Beautiful Horizons

Wisconsin's Tea Party GOP hates America

This sinister scheme is amazing in it's openness and arrogance:

The Wisconsin legislature is finalizing a bill to close ten Department of Motor Vehicle centers located in Democratic districts within the state. The money saved will be used to extend operating hours at DMV centers in Republican districts. These cuts come on the heels of new voter ID laws that require voters to present a state-issued photo identification card at the poll booths.

The Super Rich

Business journalist Chrystia Freeland has a very good piece in the latest Atlantic on the unreality of the world inhabited by the Super-Rich, who are sucking up the lion's share of increases in wealth at the expense of the much-vaunted and lately lamented "middle class."  Worth a read as part of ongoing conversations about wealth distribution, taxation, the unraveling of rational social constraints on plutocrats, deficit hysterics/hypocrisy and increasing economic  destabilization.

We Went All 'Red Pen' on Our Call Lists

    Because we're fired up and ready to go!  

    Here in San Pedro, California, our OFA Organizer, "Robert B"  is running a highly motivated, fine little phone bank.  He got a little bagel joint packed full with over 30 volunteers -- mostly youngsters -- and we were cranking today!  Called and called and called until there were no more lists.  Amazingly, when we finished all of our lists 45 minutes ahead of schedule, just about everyone 're-volunteered.'  So we broke out the red pens and called the "not homes."  Over 2,000 calls in all.   

    You can be active with the activists.  Or sleeping with the sleepers.  

The most definitive "mosque comment" I've seen to date

AP-Aug. 20, 2010:  Talat Hamdani traveled to Mecca to pray that her missing son, an EMT, was safe in the days after 9/11. She held out hope that his Muslim background had led to his detention as a suspect, considering it better than the alternative.

When part of his body was returned to her — his lower half shattered into 34 pieces — it was final proof he had indeed been killed when Islamic extremists brought down the World Trade Center. As Americans take sides over plans to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque blocks away, Hamdani says it feels personal.

"Why are we paying the price? Why are we being ostracized? Our loved ones died," she said at her Lake Grove, N.Y., home. "America was founded on the grounds of religious freedom," and opposition to the cultural center "is un-American. It's unethical. And it is wrong."

Iran

Iran is, once more, embroiled in violent protests of the corrupt, dictatorial regime.  I have no idea what this outbreak signifies for the immediate survival of the current theocracy, but I am hopeful mass dissidence might bring it to an end in the near term.  Andrew Sullivan has consistently been the best source among bloggers for updates bringing together timely and wide-ranging information on the protest movements in Iran.

Update: More online Iran news from the Times here.

Honduran Coup

Boz (in particular), Adam, Greg, Steven Taylor and Matthew Shugart all have the latest on the Honduran coup, including legal analysis (by Shugart) and Boz's Twitter feed is a great source for updates.

Adam tips me to the OAS's official response, which is spot on. They are acknowledging their responsibilities under the terms of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Good for them. So is the Obama administration. Even better.

There appears to be unanimous condemnation of the coup.

Adam also tips me to this disproving of a long-held belief (at least in this instance). Perhaps what we'll learn from this is that what should be encouraged in Latin America is disarmament.

What I can gather about Zelaya is that he may very well have overreached and that he had made a lot of enemies. There is, however, a solution for this: laws. Given the region's literally tortured history, the military should never ever take a role in deciding who is in power except to restore a legitimately elected government.

Yet Another Modest Proposal

Since Hugo Chavez claims to be a Christian, allow me to call to his attention this verse from Proverbs 26:11:

As a dog goes back to its vomit, so a fool repeats his stupidity.

Indeed. Hat tip to Marc Cooper.

A "New" Majority

This morning, still compulsively watching the Bobbleheads, I endured George Will wagging a verbal finger at The American' Prospect's Robert Kuttner and warning, "This isn't a good time to be a liberal." The immediate rationale for a man whose ideology and party has been dealt a resounding blow suggesting that the OTHER side had bigger problems was that Wall Street's "wages" are down so a source of potential tax revenue eludes "big spenders." A truth, if a small one. But Will's attempted taunt is part of the current conservative mission - to convince the winners of the last election that they're really losers after all, i.e. that the country is essentially conservative and the best liberals can hope for is to help restabilize a country where George Will's nostrums always make sense.

This may not be a "good time" for any of us in terms of the nation's economy or the extreme global challenges that have been exacerbated by an administration mired in mendacity and incompetence, but it's a pretty darned good time to be a liberal, as poltical moments go. And, contrary to the conventional - and convenient - wisdom being dispensed by the Wills of the world that this is a center-right country and President-elect Obama will have to bend to a center-right reality, the country is eager for the government to step up , go to work and get things right. The contrary is wishful thinking on the part of a conservative faction in total ideological disarray and politically discredited to a degree that would have seemed inconceivable as recently as four years ago.

Media Matters has just published "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative Majority is a Myth", that documents shifting public attitudes toward government's scale and role, here, and reinforces the message of the recent election: to paraphrase Richard Nixon when he embraced John Maynard Keynes, "We are all liberals now." The difference between Nixon's "conversion" to a constricted, grudging embrace of Keynesianism and what's happening now is that in the thirty-five year interval between Nixon and Obama's opening, we've had a massive conservative reaction that has ended rather abruptly in multiple failures. The new period of progressive politics is coming in on a fresh wind, not as conventional wisdom that's exhausted itself. (That exhausted CW would be "conservatism" or what's been passing as such.) Someone should tell George Will that's it's "not a good time for liberal dispensation of illiberal mythology." If ever there was a political moment for his peers and party that justified Mr. Will's sour scowl, this would be it. It's the look of bad losers.

Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights

1965

"Cigar-chomping, ex-Marine CEOs for Obama"

Hugh McColl is the stereotype of the hard-charging, take-no-prisoners CEO. Now retired, McColl used his position as head of a small, southern regional bank to take control, first, of NationsBank and then Bank of America - creating the largest bank (by assets) in the US. (BofA has been relatively unscathed in the housing meltdown.) A veteran of the Marine Corps, McColl was known for military-style strategies in consolidating and growing his banking "empire" and earned a reputation as one of the toughest competitors around.

Given McColl's position and carefully crafted image in the corporate world, I was more than a bit stunned to see this op-ed released to the Charlotte Observer last week:

Obama offers best way out of economic disarray

Posted: Monday, Oct. 06, 2008
From Hugh McColl Jr., former chairman and CEO of Bank of America:

In 49 years of living in Charlotte, I've seldom offered my opinion in writing and never submitted a piece such as this. The condition of our country compels me.

The economic disarray threatening our community and nation poses critical challenges but also presents opportunity. We can observe the presidential candidates in the crucible of crisis.

Only one of them demonstrates the needed intellect, fortitude and temperament. That is why I have decided to publicly support Barack Obama.

What is needed in Washington is sound judgment and exceptional leadership. Through the years that I've been a businessman and before that an officer in the Marine Corps, I saw what qualities make effective leaders. I see them in Obama: a sharp intellect, stiff spine and steady hand.

Obama's economic plans will restore market confidence and provide a blueprint for a better future. His pragmatic, intelligent economic plan will stop our financial slide and restore the expansion and confidence we knew in the 1990s. Obama's tax relief plans for small businesses and the middle class should provide much-needed economic stimulus.

Obama also has an energy plan that makes sense. He will shift energy use from foreign oil toward alternative, domestic sources. This will create millions of “green collar” jobs and enable us to capitalize on alternative energy. These cleaner energy solutions will protect the planet for our children and grandchildren and free us from depending on hostile nations.

We could not have built Bank of America into the leader it has become without a highly educated workforce. Obama proposes to invest in education to ensure we remain the most productive and efficient in the world. We must take these steps to stay globally competitive.

I greatly respect all that John McCain has done for our nation. But it is Barack Obama whom we need now.