David Swanson's Blog, page 221
April 29, 2011
Four Million Refugees From a Liberation
Of all the 95% of humans who live outside the United States, or any of those within it for that matter, who do you think is most invisible? Whose existence, did we come to hear about it, would be the most incomprehensible and therefore inaudible?
I have a nominee: the 4.8 million Iraqis made homeless by the liberation, the people liberated from their homes, millions of them liberated into exile from their country, afraid to return and with little to return to.
These people are not the most exotic or different. They just fit so poorly into U.S. news narratives that, despite having heard or read about them several times, you probably have no real idea that they exist at all.
How Democratic Party Blogs Filter Information
Here's a blog that readers of Dailykos despised:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/28/970914/-Obama-Denies-Vermont-He...
Here's one a day later (currently on their most-popular list) that they loved:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/28/971283/-Alan-Simpson-Just-Asked...
FireDogLake loved both. Democratic Underground got into a bitter split over the first one and loved the second one.
The first one criticizes Obama and the second one criticizes Alan Simpson, a Republican.
Now, that's not all that they do. And the first one is not beyond the range of possible criticism quite apart from targeting Obama.
But the first one describes something that Obama did. He signed into law a health insurance reform bill that made it much more difficult for states to enact single-payer healthcare. An amendment to fix that had been passed in committee overruling the committee chairman. Speaker Pelosi had gone on TV and said she'd had to strip the amendment out of the final bill because of Obama's promise that everyone could keep their existing insurance if they wanted to. I also claimed to know that the committee chair and Pelosi had been instructed in this detail (as in every other on this bill) by Obama. Few at DailyKos wanted to take my word for it. They were also quite obsessed with the fact that Obama has more recently said he would support legislation to allow Vermont waivers needed to create a single-payer healthcare system. That such a bill would be hard to pass, and that Obama is responsible for Vermont NEEDING the waivers in the first place (or at least needing them much more badly than before) seems to be of no interest. Words speak louder than actions. Unless they are my words and they are criticizign a Democrat.
In the second blog, I wrote about an event, and I included videos of some of it. But the key points that I highlighted in my text I did not include video for. DailyKosers had just my word to go by, yet they were happy to do so. After all, Simpson is a Republican.
I don't mean to pick on Kos in particular, but to use it as an example of a popular Democratic-loyalist site. Facts get filtered. Some are more welcome than others.
Why a Dog Is More Qualified for Congress Than Robert Hurt
The Charlottesville Daily Progress, to its credit, did something that I don't think it or most small-town newspapers have done before, and certainly have not done often: it wrote about the local congress member's position on military spending. Sure it's where half of our income taxes go, but it's hardly ever mentioned.
Hurt told the paper that he wants to cut spending, but not in the military: "I think everybody would agree that national defense is a top priority for our government and really for any government." Does Hurt really think that? Because this is where a dog being better qualified for Congress than Hurt comes in.
April 28, 2011
In L.A. This Weekend: Swanson, Hedges, Chappell, Garrett
Upcoming public events:
Saturday, April 30, 2011
3:15 - 5:15 pm Book signing at Los Angeles Times Festival of Books ( http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks ), at the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace ( http://www.icujp.org ) booth, Booth 921.
University of Southern California
7:30 - 9:30 pm "The Costs of War" with David Swanson, Chris Hedges, Paul Chappell, and Lewis Logan, moderated by Ameena Mirza Qazi.
United University Church at the University of Southern California
817 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA
They Question Where He Was Born But Are Trying to Give Him Absolute Power
Beneath the noisy blather about where the president was born and the whole superficial pretense of disagreement and fundamental opposition between elected Republicans and Democrats, top Republicans in the House and Senate are attempting to give President Obama and his successors from whichever party absolute power to make war and absolute power to imprison.
Tom Andrews has blogged on this here.
April 27, 2011
Obama Denies Vermont Healthcare
Here's the news as I received it in an Email from Thom Hartmann's radio show on Wednesday:
"Vermont is one step-closer to becoming the first state to set up a truly universal, single-payer health care system. The Vermont Senate passed the new healthcare bill yesterday - following in the footsteps of the state House that passed the bill last month. Now - it just needs to be signed into law by Governor Peter Shumlin who's already expressed his support for the measure. There IS one last step though - Vermont would need to secure a waiver to opt out of Obamacare in order to build its own healthcare system.
Alan Simpson Just Asked Me to Leave Rich People Alone
I'm feeling pretty guilty. I hadn't known I was causing billionaires so much suffering. The former co-chair of President Obama's deficit (a.k.a. catfood) commission just asked me during a public event to stop going after rich people. Then he came up to me after the event to make sure I'd gotten the point. He seemed truly worried about it.
Is Israel's Rightwing in Eric Cantor's District?
In May 2009, Congressmen Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) wrote to President Barack Obama about U.S. policy toward Israel. Their staff sent the letter as a PDF but forgot to change the name of the file to something other than "AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf."
April 26, 2011
Mitt Romney and Netroots Nation Agree: It's Peacetime
Mitt Romney recently criticized "peacetime spending" in an era in which we have numerous wars going and are devoting about half of discretionary spending to wars and the military.
Netroots Nation has just announced 70 panels of progressive commentators. Of those panels, 69 do not discuss the wars or the military, their moral costs, their economic costs, their environmental costs, or their destruction of civil liberties and representative government.
One panel is called "Means to an End: Resolving Conflict in Afghanistan"
One wonders what the end is, and what the means. Here's the panel description:
How Americans Can Get Up and Stand Up
In December 2009, psychologist Bruce Levine published an article at Alternet called "Are Americans a Broken People?" His timing couldn't have been better. Americans of good will and bad analysis were suffering a severe fit of Obamanation withdrawal. The article was reposted everywhere, commented on endlessly, and responded to voluminously. (This was my response.) Levine has now developed his article into an important book called "Get Up, Stand Up."
