office. Comforted that science will be suppressed and church programs will be federally funded, the vocal conservatives fell into relative complacency. Or did I miss it? But now, the flood gates are opening. The "gun nuts" are buying up weapons and ammunition creating a price spike never before seen. Why? Because they are convinced that Obama is a communist who will outlaw their guns and tax their ammo. The anti-family-planning crowd is staging bigger sit-ins at health clinics. They are also submitting bills to local, state, and federal government to restrain the feared upsurge in availability of contraception and related information. He overturned the stem cell funding ban. Now discarded blastocysts are again eligible research subjects rather than just trash. The humanity! After all, they quail, if we don't respect trashed cell clusters as people, how can we possibly value adult citizens? Anti-science groups are pushing ever more vocally for science in schools to be properly tempered by religious counterpoints. Bills appear in state after state calling for "Academic Freedom," meaning to give the Bible equal weight as proven science in schools. Yes, this started long ago, but now they have greater urgency. The conservative media is calling Obama's initial tax cuts a hike, and his pushing through of the stimulus package (that had been in the works for months under his predecessor) as typical unrestrained Democrat unilateral spending. They can get away with it because they knew that the necessary spending will pass whether or not they approve it. Looking tough with no teeth is all they have, at present. Recall the political fury during the 1930's depression. A Democrat prevailed over strong Republican objections and turned the country around doing basically what Obama is now doing. He kept getting re-elected because he got results. Results directly opposite of all the dire predictions of the Republicans. Basically, the same arguments being made now against Obama.
I've mentioned the Louisiana Gov before, as he signed a Discovery Institute plan to allow creationism in biology classrooms into law. It shouldn't have surprised me that Bobby Jindal was the chosen figurehead to rebut the first public Obama address to Congress. After all, he is young and dark with at least one foreigner for a parent. It seems a natural, from a certain game-playing point of view. But the talking points have all been heard before. His speech may well have been finalized weeks ago. The allegations of "pork" about the massive stimulus bill are what irk me. The examples cited are so silly, I wonder how anyone believes them. The sum of all the line items to which so-called conservatives object add up to a fraction of the bill. One line item he cited was a small fraction of a billion to upgrade aging government vehicles to newer, more fuel efficient models: Pure pork to the failing American Auto makers? It's significantly less than what they are asking for as an encore direct handout. There were mentions of some classic pork projects, like energy research and environmental studies. No one really needs to know how to prevent the collapse of our lifestyle, civilization, or species. Do they? One allegation that puzzles me every time a conservative says it is that this stimulus bill builds a bigger government. How? One of the issues with it is that no bureaucracy was set up to monitor spending. No new agencies are being created, nor are existing ones being expanded. Exactly how is this spending measure making government bigger? The biggest buildup of Big Brother government agencies was enacted by the previous administration. Why didn't they object for the last 7 years? Homeland security is a bureaucracy established to coordinate the bureaucracies sitting on top of the agencies that actually do things having to do with internal and external security. His parable of volunteer Katrina rescue boats was well aimed. They had to violate insurance regulations as if the flooding of a city was a non-typical circumstance. But it is a poor illustration of Big Brother governance. That the Dubya appointed management of FEMA failed, and his backup, Dubya himself, failed and that the manpower established to deal with such events was engaged on a foreign mission for which the Army was inadequate is hardly proof that government itself is a bad organization to organize rescue efforts. But it does prove that we should be more careful in electing and appointing those in charge.
Barack Obama has quite a knack for addressing deep themes with his surface eloquence. What are those deep themes? Linguist George Lakoff has taken the time to set them out in a recent Huffpo article, and I think he's thought it through impressively. Lakoff's article is well worth a slow read. What is Obama really about?
Behind the Obama Code are seven crucial intellectual moves that I believe are historically, practically, and cognitively appropriate, as well as politically astute. They are not all obvious, and jointly they may seem mysterious. That is why it is worth sorting them out one-by-one.
Note that for Lakoff (and Obama), "progressive values" (#2) are the natural result of genuine and uncorrupted empathy:Those empathy-based moral values are the opposite of the conservative focus on individual responsibility without social responsibility. They make it intolerable to tolerate a president who is The Decider--who gets to decide without caring about or listening to anybody. Empathy-based values are opposed to the pure self-interest of a laissez-faire "free market," which assumes that greed is good and that seeking self-interest will magically maximize everyone's interests. They oppose a purely self-interested view of America in foreign policy. Obama's foreign policy is empathy-based, concerned with people as well as states--with poverty, education, disease, water, the rights of women and children, ethnic cleansing, and so on around the world.
Here are Lakoff's seven insights into the ideas that drive Obama's spoken words:1. Values Over Programs 2. Progressive Values are American Values 3. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship 4. Protection and Empowerment 5. Morality and Economics Fit Together 6. Systemic Causation and Systemic Risk 7. Contested Concepts and Patriotic Language
For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear, according to administration officials.