Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Frank Rich On Christine O'Donnell, The Tea Party Movement, the Republican Party, and the Super Wealthy Sponsors of the U.S. Right

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03rich.html?th&emc=th

All,

As usual Frank Rich shows us what intellectual clarity, research, and knowledge can do to reveal the complex truth about our society and culture. Thought, insight, depth, and genuine critical analysis rooted in material reality trumps stupidity, ignorance, fear, and irrationality every single time. It also doesn't hurt to have an eloquent and disciplined command of language. Thanks Frank...

Kofi


October 2, 2010

The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell
By FRANK RICH
New York Times

ALL it took was some 30,000 Republican primary voters in a tiny state to turn Christine O’Donnell into the brightest all-American media meteor since Balloon Boy. For embattled liberals, not to mention the axis of Comedy Central, “Saturday Night Live” and Bill Maher, she’s been pure comic gold for weeks: a bottomless trove of baldfaced lies, radical views and sheer wackiness. True, other American politicians have dismissed evolution as a myth. Some may even have denied joining a coven. But history will always remember her for taking a fearless stand against masturbation, the one national pastime with more fans than baseball.

Yet those laughing now may not have the last laugh in November. O’Donnell’s timely ascent in the election season’s final lap may well prove a godsend for the G.O.P.

At first some Republicans had trouble figuring this out. On primary eve, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee badmouthed O’Donnell’s “disturbing pattern of dishonest behavior.” On election night, Karl Rove belittled her “nutty” pronouncements and “checkered background” on Fox News. But by the morning after, bygones were bygones. The senatorial committee’s chairman, John Cornyn, rewarded O’Donnell’s “dishonest behavior” with an enthusiastic endorsement and a big check. A sweaty Rove reversed himself so fast you’d think he’d been forced to stay up all night listening to Glenn Beck’s greatest hits at top volume in a Roger Ailes re-education camp.

Rove’s flip-flop was no doubt hastened by his own cohort’s assaults on both his ideological purity and masculinity. The blogger Michelle Malkin labeled him an “effete sore loser,” and Sarah Palin publicly instructed him to “buck up.” But surely the larger motive for his retreat was the dawning recognition of just how valuable O’Donnell is to the G.O.P.’s national aspirations in November — even should she ultimately lose her own race in blue Delaware. Whatever her other talents, she’s more than willing to play the role of useful idiot for her party. She gives populist cover to the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails.

While O’Donnell’s résumé has proved largely fictional, one crucial biographical plotline is true: She has had trouble finding a job, holding on to a home and paying her taxes. In this, at least, she is like many Americans in the Great Recession, including the angry claque that found its voice in the Tea Party. For a G.O.P. that is even more in thrall to big money than the Democrats, she couldn’t be a more perfect decoy.

By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans. O’Donnell’s value is the same as that other useful idiot, Michael Steele, who remains at the Republican National Committee only because he can wave the banner of “diversity” over a virtually all-white party that alternately demonizes African-Americans, Latinos, gays and Muslims.

O’Donnell is particularly needed now because most of the other Republican Tea Party standard-bearers lack genuine antigovernment or proletarian cred. Joe Miller and Ken Buck, the Senate candidates in Alaska and Colorado, actually are graduates of elite universities like those O’Donnell lied about attending. Rick Scott, the populist running for governor in Florida, was chief executive of a health care corporation that scooped up so many Medicare and Medicaid payments it had to settle charges for defrauding taxpayers. Rand Paul, the scion of a congressman, is an ophthalmologist whose calls for spending restraint don’t extend to his own Medicare income. Carl Paladino, the truculent man of the people in New York, grew his fortune as a developer with government handouts and favors. His California bookend, Carly Fiorina, received a golden parachute worth as much as $42 million from Hewlett-Packard, where she liquidated some 20,000 jobs.

The O’Donnell template, by sharp contrast, is Palin. It was Palin’s endorsement that put O’Donnell on the map, and it’s Palin’s script that O’Donnell is assiduously following. The once obscure governor of Alaska was also tripped up by lies and gaffes when she emerged on the national stage, starting with her misrepresentation of her supposed opposition to “the bridge to nowhere.” But she quickly wove the attacks into a brilliant cloak of martyrdom that positioned her as a fierce small-town opponent of the coasts’ pointy-head elites. O’Donnell, like Palin, knows that attacks by those elites, including conservative grandees, only backfire and enhance her image as a feisty defender of the aggrieved and resentful Joe Plumbers in “real America.”

The more O’Donnell is vilified, the bigger the star she becomes, and the more she can reinforce the Tea Party’s preferred narrative as “a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement” (in the recent words of the pundit Charles Krauthammer) populated only by everyday folk upset by big government and the deficit. This airbrushed take has had a surprisingly long life even in some of the nonpartisan press. In a typical example just three weeks ago, the influential publication National Journal delivered a breathless report on how the Tea Party functions as a “headless” movement where “no one gives orders.” To prove the point, a head of the headless Tea Party Patriots vouched that “75 percent of the group’s funding comes from small donations, $20 or less.”

In fact, local chapters of Tea Party Patriots routinely received early training and support from FreedomWorks, the moneyed libertarian outfit run by the former Republican House majority leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is itself a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a pseudo-grassroots group whose links to the billionaire Koch brothers were traced by Jane Mayer in her blockbuster August exposé in The New Yorker. Last week the same Tea Party Patriots leader who bragged to the National Journal about all those small donations announced a $1 million gift from a man she would identify only as an entrepreneur. The donor’s hidden identity speaks even louder than the size of the check. As long as we don’t know who he is, we won’t know what orders he’s giving either.

Such deep-pocketed mystery benefactors — not O’Donnell, whose reported income for this year and last is $5,800 — are the real indicators of what’s going on under the broad Tea Party rubric. Big money rains down on the “bottom up” Tea Party insurgency through phantom front organizations (Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Job Security) that exploit legal loopholes to keep their sugar daddies’ names secret. Reporters at The Times and The Washington Post, among others, have lately made real strides in explaining how the game works. But we still don’t know the identities of most of those anonymous donors.

From what we do know, it’s clear that some Tea Party groups and candidates like Sharron Angle, Paul and O’Donnell are being financed directly or indirectly not just by the Kochs (who share the No. 5 spot on the new Forbes 400) but by a remarkable coterie of fellow billionaires, led by oil barons like Robert Rowling (Forbes No. 69) and Trevor Rees-Jones (No. 110). Even their largess may be dwarfed by Rupert Murdoch (No. 38) and his News Corporation, whose known cash contributions ($2 million to Republican and Republican-tilting campaign groups) are dwarfed by the avalanche of free promotion they provide Tea Party causes and personalities daily at Fox and The Wall Street Journal.

However much these corporate contributors may share the Tea Party minions’ antipathy toward President Obama, their economic interests hardly overlap. The rank and file Tea Partiers say they oppose government spending and deficits. The billionaires have no problem with federal spending as long as the pork is corporate pork. They, like most Republican leaders in 2008, supported the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout. They also don’t mind deficits as long as they get their outsize cut of the red ink — $3.8 trillion worth if all the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.

But while these billionaires’ selfish interests are in conflict with the Tea Party’s agenda, they are in complete sync with the G.O.P.’s Washington leadership. The Republicans’ new “Pledge to America” promises the $3.8 trillion addition to the deficit and says nothing about serious budget cuts or governmental reforms that might remotely offset it. Surfing the Beltway talk shows last Sunday, you couldn’t find one without a G.O.P. politician adamantly refusing to specify a single program he might cut at, say, the Department of Education (Pell grants?) or the National Institutes of Health (cancer research?). And that’s just the small change. Everyone knows that tax cuts for the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons must come out of Social Security and Medicare payments for everybody else.

They are acing it, these guys. Election Day is now only a month away. The demoralized Democrats are held hostage by the unemployment numbers. And along comes this marvelous gift out of nowhere, Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party everywoman, who just may be the final ingredient needed to camouflage a billionaires’ coup as a populist surge. By the time her fans discover that any post-election cuts in government spending will be billed to them, and not the Tea Party’s shadowy backers, she’ll surely be settling her own debts with fat paychecks from “Fox & Friends.”



"Obama's War" : Video Lecture by Tariq Ali on Afghanistan (Parts 1-4)--April 19, 2010



LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS


http://www.lrb.co.uk/2010/04/19/tariq-ali/obamas-war

All,

Please click on the videolink (Parts 1-4) above to view and listen to Tariq Ali's very important lecture from April 2010 on the Afghanistan war and the highly dubious military role of the Obama administration in an obviously "unwinnable" war that even Vice President Joe Biden -- of all people!-- privately defines as a "Vietnam like disaster". After nine years of occupation (which makes it the longest declared war in American history-- [NOTE: The Vietnam war lasted over 10 years in duration but was never formally and officially declared or approved by Congress beforehand as an American war]-- the U.S. still finds itself deeply mired in a massive quagmire of a region that historically has roundly defeated every delusional and stupidly ambitious imperialist invader from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union...Check it out...

Kofi



Tariq Ali’s new book, The Obama Syndrome, will be published by Verso in October.


Obama’s War
by Tariq Ali

During his presidential campaign, President Obama pledged more troops, ground intrusions and drone attacks to end the war in Afghanistan. This is a promise he has kept, but it won’t work. In this lecture Tariq Ali talks about why the war is unwinnable and can only lead to a bloody stalemate.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull prevented Tariq Ali from delivering this lecture at the School of Visual Arts in New York on 19 April as planned; it was instead broadcast from a studio in London.

The other events in this series are also available to watch online. J’accuse: Dreyfus in Our Time: a lecture by Jacqueline Rose; The Author in the Age of the Internet: a panel discussion featuring John Lanchester, Nicholas Spice, Colm Tóibín, Mary-Kay Wilmers and James Wood.


New Book by Political Journalist, Cultural Critic, Novelist, Historian, and Activist Tariq Ali on Obama & American Foreign Policy

Tariq Ali
Photo by Nina Subin


http://tariqali.org/archives/1640

Tariq Ali

http://tariqali.org/archives/category/books

The Obama Syndrome
AUGUST 25, 2010
Forthcoming from Verso, October 2010

A merciless dissection of Obama’s overseas escalation and domestic retreat

What has really changed since Bush left the White House? Very little, argues Ali in The Obama Syndrome, apart from the mood music. The hopes aroused during Obama’s election campaign have rapidly receded. Following the financial crisis, the “reform” president bailed out Wall Street without getting anything in return. With Democratic Party leaders and representatives bought by the lobbying system, the healthcare reform bill was quickly eviscerated, public education delivered to the market and the big banks rewarded with light-touch regulation. Abroad, the “war on terror” continues: torture on a daily basis in Bagram, Iraq indefinitely occupied, Israel permanently appeased, and more troops and drone attacks in Af-Pak than under Bush. Obama’s failures are paving the way for a Republican surge, while his own supporters become increasingly despondent.

Tariq Ali in The Obama Syndrome:

“In Cairo, at West Point, at Oslo, Obama has treated the world to one uplifting homily after another, each address larded with every euphemism that White House speechwriters can muster to describe America’s glowing mission in the world: ‘Our country has borne a special burden in global affairs’; ‘Our cause is just, our resolve unwavering.’ The model for this variant of imperial presidency is Woodrow Wilson—no less pious a Christian, whose every second word was peace, democracy or self-determination, while his armies invaded Mexico, occupied Haiti and attacked Russia. But cant still goes a long way to satisfy those who yearn for it …”

Please direct press inquiries to:
Clara Heyworth / clara@versobooks.com / 718-246-8160

View press release:
http://tariqali.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ali_obama-syndrome_PR_1.pdf


Buy from Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk:

http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Syndrome-Surrender-Home-Abroad/dp/1844674495/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278090769&sr=8-1

Read / Watch Tariq Ali’s April 2010 lecture ‘Obama’s War’
:

http://tariqali.org/archives/1607

New Book by Historian, Critic, and Activist Paul Street on Barack Obama and Modern American Politics




http://www.paulstreet.org/

The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power [Paperback]
Paul Street (Author)

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Paradigm Publishers (September 15, 2010)

A sequel to Street's Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (2008) this new book documents and assesses Obama's newly emergent record on domestic and foreign politics against his original agenda for change. Although mainstream journalists have noted discrepancies between Obama's original vision and reality, Paul Street uniquely measures Obama's record against the expectations of the truly progressive agenda many of his supporters expected him to follow. Taken together, the list of Obama's weakened policies is startling: his business-friendly measures with the economy, the lack of support for the growing mass of unemployed and poor, the dilution of his health reform agenda, the passage of a record-setting Pentagon budget, and the escalation of U.S. military violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Street s account reveals these and many other indications of how deeply beholden Obama is to existing dominant domestic and global hierarchies and doctrines. His new book yields a perspective on Obama and current politics that is scarcely found in mainstream media. No progressive reader will want to miss it!

About the Author

Paul Street

Paul Street is an independent journalist, policy adviser, and historian. Formerly he was Vice President for Research and Planning at the Chicago Urban League. Among his recent books are Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm, 2008), Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), and Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in Post-Civil Rights America (Routledge, 2005). His many articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune; In These Times; Dissent; Z Magazine; Black Commentator; Monthly Review, Journal of American Ethnic History; Journal of Social History, and other publications.

A sequel to Street's Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics, this new book documents and assesses Obama's newly emergent record on domestic and foreign politics against his original agenda for change. Although mainstream journalists have noted discrepancies between Obama's original vision and reality, Paul Street uniquely measures Obama's record against the expectations of the truly progressive agenda many of his supporters expected him to follow. Taken together, the list of Obama's weakened policies is startling: his business-friendly measures with the economy, the lack of support for the growing mass of unemployed and poor, the dilution of his health reform agenda, the passage of a record-setting Pentagon budget, and the escalation of U.S. military violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Street s account reveals these and many other indications of how deeply beholden Obama is to existing dominant domestic and global hierarchies and doctrines. His new book yields a perspective on Obama and current politics that is scarcely found in mainstream media. No progressive reader will want to miss it!


Pre-order "The Empire's New Clothes" on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Empires-New-Clothes-Barack-Obama/dp/1594518459/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277750493&sr=1-2


Street’s writings, research findings, and commentary have been featured and presented in a large number and wide variety of media venues, including The New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, theChicago Tribune, The Times of India, Morning Star (England), Al-Alkhbar (The News in Beirut, Lebanon), WGN (Chicago/national), WLS (ABC-Chicago), Fox News, the Chicago Sun Times, theCapital City Times (Madison, WI), and the Iowa City Press Citizen.

Street has appeared in more than 60 radio and television interviews/broadcasts and on the popular live Web book-chat at “Firedog.” Lake

Street possesses a doctorate in modern U.S. History (with an emphasis on the history of industrial and class relations) – a degree that he will soon be marketing on E-Bay – and once hit a 25-foot jump shot over the outstretched arm of Michigan Wolverine basketball great and future NBA veteran Ricky Green.

Street has taught various aspects of U.S. history at a large number of Chicago-area colleges and universities. He has been strongly attached to Left political and intellectual culture since he read Volume 1 of Das Kapitaland Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution (the first at a snail’s pace) in the basement of a house in DeKalb, Illinois in the spring of 1978. He was the Director of Research at The Chicago Urban League from 2000 through 2005.

Street is a (sixth-grade) graduate of (the original John Dewey) Laboratory Schoolat the University of Chicago but it was all public schools after that. Teenage delinquency may have saved him from ruling-class indoctrination/socialization at one of the nation’s elite universities or liberal arts colleges and put him on a fateful path to the once-exciting ”little red schoolhouse on the prairie” – the formerly Marxist History Department of Northern Illinois University. The best childhood education he received came from the social movements of the 1960s – a pedagogical engagement that begin with hearing Martin Luther King, Jr, speak at Chicago’s Soldier Field during the long hot summer of 1966. Much of Street’s writing revolves around criticism and exposure of what King called “the triple evils that are interrelated”: racism, economic exploitation (capitalism), and militarism-imperialism. He thinks that other and related evils, including sexism and ecocidalism (and authoritarianism more generally) deserve equal consideration.