Posts Tagged → democracy
Happy Birthday, Pennsylvania!
333 years ago this week, Pennsylvania was born, when King Charles signed the Penn Charter, granting William Penn millions of acres of land in the New World. Ever since then, Pennsylvania has been a leader in religious tolerance, democracy, and citizen liberty. Contrast our liberties with, say, adjoining states New York and New Jersey. ‘Nuff said.
Condolences to the Mowery family, who lost former state senator Hal Mowery this week. Hal was a gentleman, cheerful, intelligent, thoughtful, charismatic, and without question the best looking man to ever serve in the Pennsylvania legislature. He will be sorely missed.
Huffington Post: No democracy for you!
A Huffington Post headline reads “Congress Inaction Prompts Obama to Act Alone.”
American civics class 101 teaches citizens that the executive branch cannot act alone, not really. If Congress is inactive, the president can only enforce laws that are on the books. He cannot create new laws. That would be dictatorial.
Ah-hah. There’s the point. Obama fans LOVE his dictatorship. Unashamedly.
Just remind us of that love when we have a new president from the other party, surrounded by angry citizens demanding retroactive corrections to the Obama years. You’ll learn to love it then, friends.
Harrisburg City mayoral race free-for-all shows weakness of rules-happy system
Watching all of the petty legal shenanigans unfold in our mayoral race reinforces the lesson that lots of rules works against democracy, and works in favor of rule makers.
Here’s a city in need of an independent minded leader, and both main political parties gang up to protect and promote the one guy, Eric Papenfuse, who is most likely to sell out the city taxpayers.
If you like democracy, and you want ordinary citizens to be part of the political process, then eliminate these arcane and unnecessary rules. They are barriers to legitimate political participation.
In our case, these silly rules are going to help protect the guilty (the bondsmen who issued faulty bonds that bankrupted Harrisburg) in both main political parties. And that tells us all we need to know.
The Method to the Obama Administration’s Mad Foreign Policy
The Method to the Obama Administration’s Mad Foreign Policy
By Josh First
May 16, 2011
Keeping one’s powder dry for over a month, while Obama’s approval ratings dropped lower and lower with a distinct “Cha-Ching” chime each Friday, and then watching the Obama Administration dance and spin with its friendly mainstream media pals, well…it was tough to stay tight-lipped, and now yours truly feels truly compelled to write. We don’t get this kind of analysis too many other places, just in blogs and small, independent news services, and certainly not in the mainstream media, which appear to be owned by the Obama Administration and who are doing their utmost to officially protect and promote the administration.
So, let’s evaluate the administration’s recent foreign policy by summing up its Attaboys and Awshuckses over the past couple of months, shall we?
Attaboys to the Obama Administration for (1) bombing Libya, and (2) for successfully closing out President Bush’s effort to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice, one way or another. That’s a total of two Attaboys.
But….Awshucks #1 for having pledged to bring Gaddafi to justice without force but with much sweet talk and then scolding, then by using actual force, and then saying the US was out of the Libya effort just as the military force was having an effect, and then saying that, actually, America was back in the military force effort and that the mission was open-ended in time and scope. This three-week-long flip-flop-flip is not good foreign policy. It looks care free and careless, an elliptical byproduct of a pacifist confronted with reality. Or, like a liberal who keeps getting mugged, these several recent times by Islamic countries like Libya. Or, like a liberal who has the silent approval of his array of political allies in Congress and political activists, who otherwise never saw a war, military adventure, or foreign invasion conducted by a Republican that they could support, but who now are whistling while casually looking up at the sky and admiring the nice spring weather.
Awshucks #2 for having held Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak to one quickly developed standard, and then to another standard that was quickly developed by the citizens of Tunisia and Yemen, and then holding him to yet one more: Instead of moving on with his life, Mubarak must stand trial. OK, we get it, President Obama, you are trying to demonstrate that you are committed to the rule of law and freedom. The problem is, your inconsistent messaging has sent confusing signals to both allies and enemies, which is not good foreign policy, and those mixed signals have consequences….
Awshucks #3 is the administration’s continued inconsistency on Bashar Assad of Syria, where as soon as the citizens Syria took to the streets, demanding their own freedom and representative government like their counterparts had in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt, all of whom had Obama’s support, the Obama Administration went silent, like he did two years ago when Iran’s citizens took to their streets. Syria is the latest missed opportunity for this administration.
Some have speculated that Obama is such an absolute statist that he identifies only with those who hold dictatorial power, and that, therefore, he is disinclined to criticize or undermine dictators, a la Ahmadinejad then and Syria’s thug-in-chief Bashar Assad, now. Some others have simply stated that the Obama administration lacks a cohesive doctrine or position on the Middle East as a whole, a common, convenient fall-back position for political watchers with degrees in political science.
However, based on the totality of Obama’s actions and statements, it is most likely that Obama is unwilling to make the same demands of Assad, or to hold him to the same high standard to which Mubarak, Gaddafi, et al were held, because without Assad (and Iran and Pakistan) pressuring Israel, Obama cannot accomplish his most likely and consistent goal: Undermining Israel and forcing Israel to make suicidal concessions to its homicidal neighbors.
Obama waited to comment while freedom-loving Iranians were being mowed down, tortured, and disappeared and he ultimately did not really criticize Iran’s Ahmadinejad, nor has he stated the obvious about Pakistan: Osama Bin Laden was hiding in plain view in a Pakistani military garrison town, with one AK 47 in his possession, because the Pakistani military was obviously protecting him. Pakistan has nuclear bombs that can be handed off to Iran or Hezbollah or any other enemy of Israel, and therefore, in the unique logic guiding Obama’s mind, it serves a role of pressuring Israel. Egypt went from moderate under Mubarak to now headed toward war with Israel under its current leadership and their likely political heirs, the Muslim Brotherhood (whom Obama has praised). Removing Mubarak served Obama’s larger goal, which is pressuring Israel.
Obama knows of no other way to work with Israel than to pressure it, to force it, to get Israel to make unsustainable concessions. Any nation or actor that has the potential to directly pressure Israel either gets a pass from Obama, like Iran, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Pakistan, or an actual nod, like the new Fatah-Hamas unity government that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist but which is Obama’s choice for peace partner. By allowing Syria to muddle along under Assad, Israel’s arch-enemy Hezbollah keeps its next door ally and stays strong, and actual peace remains elusive. So, what looks like an Awshucks to normal Americans is actually a purposeful decision by Obama.
Thus, even though the Obama Administration gets three negatives to two positives and loses the pitching count, there is actually a method to Obama’s madness; there is careful reasoning behind his apparent indecision in the Middle East. His actual goal is to force and pound and pressure Israel into indefensible submission, and he needs certain countries and regimes around in order to achieve that. And we all know the old Muslim adage that Obama is now living by: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Right now, Obama’s best friends in the Middle East are the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, Pakistan, and Iran.