Is there a racial bias being used against President Obama?

Is there a racial bias being used against President Obama by these “birthers”?

Does anybody think that if our President were named Herman Hermann, to a German-born father and a white American mother and had a Certificate of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii that we would have all these “birthers” running around?

D. J. Tice writes and the President will speak -- health care some more

While I still think the most important thing for health care reform is to get the matter taken completely away from employment. It seems to me that access should be a matter of citizenship instead of employment and, as a function of employment, it helps us price ourselves out of the market in too many things.

But it appears that in his speech tonight that President Obama is unlikely to go that way. Every bill which has been introduced still works off that employment model.

But whatever we hear tonight, it seems to me that D.J. Tice of the Mpls. paper is raising questions that we haven’t been hearing, by noting that most of the people who oppose a “public option” in health care [an idea to which I admit warmness] oppose education vouchers for K-12 students [to which I concede coolness], while most of the voucher-haters seem to want the public option in health care.

As I have said before, we are all pro-choice. We just aren’t all pro-choice on the same things.

There are various fields of enterprise in which there are public sector competes with private sector. K-12 education is one, but there is also higher education, package delivery, commuter trains [in some places], weather forecasting for starters. The results of these competitions vary and are certainly judged differently by different people and factions.

Public option health care and public education seem to work well in many countries, but they aren’t the only way to do things. As we consider what works for our country, maybe we should read Tice’s article and think a bit.

Why the uproar on Obama speaking to our children?

I find the hoop-de-do over President Obama’s speech to our country’s schoolchildren even more amazing to the presumptuousness of the White House decision to interrupt what for many is the usually chaotic enough already first day of school at what is lunch time in much of the country.

I have vague memories of hearing President Eisenhower when I was a child in grade school. My memory says it was during the national hysteria that we weren’t teaching our children enough science which came after the Soviet Union had launched the first. My memory is of a radio being brought into our classroom and a speech coming over WSUI radio [University of Iowa radio] from Iowa City. Because we would have been listening to a single house-sized radio with the limited sound projection that three- or four-inch speakers provided over a low-power station in the next county and having to hear it over whatever sounds even an attentive audience of thirty or so would have been making I don’t remember hearing much, but I think all the leader of the free world was saying was that America’s children needed to study more because the other country’s children were. It probably took no more than ten or fifteen minutes.

This might not have been a national address and it may not have been especially aimed at children, but I don’t remember hearing of any parents or politicians objecting. And, since I had not even thought about this for half a century, I may be a bit off on what I remember.

Mary Jo who? We don’t want to remember.

A sexual harasser who managed any jail or prison time after killing a woman in the course of his harassment has just died. [Don’t tell us that connections and/or wealth don’t help.] His passing probably won’t get the attention that the recent death of a child molester has received, but he is receiving a lot.

I remember when he spoke at the Civic Center in 1971 to raise money for the DFL Party and people who we would now call “abortion rights supporters” and/or “feminists” demonstrated against him, showing caricatures of the senior senator from Massachusetts pregnant captioned “if he were pregnant” and attacking him for his position on abortion. [In later years he almost looked the caricature, but I am confident that pregnancy was not the reason.]

Of course, this senator whose name I am withholding changed sides and the feminists made peace with him.

In 1980 the same senator whose name I am withholding challenged President Carter and helped bring on the Reagan era.

Yet Democrats continued to lionize him. And last year Senator Obama made an extra effort to enlist his support.

And I hear today that this guy who never saw combat is to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

To quote Yakov Smirnoff: “What a country!”

Cash for clunkers

Somehow when I first heard of cash for clunkers I figured that few buyers would actually get the full $4500. Car dealers will give big trade in prices for bad cars any way and just take keep the purchase price high.

But it appears that the program is popular. I guess they’re going to fund it for more.

But if the thing is suppose to be a stimulus for our economy, why are we letting people use what is in theory money from our government to buy Japanese or other foreign cars?

And now we have two

Al Franken, escorted by his senior colleague, Amy Klobuchar and by a former holder of Minnesota’s Class II U.S. Senate seat, Walter Mondale, went to the front of the Senate chamber and was administered the oath of office [on a Bible formerly owned by another predecessor in that seat, Paul Wellstone] by that body’s president, Joseph Biden.

There were some questions one might have raised. Why Mondale? Most senators just use the state’s other. Wellstone used Mondale, but that was because he was disgusted with the ethics [or lack thereof] of his colleague, David Durenberger. And, Didn’t he have a Bible of his own?

Now we have two senators. Never mind that more than four of every seven who bothered to vote last year voted against o9ne of them, if we believe some of the muttering we have heard the last few months we are now at Nirvana.

Diversity on the Supreme Court. Really?

Sonia Sotomayor has been named to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Obama. If confirmed and sworn, she will be the third woman and second Hispanic justice. [Many sources are saying she would be the first Hispanic, but they seem to have forgotten Justice Cardozo.]

Conservative types are aghast. The have found that she might think that a Latina woman would be wiser than a white male. I doubt that she really meant that, but I cannot help but think that she would bring differing perspectives than some of the more typical nominees might.

But how much diversity will she really bring?

All of the justices are lawyers and were chosen from federal appeals courts. This seems to have become normal procedure for choosing Supreme Court nominees since the Nixon days.

I really would like a really diverse court with most of the justices being non-lawyers, people more apt to have better common sense on what is right and what is wrong.

I do not suspect that I will ever see even one such justice.

But even if we continue to have lawyers for justices, maybe we could break the stranglehold that appeals courts justices seem to have on the position. Why not somebody who has practiced law and had clients of limited means or minority heritage? Or for the wrongly imprisoned? Why not somebody who has actual legislative or administrative service as something other than a lawyer? Why not somebody from a state trial court? Or even a law school professor?

Actually, I do wish Judge Sotomayor luck in her confirmation hearings. She will indeed bring a new element to the highest court.

But it really doesn’t add much diversity.

Maybe Michele isn't as crazy as we have been thinking

Michele Bachmann says a lot of crazy things, but her comments on the 2010 census may not be so far from the wall as many are suggesting.

The Constitution of the United States of America does indeed provide for a decennial census. But it only specifies one purpose – for allocation of Representatives from the several states. It does not even include locating locations within states to assist them in apportioning congressional, legislative, and seats for other jurisdictions.

A reasonable corollary would be to assume that taking of names and addresses is necessary to make certain that all are being counted and being counted only once. This would require Ms. Bachmann as well as all the rest of us to give a little more information than just that they exist.

But with the increasing cases of government and other big institutions screwing up on privacy matters, one might be reasonably tempted to withhold unneeded information. And despite all the assurances we receive about how secret the data can be we should not forget that we change our rules when we perceive crisis. 1940 census data did help the government find Americans of Japanese ancestry a lot more easily.

Refusing gratuitous answers to irrelevant and personal questions would not necessarily indicate a nut case. It could just be indicating a libertarian.

[And believe it or not, the terms are not always interconnected.]

Hitching your wagon to the wrong star

There have been a couple of times the last few days when I was wondering whether anybody would miss Commissar Pawlenty if he were to disappear for a few days, or whether anybody would mind. But I was never by my computer at the right time to post the question.

But now that we find that the Governor of South Carolina was not taking a hermit’s hike, but instead was philandering internationally, the subject has different coloration.

And I suddenly feel sorry for a lot of Republicans in South Carolina. It is a concern in the back [and sometimes the front of] every political activist’s [professional or volunteer] mind that he/she will support a candidate who does something unconscionable. Think of Grunseth followers in 1990 or local Dino Guerin supporters in the middle of the last decade. Think of where Bill Clinton supporters might be heading if the Monica Lewinski thing had come out during his first term. Or of Elliot Spitzer backers last year.

And new Nixon tapes are out. He must have left a few supporters disappointed also.

You can say that that’s life, that things like that happen, but for those involved it must still suck.

What don't I get about the health care debate?

I guess I just don’t get it.

We are having a lot of discussion lately about the cost of and access to health care and whether the federal government should play a role therein.

The cost of health care is making many otherwise profitable businesses marginal or even losers. I have medical coverage and am grateful that my employer has made that possible, but it is a small company and I wonder what it is doing for the company’s bottom line.

Yet it seems that all the plans being advanced by all the political types seem to continue basing access to health care on employers and one’s employment status.

We complain about the high cost of what becomes subsidized emergency room care, but the fact is that health care providers do not offer the public the same rates they charge individuals. While it is usually considered good business to offer volume purchasers a better deal, this makes the burden on the uninsured [or improperly insured] onerous.

I do not know what is the answer, but somehow we need to make sure that we all have access to medical and dental care at rates which don’t rip the general public off and which do not require an employer to have to factor in expenses which similar employers in other countries have to cover and allow all people the option to change employers or to enter or leave other employment or self-employment.

How many happily married ten-year olds do you know?

The U.S. House passed a bill introduced by Congressperson Betty McCollum which would increase State Department staffing on the issue of child marriage and direct that we work with other countries on strategies to combat this problem.

An article in Minnesota Independent quotes her as saying, ““By prioritizing and valuing girls in the developing world, the U.S. sends a signal to countries like Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Yemen that the practice of allowing 10, 11, or 12 year olds to be married to much older men is a human rights violation.”

Of course, she is right and she probably has the primary purpose for her act well stated, but it does not seem to me that 10-year olds of either gender, straight or gay, should be marrying anybody, regardless of age and we should not be approving of any place where that is encouraged or tolerated.

Even after you have been elected, you still have to get there

Chris Steller of Minnesota Independent reminds us of something which should have been obvious all along. To get to the 60-vote filibuster-proof number, they need Franken but also have to have the 59 others all available to vote and some of them are not well. He cites Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy as examples, but remember that the world belongs to those who show up.

Do you suppose that any of the GOP hardliners will take this into consideration when they contemplate their next step when/if our Supremes rule for Franken?

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, revisited

Now that Pawlenty is out of the race for governor next year, people around the republic are wondering what he is thinking for 2012.

And it’s not just local media.

Among the other out-of-state stories and commentaries is one from Nate Silver of fivethrityeight.com. He calls Pawlenty a “hockey dad” and notes that our governor’s approval ratings have been nothing remarkable but suggests that he could be a factor.

Silver seems a bit disdainful of the whole Republican field and those who will choose their candidates and gives us the quote of the day which may say more about him than about Pawlenty, but is interesting nevertheless:

“If I were him [Pawlenty], I might talk a lot about guns -- but not so much about God.”

Pelosi was not alone

I am getting confused and tired by the revelations, accusations, and counter-accusations arising about what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it. She is, unfortunately, no different from a lot of other politicians of both parties when it comes to keeping what is important in perspective.

Leonard Pitts, jr. has noted, [link to article from which this was lifted]

In those days of heat, fear and panic, many of us — including, apparently, Nancy Pelosi — failed to consider what should be ever obvious: Our national identity is the one thing that makes us worth attacking or defending. We are a nation of laws, not men, we are better than those who attacked us, we are America and that has to mean something, even — "especially" — in days of heat, panic and fear.

The sad truth is that almost all of our national leaders, regardless of party, turn politically yellow when big national traumas arrive. Whether it be Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, the whole Congress after Pearl Harbor and the incarceration of American citizens of Japanese ancestry, the Oklahoma City bombing which prompted a GOP-run Congress [including the sainted Paul Wellstone] and Bill Clinton to create whole new categories of capital offenses, or the excesses of the PATRIOT Act after 9/11/2001, too many of them cower and stay silent. Willingness to stand up for what really should be considered our national principles is way too rare.

We might wish to remember one of Martin Luther King, jr.'s less-quoted statements, which Pitts used a week earlier on a different subject: [link]

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

Tourniquets do work, after all

Tourniquets around necks will stop nose bleeds, but most [all?] health care professionals would recommend against this treatment.

Well, I guess that keeping all people from entering our country might make us a little more secure. Of course we need to remember that Timothy McVeigh, the guys from Posse Comitatus, and Lee Harvey were all born here. And we know that what we gain from people coming here has made us the great people we are.

Many people’s concerns are racially- or ethnically-based, sometimes fueled by politicians and commentators whose personal standards allow them to run on this issue.

And, maybe some just comes from ignorance. Christianity has been in India since the First Century. It has been here since the Spanish brought it to Florida in the early Sixteenth Century.

Yet we find that our officials rejected allowing a Christian religious worker into our country because he was Indian born. It took a lot of money and an attorney, who ironically was a rabbi’s daughter, to get him in.

Decisions like this may make one wonder if maybe we should consider just closing the border down and not letting anybody in. Remember: that tourniquet around the neck will indeed stop a nose bleed.

See the story.

Which will be worse? Obama's flu or W's hurricane?

If Michele Bachmann’s district included local territory, I would never have to look for something to write about. She would be the gift that keeps on giving. But once in a while I suppose it is not extremely out of order to note her once in a while, since national coverage usually just lists her as “R-Minnesota” and, unless we make it clear every once in a while, people from elsewhere might think she is ours.

Finding any relevance in the “fact” that the flu named after swine has come twice when Democrats are president requires a stretch of one’s brain that I doubt that few of us could ever manage. And on top of that, as many are now pointing out, it is not even historically accurate.

W was never blamed for Hurricane Katrina, just for the inadequate response for it. But if we use Ms. Bachmann’s approach, we have one more less than satisfactory thing to put into the last president’s historical file.

Right is right and wrong is wrong and torture is the latter

In recent years the DPP [Dispatch Pioneer Press for those who were wondering] has reduced its editorial and opinion section considerably, in editorials, syndicated columnists, and letters to the editor. However, they sometimes do obtain good guest columnists and certainly A. L. Brown’s occasional contributions qualify.

Since KSTP radio has shelved Mr. Brown from his Sunday afternoon spot again, it is indeed fortuitous that his work shows up once in a while in the DPP and yesterday’s column is indeed edifying.

Brown is a lawyer. After distinguishing between legal advise and legal counsel, he identifies the poor counsel given by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, particularly the work of Jay Bybee who is now a federal judge.

But his primary point is the indefensibility of the use of torture by a free people. He notes

“The American standard is clear: Torture is always morally and legally wrong. This standard is a strength, not a vulnerability. It deprives our enemies of a rationale or moral standing while providing both to those who work on our behalf.”

I fear that he errs in writing this in present tense. I suspect that under the misdirection of the Bush administration that we have already gone too far in the wrong direction. And I doubt that Bybee’s counsel probably made much of a difference, because I suspect that if he had not given them such counsel that [although it might have taken some doing] they would have found an lawyer who would.

But Brown points out that each person who tortured or helped make the torture possible, needs to have his/her case examined.

President Obama seems to have been less than clearly decisive on this. But we still need vigilance on this matter and ought not let it be forgotten. And maybe we will learn from our inexcusable mistakes.

NOTE: I suppose that we should not view Brown’s departure from KSTP with alarm. This seems to be a seasonal thing, since the station commandeered the Twins from their age-old home with the Good Neighbor and they no longer need him to fill in that slot during spring and summer, but it is still a shame. While KSTP seems to have made some moves lately to move a little bit away from its right-wing base, eliminating Willie Clark and [apparently] all three faces of ThompsonO’BrienDavis and replacing them with Pat Reusse [whom it looks like is being played as the new in-house “liberal”], a couple of guys from Wisconsin who don’t seem to think that political topics are the only topics to cover, and WCCO discard Smarmy Al Malmberg [who seems, however, to have made a transition from simply smarmy to smarmy and pandering with the pseudo-conservative, anti-tax constituency his new station has given him], they really should have more room for Brown. I think it would be interesting if he could fill in for Joe Soucheray sometime, but I imagine that it would be too much shock for Garage Logicians.

Link to the DPP column

What do you do with a juvenile hijacker?

Anytime a juvenile gets arrested for something particularly notorious, there are screams by those who presume to have the interests of victims and society at heart to have the young person get the maximum penalty allowed.

And most of the time there are a fewer, quieter, do-gooders who note that the criminal is young, perhaps too young to understand what he/she did or was perhaps under the influence/control of an older, corrupting influence.

Most of these cases fall under state jurisdiction. Few of them fall under federal jurisdiction.

Now the federal government has to figure out how to handle a 16-year-old boy who was involved in an attempted hijacking of a ship in open sea.

The Obama government needs to show that it is tough on crime and actively combating hijacking, yet it has its share of people who will want mercy for the young man.

Of course, this all supposes that “juvenile justice” and “standing tough on crime” are mutually incompatible. That often is not the case, but few concede this.

Could be interesting.

Administration's Veterans U-turn

The Obama administration is backing off the suggestion to charge veterans for their health care.  It only seems fair that when we ask people to surrender their personal civil liberties for a period of time and take extraordinary risk limb and life that we honor whatever we promised them before we got them to do so. 

Two observations come immediately: 

1.  We never factor in this cost when we decide to go to war.  We really need to do better accounting before we become so internationally adventurous. 

2.  From 1945 until 1993 only one president did not have military experience.  Since then we have had two draft dodgers and one who was not old enough to be subject to a draft.  It seems likely that with our volunteer military that it may be a long time before another veteran becomes president.  This is neither good nor bad per se, but it will not be hard to understand when veterans become uneasy in the next decade or two.

AIG: a new way to spell ripoff?

AIG says that it was contractually bound to give large “bonuses” to a few select salaried employees out of government bailout money. While these are apparently not bonuses as most people think of them, i.e., rewards for doing things exceptionally well, it still seems unconscionable for AIG to make these payments with tax money, especially considering that they likely could have never made the payments any other way.

But contracts for basic pay [never mind bonuses] with many wage employees are overlooked all the time. Wilson Foods started this modern era of using bankruptcy and Hormel used those ensuing pay reductions to start its 1980s war with their employees even though they were not losing money. Recently Northwest Airlines has used similar tactics to abrogate some of its contracts.

Go figure!