Noam Chomsky: Republican Candidates Are Insane • Coral Reefs Will Die in Our Lifetime • Pro-Death Republicans • Ron Paul Tells the Sick to "Die" • Famine • and more!

- Republican Blood Lust Again

So I was watching the Republican tea party debate on CNN, led by Wolf Blitzer, whom I usually don’t care for at all. 

But I perked up when Blitzer asked a tough question of Ron Paul. Blitzer presented him with the following hypothetical:

“A healthy young, 30-year-old man has a good job, makes a good living but decides, ‘You know what? I’m not going to spend $200 or $300 a month on health insurance because I’m healthy, I don’t need it.’ But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. What’s going to happen if he goes into a coma? Who pays for that?”
Ron Paul, who is showing himself in these debates to be a heartless old fool, amazingly responded by saying, “That’s what freedom is all about. Taking your own risks.” And he belittled what he called “this whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody.”

Blitzer, to his credit, followed up:

“Are you saying society should just let him die?”

Before Paul had a chance to answer (and he eventually said churches and neighbors would take care of the patient), members of the audience responded with shouts of “Yes!” and “Yeah!”

What a scary bunch of people!

Just as the Republican audience last time showed their bloodlust when they cheered Rick Perry’s 234 executions, here in this debate they were even more callous and creepy.

- Alan Grayson condemns Tea Party for ‘sadistic’ response to uninsured Americans video

Angered by the “Let Him Die” chant at the Tea Party debate Monday evening, Keith and former congressman Alan Grayson discuss the appropriate response to this outrage. Grayson questions the Tea Party’s Christian ideology, saying, “They glorify and sanctify other people’s pain.”

- Nicole Lamoureux on Tea Party’s ‘Let Him Die’ controversy video

Keith and Nicole Lamoureux, the executive director of the National Association of Free Clinics, condemn the reaction from the audience at the GOP Tea Party debate to an exchange between moderator Wolf Blitzer and the radical libertarian candidate for the GOP nomination Texas Rep. Dr. Ron Paul. Blitzer asked Paul what should happen to a healthy 30-year-old without medical insurance who becomes seriously ill. Paul responded by saying, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.” Blitzer replied, “But congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” The Tea Party crowd chanted, “Yeah!” Lamoureux says, “It broke my heart for the uninsured, and someone needs to be the voice for those uninsured.”

- A Killer Issue

Republicans like Rick Perry are skeptical of everything the government does—except when it executes people. 

Either you believe in government or you don't.

The current field of Republican contenders for president are hard at work to prove they don't. The best government, they insist, will leave you alone to repair your own ruptured kidney while your neighbors bring you casseroles and cigarettes. In recent weeks, leading Republicans have made plain they don't believe in government-run health care (lo, even unto death). They don't believe in inoculating children again HPV (lo, even unto death). They don't believe in government-run disaster relief (ditto, re death), the minimum wage, Social Security, or the Federal Reserve. There is nothing, it seems—from protecting civil rights to safeguarding the environment—that big government bureaucracies can't foul up.

But there is one exception: killing people. These same Republicans who are dubious of government's ability to do anything right have an apparently bottomless faith in the capital-justice system. Everything is broken in America, they claim—except the machinery of death.

At last week's Republican debate, when asked whether he had ever lost sleep about the record number of executions that have occurred on his watch, Texas Gov. Rick Perry answered no. (The crowd whooped and cheered. Better in error than in doubt and all that.)

Perry's confidence in the infallibility of Texas' capital punishment system would be inspiring were it not for the empirical evidence. Of the 234 people executed in his 11-year tenure, Texas' "thoughtful, clear process" resulted in what was almost certainly the execution of at least one innocent man—Cameron Todd Willingham—based on "expert" arson evidence that was complete junk, an informant who recanted his testimony, and a forensic psychiatrist who diagnosed Willingham based chiefly on his possession of an Iron Maiden poster.

- The Most Anti-Environment Congress Ever?

House Republicans have undertaken a war on environmental regulations since assuming the majority earlier this year, taking a total of 125 votes on measures that would take undermine environmental laws or take away the government's authority to set regulations. Together, the measures make this "the most anti-environment Congress in history," says Rep. Henry Waxman, the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

- Climate report links extreme weather events to global warming

Heat waves, droughts, blizzards and the the rest of the year's U.S. record-breaking extreme weather, likely enjoyed a boost from global warming, suggests a climate report.

- The costs of climate change

From California beachside communities to remote villages in subarctic Alaska, the impacts of climate change are becoming ever more tangible, as shown by two government studies released this week.

- Lizz Winstead on Michele Bachmann’s fear of HPV vaccinations

“Countdown” guest host David Shuster and comedian Lizz Winstead, co-creator of “The Daily Show,” examine Michele Bachmann’s dubious claim that HPV vaccinations for young girls can cause mental retardation. At this week’s CNN/Tea Party Debate, Bachmann attacked Rick Perry for supporting HPV vaccinations, which prevent forms of cervical cancer.

- Famine Ravages Somalia in a World Less Likely to Intervene

Is the world about to watch 750,000 Somalis starve to death? The United Nations’ warnings could not be clearer. A drought-induced famine is steadily creeping across Somalia and tens of thousands of people have already died.

- Final Deepwater disaster report paints bleak picture

The full catalogue of failures that led to the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been laid out by a final US government report. 

The report was released today by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) — set up to replace the discredited Minerals Management Agency wound up in the wake of the disaster (see Nature's special page for all news on Deepwater).

Investigators from BOEMRE and the US Coast Guard lay the blame for the accident on owners of the rig Transocean, contracting company Halliburton and ‘ultimate operator’ BP.

The panel concludes that BP, Transocean and Halliburton all violated a number of federal regulations.

- Summer of Extreme Weather Ends with a Bang

Regardless of Hurricane Irene, severe rain and flooding, this August was the second warmest on record for the continental United States. Last month also spread the love around the globe, making it the third warmest August in 34 years.

- CLIMATE 101 by The Climate Reality Project

Video explaining Climate Change- share it!

- Experts say Fukushima 'worse' than Chernobyl

Experts say that the total radiation leaked will eventually exceed the amounts released from the Chernobyl disaster that the Ukraine in April 1986. This amount would make Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in history.

- Coral reefs 'will be gone by end of the century'

Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.

- Why There Are Protests On Wall Street: Their Actions Impoverished More Than 60 Million People

Today, over a thousand demonstrators began protests as a part of a campaign they are calling “Occupy Wall Street.” The protesters intend to engage in long-term civil disobedience to draw attention to Wall Street’s misdeeds and call for structural economic reforms. 

As demonstrators converged on Wall Street — with police blocking them from reaching the New York Stock Exchange — much of the news media paid little attention to the protests. Meanwhile, much of the conservative punditry has taken to mocking the demonstrations, with conservative Twitter users lambasting the “hippies” in New York City.

While many of the conservative defenders of Wall Street may be quick to portray protests against the American financial establishment as driven by envy of its wealth or far-left ideologies, the truth is that people have a very simple reason to be angry — because Wall Street’s actions made tens of millions of people dramatically poorer through no fault of their own.

- If Everybody’s Working for the Weekend, How Come It Took This Country So Goddamn Long to Get One?

Ta-Nehisi Coates went after liberals the other day for being too whiny. Those who complain about the compromises and capitulations of Obama—”Team Commie,” as he calls them—have only themselves to blame. They haven’t done the hard work of organizing citizens to put pressure on the pols in Washington, particularly conservative Democrats resisting Obama’s jobs program. 

I was a little puzzled by this post. Its hectoring tone (“being taken seriously involves actual work”) sounds a lot like the one Obama uses when he attacks “griping and groaning” liberals—a tone ably skewered by none other than Ta-Nehisi Coates in a New York Times op-ed, which I wrote about in an earlier post.

It’s also not clear who exactly Coates is talking about here. Most of the liberals and leftists I know who criticize Obama spend their lives working to elect more progressive politicians, not only in Congress but throughout the country. They know full well that if things are going to change, it’s not going to come from Obama or the Democratic Party but from social movements and grassroots activism.

- The Theology of Armageddon

The woo-woo nuttiness of it all defies the imagination, beginning with the idea of a course in “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare” at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Nuclear ethics?

Does that mean no nuclear weapons should ever be used to promote sexual harassment?

Well actually, turns out the point of the mandatory course recently canceled by the Air Force after officers of numerous faiths complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about it and TruthOut published an exposé in July — was to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a Bible-verse-studded indoctrination in faux-Just War Theory, cynically known in the ranks as the “Jesus Loves Nukes” training.

- The Election of 2012: Why the Most Important Issues May Be Off the Table (But Should Be On It)

We’re on the cusp of the 2012 election. What will it be about? It seems reasonably certain President Obama will be confronted by a putative Republican candidate who...

- Noam Chomsky: 2012 GOP Candidates Views are "Off the International Spectrum of Sane Behavior" video

MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky discusses the position of the Republican presidential candidates on issues such as climate change and calls them "utterly outlandish." "I’m not a great enthusiast for Obama, as you know, from way back, but at least he’s somewhere in the real world," Chomsky says. "Perry, who’s very likely … to win the primary and win the nomination, and maybe to win the election, he’s often in outer space." 

"I mean, as you mentioned before, I just came back from Europe, where people just can’t believe what they’re seeing here, what people are saying. I mean, take one of the really crucial issues for the human species: doing something about environmental catastrophe. Well, you know, every single one of the Republican candidates—maybe not Huntsman, but every major one—is a climate change denier. It’s kind of ironic in the case of Perry. He says there’s no global warming, while Texas is burning up with the highest temperatures on record, fire all over the place, and so on. But it doesn’t matter, it’s just not happening. In fact, the one who has conceded that maybe global warming has taken place is Michele Bachmann. I heard a statement of hers in which she said, "Well, yes, maybe it’s happening. It’s God’s punishment for allowing gay marriage," or some comment like that. I mean, this—what’s going on there is just off the international spectrum of sane behavior."

Obama being a wimp; Bad Climate Change news; US Threatens UK, and more (originally posted 02/06/09)

- Letters Prove US Threats to Halt Intelligence to UK "A flurry of letters between the British Foreign Office and the US State Department has revealed that Washington did threaten to withdraw intelligence-sharing with Britain if documents related to the alleged torture of a British terrorism detainee in Guantanamo Bay were made public....The High Court in London said on Wednesday the Foreign Office had refused to allow the torture documents to be revealed because of a "threat" from Washington to stop sharing intelligence with Britain."

- Naomi Klein: We've Got to Make Obama Do It!

- Obama's Energy Secretary Outlines Dire Climate Change Scenario

- Watchdogs: Government Overpaid for Wall Street Assets "The federal government (under control of Bush) overpaid by about $78 billion for stock and other troubled assets when it bailed out big banks last year, and it lacks sufficient internal controls to police and protect taxpayers' investment in the institutions, government watchdogs said Thursday."

- Advocacy Groups Fear New Wave of Homeless

All the Comforts of Home: Republicans Destroy, Democrats Serve Cookies

Published on Friday, February 6, 2009 by CommonDreams.org 
 by David Michael Green

I got a bad feeling that if we liked the Clinton years, we're gonna love the Obama ones.

Remember those fun 1990s? Actually, they really weren't, of course. If they look good at all in retrospect, it is purely because the intervening monster mash gave us a point of reference so that we might know what ugly really looks like.

Apart from that, however, the political story of that decade had a depressingly simple narrative arc to it. Republican bottom-feeders demonstrated at every opportunity how scummy politics can be, and Democrats responded over and over again with the political equivalent of "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" And wasn't that fun to watch?

What the last months seem to be screaming out for all to hear is the lesson that some people just can't change. Or won't.

Could the little project launched a few centuries back, and affectionately referred to as 'America', possibly be in a more precipitous free-fall than it is right now?

No. And yet...

...And yet, while Wall Street firms are desperately trying to out-30s the 1930s themselves with their 2008 exercise in earnings annihilation, management gladly rewarded itself with nearly $20 billion dollars in bonuses, many funded by the United States taxpayers. This caused the people's president to nearly raise his voice in remonstration, he was so upset.
...And yet, with the Republican Party tanking so badly that its best likely outcome in the years ahead (and you should see the second best) is to wind up as the undisputed vote-getting champ of Mississippi and large parts of Georgia, still they reiterate their most aggressive and abysmal of behavior.

...And yet, with the Democratic Party holding more or less all the political cards imaginable, still they go desperately looking for any and all possible ways to share their political power with the GOP. And when the latter folks reward such generosity with an immediate slap to the face, still the Dems come back begging for more.

We're two weeks into the Obama decade, and already I'd be bored if I wasn't so pissed. Even with every imaginable self-made predator circling the camp, still we go on with the same set of juvenile antics that substitute for meaningful politics in America. Even with every conceivable disaster hungrily lapping at our shores, some of us would rather get rich than live to retirement age, some of us would rather win elections than save the country, and some of us would rather hold hands than be the guy who walks away from the knife fight alive.

Yep, it's the Clinton years again. Minus the booming economy and probably the sexual shenanigans. But the politics sure look the same.

Wall Street greed that exists absolutely without bound, to start with. And a government that finds increasingly creative ways to liquidate the commonwealth of its common wealth and turn it instead into private playgrounds, corporate jets, MBA bacchanals, and really big rings on the fingers of really big trophy wives. What, you've got a problem with a $35,000 toilet for a company accepting taxpayer bailout money?

Don't worry. Barrack Obama called it shameful. Since that appears to be just about all he plans to do about it, and since I had already made that particular analytical leap on my own horsepower, I must confess to being seriously unimpressed. Yeah, limiting salaries of the execs running companies receiving bailout funds is not a bad idea, but mostly another terribly trembling tactic from timid town. Since I am now an owner of these firms, would it be too much to ask for new management? Call me strange if you must, but I don't want corporate chiefs who have proven their ability to wreck companies running mine. It's just this odd quirk I've always had.

But the finger-wagger-in-chief's little dressing down was actually the high point of the week. Somewhat less amusing was the GOP's reaction to the president's fiscal stimulus plan. Even though Obama went out of his way to include within it tax cuts that seem to be the only two words the lips of Republicans are able to form in discussions of economics or public policy - tax cuts that are widely understood not to have serious stimulus capacity at this point - still not a single member of the House - not one - voted for the bill. Instead, they went parading around the media complaining about how the legislation would favor illegal immigrants, or would spend a few bucks on family planning services. Can't have that. Brown women in America? Not barefoot and not pregnant? Not okay.

Did I mention that this looks a lot like the 1990s? Zero was precisely the number of Republicans who voted for Bill Clinton's economic rescue package in 1993. Taxes, sex, war, taxes. Taxes, sex, war, taxes. This guys are like a jazz singer who can only hit four notes, two of which are the same. And about as useful.

Of course, people gotta have principles. Texas Senator John Cornyn - who is absolutely everything you'd expect a Texas senator to be - said this week "I read the bill in vain for any real stimulus in the economy. What I do see mainly is an opportunity being exploited to spend a lot of money without much scrutiny." Now see, dang it, that's not okay. For example, let's just say you had this Treasury secretary - we'll just call him John Doe Paulson, to pick a name at random - and he spent $350 billion by giving banks rescue money that they used instead for bonuses and really cool toilets, literal and figurative. Now that there, my friends, is an example of money being spent without scrutiny. Or certain contractors (oh, you know, like Haliburton maybe) and their no-bid contracts in certain wars (let's say Iraq, for instance). Or a prescription drug bill that actually forbids the government from using its buying power to obtain volume discounts. Now those are some nasty cases of unscrutinized federal spending, and we can all be thankful that Cornyn and other Republicans have been on the job this last decade, making sure none of that transpired.

The party, meanwhile, was busy last week choosing for themselves a new chairman. And guess what? He's a real conservative fellow. Now there's a shocker. And he's a black man. And he argues that Republicans have gotten a totally bum rap when it comes to perceptions of their racist politics these last decades. You know, that whole Reagan states' rights campaign kick-off speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi - a town famous for only one thing, murdering civil rights workers - for example. Or that whole Nixonian Southern Strategy to appeal to racist white voters in the South. Or the Willie Horton ad. Or the small matter of mass black voter disenfranchisement campaign in Florida in 2000. Or Ohio in 2004. Yeah, man. You gotta feel bad for the GOP and this unfair reputation. They really need to hire some new marketing people!

Oh, and did I mention the guy who didn't get the chairmenship? He sent around a CD to party leaders that included the snappy little tune, "Barack, the Magic Negro"! Some people in the party thought that was pretty tacky. But others didn't, and so a serious and major debate ensued within the party leadership as to whether this was an appropriate thing to do, and whether it was a good idea to put such a person at the top of the party. Hmmm, tough question. No wonder they had such a struggle over it.

Of course, the good news for the GOP is that with a black man as their chairman now, they'll no doubt be drawing tons of black votes from this point forward. And the even better news is that the GOP thinks that with a black man as their chairman now, they'll no doubt be drawing tons of black votes from this point forward. You know, just like Sarah Palin knocked down those barriers preventing women from gaining equality (the same ones that Republicans had spent lifetimes erecting) and thus energized the female vote for the GOP ticket. Oh yeah.

Let's be honest. The chances that the GOP would change its ugly ways only rose to the high-water mark of about three out of a thousand because of the trouncing they took in two elections back-to-back. Anyone who thought these folks were about to give up either their abysmal politics or their disgusting tactics hasn't been paying attention since the 1950s. And, besides, what would be the point? We already have a party that stands for just about nothing, and does so with unsurpassed strategic blunder, and a passionate devotion to the avoidance of both passion and devotion. Who needs another?

Speaking of which, I'm starting to feel kinda dumb for having said lately that a certain fellow by the name of Obama is a real smart guy. The more I see him in operation, the more I get the sense that the prime directive of his operating system is to always seek the making of happy-happy with his adversaries. He actually had some nice Republican members of Congress over to his new house the other day and personally walked around the room carrying a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies to serve them. You think I'm making this up, don't you? You wish. I wish. If this keeps up, pretty soon he's gonna make Chamberlain at Munich look as tough as the siege of Stalingrad by comparison.

He gave the Republicans a couple of hundred million bucks worth of worthless tax cuts as a means of compromise, even though that substantially diminishes his chances for succeeding in bringing recovery, and therefore also in succeeding at playing president. He says nice things about Ronald Reagan and throws a big shindig for the guy who just got through spending half a year calling him a socialist terrorist. He's now put three Republicans in his cabinet, which by my count totals to a contingent therein approximately three hundred percent bigger than the liberal cohort (of, maybe, one person). Not only that, instead of trading the last Republican added for the 60th Democratic senator and thus a filibuster-proof majority that would guarantee getting his legislation through Congress, Obama agrees to a deal wherein the Democratic governor of New Hampshire backfills Judd Gregg's seat with a Republican appointee.

And what do they do, in return? Trash his bill in public, say that they hope he fails, and vote - with nary a single exception - against the signature legislative initiative of his presidency. During an economic crisis, no less, with a public already massively angry at them.

If anyone knows this guy's Blackberry address, pass it along, wouldya? I'd like to remind him that Republicans don't get that whole 'post-partisan' thing. Precambrian, yes. Post-partisan, no. They will thrash the country (again) if they think it will wreck this presidency and bring them back to power. I'm not sure how Rush Limbaugh could possibly have been quite any more explicit about that. Yo, Barry. They are going to resist you any and every way they can. If you succeed, they'll take credit for it, maybe saying that the Bush tax cuts finally kicked in. If you fail, I'm pretty sure they won't be acknowledging the role of their political sabotage during a national economic crisis.

Lose the hand-holding impulse, dude. You've got cred, you've got crises, you've got control of the government. If you throw them a bone and they slap your face in return, the thing not to do here is increase the size of the bone. No more oatmeal cookies, man. Pull their useless stuff out of the bill, redraft it exactly the way you want it, and ram it down their throats. If they use their 41-seat minority in the Senate to block a relief bill that the people desperately want, the House has passed, and the president is waiting to sign, make them pay for it politically by endlessly reminding the public just who's standing in the way of the Red Cross trucks, and just who's driving them.

I mean, is it really too much to ask for a Democratic Party actually does something? Without asking the GOP for permission first?
 
Once before, America had a crumbling economy, a bumbling foreign policy, an angry electorate, and a decisive election. Ronald Reagan won in 1980, and Democrats cowered for the next three decades. They're still cowering.

This time the conditions are almost identical, except for three things. First, people are hurting a lot worse now than in 1980. Second, it's the Democrats who have won this time. And, third, it wasn't an election. It was two (elections).

But, of course, one thing hasn't changed.

It's still the Democrats doing the cowering.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at HofstraUniversity in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

Sean