Category: National Politics

Norquist Clarified

One comment

It’s not every day the teabagging wing of the Republican Party decides to overrule an 89-10 bipartisan Senate compromise over the payroll tax holiday.

It would appear, therefore, that the Grover Norquist pledge never to raise taxes to which GOPers have beholden themselves is voidable in the event (a) that the tax hike disproportionately affects middle-class wage-earners; and/or (b) the President isn’t a Caucasian.  I’m glad that the 112th Congress was able to clear that up for us.

You see, under the Republican supply-side sect of trickle-down theory, only tax cuts on the wealthy are acceptable. The middle class, working class, and poor looters must be made to pay more.

The Constitution. Let’s Follow It.

9 comments

Title X, Subtitle D of the National Defense Authorization Act is neither well-considered, nor do I think it’s Constitutional – even foreigners on American soil are entitled to basic Constitutional protections.

If the government uncovers an al Qaeda cell that plotting some attack on US citizens, it already has myriad tools at its disposal to detain and try the accused.

And that’s the key here – the NDAA doesn’t really call for trial. Indefinite detention and interrogation of people on American soil is a complete abrogation of the Constitution that ought not stand (given an apolitical Supreme Court).  I’m not one to jump on the “police state” bandwagon, because I’ve had the experience of actually spending extended periods of time living in one. But giving the military and police agencies the power to indefinitely detain people based on mere accusations and suspicions brings us ever-closer to an America where people are detained arbitrarily and capriciously based on denunciations and evidence which may not be adequate to convict someone in military or civilian court.

A decade of paranoia and a lousy economy aren’t making anyone any freer, and codifying the indefinite pretrial incarceration of enemy combatants on de jure American soil is contrary to our national interests.  The full text of the provisions in question is after the jump. Read more

The Constitution. Let's Follow It.

9 comments

Title X, Subtitle D of the National Defense Authorization Act is neither well-considered, nor do I think it’s Constitutional – even foreigners on American soil are entitled to basic Constitutional protections.

If the government uncovers an al Qaeda cell that plotting some attack on US citizens, it already has myriad tools at its disposal to detain and try the accused.

And that’s the key here – the NDAA doesn’t really call for trial. Indefinite detention and interrogation of people on American soil is a complete abrogation of the Constitution that ought not stand (given an apolitical Supreme Court).  I’m not one to jump on the “police state” bandwagon, because I’ve had the experience of actually spending extended periods of time living in one. But giving the military and police agencies the power to indefinitely detain people based on mere accusations and suspicions brings us ever-closer to an America where people are detained arbitrarily and capriciously based on denunciations and evidence which may not be adequate to convict someone in military or civilian court.

A decade of paranoia and a lousy economy aren’t making anyone any freer, and codifying the indefinite pretrial incarceration of enemy combatants on de jure American soil is contrary to our national interests.  The full text of the provisions in question is after the jump. Read more

Gingrich: Give Millionaires a Leg Up!

One comment

The Palinist wing of the so-called “tea party” is just a front group for superwealthy conservatives. As further proof of that, their favored Presidential-candidate-of-the-month, Newt Gingrich, is proposing a reformation of the tax code to codify a lower marginal income tax rate on millionaires than on middle-class families earning $40 – 50,000.

It’s all part of the Republican Party’s war on the middle class, and the social safety net that Americans fought for throughout the course of the last century. A tax cut of this magnitude on the superwealthy would starve the federal government of revenue, resulting either in a fiscal crisis or massive cuts to programs like Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, and other things on which people depend when they are elderly or in the midst of a personal financial crisis.

It’s part of an ideology that treats any public expenditure as redistributionary socialism and represents a real danger that the country slips back to conditions extant during the times of the robber barons.

Right down to Gingrich blaming America’s underclass for being poor.

Right down to Gingrich’s support for an abolition of child labor laws.

All-American Muslim Nontroversy

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This past weekend, home improvement megachain Lowe’s caved in to pressure from some reactionary Christianist organization in Florida to pull its advertising from a new TLC series called “All-American Muslim.” The show is especially designed to show people that the overwhelmingly vast majority of American people of Muslim faith are perfectly normal, just like any other American person of different faiths. It’s a point that’s not only true, but truly important to get out there in the face of a growing right-wing Islamophobia / xenophobia.

The Florida Christianist group is the same one that boycotts Walt Disney World over Gay Day.

Anyone who has listened to WBEN’s troubled mulleted talkmeister Tom Bauerle at any point in the last few years knows what I mean. If you are aware of last year’s Park 51 nontroversy, or know the name “Pamela Geller,” you know what I’m talking about. In bad economic times, it’s easiest to blame it all on some enemy, like Hitler blamed Germany’s post-Versailles decline on “international Jewry”. Former right-wing Islamophobe Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has reformed himself and now devotes much time exposing these neofascists for what they are.

Yes, there are very bad Muslims in the world who want to kill you and your way of life. But that isn’t the basis for an indictment of an entire religion and all its adherents. There are many bad people out there, and if you live your life in fear of them, you’re not really living much of a life at all.

In the same weekend that Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich went out of his way to assail the Palestinian people of the former Ottoman Empire as “invented”, American ignorance of Islam is on full display with this Lowe’s nonsense.

Buzzfeed posted what it considers to be the 25 dumbest comments. Wading through them, you begin to lose all hope for America. When you realize that at least one or two people you know who consider themselves to be tea partiers think the same way, you realize how pervasive this ignorant xenophobia has become.  The Muslim families depicted on the TLC program are better Americans than, e.g., this guy:


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Email me at buffalopundit[at]gmail.com.

Invented People

10 comments

At the Republican debate where multimillionaire candidate Mitt Romney bet slow candidate Rick Perry $10,000 as to whether Romney was a member of the Obama revolutionary socialized medicine cadre or not, book hawker and corrupt former Congressman Newt Gingrich averred that Palestinians were (a) all terrorists; and (b) an “invented” people.

Setting aside the tea party pandering about all Muslims being terrorists, I’m more fascinated by the “invented people” crack. Members of, say, the Navajo or Seneca Nation might very well ask what the hell Gingrich thinks “Americans” are.

Contracting the Economy Doesn't Grow It

3 comments

American Conservatives have been agitating for what amounts to an austerity budget to address the debt and deficit, arguing that the economy will grow if finances are sound.  They have – and will continue to – hold the country hostage to their faith-based “tax cuts will solve everything” ideology.

That’s what British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government did, and the results have been an epic disaster. British society is fraying at the edges, mass layoffs have led to strikes, services on which people depend – and for which they pay – are suffering.

The austerity budget is fraying at the edges, amid strikes and protests over layoffs and rising fees. Growth has been slowing, despite Mr. Cameron’s insistence that businesses would pick up the pace when it became clear that the government’s finances were sound. And now Britain looks to be in an unusually poor position to defend its interests in Europe.

Members of the Labour opposition lost no time exploiting what they saw as Mr. Cameron’s weakness on the issue.

“Six weeks ago, he was promising his backbenchers a handbagging for Europe, and now he’s just reduced to hand-wringing,” the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, told Parliament, as his party members whooped their approval. “The problem for Britain is that at that most important European summit for a generation, that matters hugely for businesses up and down the country, the prime minister is simply left on the sidelines.”

So maybe the whole austerity budget, abolishing Medicaid, privatizing Social Security and other Republican payoffs to their ultra-wealthy benefactors might not be what’s best to get the economy moving again.

Contracting the Economy Doesn’t Grow It

3 comments

American Conservatives have been agitating for what amounts to an austerity budget to address the debt and deficit, arguing that the economy will grow if finances are sound.  They have – and will continue to – hold the country hostage to their faith-based “tax cuts will solve everything” ideology.

That’s what British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government did, and the results have been an epic disaster. British society is fraying at the edges, mass layoffs have led to strikes, services on which people depend – and for which they pay – are suffering.

The austerity budget is fraying at the edges, amid strikes and protests over layoffs and rising fees. Growth has been slowing, despite Mr. Cameron’s insistence that businesses would pick up the pace when it became clear that the government’s finances were sound. And now Britain looks to be in an unusually poor position to defend its interests in Europe.

Members of the Labour opposition lost no time exploiting what they saw as Mr. Cameron’s weakness on the issue.

“Six weeks ago, he was promising his backbenchers a handbagging for Europe, and now he’s just reduced to hand-wringing,” the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, told Parliament, as his party members whooped their approval. “The problem for Britain is that at that most important European summit for a generation, that matters hugely for businesses up and down the country, the prime minister is simply left on the sidelines.”

So maybe the whole austerity budget, abolishing Medicaid, privatizing Social Security and other Republican payoffs to their ultra-wealthy benefactors might not be what’s best to get the economy moving again.

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