BroadSnark

People have, apparently, lost their minds.  There seems to be a panic that we have lost the fabric of our society and I’m having trouble getting a handle on what has happened that is so drastic that people would think its tyranny or fascism or hitleresque or stalinesque (Jon Stewart)

That quote is from Stewart’s interview with Lou Dobbs (video below).  Dobbs never really answered Jon’s question, so I’m going to try.

There is a certain segment of the American population that really believes in the American foundational myths.  They identify with them.  They believe that America was built by a handful of white, Christian, men with exceptional morals.  Their America is the country that showed the world democracy, saved the Jews in World War II, and tore down the Berlin wall.

These people have always fought changes to their mythology.  They have always resented those of us who pushed to complicate those myths with the realities of slavery, Native American genocide, imperial war in the Philippines, invasions of Latin American countries, and secret arms deals.

And we have been so busy fighting them to have our stories and histories included in the American story that we sometimes forget why the myths were invented in the first place.

No myth illustrates the slight of hand behind our national mythology quite like the myth of the cowboy.  In the mythology, the cowboy is a white man.  He is a crusty frontiersman taming the west and paving the way for civilization.   He is the good guy fighting the dangerous Indian.  He is free and independent.  He is in charge of his own destiny.

Read Richard Slatta’s Cowboys of the Americas and you will get a very different picture.  In reality, the first American cowboys were indigenous people trained by the Spanish missionaries.  In reality, more than 30% of the cowboys on Texas trail drives were African American, Mexican, or Mexican-American.

And cowboys were not so free.

Cowboys were itinerant workers who, while paid fairly well when they had work, spent much of the year begging for odd jobs.  Many did not even own the horse they rode.  Frequently, they worked for large cattle companies owned by stockholders from the Northeast and Europe, not for small family operations (a la Bonanza).  The few times cowboys tried to organize, they were brutally oppressed by ranchers.

So what does all this have to do with Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, teabaggers and white panic?

Marginalization and myths have always been about economic exploitation.  White supremacy is not simply personal bigotry.  It is the systematic exclusion, dehumanization, and erasure of the majority in order to preserve economic dominance for the wealthy minority.  And while white men may be in most positions of wealth and power to this day, only a very few of them really benefit from our current economic system.  White supremacy helped distract poor and working class whites from targeting their economic exploiters.  White supremacy helped mask the lie of equal opportunity.

When you know the real history of the cowboy, it makes the selling of Reagan and Bush as cowboys seem like an inside joke.   The mythological cowboy is the heroic figure that many Americans wish they were.  The fact that the cowboy was actually an exploited worker is virtually unknown.

When Americans vote for a president, they want to see that heroic version of themselves looking back at them.  They want to see that free cowboy of the mythology.  No matter how poor or exploited white people were, they could always take subconscious comfort in the fact that, when they looked at the highest power in the land, they saw an idealized version of themselves.

And then came Barack Obama.

Pop.

It’s a powerful thing to be able to identify with the people who are your leaders, to feel like they are one of you.  It’s a feeling that many people in the United States felt for the first time when Barack Obama was elected.  It’s equally powerful when your elected leaders are clearly not like you, when the fact that they do not represent you is glaringly obvious.

I had my whole life to get used to the idea that the government was never made to really represent my interests.  Many of these angry people are the very white, Christian, men that this country was supposedly built by and for.  And this is the first time the myth of America has been unmasked for them.

Undoubtedly, there are some bigots out there who are just angry that they have a black president.  Clearly, even for those who don’t feel motivated by personal bigotry, there is a healthy dose of racism underlying the fact that it took a black president for them to realize that their government is as dysfunctional as it is.  But I doubt the people we are talking about have an understanding of the difference between bigotry and racism.

And I don’t believe it is just blackness that makes Barack Obama different and symbolic.  It is also his intellectual cosmopolitanism.  He is a symbol of the privilege that is replacing whiteness – the educated professional/managerial class.  And there is a significant amount of animosity directed towards those people who justify their privilege by virtue of their intellect.

And so these people who have lost their foundational myths are out in the streets.  They are using all the synonyms for “bad” that our pathetic school system and media have taught them – communist, fascist, totalitarian, socialist, nazi.  All the words are interchangeable.  They all mean not American.  They all mean not them.

Bolivian president Evo Morales says that exports to the U.S. have decreased 8% due to Bolivia’s decertification under The Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA).  However, Morales expects that agreements with Venezuela, along with demand from Arab countries, will make up for the loss.  (Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been strengthening his ties with Bolivia and Venezuela.)

Supposedly, the U.S. government frowns on the increasing influence of Chavez in Latin America.  Supposedly, the U.S. government is worried about Iranian power around the world.  Supposedly, the Obama administration is trying to turn over a new leaf with Latin America.  So why would the U.S. government do something that alienates Latin American countries and sends them into the warm embrace of the very people they are trying to isolate?

It’s inexplicable, at least to any rational person, but U.S. drug policy has never been rational.

The United States is the leading consumer of cocaine.  Rather than dealing with U.S. addiction and its related problems, our policy has been to go after the “source.”  Now it takes many ingredients to make cocaine – sulfuric acid, kerosene, lime, sodium carbonate – but we have focused on going after the coca leaf.

Going after coca leaves may seem to make some sense, as the coca leaf is where the alkaloids that make you high are found.  But coca is a bush grown by subsistence farmers, campesinos, who often have no other viable cash crop.  And the coca leaf is an integral part of Andean culture and has been since at least 1800 B.C.

Unfortunately for Andeans and their traditions, a German chemist named Friedrich Gaedcke isolated the alkaloids in coca leaves.  Andean coca growers were everyone’s best friend when coca was used in legal products like Coca Cola and cocaine laced wine.  But once a handful of U.S. drug warriors decided that cocaine had to be stopped, we expected Andean people to turn their backs on thousands of years of culture and to just give up an integral part of their economy.

As the drug war ratcheted up, Andean people in Bolivia and elsewhere suffered the consequences.  Bolivia was pressured to eradicate coca crops using herbicides and fungicides that damaged food crops, contaminated water sources, and made people sick.  Human rights abuses escalated as pressure was put on Bolivia to militarize their anti-drug efforts and to impose increasingly draconian penalties on people involved in the coca and cocaine trades.

In addition to interdiction and eradication, drug warriors from the U.S. promoted crop substitution programs.  Loans were provided to farmers to grow crops other than coca and special trade deals were arranged to help open up U.S. markets to legal Andean goods.  The ATPDEA was part of that effort.

All of our efforts to stop drugs at the “source” have been an abysmal failure.  Substitute crops were no replacement for coca bushes which need little care and bring in far more money.  The only things U.S. imposed drug policies were effective at was alienating Andean people.  Nobody knows that better than Evo Morales, former head of the Chapare coca growers union.

Morales has taken the position that Bolivia should say no to cocaine, but yes to coca.  His refusal to acquiesce to all U.S. demands when it comes to drug policy has contributed to a testy relationship with the U.S. and to Bolivia’s continued decertification.

Now the decertification doesn’t really matter much.  It effects only a small amount of trade.  And the U.S. officials know damned well that, even if Morales did everything they want, it wouldn’t do anything to resolve the drug problem in the United States.  So it makes absolutely no sense that we would take action to piss off Bolivians (and their allies) and drive a further wedge between the U.S. and other countries of the Americas.

But sense and drug policy don’t seem to go together in the United States.

Amazingly, there are still people out there who claim that women just aren’t interested in politics.  I discovered this when I started nosing around on Libertarian blogs where they wondered why there weren’t more women in their midst.

Allison Brown says “I personally know no other female libertarians, and when I discuss the topic with other women they’re generally apathetic on the topic of politics in general, and libertarianism in particular.”  Rather than actually looking for information on women and political interest, Allison just proceeds into some drivel about women being emotional and less independent (more on that in upcoming posts).

Terje, a commenter at Thoughts on Freedom, also wonders about our interest in political debate, saying:

The extent to which women are involved in political debate at all (libertarian or otherwise) is a relevant consideration. Maybe men are more prone biologically to expend energy scaning the horizon for signs of trouble/opportunity whilst women are more interested in more immediate concerns.

Let’s break this down a bit shall we?

First of all, we have to define “political”.  You don’t get to define political as only that which entails a theoretical circle jerk between privileged people with way too much free time.  Politics isn’t only that which has no immediate application to reality.  “Immediate concerns” like being able to feed your family are political.  It isn’t that women aren’t interested in politics.  It is that some people define politics so narrowly that it only applies to pseudo philosophers.

Access to water is an immediate need and a dilemma often left up to poor women to grapple with.  Who has access to water sources, whether or not water is privatized or a public utility, whether or not water sources are protected from pollution – these are all very political issues connected with a very immediate need.

So lets look at a few proxies for women’s political interest.  Do women:

1. vote?
2. participate in public protest?
3. follow the news?
4. study political science?
5. run for public office?

Women vote.  In fact, in the United States, women vote in higher numbers and in higher proportions than men do.  Even in Afghanistan, 40 – 55% of women braved the polls this year, despite Taliban threats.  And in 2004, when things seemed somewhat safer, 70% of Afghani women voted.

Public protests are filled with women.  Perhaps the most famous protester in the United States is Medea Benjamin of Code Pink.  And it was s a woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death became the symbol of Iranian protest.  Even in the most repressive regimes, women like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo continued stand up when nobody else was.

Women follow the news.  Women are more likely to follow network news (morning shows, nightly news, and news magazines).  They are almost as likely to watch cable news.  What women are somewhat less likely to do is read newspapers, listen to talk radio or get their news online.

News sources by gender

Perhaps women don’t read newspapers like the Washington Post because 90% of the Post’s opinion pieces are written by men.  Perhaps they don’t want to listen to vile shmucks like Rush Limbaugh on the radio.  Perhaps women don’t spend as much time online because they are actually working at their desks (not me, obviously, but some women).  Whatever the reasons for the differences in news sources between men and women, it is clear that women are following the news.

As for political science, according to the American Political Science Association, 42% of all PhDs in political science go to women.  It is true the number of women who complete the tenure track to become full professors is only a fraction of the number of men.  As the APSA report shows, that isn’t due to lack of interest, but to less support and more responsibilities.

Obviously, there are far less women in public office than there are men.*  There are people who would like to claim this is due to lack of interest.  There are people who would like to claim that women are less ruthless and power hungry. I would like to believe it is because all those women are secret anarchists, but I think we all know it is much more likely a result of the barriers to women being elected to office.

So no, my Libertarian friends, a lack of political interest is not the reason there aren’t more women in your midst.

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*Only Rwanda has near parity in male/female political representation.

I came across a study this week that reminded me why I focused on history and not economics.

Carl-Johan Daigaard and Ola Olsson, economists at the University of Copenhagen, published results of a study called Why are Rich Countries More Politically Cohesive?.  They conclude that there is a correlation between market integration, wealth, and politically cohesiveness.

Basically, as people specialize and trade with each other they become interdependent.  That interdependence brings on a meeting of the minds.  This turns into an upward spiral of wealth and political cohesiveness.  That’s the theory.

In order to test their theory, they needed to compare political cohesion.  They use the World Value Survey.  On the survey, respondents rate themselves from one to ten on a left to right political scale.  Daigaard and Olsson looked at the number of respondents who rated themselves at the extreme ends of the scale.  They argue that countries with fewer people self identifying at the extremes have higher degrees of political cohesion.

They admit that this is only a proxy for political cohesion and that people in different countries hold different ideas about what is extreme left or extreme right.  But they claim “it is clear that individuals who answer ‘one’ or ‘ten’ are deliberately signaling extreme political views in the context of their political landscape.

Off the top of my head I see two major problems with this measure.  First, they are assuming that all people are equally comfortable claiming their political views.  That is a big assumption.  Let’s take Guatemala for example.  In the handy chart below, you will see that Guatemala scores about the same as France on political cohesion.

Chart showing degree of political cohesion

I’m not an expert on France, but I have spent considerable time in Guatemala and studying Guatemala.  I can’t think of a person I encountered who would have admitted to extreme left or extreme right views (although I would bet that some people had them).

This is not because of political cohesiveness.  It is because of a 36 year civil war, during which hundreds of supposedly leftest villages were burned to the ground and an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or disappeared.  And while the Guatemalan far right still enjoys prestige and power, their traditional political impunity may be beginning to erode.  All of which is to say that the accuracy of any self-identification is problematic at best.

And then there is the issue of trying to compare one country to another.  Is it really surprising to find that countries scoring low on the political cohesiveness scale are also countries who had their national borders imposed on them by colonialist powers?  It isn’t exactly shocking that Vietnam and India would fall at the bottom of the scale, given their colonial histories.  Or, to put it another way, if national borders weren’t so nonsensical, political cohesiveness proxies would look much different.  (ie. Imagine looking at just Iraqi Kurdistan and not Iraq as a whole.)

Then there is the measure of wealth that they used, GDP per capita.  Gross Domestic Product per capita doesn’t measure actual wealth distribution.  Wouldn’t it make sense that wealth distribution would have an effect on stability and political cohesion?  Let’s go back to our example of Guatemala and France.  According to the UN, France has a per capita GDP of $40,090.  Guatemala has a GDP per capita of $2,504.  Why?

By their theory, it would have something to do with trade interdependence within their national boundaries.  By their theory, it might be the relative self-sufficiency of the Guatemalan highland indigenous that correlates to any lack of political cohesion.  This ignores Guatemala’s colonial history and imposed borders.  It also ignores the very different results of their two revolutions.

France’s revolution successfully overthrew the ruling classes and brought about lasting land reform.  Guatemala’s attempts at land reform, on the other hand, were violently prevented.  Seventy percent of the land in Guatemala is possessed by 0.2% of the producers.  Is any lack of political cohesiveness due to lack of interdependence or to land scarcity (a topic not discussed in their paper)?

They aren’t the first people to suggest that trade brings about interdependence and cohesion.  As they mention, there is a whole sect of political science devoted to ideas of “the liberal peace” that arises when nations trade with each other.  What Daigaard and Olsson don’t mention is that the results of studies on the subject are ambiguous.  In fact, some types of trade (oil, for instance) are correlated with increased conflict.

There are other issues with their theory, some peripherally addressed (power imbalances, ethnic tensions, greed) and some not (risks of specialization, colonialism, and dependency).  And they base everything on the underlying principal that “without market exchange, the welfare of inherently selfish individuals will be mutually independent (and)…political negotiations..dog-eat-dog in nature.”  That is also debatable.

There’s more, but this post is too long already, so let me go back to where I started.  The problem with economics is that, all too often, economists try to simplify human actions to such a degree that it renders their conclusions virtually meaningless.  They make a pretty equation and then try to fit people into it.  Which brings me to my personal favorite assumption:

As usual, we assume rational and forward-looking individuals who can perfectly assess the effects of choices in each stage.

Good luck with that.

Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen at Politico wrote a story about how Obama’s White House is “working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party.”

The Heritage Foundation quoted that story and then did a fascinating little maneuver where they tried to turn “the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party” into the “average Americans” that progressives have “contempt” for.

The argument goes like this.  Obama’s people are shutting out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street executives, and Fox News.  This shutout shows that Obama is targeting those organizations, just like Saul Alinsky advises people to target their enemy in his book Rules for Radicals.

Alinsky said that the middle class was “materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt.”  Ergo, Obama, who is using Alinsky’s tactics, has contempt for the middle class.  Since all Americans are, of course, middle class; Obama hates you and wants his elite friends to make all your decisions for you.

Let’s break that down a little.  Wall Street executives, whose bonuses are being paid with the tax money Obama gave them, are feeling shut out?  Even better – Wall Street, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are “average Americans?”

And, goodness me, aside from Saul Alinsky, no one on earth has ever attacked (by ignoring) another person – not ever.  So this must be an Alinsky thing, cause the world of politics was all civility and roses aside from that.

Oh, I could go on and on.

What should we take from this (aside from the fact that Heritage is full of shit)?

Republicans have done a very good job of painting Democrats as elitist.  That isn’t particularly difficult.  Democrats are elitist.  So are Republicans.  This whole town is elitist and everybody is working to get their elites as much as they can.

The good news is that many (most?) Americans, while still widely accepting of all the hierarchies that prop those elitists up, have a little voice in their head that responds negatively to the idea that ivy league Wall Street schmucks should get bonuses for screwing us or that you need alphabet soup at the end of your name in order to be capable of making a decision.

That’s why people respond to messaging like that.  And that’s a good thing. Or, at least, it could be if people besides The Heritage Foundation were tapping into it.

In 1989 the Berlin wall fell and the cold war officially ended.  While most of the world was thrilled, arms dealers were less than excited.  The end of the cold war arms race meant a serious decline in sales.  But what to do?

The arms dealers needn’t have worried.  The U.S. government always looks out for them.  As this Foreign Policy in Focus article sums up nicely, the U.S. government from, Nixon to Clinton to Bush, aggressively pushes for arms sales around the world.  Any cold war drop was quickly made up.

In yesterday’s post, I described the enormous arms sales by developed nations (especially the U.S.) to developing nations.  The obvious question is, why?  Why would a developing nation spend so much money on arms?  Why would the people in those nations allow it?

In fact, why would any people allow so much of their money to be taken in taxes and paid directly to defense contractors who make obscene amounts of money?

Fear.

Arms dealers need to keep us all in a constant state of, if not war, at least fear.  Both fear and war in the Middle East have been keeping arms dealers very busy.  Take another look at that Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2001-2008 (CATDN) report.

Top purchasers of U.S., Russian, French and British arms include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco – whose arms transfer agreements in 2008 were worth $9.7 billion, $8.7 billion, and $5.4 billion respectively.

Is it any surprise that the United States, France, and the UK would stand united in their tough talk toward Iran?  Each of them stands to gain by keeping that area of the world militarized.  Note the following quote from the CATDN report.

The principal catalyst for major new weapons procurements in the Near East region in the last decade was the Persian Gulf crisis of August 1990-February 1991. This crisis, culminating in a U.S.-led war to expel Iraq from Kuwait, created new demands by key purchasers such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for a variety of advanced weapons systems. Subsequently, concerns over the growing strategic threat from Iran has become the principal driver of GCC states’ arms purchases. Because GCC states do not share a land border with Iran, their weapons purchases have focused primarily on air, naval, and missile defense systems. Egypt and Israel, meanwhile, have continued their military modernization programs, increasing their arms purchases from the United States.

(Interesting how this is just one year after the Berlin wall fell, no?)

As Scott Ritter explains in this Guardian piece, Iran is not in violation of any laws related to nuclear facilities.  And Iran is not any closer to nuclear weapons capabilities.  Iran has not been the aggressor in the area.  “When is the last time that Iran has invaded any other country?” Glenn Greenwald asks in this must see appearance, “You would have to go back several centuries.”

Now some of you are going to want to talk about how crazy Iran’s leaders are, how they violate human rights, victimize homosexuals and oppress women.   But if we care so much about human rights violations, why are we selling weapons to the United Arab Emeriates, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco?

Iran is easy pickings.  While we are hiding under our beds, the arms dealers, military contractors, oil companies, and other industries that profit from our fear are contemplating how to spend their bonuses.

Money spent on arms is money that impoverishes people.  Governments take money from their citizens, money that they can ill afford to give up.  Instead of using that money on education and social programs which would help the poor climb out of poverty, it is paid out to weapons manufacturers.  Tax resentment, stemming from all the taxes it takes to keep up with arms purchases, makes social spending even more impossible.

According to a Congressional Research Service report out this month titled Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2001-2008 (CATDN), 76.4% of 2008 arms transfers agreements by major weapons suppliers were to nations in the developing world.  “The value of all arms transfer agreements with developing nations in 2008 was nearly $42.2 billion.”

Let’s put $42.2 billion into perspective. India is one of the primary developing country purchasers of weapons around the world.  According to the World Bank’s Geo, India had a 2006 per capita income of $820.  So $42.2 billion is equivalent to a year’s income for more than fifty million Indians.

How many people is that?  Take the populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and San Antonio.  Add them together.  Now double it.  It is still less people than the fifty million Indians whose yearly income equivalent is being spent on arms by developing nations.

“India ranked second in arms transfer agreements during 2005-2008 with $20.2 billion (in current dollars), or 13.7% of the value of all developing-world arms transfer agreements.”   So while India contains a third of the worlds poor and while nearly a quarter of urban residents live in slums, the government is spending vast amounts of money on arms.

The money that is spent on arms by developing nations goes primarily to companies from the richest countries in the world.  And the United States military industrial complex benefits more than anyone. “In 2008, the United States ranked first in arms transfer agreements with developing nations with $29.6 billion or 70.1% of these agreements” (CATDN).*

Selling arms benefits the United States in all sorts of ways.  First there is the money directly made from the initial arms sales.  Then there is the continuing income from “upgrades, spare parts, ordnance and support services” (CATDN).

Rather than feeling any moral ambiguity about taking money from poor people in developing countries to fill the coffers of the U.S. “defense” industry, many in our government see the arms race as a desirable mechanism for keeping dependent countries from ever catching up.

Lest you think I have been hanging out on too many conspiracy theory websites, I direct your attention to Senate Bill 1044.  The bill was introduced by Republican John Thune of South Dakota.  It is titled Preserving Future United States Capability to Project Power Globally Act of 2009.  Its purpose is to “pursue a development program for the next generation bomber” and it reads, in part:

(2) Long range, penetrating strike systems provide…the ability to impose disproportionate defensive costs on prospective adversaries of the United States.

In other words, as long as we can keep other countries buying our outrageously expensive high tech weapons, our world hegemony remains secure.  The fact that this hegemony depends on keeping the poor impoverished is not an unintended consequence.  It is a tactic.

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* Please note that this figure includes only the government-to-government Foreign Military Sales.  Data for commercial export sales is not kept by any government agency.

United States commercially licensed arms deliveries data are not included…The United States is the only major arms supplier that has two distinct systems for the export of weapons: the government-to-government Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system, and the licensed commercial export system. (CATDN)

This post was going to be about one of Senator David Vitter’s idiotic bills.  But then I started looking at all his bills and each one was stupider than the last.

This isn’t the first time I have written about Vitter.  In Sneaky Union Busting I wrote about his bill meant to poke a planet-sized hole in collective bargaining.  But destroying unions isn’t all Vitter has been up to.  Vitter has sponsored 54 bills in the Senate (none of which, thankfully, have passed).  Of the 108 items he has cosponsored, only one has passed.

S.Res.22 – A resolution recognizing the goals of Catholic Schools Week and honoring the valuable contributions of Catholic schools in the United States.

Wow. Vitter has really done Louisiana proud.  I’m sure his constituents’ lives are much better now that this resolution has passed.

Hopefully, none of his constituents are too into that whole separation of church and state thing.  Vitter isn’t.  One of his other submitted senate resolutions is,

S.Res.5 – A resolution expressing the support for prayer at school board meetings.

Vitter is also a proud teabagger. He introduced,

S.Res.98 – A resolution designating each of April 15, 2009, and April 15, 2010, as “National TEA Party Day”.

And he is on the anti-Czar bandwagon.  According to Think Progress, he

filed an amendment to the $32.1 billion FY10 Interior-Environment appropriations bill that would block any of the bill’s funds from being used to carry out orders from Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, who is often referred to in the press as the White House “climate czar“

Do you like that health insurance your employer provides?  Vitter doesn’t.  He would prefer if you lost that and were mandated to buy your own.  Vitter isn’t too fond of immigrants either. He would like to change our citizenship laws. Currently, if you are born on U.S. soil, you are a U.S. citizen. Vitter submitted

S.J.Res.6 – A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to United States citizenship.

This proposed amendment would restrict citizenship to only those who have at least one citizen parent. That’s not Vitters only anti-immigrant proposal. He would also like to make sure any wages you earned (and social security contributions you made) while in the U.S. illegally can never be credited to you, even if you become legal (S. 115).

And then there is this gem.

S.91 – A bill to reduce the amount of financial assistance provided to the Government of Mexico in response to the illegal border crossings from Mexico into the United States, which serve to dissipate the political discontent with the higher unemployment rate within Mexico.

Cause, you know, the best way to stop economic refugees is to try to make life in their own country even more dire. Or maybe he wants to cut off U.S. funding for the drug war in Mexico? Hey, I might actually be down with that one.

No, my bad, that’s not it. He’s a drug warrior. He wants drug testing for anyone who applies for help from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

S.97 – Drug Free Families Act of 2009. A bill to amend title IV of the Social Security Act to require States to implement a drug testing program for applicants for and recipients of assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

And while they are there, maybe they can just give DNA samples too. Vitter would like anyone convicted of a felony to have to fork over DNA (S. 106). So when poor people go to apply for temporary assistance, we can drug test them, convict them for a felony, collect their DNA, and send them off to prison. Then they’ll have three squares a day. It’s just brilliant.

Of course, he has the requisite anti-abortion bills (S. 96 and S. 85).  And he has the requisite anti-flag burning bill (S.J. Res. 15). He made sure to show his pro-Israel chops by submitting

S.Res.6 – A resolution expressing solidarity with Israel in Israel’s defense against terrorism in the Gaza Strip.

Perhaps now that the Goldstone Report has come out, clearly showing Israel’s human rights violations, he’ll rescind that one? Yeah right.

Out of all of the horrible miscarriages of justice that David Vitter is fighting against, his crusade against ACORN is my personal favorite.  He is shocked, just shocked, to find out that ACORN has been caught supposedly assisting prostitutes.  It’s one thing for a Louisiana senator to hire a prostitute to play out his diaper fetish, but low-level ACORN employees advising someone posing as a prostitute on how to report their income to the IRS, well that’s just beyond.

Come on Louisiana.  You can do better than this.  Can someone please get rid of this guy in 2010?

Update:  Apparently, Citizens for Responsibility also think Vitter is an idiot and are trying to get him disciplined by the Louisiana bar for soliciting a prostitute.  (Dare I make a crack about how Vitter will feel about being “disciplined”?)

Welcome to Carnival of the Liberals.  Lots of good posts this month.  My highlights are preceded by asterisks and followed by short quotes.

It has been one hell of a month or so in the U.S.

The health care crisis, perfectly summed up by  Dave Away From Home’s stark graphic titled Cristina’s Health Insurance, continued to spark contentious debate and even an outburst by Congressman Joe Wilson during Obama’s health care speech.

Torture made headlines again after Eric Holder announced that he would investigate interrogators who went beyond allowed methods.  Talking heads argued about whether or not torture provided accurate information, but as Stump Lane points out in What is Torture For, torture is not intended to get accurate information.

** At Apple of Doubt, Friar Zero goes into excruciating detail about what torture is and Why Torture Matters.

Torture doesn’t provide reliable information, it doesn’t deter future acts of terrorism, it doesn’t separate the guilty from the innocent, it treats prisoners like irredeemable animals rather than men, it’s born out of a primeval need for retribution, it’s subjective and capricious, and it is antithetical to civilized justice.

Treating prisoners like irredeemable animals isn’t just limited to war on terror suspects.  This month saw increasing attention to the Texas execution of (likely innocent) Cameron Willingham, for an accidental fire – a story Executed Today has been on for quite some time.  And Texas was also ground zero for some of the harshest criticisms of Obama’s speech to students, (Rough Fractals).

**The objections to Obama’s school speech appeared nonsensical.  The only explanation seemed to be that they were rooted in The Anti Obama Bigotry that Staring at Empty Pages describes.

It’s not acceptable to say that they don’t want a black president talking to their children, so they make up shit about political “indoctrination” and “subliminal” liberal messages, or compare him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il (as Mark Steyn did last week), and won’t allow their children to listen to the president.

Those racism tinged objections continued on 9/12 with anti-government, anti-cap and trade, anti-health care, anti-everything protests as covered on Stupid Right Wingers in Observations From the Tea Bag Protest in DC – 9/12/09.  And now it looks as though anti-government sentiment may be the motive for the murder of a federal census worker, a death that God’s Own Party argues was the result of Fear, Paranoia and Ignorance propagated by right-wing leaders like Michelle Bachmann.

**Meanwhile, as Doctor Biobrain points out, the Counter-Productive Charges of Racism get us no closer to solving our problems.

And rather than discussing the merits of Obama’s proposal, the Republicans gleefully attack us for “playing the race card” and insist that we’re unfairly smearing all “real” Americans; while the media has fun describing the mud fight that ensues.

Ah yes, the media.  When they aren’t giving the Michelle Bachmanns of the world a stage, they are whining like toddlers.  See Mad Kane’s post, Chris Wallace Feels Dissed.  (Don’t feel too bad about the state of our media U.S., River’s Edge was compelled to write In Defense of Local Journalism upon hearing about the troubles of an actually useful major publisher of local newspapers in the UK.)

Is it really a shock that the media aren’t covering anything substantial?  The people who own the media are quite happy to keep us peons squabbling and vilifying one another.  They don’t want any commie George Bailey types inspiring people.  The fact that, as Liberal Agnostic Redneck points out, teabaggers are duped into defending Pottersville works out quite nicely for some.

With all of these crises, an impotent media, and a paralyzed populace, it is easy to get discouraged.  Unless you too enjoy getting your weekly exercise through uncivilized, senseless screaming like the kind Freechezeburgerz describes in Have an Argument and Call Me in the Morning, you might be in a fit of despair by now.

**I mean, where do we go from here?  I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to discover Some Possible Health Care Solutions of Rick Foreman’s in a health care reform bill amendment – perhaps his suggestion that

If you don’t have health care we can pass legislation that will just exclude you from the species. If you’re not considered human then there’s no need to worry about human rights.

The scariest part is that we are dealing with, what should be, easy issues like health care.  We better learn how to have real debates soon or we are going to be in serious trouble when the moral issues get more complicated.  Can you imagine the explosion that will occur when science finally figures out Sexual Reproduction for Same Sex Couples, an event The Chromosome Chronicles describes as not being as far fetched as you might think.  You thought surogacy and in vitro was controversial.  That aint nothin.

It would help if we were able to agree on verifiable facts, or even that there are such things.  But verifiable facts are the purview of science and science is currently in disrepute with a significant portion of the population.  Not even congress is interested in scientific information.

**It is precisely that problem that is addressed in the book Unscientific America.  Unfortunately, according to the Primate Diaries, the book focuses on Rebranding Science, rather than real solutions.

In focusing on science communication alone, rather than unequal access to scientific tools, Mooney and Kirshenbaum have chosen to focus on style rather than substance. They present a host of wrongs but think that mere cosmetic changes will reverse two decades of decline.

And while scientists and other logical thinkers try to figure out how to make science cool again, too many of our fellow citizens live in fact free environments. The gay marriage panic is a perfect example.  All the right’s freaking out has, of course, turned out to be as ridiculous as it sounded.

** Will the facts matter?  Will it matter that, as (((Billy the Atheist))) shows, The Right is Wrong Again: Gay Marriage Does Not Hurt Marriage?

Looks like allowing human rights for all humans did not hurt the family, or the institution of marriage, or destroy America, or any of the other absurdities being spouted by the radical right wing.  Instead, Massachusetts now has a lower divorce rate than it did when the legalized gay marriage.  Oopsie.

Maybe Rick is right and this is all Evidence of Conservatives Mental Imbalance.  Maybe we are all, as the Evolving Mind shows, Normally Biased toward information that supports our already held beliefs.  Maybe liberals and conservatives are just wired differently.  Honest Inquiry asks Are We Born Liberal? and discovers that, unlike conservatives who want predictable familiarity, liberals want change and inclusiveness.

**Mind you, that doesn’t mean that liberal-leaning groups are always so great at being inclusive.  Greta Christina shows, in her post Getting It Right Early: Why Atheists Need to Act Now on Gender and Race – Part I and Part II, that progressive movements suffer from the same homogeneity and denial that plagues other groups.

People can have racist or sexist attitudes without being conscious of them. You don’t need to be a torch- wielding member of the KKK or Operation Rescue to say and think dumb things about race or gender. (As someone who has said and thought plenty of dumb things… believe me, I speak from experience.)

So is it hopeless?  Should we all just throw in the towel, buy a shit ton of really good drugs, and go party naked on a warm Caribbean beach until global warming or the nuclear arms race takes us all?  Although that does sound like a good vacation plan, I’m not giving up on democracy just yet.  Neither, luckily for us, is Greta Christina.

**So let me leave you with Greta’s post Decisions are Made by Those Who Show Up: Why Calling Congress Isn’t a Waste of Time, Part I and Part II. We should listen to Greta.  We should get (or stay) involved.  Because as frustrating as our political discourse might be right now, she is right.

When very few people get involved in politics — when very few people even bother to vote, and even fewer bother to call or email their elected representatives — then the few people who do bother are the ones who get listened to. The hard-line crazies get to set the terms of the debate. Them, and the people with money.

And that does it for this month’s Carnival of the Liberals.  If this post left you wanting more of Greta Christina (and really, who doesn’t want more Greta), she will be hosting next month’s edition – scheduled to come out on October 31st.

It is time for me to enter the 912 commentary fray.  It seems like most of the posts I’ve seen have either ridiculed all the protesters as ignorant racists or completely ignored the obvious racism and ignorance.

Below is a series of photos taken by Chris (that’s the boyfriend), who describes his undercover adventure into the 912 protests:

I would ask each protester in my Oklahoma accent if I could get a picture of their great sign. They would ask me suspiciously, one eyebrow up, who I was with. I told them I was an independent blogger. Not MSNBC, okay. They would ask me where I was from and I would tell them Oklahoma. Geographically okay. I just hoped they didn’t have any lefty sniffing dogs.

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Is it wise, or even fair, to just dismiss the 912 protesters as a hoard of pitchfork carrying, white-hood-wearing, racists?  Some of the signs were appallingly racist.  But most of the signs Chris shot were not indicative of the kind of personal hatred and bigotry that we most associate racism with.

Even the boyfriend, who grew up around people very much like those at the protest, “expected to see screaming lunatics like at the town hall or secessionist meetings I see on the television.”  But as Chris spent more time wandering around and talking to people, he got the impression that:

The vast majority of the people at this event were more government-out-of-my-life Libertarian types as opposed to right wing spittle spewing racists. That doesn’t mean there were not racist messages or people out there, because there were. It seemed, however, that there were more class issues and anti-government issues.

Now it is impossible to separate class and anti-government issues from racism in this country. It is impossible to separate anything from racism in this country, including healthcare. We are saturated in racism. But that is exactly why it is so ludicrous to dismiss people as racist and therefore unnecessary to be listened to.  If only non-racists are allowed to participate in our democracy, then we better anoint a king now.  The only problem is, where do we find the one non-racist to be king?

Dismissing all the protesters isn’t just undemocratic, it also avoids confronting issues that we need to confront.  As Stephen Maynard and Charlton McIlwain point out in their must read post, using racist as a noun only obscures the fact that we are fighting structural racism and not just personal bigotry.

And remember, as you look at some of the more appalling photos and images from that protest, what the media does to us.  There could be a million everyday-looking people at an anti-war march, but the media will film the three naked hippies or the two kids throwing rocks through windows.  We don’t get reporting anymore.  We get Jerry Springer with a veneer of newsiness.

That’s if the media bothers to show up at all.  Note that most of the footage and photos floating around the internet don’t seem to be from major news stations.  Chris said, ” I saw one other person wading through the crowd as I was covering the event. I didn’t see any news trucks.”

The media doesn’t need to stick around because they have no plans to talk about anything substantive.  Darren at Dissenting Justice observes that:

The issue of race has become the latest nonpolicy distraction for the media. Earlier, the media covered violence and mayhem at healthcare town hall discussions — rather than the substance of reform. It then covered the conflicts between moderate and liberal Democrats (rather than the substance of reform). Now, it is exploring whether the opposition to Obama is racist (rather than the substance of reform).

Nobody knows what the hell is in those healthcare bills.  Matt Taibbi says you would have to read 9,000 or 10,000 pages of documents in order to figure out what they are trying to do.  And then the myriad of bills will just go into committee, where who knows what will happen.

It isn’t surprising that people are confused and enraged and feeling as though our government is constantly confusing, deceiving and taking advantage of us.  And since we don’t communicate with each other, it’s easy for the Glenn Beck’s of this world to rake in the cash insinuating that the money of “hard working Americans” is going to be given to less hard-working, less American (less white ) people.

The anger and confusion is legitimate.  It is the target that is too often confused.  Glenn Greenwald (the Glenn that people should be listening to) says:

It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that “someone else benefits.” But so obviously, that “someone else” who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes — who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The “someone else” that is benefiting from Washington policies are — as usual — the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government.

In the first link of this post, there is a video of some anti-czar protestors. The interviewer points out that Ronald Reagan appointed the first czar and that Bush increased them. The protestors had no idea. It’s easy to ridicule them for being ignorant, but by doing so you might miss something important. One of the women says she has been a republican all her life, but is rethinking that now. That’s what we really need, a whole lot of Americans rethinking their knee jerk support of the republican and democratic parties. That’s what we could get if we actually spoke to one another.

I’m not saying it will be a piece of cake or that everyone is equally open to new information. Too many people, right and left, are closed minded as hell. Chris didn’t talk to everyone, but he talked to enough people to give him an impression that he wouldn’t have gotten from sitting in front of the televison

Once people realized my t-shirt was Bob Marley and not Go Army (same green color), they stopped giving such candid proud photos. They would still talk to me though, guarded perhaps. But they would still have an ideological political discussion with me. I believe, to save our democracy, we need to find a way to have those conversations in the midst of all the crazies.

***P.S. Still on the Hunger Challenge this week.  Yesterday went a bit better.  I managed to stay in my $4 budget and get to the gym.  I was still sadly lacking in veggies though.