obama

Zombie arguments from the GOP

/ bharatwrites / 10 Comments

I won’t lie to you. I lean right.

Seriously. I appreciate low taxes and believe religion is a choice. People should be permitted to bear arms if you ask me. I regard the individual more than the collective. I like limited government. I believe that wages should be contracted between employers and employees. I want more private schools. I believe we will never eliminate prejudice through reparations and minority-appeasement.

But I also love nice roads. I enjoy some government-sponsored facilities. I know that science trumps religion. I doubt peaceful people need assault weapons. I believe that when an individual pollutes, the collective can hold him accountable. Therefore I can’t imagine a reason for any Republican vote. The party is fragmented, non-directional, and at the mercy of the Tea Party and the Evangelical wing. Most importantly, they haven’t accomplished anything. The Republicans might not be in the executive office, but they have had legislative majority and been an opposition party. They sucked at both.

The Obama administration of 2009 with a Democrat majority in Congress would have been helped by a strong opposition. But the GOP was anything but constructive. Obama’s election victory began with Rush Limbaugh calling for him to fail; and, strangely, the disgruntled Republican voters took political direction from a radio-host with a penchant for oxycodone. There was no room for discourse. Now that they have the House, instead of playing Devil’s Advocate to the President, they’re still carping about the birth certificate—after he has already produced it. It’s one thing to adhere to an ideology that isn’t even a declarative statement. That’s politics. But the GOP of today spews arguments that have been disproven. So, taking a leaf out of John Quiggin’s book, I declare some of the GOP’s discharges Zombie Arguments. Here we go.

Obama is a leftist

I know he said, “You didn’t build that.” And that he once said, “…spread the wealth around.” But he doesn’t mean that the government gave you everything. Nor does he want to hand your 5000-square feet mansion to the illegal immigrants. All he said was that every business enjoyed benefits of government facilities and that taxes are the way to buy into this service. Oh the outrage! You’d think we were in Animal Farm in 1984.

This man has upheld the Bush tax cuts, ignored the demands from his base for single-payer healthcare, and pulled out of Iraq no earlier than the deadline the Bush administration had set. And he is a foreign-policy hawk. He has killed Osama bin Laden, Badruddin Haqqani, and the second in command at Al Qaeda without losing American lives.

Guns protect you from government oppression

The Second Amendment is impotent against the federal government. The White House has nuclear weapons and drones. Your huge shotgun collection makes Joe Biden want to pinch your cheeks and cuddle. The gun-nuts need to remember that until and including Vietnam, every paper-cut that America inflicted overseas was accomplished with a draft. And everyone complied. Don’t let them fool you with faux patriotism. Most went because they had to. Even today, young men must register at 18 or face prosecution and lose their federal employment eligibility.

Short version: if the federal government wants something, you’ll do it.

The debt is Obama’s fault

Really? Did Obama begin two wars, double the defense budget, and cut taxes on the rich? Did he, when refused a bailout by the Congress, sign an executive order to do it anyway? Criticizing Obama for not fixing the economy might be fair, but blaming the debt on him is disingenuous.

States’ Rights are paramount

I hear this all the time. The individual mandate is against states’ rights. Roe v. Wade violates states’ rights. As if it matters. An oppressive state government is no different from an oppressive federal government. We must protect individual rights—not states’ rights. But let’s not forget that rights are privileges over your body and property. Not just something your heart wants. Those are wishes. Forcing a pregnant girl to carry her fetus to term so you can look Jesus in the eye is not a right.

I have the right to teach my child about Noah’s ark

You do. As long as you tell him that it’s as true as Harry Potter.

Funny how the Bible posits with 99.98% precision the age of the Earth but misses certain glaring facts…such as…the earth is a ball, not a plate; and it’s not the center of the Universe. Charlie Sheen is.

Children cannot be owned. All that parents have is the right to care for their children. To be honest, I doubt that the state has any place between parents and kids, but few things rile me up as much as children being put in harm’s way. But if religion supplants science, especially at a young age, it could destroy creativity, dull curiosity, and teach unquestioning obedience. So, no. Shaping your impressionable child’s mind with a subjective, unproven dogma flouts his rights. Pick someone your own size.

Steve Jobs did so I can too

No. You can’t. That’s the dream they sell you. Hey once you make over $250 000 a year, your taxes go up. So, don’t vote Democrat.

True. But that’s no reason to get your underwear in a bunch now. Worry about that when your start-up becomes the next big thing, or your album drops, or your novel outsells The Hunger Games. Please consider the likelihood of that happening before you cast that ballot.

Finally, I criticize the Left a lot, but they aren’t guilty of petulance. I understand that politics is about compromise. No one can have all that they want. But the GOP keeps moving to the right and then demands a compromise from the Democrats. Even that would be tolerable if their arguments were cogent. We would have scope for debate. Instead the GOP resorts to faux patriotic and religious one-upmanship.

And that bodes well for no one.

GOP race to the bottom

/ bharatwrites / 9 Comments

And then they were four

So what by Miles Davis serenades me while writing about the Republican primaries. It’s always fun to watch presidential candidates coddle their bases during primaries by extolling the magnitude of their orientation, only to reach the general election and water down everything they said merely months ago, their chests still smarting from self-righteous thumping.

Mitt Romney needed to cruise through the primaries without any extreme right wing proclamations to take on Obama in November. He probably didn’t realize that the Republican base would sooner endorse a welfare-using pot-smoking mother-of-six than the ex-Governor, whose capacity for emotion would make a sociopath sit up and take notes. And they haven’t even played the Mormon card yet. Well, at least we can conclude that magic underwear can barely withstand the triumvirate of one wrinkled heartless crypt-keeper, one Christy senator whose main claim to fame is the guarantee of giggles upon googling his name and one shameless adulterer who was cheating on his wife while lampooning Bill Clinton for the same. The NIH budget is richer by a few thousands that can now go to fund illegal abortions.

Some people need to be sat down and explained to that making abortion legal doesn’t make it mandatory. Only that confusion can explain the outrage on this issue. Also, wide availability of contraception doesn’t mean that the high school lunch lady will sprinkle crushed Plan B over your daughter’s apple pie.

I think the employer-insurer nexus must go, but while it exists, insurance plans must cover contraception and abortion. An employer whose religious beliefs do not allow these interventions might be skittish about shopping for such a plan, but consider the alternative. Unwanted babies are less cared for and more prone to crime. Steven Levitt suggests that legalized abortion is responsible for half the drop in crime in the 90s. What if a Jehovah’s witness organization claims that forcing it to cover blood transfusions is religious persecution? Christian scientists do not believe in any medical intervention, and that disease is merely God’s will. Where does it end?

Pharmacists who believe that contraception is against their religion shouldn’t be forced to sell them, and at least one judge agrees. People should not be forced to engage in any transaction. No questions asked. This isn’t a matter of religious freedom. It’s freedom. Don’t worry about the supply of contraceptives drying up. There are plenty of sane pharmacists. But I must ask these pharmacists how they reconcile their faith and their professions. The Bible does not weigh in on melanoma or the common cold. It’s not a big leap of faith that some scientific information led to their career choice.

We live in a country where churches have automatic tax-exempt status. (Other religious organizations must file for this status if their gross annual receipts exceed $5000.) Everyone is forced by threat of state-funded violence, to subsidize Christianity in a country whose bill of rights begins with the words Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…etc. Republican politicians love saying that the U.S. Constitution is founded upon Christian principles. If a 4,543 word document is based on ten sentences that would fit on an index card, wouldn’t the founders have mentioned that as a footnote? Maybe they were being paid by the word.

What is exceptionally galling, is that a barely legitimate argument about gay marriage, immigration and abortion has descended to discussion of previously undoubted issues like contraception and mentioning Satan among adults (link to 2008 video).

This election was supposed to be about the economy. But the economy, to the right-wingers’ chagrin, is doing better. Nobody is breaking out the champagne just yet, but we are far from the train-wreck predicted most gleefully by the right. Now that that angle is out of the window, the right has gone back to what it does best: kiss up to Christ and call Obama a pansy on the international stage. Whatever your politics, you won’t be taken seriously if you don’t admit that as far as national security is concerned, this president does better with a scalpel than the previous one did with a sword. He has ridden us of Osama and al-Awlaki with minimal cost.

Mitt Romney cannot come out of this unscathed, and if he gets wounded enough, he won’t pose a real threat to Obama in November. The primaries have shown that Christ one-upmanship can reach ridiculous levels. The Christian death-grip on the right has sapped the traces of political discourse left in this country.

The aftermath

/ bharatwrites / 4 Comments

The ISI has leaked to the media the name of a CIA agent stationed in Pakistan as some sort of childish retaliation to American forces violating the sovereignty of their country. Apparently, the fact that the world’s most wanted terrorist was hiding in their country in a large villa opposite a military base isn’t bothersome enough for them. They are way more worried about how US helicopters entered their country undetected, and executed a surgical mission to kill a man who was responsible for the death of many Americans directly and indirectly responsible for bankrupting the country by leading them into two wars.

What I don’t get in this whole scenario is why America keeps funding Pakistan so much when it is seems that the Pakistani army and intelligence are definitely incompetent, and/or quite likely that there are some bad apples in the ISI.

Who cares? Let them cry foul and throw a tantrum. When they want to buy weapons to arm themselves against India, they’ll know whom to kiss up to. Cui bono is an important question to be asked in political debates. It basically means to whose benefit? It is in Pakistan’s financial interest and political expediency to foster terrorism within their borders. Keeping militants happy in their country ensures the death of a few Indians every year and guarantees the flow of cash from Uncle Sam to stem terrorism as it were.

The sovereignty of Pakistan is a tricky question. In a civilized world, it shouldn’t be legal for agents from one country to enter another and commit murder. Surely there’s something wrong with that. It would have been a different thing if CIA agents in disguise had entered the compound and killed bin Laden in some guerrilla way and quietly exited the country without a trace. Kinda like how Mossad runs things. The Obama administration needed a nice victory. No one would say that they killed bin Laden to increase polling numbers but publicizing this as an American effort and painting red, white and blue all over the news does reek of opportunism.

On the other hand, had this been a special OPs kind of operation, the Pakistani intelligence or army would’ve taken credit for this, further obfuscating their role in the war against terrorism. It must have been a dicey situation.

Now we have another question to answer. Did the enhanced interrogation techniques authorized by the Bush administration directly or indirectly lead to this operation? If it did, is it still fair for a democratic civilized nation to torture people for information, whether it is reliable or not?

There is some evidence to say that important information obtained about bin Laden’s courier was a product of torture, but the people who were waterboarded the most like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, produced very little usable information at best. They also misled the investigation more. This leads credence to what was said by Nice Guy Eddie in Reservoir Dogs, “If you f**king beat this prick long enough, he’ll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don’t necessarily make it f**king so!”

It is expedient, and not just politically, to do whatever measures seem necessary to protect innocent people. I just end up thinking that in that zeal, we might turn into the very people we are fighting against. We must draw a line. There are some things that civilized people just won’t do. Something as barbaric as torture should be one of them.

I think it is best summed up by Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, “The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003.”

bin Laden ke: my thoughts

/ bharatwrites / 5 Comments

My first reaction to the news was surprisingly nothing. I mean, I wasn’t really concentrating. I was on the phone and simply checking my google news feed during a lull in the conversation, but I must say that it took me to the moment I was checking my mail in 2001.

I was still using a dial-up internet connection and was logging into my rediffmail account, for which I had to go through rediff.com. While I was entering my username and password, I inadvertently noticed a piece of news saying something to the effect of “Plane crashes into World Trade Center building”. I barely took notice of it, and the page refreshed quickly anyway to my email inbox, which preoccupied me completely. I basically did nothing productive, just replied to a bunch of emails and logged out. I was brought back to rediff.com and by now the news had changed to “Second Plane crashes into World Trade center” or something like that. Now, my interest was piqued.

As I read about what would probably be the largest single act of terrorism I will ever see, I felt a kind of fear I didn’t understand. Sure, people died needlessly on the streets of Bombay and Delhi etc, but America was untouchable…or so I had thought.

Living in a developing country makes us susceptible to a bunch of misunderstandings about the developed world. To us, places like America seemed like a large playboy mansion where everyone was comfortable and getting a lot of nookie. Of course, I was 16 in 2001, so you can excuse my sweeping generalizations. But most of all, I was under the delusion that people in the Western world were a lot safer than us. This event scared me a lot because I just realized how far from the truth I was.

While I was but 16, I couldn’t understand what force could be so strong as to motivate 19 young educated people to giving up their lives and their futures while taking so many people with them. It was later revealed by the media that the planes were to hit the buildings at exactly the right height and angle, and with the right amount of speed in order to inflict the damage that they ultimately did. So this wasn’t some spur of the moment hot-headed act. It was planned, cold-blooded mass murder.

And now the perpetrator of that was dead. What bothered me so much was that all we heard was that he died. Sure, there were some details as to the incident, but was there an attempt to capture him alive? They said he resisted, but he didn’t seem to have a weapon. Just how do you resist capture by armed forces without weapons?

The reason I did not feel the closure I wanted to feel was that I wanted him captured. I wanted him handcuffed, held against his will, pleading for the right to live and be free. I wanted him tried in a court, so that we can show the numerous other misled folk what happens to people who hurt us. I wanted it to be clear that while we will avenge our wrongs, we are not barbarians. We will not deign to deal with scum like him the way he deals with our people. And most of all, I wanted his followers to see what a common man he was, who lived secretly and died a joke, and not the martyr they probably think he is now.

While the Republicans are scrambling for photos of his body, I do believe that releasing them to the public would be a bad idea. Photos of bin Laden with a bullet hole in his eye are inflammatory. Representative Duncan Hunter of California says that terrorists who want to hurt innocent people will not be dissuaded by the lack of these photos. Perhaps. But photos like these are great recruiting material for the Muslim fundamentalists. These people are easy to rile up. Mere Danish cartoons generated unbelievable vitriol, and actual photos of their hero’s corpse will shore up Al Qaeda’s enlistment numbers.

While I’m pissed off with President Obama for a bunch of things, I do believe he made the right call here. We all just need to move on.

Update: Chembelle argues that bin Laden could’ve had bombs strapped to his chest which he could’ve detonated at any time. Maybe trying to capture him alive would’ve been too big a risk to take.

Either way, hope this issue is settled now, and we can focus on real stuff.

Birthers aborted?

/ bharatwrites / 6 Comments

The White House finally made public the long form birth certificate of Barack Obama. This whole non-issue has been stirred by a lot of people on the Republican side suggesting that the president wasn’t born in Hawaii but in Kenya. There was never any truth to these allegations, and there was an implied tone of racism there. I can’t imagine a white president being asked to prove his citizenship by birth.

Article II, Section I, Clause V of the US Constitution says, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” So, if Barack Obama had indeed been born outside the US, he would be automatically disqualified for the office he currently holds. Hence the whole controversy. It has been discussed that the original reason this clause was put in the constitution was to prevent a member of the British royal family from becoming president and then turning the country over to the very same imperialists it was fought and obtained from. Makes sense right? Except when it tends to discriminate against naturalized citizens who might otherwise be extremely qualified for the post. That of course, is a topic that deserves its own post.

Courtesy: Jerry Breen (newbreen.com)

IMHO, it’s quite sad that some of the people who’ve been clamoring for more liberty and less taxation have chosen to align themselves with the nuts who believe that the president wasn’t born in the US. If anything, it takes away from any morality that existed in their political stand. Of all the people who’ve taken on this ridiculous project of questioning the president’s birthplace, Donald Trump has been the most disappointing but not very surprising. He actually had fueled a lot of this controversy by pandering to the ‘birthers’. He even apparently released his own birth certificate in a tongue-in-cheek way. Now that the president has released the long form of his birth certificate, Trump has the gall to take credit for helping settle the issue. My opinion of Trump’s arrogance is better expressed by Mr. Jim Mitchell. In any case, people who attack the president on policy and question his methods of resolving the debt and jobs crisis were being drowned out by this incessant yapping from a faction of the right. I must admit that I too was wondering why Obama doesn’t release the long form of his birth certificate for all this time. I thought of some good reasons:

  • Apparently, the state of Hawaii doesn’t release long forms often
  • Obama didn’t want to dignify this non-issue by reacting to it
  • Obama wanted the birthers (and the Republican candidates who align themselves with the birthers) to collect enough rope so he could hang them at the right time
All of the above could be reasons for his hitherto silence. If it is the third reason (which would be serious realpolitik by the way!), perhaps Obama would have been helped by waiting a little longer. Trump seemed like he was gonna take this issue further, and cutting him to size would have been better if done closer to the beginning of the 2012 campaign.
Either way, hope this issue is settled now, and we can focus on real stuff.

Tedious rants

/ bharatwrites / 8 Comments

People! Stop holding doors for other people! Even in crowded bustling New York City; it is insane how you manage to pump chivalry and politeness into such crammed workdays. It is one thing for you to expect me to hold the door open when you are right behind me, but if you’re far away, you’re on your own. One wonders what the limit is, beyond which the intensity of chivalry wanes. I like the 5-second rule. If you can get to the door in five seconds, I hold it open. The calculation of how soon you reach is mine only…non negotiable. Of course, if you are lagging, I suggest you buck up, although the energy wasted in the speed increase could be used to open the door…

The next person who tells me to have a nice day is getting the shraapam of his life. He is forewarned of boils in very private organs which will make small pox seem like a mosquito bite. When I reach the checkout counter of a grocery store, I will not ask you “How are ya?” Not because I’m rude, mainly because I don’t give a tiny rat’s ass. I mean that with sincerity and honesty; you know…the kind that you don’t mean when you are asking me about my day, and then telling me to have a nice one. That applies to smiles too. Let’s have fewer but more genuine smiles. And once in a while, let’s see some frowns. We could all use some bad expressions. Kinda colors the day more.

If I sneeze, and you are right in front of me, and we are having a conversation, and you are done wiping yourself dry, I will excuse the bless you. All those who scream bless you from the other end of the car of the E train at Penn Station need to get a life. We could all use a little less blessing and little more reality…maybe some paper napkins too…

People hawking politicians can stop pretending to know their stuff now that Election Day will pass soon. It is so annoying to see people wanting to vote for Obama but not being able to name any legislative action he has taken as senator.

Women who are bad drivers, you have an added responsibility on you. Don’t reinforce the stereotype that women cannot drive well! The majority of women who drive competently are continually judged because you usual suspects always come along and make people roll their eyes. Apologies to women everywhere for this rant.

Many more to come…

Mea culpa

/ bharatwrites / 1 Comment

Here is the time for me to accept a mistake, and cede a little. I have said formerly that without a doubt, Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee. I am having some doubts about this now. Not because I am convinced that he is not leader material. It is not a result of the “bitter” remarks. It is the result of the pseudo-republican fake outrage machine, (known simply as Hillary Clinton.) Her reaction to this is as fake as the bullshit she says about her grandfather who worked blue-collar shifts in Scranton. It was class-A pandering to the working class whose votes she has a predisposition to anyway.
First of all, Barack Obama seems elitist because he made some sweeping remarks about people probably clinging to religion, guns and antipathy in economic woe. Instead of deigning to qualify his statements, Barack Obama should have used this to attack the credibility of the current administration. He should have said that “People will naturally cling to these, as these are the parts of the Bill of Rights that they haven’t relinquished as part of the Patriot Act.”
The amendments to the US constitution guarantee a person the right to free speech (1st amendment) the right not to have their person or their privacy violated without reasonable suspicion (4th amendment), the right not to incriminate themselves (5th amendment), the right to a jury trial if accused of a crime (7th), the right not to be subjected to cruel & unusual punishment(8th).
All of these rights are obliterated under the garb of national security and this free-market capitalist democracy is giving way to a socialized capitalism where taxpayer money is used to bail out big rapacious multi-billion dollar companies which are filing chapter eleven. What is converting this to a fascist system is that the only rights remaining are guns (2nd amendment), religion and, of course the right to antipathy is mainstreamed whenever there are times of danger.
So, when Hillary Clinton criticizes Obama, she is inadvertently helping Mc Cain so much. Barack keeps accusing her on issues, where she would not be hard done by when (& if) competing against Mc Cain. But Hillary is being extremely republican in accusing Obama, thus giving him a raw deal in the general election. In the Pennsylvania debate, Hillary announced that while Obama & she are fighting it out now, she will make sure that a Democrat will occupy the White House. Somehow she is fighting so dirty that she might ensure a victory for Mc Cain. She needs to mature some and realize that if she wants a Democrat to win, she has to take the high ground.

If however, by pandering to the working class and their misled republican ideologies, she is planning to secure a position in the highest office in the country, and then be the same radical hippie who wants socialized medicine and real benefit for the common people, then I salute her intelligence. Only, I don’t think she is that smart or has it in her to take that big a risk.

Here comes my mea culpa. I take back my categorical statement that Obama will win the nomination. I do believe that the average American needs to understand that for the country to work well, he has to hand over the power to a much above-average person. If such a person makes a remark which seems sweeping, let it go or better still weigh it with all the good this man did on the streets of Chicago after graduating from Harvard Law, when he could have landed himself the cushiest of jobs, had he wanted.

Also, let’s not forget that Hillary Clinton’s popularity is largely because of her husband being president. Let both candidates make good on their statement that a Democrat should become president.