Tag: Democrats

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Politics Politics Feature

The Mackler Moment: A Parable

Marquita Bradshaw (Photo: Darnell Landers)

Can Knoxville state Senator Gloria Johnson, she of last spring’s “Tennessee Three” and a heroine of sorts among Democrats, actually unseat the GOP’s Marsha Blackburn in the 2024 U.S. Senate race?

There is an illustrative case — that of James Mackler, a Nashville lawyer and former Iraq war helicopter pilot, who made bold to put himself forth as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018 for the seat then held by the retiring moderate Republican Bob Corker.

Meanwhile, out of the Republican MAGA ranks, seeking the same seat, came the aforementioned arch-conservative Marsha Blackburn, then a congresswoman. The then still existent state Democratic establishment, two years into the Trump age, didn’t trust a novice Democrat like Mackler, no matter how promising, to take on Blackburn, so talked Tennessee’s recent Governor Phil Bredesen, an old-fashioned conservative Democrat, out of retirement to become their candidate.

Mackler dutifully withdrew, biding his time.

History records that both Bredesen and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, the last two name Democrats to carry the party banner into battle, were both routed in 2018, Bredesen by Blackburn (who would end up a cover girl on The New York Times Magazine) and Dean by Bill Lee.

Mackler was still on the scene and considered it his time to take on the next Senate race in 2020, where he would be opposed by the GOP’s Bill Hagerty, a former ambassador and state economic development commissioner. What was left of the Democratic establishment, in something of its last go-round, thought Mackler was right and timely, also, and got behind him.

Alas! Mackler and the party establishment withheld their considerable fundraising receipts from a five-way Democratic primary, hoarding them for the forthcoming race against Hagerty, and never even got to the general election. Mackler was upset in the primary by one Marquita Bradshaw, an environmentalist from Memphis who had no ballyhoo whatsoever and had raised virtually no money.

What she did have was an emergent standing among Memphis Blacks as a progressive candidate (though a nonmember of the now-expiring party establishment).

What she had was enough to win 35.5 percent of the primary vote, outpolling poor Mackler, who had 23.8 percent. Between the primary and the general, Bradshaw upped her campaign kitty from $22,300 to $1.3 million (a major-party nomination is still worth something), but lost to Hagerty, once again polling 35 percent.

Jump to last week, when the Beacon Center, a conservative think tank, released the results of two Emerson College polls — one measuring incumbent Blackburn running for reelection against Gloria Johnson, another matching her against Bradshaw, regarding the Memphian, once again as a prospective Senate candidate.

Beacon had Blackburn running ahead of Johnson by 49 percent to 29 percent, with the balance undecided. Against Bradshaw, Blackburn’s margin was smaller, 48 percent to 36 percent.

What Beacon did not do was match the two Democrats against each other, testing what might happen in a primary encounter.

But, given the example of Mackler, the already actively campaigning Johnson might wonder, as do we. Might she suffer an unexpected defeat to Bradshaw, a la Mackler?

Word from the Democratic establishment (yes, it still exists, though barely) is that Johnson has digested the lesson of Mackler and will pour a generous amount of the substantial funds she has already raised for a primary contest.

That will take pace in August, and we shall see what we shall see.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Math Hysteria

Photo: Steve Mann | Dreamstime.com

You are about to enter a column with math, which I’m not usually great at, but this is important stuff. According to a recent Tufts University study, there were an estimated 8.3 million voters who were newly eligible for the 2022 midterm elections — “newly eligible,” meaning those who had turned 18 since the previous general election in November 2020. They are members of what’s commonly referenced as Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012).

The newly eligible voters — approximately 4.5 million of them white and 3.8 million people of color — turned out in historically high numbers, and voted overwhelmingly (by 27 percent) for Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Tufts reported that young voters swung results in Georgia and Nevada, and tilted races toward Democrats in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Another report, published by NPR in February, polled Gen Z-ers about their political concerns. They ranked “protecting abortion access” at a higher level than any other age group. It’s worth noting that Gen Z voters will be the most educated group in our history, statistically, and the higher a voter’s education level, the more likely they are to vote. And the majority of Gen Z college graduates are female.

Using this data, you could predict that women and young people are going to have an increasing say in electoral outcomes in the U.S. Or you could just look at recent statewide elections, where it’s already happening. Start with the abortion referendum in 2022 in blood-red Kansas, where abortion rights prevailed by a nearly 60 percent to 40 percent margin, thanks to an unprecedented turnout by women and young people. There were similar results in Michigan a few months later, where abortion rights prevailed 57 to 43 percent, and last week in Ohio, where pro-choice voters also won by a 57 to 43 percent margin.

Along with abortion rights, Gen Z voters cited racism, the environment, gun violence, and LGBTQ/gender issues among their top concerns. They are the least traditionally religious generation in our history.

It’s almost as if the Republican Party read that NPR report, saw the recent state election returns, and said, “You know what? Let’s see what we can do to really piss off young voters. Maybe we should start something like ‘a War on Woke,’ where we force women to have babies against their will and demand open-carry laws and suppress LGBTQ rights and drill for oil in baby seal habitats. That’ll show ’em we mean business!” I don’t know how else you explain what appears to be a GOP death-wish agenda for 2024.

It’s enough to make a logical person think that the upcoming election will be a walkover for the Democrats, but these coots ain’t made for walkin’. In the midst of this epic demographic swing toward youth, the Democrats are stuck ridin’ with Biden, an 80-year-old who Republicans are painting as a barely sentient geezer who can’t tie his own shoes. It’s ageist, unfair, and unfortunate, but it’s where we are.

Fortunately for the Democrats, in addition to the genius strategy of going against every policy favored by young people and women, the GOP seems hellbent on renominating a multiple-indicted 77-year-old loon with a Grateful Dead-like following of cosplaying cultists. He’ll be running for president in between court appearances and possible jail time for witness tampering. The media will consume and regurgitate Trump and his lies ad nauseam. Orange will be the new gack.

Frankly, given mortality tables, the odds of both of these Boomers getting through a stressful, yearlong presidential campaign without a health crisis seem slim. It seems more likely that we’ve got 14 months of chaos of one kind or another looming ahead.

This is when it helps to remember that even though the candidates might look the same as four years ago, the electorate will not. In the four years between the 2020 and 2024 elections, the country will have gained another 16 million young eligible voters. And in each of those four years, 2.5 million older Americans will have died, meaning there will be 10 million fewer older voters. That’s a net swing of 26 million younger eligible voters. I may not be good at math, but I know how to count change when I see it.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

White Becomes Third Democrat in D.A. Race

Janika White

Scarcely a week after the announcement for District Attorney General by University of Memphis law professor Steve Mulroy, joining attorney Linda Harris in the Democratic primary, a third Democratic entry is now declared.

This would be Janika White, a member of the Bailey, Bailey & White law firm, who made her announcement on Tuesday at the Walter L. Bailey Jr. Criminal Justice Center at 201 Poplar.

White boasts years of experience in both civil and criminal cases. In the past, White served as a judicial law clerk to then-Chancellor Kenny Armstrong of the Shelby County Chancery Court and went on to clerk for Judge Bernice Donald, who at the time was a  U.S. District Judge. She is also the niece of the late Rev. Ralph White of Bloomfield Baptist Church, who was heavily involved in Democratic politics.

Her stated goal is “to provide equity and justice to all who encounter the legal system,” and, like both Mulroy and Harris, is critical of current D.A. Amy Weirich, a Republican.

In a statement released to the press, White said, “What we are currently doing is simply not working. Violent crime is up, more people are being incarcerated, but our communities are not getting any safer. It is past time for change. I’m running for District Attorney to answer a call to service and bring justice, fairness, and safety to our community.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Smashing Victories by “Unorthodox” Candidates Obama and Huckabee

CREDIT: jb

DES MOINES, IA –“They’re all a bunch of goops,” said the
check-out lady at QuikTrip [sic], the Interstate 80 truck stop that doubles as a
passing-good deli. Meaning politicians. And someone suggested to her that this
was exactly why Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee had just won
their party’s caucuses in Iowa so handily.

Neither is the same old goop. A mixed-marriage
son of Kenya and Kansas on the one hand. A Baptist preacher with a yen for
populist economics on the other. Each articulate to a preternatural degree.
Each appealing, both overtly and by their very beings, to the political
crossover vote. Each defeating his main opponent by the margin of 9 percent.

Each an example of the improbable proving
inevitable, in victor Obama’s phrase.

“We are one nation. We are one people. And our
time for change has come,” the Democratic victor said, in a speech that touched
so many bases and was said so well that it put to shame his 2004 convention
speech – the one that put the then new senator from Illinois on the map.

Yes, Obama won the “youth” vote
— .57 percent of the under-30’s – and Huckabee got the evangelicals – 45
percent of a base that, in Iowa, amounted to 60 percent of caucus-goers overall.
But both are – how to say it? – bigger than that. And each made a point of
talking up inclusiveness as the foundation of their Iowa victories and of the
election to come and the political era that comes after it.

To be sure, Hillary Clinton has
too deep a war chest and too deep a bench, organizationally, to bow out. One
remembers longtime Clinton retainer James Carville’s cry when the Monica
Lewinsky scandal threatened to overwhelm Bill Clinton’s presidency: “This is wah!”
he shouted out in full South Loos-iana Cajunese. Whereupon he – and the Clintons – fetched up the ordnance to win
that war.

Hillary will try again. But,
beyond the fact that she’s up against a man who could be a generational
phenomenon, she has also to contend with the second-place finisher in the
Democratic race, former senator John Edwards, who has so unabashedly talked about “corporate greed” and promised
what Republicans like to call “class war.”

“On to New Hampshire,” vowed
Edwards to a turnaway crowd at the Renaissance-Savery Hotel in downtown Des
Moines. And what that meant was spelled out afterward by the candidate’s chief
economic-policy advisor, Leo Hindery: “We beat the Clinton machine. And we’ll
beat it again,” he said. No mention of Obama.

And Huckabee had left no doubt in
the last few days of campaigning, nor in his speech to his throng Thursday
night, that his pending triumph over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney
was a victory of ordinary folks over the elite, of truth over dissembling, and
of will over money. He never tired of pointing out that Romney out-spent him
“20-to-one,” and it was obviously his former fellow governor – and onetime
moderate turned conservative exemplar — that he meant when he used words like
“phony” and “pretender” on the stump.

Speaking of exemplars, the
apparent third-place finisher among Republicans, former Tennessee senator Fred
Thompson, materialized as something of a conservative firebrand Thursday
morning in a barn-burning speech to a packed room at a West Des Moines hotel.
For a change this campaign year, he was focused, intense, and capable of a sense
of humor (he was seen so frequently in the movies, he said, because “they
need[ed] somebody who was big and worked cheap”).

Both Thompson and his longtime
friend John McCain, the given-up-for-dead onetime frontrunner who has surged
again, finished in a virtual dead heat for third place in Iowa, and each has
thereby won a ticket to New Hampshire. McCain, a possible winner there, has
gotten most of the attention, but Thompson is a legitimate substitute either for
Huckabee, should he falter, or for McCain, if the Republican establishment
proves unreceptive to the maverick hero again, as it did in 2000.

“You have done what the cynics said we couldn’t
do. You have done what New Hampshire can do in five days,” said Obama Thursday
night, looking ahead. As for Huckabee, he’ll hope to score well in New
Hampshire, but it’s more likely that he’ll be looking at South Carolina later in
January, to finish off Romney – and whomever else is still out there, including
McCain, with whom he, too, like Thompson, still has a mutual-admiration-society
relationship.

One way in which pundits are still
underestimating Huckabee is in concentrating so totally on his evangelical
persuasion and skimming over, or ignoring altogether, his populism. “Republicans
have economic concerns,” Huckabee stressed Thursday night, and he didn’t mean
the high-bracket tax-cut crowd. He talked instead about working families
struggling to pay for gasoline at the pump.

As Obama said, “People are looking for someone
who is willing to say the unorthodox – and [for] authenticity.” Or, as a
still-game Edwards put it, “One thing is clear from the results tonight. The
status quo lost and change won.”

Indeed so. And there is more to come.

(Flyer political editor Jackson Baker will be
reporting regularly from Iowa and New Hampshire for the next few days.)

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Real Costs of War

Several newspapers and websites covered President Bush’s visit to Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio earlier this week. The pictures were gut-wrenching. The president toured the facility, meeting soldiers who had lost arms, legs, eyes, ears, even faces in combat in Iraq.

Bush moved through the hallways, greeting the wounded with a wry smile and his typical bonhomie. As he watched one soldier — blind and legless — climb a wall, he turned to the soldier’s mother and said, “He’s a good man, isn’t he?” Yes, Mr. Bush, he is. And he was probably even a better man before an IED maimed him for life.

One hopes that Bush came away from his visit with some deeper understanding of the human costs of his administration’s unilateral and unnecessary war.

But it’s doubtful. As the president exited the hospital, impressed by the good medical work he’d just seen, he took a moment to advocate for better government support for wounded veterans. Apparently, Bush was unaware that the high-tech rehabilitation facility he’d just visited was entirely supported by private funds.

A new report on the financial costs of war was released this week by congressional Democrats. The report cited the costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at nearly $1.5 trillion — so far. It’s an amount that is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008. The report estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000.

The report also says that our war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from “productive investment” by American businesses. It adds that National Guardsmen and reservists are being kept from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers estimated at $1 billion to $2 billion. Gas prices, the report further notes, have tripled since the beginning of the war.

Critics say these figures are inflated. We say, inflated or not, it’s quite obvious that the cost of endless war on two fronts has depleted our economy, pushed our armed forces to the breaking point, and inflicted immeasurable human suffering on our soldiers and their families — not to mention the Iraqi people.

As has been demonstrated over and over again, the way to fight terrorism is through police work and our intelligence agencies. Invading a country under the guise of “keeping America safe from terrorism” makes about as much sense as the old Vietnam canard: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

In this case, we fear, we are destroying our own village. It is time for congressional Democrats to do more than issue reports. It is time to stop the madness of this no-win war.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

If anyone doubts that the

republic created by the U.S. Constitution

is dead, he or she only has to watch the Republican

presidential debates. Save for Ron Paul, all of the candidates believe a

president can take the country to war on his own, though most concede it might be a good idea to “consult” attorneys and even Congress.

The Constitution, written by men more intelligent and better educated than today’s crop of political duds, is quite clear. The president has no authority to take the country to war. The sole authority for declaring war rests 100 percent with Congress.

Naturally, if a shipload of pirates sailed up the Potomac and began shooting at the tourists, you wouldn’t need a declaration to authorize returning fire. American troops defending themselves while they are under attack is not the issue. The issue is that if a president wants to take the country to war against another country, he must, as Franklin Roosevelt did after Pearl Harbor, ask Congress to make that decision.

The founding fathers, having suffered under a monarch, deliberately created a weak president. His powers, as specified by the Constitution, are limited mainly to administering the laws passed by Congress, making appointments, negotiating treaties and being the official greeter when dealing with foreign powers. His role as commander in chief is limited to just what it says — the military. The president is not our commander in chief, as the current president seems to think.

Lest anyone be beguiled by the current politicians’ determination to create an emperor and an empire, even the president’s appointments and treaties have to be confirmed by the Senate. Congress has sole authority over taxation and spending. Appropriations for the military are limited by the Constitution to two years. Furthermore, Congress is elected independently of the president and is a separate branch of government. It is under no obligation whatsoever to do anything the president asks it to do, and the president has no authority whatsoever to do anything not authorized by Congress and the Constitution.

The Constitution, which apparently not many Americans have ever bothered to read, is the supreme law of the land. It does not make suggestions. It commands. It was written in clear English. It has provisions to amend it, but it should never be amended by interpretation. That is always a usurpation of power and should be grounds for impeachment.

There is only one way for the U.S. to be a real nation of laws. That way is for the people to demand that every single public official obey the laws as they are written and obey them to the letter. The current president seems to think he can alter laws with “signing statements” and legislate with executive orders. He should have been impeached a long time ago.

The kernel of the nut is this: In our constitutional republic, sovereignty rests in the people. If the people are too stupid or ignorant, too lazy or indifferent, to hold their public officials accountable for violating the laws and the Constitution, then of course they will deserve the tyranny they will surely get.

Self-government is tremendously more difficult and demanding than living under a dictatorship. In a dictatorship, all you have to do is obey. I fear that concept appeals to some Americans today. It’s understandable. Responsibility can be a heavy load to carry. It’s much easier to relegate all of that to the Great Leader and just do what we are told.

Anybody who’s ever been in the military or jail knows what I’m talking about. When you are deprived of the ability to make choices, you are simultaneously relieved of the responsibility for making them. Responsibility is the other side of the coin of freedom.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: Bush Quacks On As Democrats Turn Tail

George Bush is no lame duck. You aren’t lame when you’re
getting your way on everything. At a press conference this week, instead of
quacking like a duck, he was strutting like a peacock, and warning the world
of how relevant he still is. The Decider Guy is dancing with the stars. A 24%
approval rating, a (still mostly) lapdog press and Orwellian delusions
continue to assure him that he can do as he damn well pleases. In other
words, he has another18 months to take this country farther down a rat hole.
And the one thing he knows for sure is the gutless opposition has no serious
plans to stop him.

Yesterday, the president and his party succeeded in
denying millions of poor American children healthcare by vetoing a bill to
expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Never mind that the
money spent on forty days in Iraq would have paid for at least ten million
poor kids to be insured for an entire year. We have the money for funding
perpetual wars, but not for our nation’s poor, sick children. This
administration, with the help of Congress, killed the bill.

Even more appalling, Bush and the Republicans fought to
get legal immunity for the telecommunications companies who helped this
government engage in spying and criminal phone tapping of innocent, private
citizens. Never mind that protecting the criminals who colluded with the
right-wingers will destroy the individual privacy and hitherto protected
freedoms of all Americans. So where did Congress line up on this despicable
piece of legislation? Right behind the Republicans, of course.

Most alarming, however, was another bizarre “Bring-It-On”
display when Bush seemed jacked up when alluding to a possible third world war
involving Iran. (Excuse me, “nukyuler armed Eye-ran.”) Jocularly chuckling at
questions regarding a potential engagement of war with another country in the
Middle East, he sounded more and more like a petulant, dangerous child.

While Bush was flipping off sick children, ripping up the
Constitution and rattling war sabers, where was the opposing party– the
majority party that was sent to Washington last year explicitly to stop Bush
from doing further damage? Pissing up the proverbial rope, as usual. Since
the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared impeachment of this president
to be off the table, it is the Democrats who are quickly making themselves
irrelevant. Bush and the Republicans control the agenda, determine the course
of action, and dictate the outcome. The Democrats continue to believe that
simply keeping their heads down will somehow propel them into an electoral
landslide in 2008! While Bush continues to gain relevancy by finding new and
novel ways to continue his campaign to expunge the planet of any life form
that disagrees with him, the congress merrily assumes the
earthworm-on-dry-pavement position.

In all this mess, it is the American people who seem to be
the least relevant to the politicians. Predictably, the president will continue
to carry on the Iraq war, but the one thing voters were counting on last year
when they elected a Democratic majority was having that majority use the
Constitutional powers available to them to stop the funding of the war.

And while Bush continues to destroy our Constitutional
freedoms, the Democrats astoundingly still cower in fear of being called
unpatriotic. This administration has flagrantly flouted the will of the people,
but the people figured out a long time ago not to expect anything different from
Bush. Congress, however, in its failure to confront the president, is also
ignoring the will of the people; so it is no surprise that they, not Bush, have
the lower approval rating.

-Make no mistake, Americans are sick and tired of Bush and
the Republicans, but they are more exasperated with and sickened by
Congressional Democrats who claim to be Bush’s adversaries, yet act like never
ending enablers. Like parents offering nothing more than repeated empty threats
to a destructive, out-of- control adolescent, the Democrats are the ones who are
becoming increasingly irrelevant and dare I say –lame? Perhaps they should heed
the words of the last Democratic President who said the American people would
rather support someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is right and
weak.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: It’s Time to Come Out

Idaho Republican senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig is still trying to ride out the stormy aftermath of his arrest for soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport men’s room last spring — much to the delight of Democrats and late-night comedians.

Not content with becoming merely a momentary national punchline, Craig seems determined to drag, er, stretch his notoriety into a long-running sitcom. He has continued his tireless efforts to wiggle out of his conviction for weeks. He held a press conference to deny he was gay and thanked all those attending who “came out” to support him. Oy.

This week, he began making the rounds of the national talk shows to plead his case, dragging his poor wife along behind him, keeping the story alive for yet another news-cycle. Republicans desperately wish he would just go away. Democrats hope he keeps, uh, stalling until the next erection, er, election.

And in a, um, stroke of serendipity straight out of La Cage aux Folles, Craig was inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame (who knew they had one?) this week. I bet that ceremony wasn’t at all awkward.

Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also stupid — and oh so predictable. Another sexual hypocrite seems to pop up every week. On Monday, a Vatican official was suspended after being caught on a hidden camera making advances to a young man. The official said that he was only pretending to be gay as part of his work. He frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men in order to gather information about “those who damage the image of the church with homosexual activity.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, give me a break.

Last Thursday, October 11th, was the annual “National Coming Out Day,” sponsored by gay and lesbian groups across the country. The purpose of the event is to urge those folks who are in the closet to stop covering up their true sexuality and live openly gay lives. It’s a great idea.

Imagine our world if all the sexual hypocrisy were to go away. Sure, we’d learn we have lots of gay elected officials, but what’s wrong with that? They’re already gay, after all. Now they’d have to be honest too. And that’s never a bad thing.
Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Pulling the Plug (Again!)

I said, some months ago (“Time To Pull the Plug,” December,
’06), that it was time for Congress to defund the war in Iraq. It has now become
apparent that’s the only way we’re going to get out of Iraq in anything
approaching a reasonable period of time In the time since I wrote that piece,
hundreds more American soldiers have died, thousands more have been permanently
disabled, and we’ve spent additional billions of dollars on this tragic, futile
war. The electorate spoke loudly and clearly last November about their antipathy
for the war. Their mistake was thinking their vote would bring an end to the
war, just as the Iraqis’ mistake was thinking that voting for a government would
actually give them a government.

The feckless Democrats have knuckled under to a Republican
autocrat, choosing to play a dangerous game of political chicken with Bush
instead of exercising their electoral prerogative. If Bush thought he was given
“political capital,” after a close election victory in ’04, Democrats were given
the bank in ’06. Yet, they’ve cowered in their corners, afraid of the political
consequences of doing what they were elected to do. What sense does that make?

And the Democrats’ excuse? We don’t have enough votes to
override a veto, they say, while they engage in pathetic maneuvering, posturing,
and worse, empty table-thumping. The only thing the Democrats can do to end the
war is the very thing they have the power to do, without worrying about whether
or not the President likes or approves of it—cut off funding. Congress has
what is so colorfully called the “power of the purse.” Under the Constitution,
Congress decides whether, and how much, to fund wars. It has the power, under
the terms of Article I, Section 8, to “raise and support armies.”

Many people may not realize that, thinking that anything
Congress does is subject to Presidential approval (through signing) or
disapproval (through veto). But the truth is, Congress can end this war, ALL BY
ITSELF. So why hasn’t it done so? Because it has bought into the spin of an
administration that enjoys one of the lowest approval ratings in history that
cutting off funding for the war is cutting off funding for the troops (even
though that is manifestly untrue). And if Congress did that they’d probably face
the folks who drive around in cars with those magnetic “Support the Troops”
stickers rising up in revolt, right? Wrong.

The Democrats have allowed Bush (and his various henchmen)
to define funding for the war as either being for “spreading democracy,”
“fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”, or being
against the troops. With the notable exception of Congressmen Martha and
Kucinich, and of late, Chris Dodd, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be
cowed by an administration whose “support” for the troops has manifested itself
in vehicles that don’t protect troops from being blown up, involuntarily
extended tours of duty and woefully inadequate health care when they leave the
military. So who’s really supporting the troops?

In addition to the “not supporting our troops” trope, the
Republicans also have their go-to talking point, namely that if troops are
withdrawn, the result will be a catastrophe. This from the same people who
claimed there were WMD’s in Iraq, that the war would be short (and cheap), that
we’d be greeted as “liberators,” and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war. In
other words, Bush and his cadre of neocon war drummers were wrong about every
single thing they predicted about the war. But now we’re supposed to believe
their prediction about what will happen when we withdraw? That defies logic.

The President’s speech on Thursday, which followed his
alter ego, General Petraeus’ dog and pony show before Congress (which revealed
that he himself can’t say that the war in Iraq is making the U.S. any safer),
revealed, at long last, his (Bush’s) true agenda. We all know that the U.S. is
building the largest embassy in the history of civilization in Iraq, and that
it’s been building permanent military bases in Iraq, so we knew Bush et al. were
planning on a long-term presence in that country. But now we know that he’s
planning on an indefinite presence, because he has finally told us so. The
“enduring relationship” he announced during his speech has been interpreted as
nothing short of the kind of commitment we’ve seen in Korea.

In other words, American troops will be stationed in Iraq
for at least the next 50 years (which is probably how long it would take to get
the Iraqi army to “stand up” anyway). Of course, Korea isn’t in the midst of a
civil war, and few, if any, American soldiers who have been stationed there for
the last 50 years have died as a result of any combat. So, in the face of
overwhelming opposition to the war, the public’s belief that American troops
should be promptly (within a year) and totally withdrawn, and an approval rating
lower than most used car salesmen have, what does the President do? Why, of
course, he calls for our troops to be permanently stationed in Iraq.

I’ve thought, for some time, that Bush has gone “Captain
Queeg” (the deranged commander of a battleship in the novel—and a role so
convincingly played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie of the same name—The Caine
Mutiny) on us, or worse, that he’s figured out how to hold us all hostage to his
insanity, while we (and especially the Democratic party) have been suffering
from a bad case of Stockholm syndrome. The sailors on the U.S.S. Caine mutinied
in order to prevent the ship from capsizing. Our ship is severely listing,
thanks to our “Captain Queeg’s” insanity. If we don’t take over control of this
ship soon, and convince the Democrats in Congress that the only way to do that
is to stop funding for the war, we may find our ship of state capsizing as well.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Here’s the Deal

A couple weeks ago, I attended the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, courtesy of the Manchester, Tennessee, paper that carries my column.

Bonnaroo is an amazing series of concerts on a 700-acre farm between Nashville and Chattanooga. It is like an annual Woodstock, where hippies and hipsters go camping and watch top bands play for four days. I did not camp, however, because camping outdoors involves the outdoors, and in my opinion, the outdoors is best left outdoors.

I was initially told that Bonnaroo is a made-up word that means nothing, just like “lollapalooza” or “congressional ethics.” Later, I found out that “bonnaroo” is Cajun slang for fun. And it was.

There were lots of kids with nose rings and tattoos. Many were wearing bathing suits that they should have reconsidered. In fact, although I am steadfastly against more government, I really think some of these people should have to apply for a permit to wear a two-piece. Bill Clinton could chair the committee to review applicants; he’d like that.

One person died, and I am sure countless kids had to be untangled from making out with another joyous soul wearing a nose ring. There was more sex going on than Paris Hilton’s last night before jail. (I bet some attendees are checking their crotches this week, just hoping that itch is only a bug bite.)

As you might imagine, the Birkenstock crowd was there with booths supporting all their social causes. As best I can figure, they like to “raise awareness” in hopes that someone else will actually do something about the problems. It is apparently more noble to be an activist for grand-scale issues such as the environment than cleaning up your own campsite.

Anytime young music fans get together, there will be drugs. And the drug use at Bonnaroo was so open that if a kid was arrested with pot in his system, he could probably have asked for it back.

Drug vendors on foot offered a wide array of pot, coke, and acid for reasonable prices. Capitalism at its purest. Drugs were sold at a more competitive price than the prescription drug benefit Congress gave us, because at Bonnaroo, drug dealers were forced to compete on prices.

The way dealers at Bonnaroo operated is that when they walked by, they said the name of their product. You heard the word “pot” said by a passerby. If you wanted to buy said product, then — unlike our government’s drug purchases — you engaged the vendor in price negotiations. (And as with most of my purchases, the conversation began with: You ain’t no cop are you?)

Being one of the oldest people at Bonnaroo, I didn’t get many offers to buy drugs, although I was a little nonplussed when one dealer walked by and whispered, “Geritol.”

They also registered voters at Bonnaroo. Organizers assume the young people they register are going to vote for Democrats since most of the participants probably get their political views from the drummer for Third Eye Blind. This is the same drummer who rails against 10-cents-a-gallon profit for the oil companies yet has no problem selling his band’s T-shirts for $35 a piece.

One vendor said that he was for Hillary Clinton because Hillary would fight global warming. I told him that he might be onto something, since there is nothing about Hillary that is the least bit warm.

Another activist told me he was going to vote for Dennis (“Munchkin”) Kucinich because of his strong environmental stance. He kept citing the fact that some scientists say the oceans will rise four feet because of global warming, which explains why Kucinich is fighting it so hard: He would probably drown.

In the end, I must admit I really enjoyed Bonnaroo. I would advise other fortysomethings to try it. On one hand, the festival made you feel old, yet the vibrant and infectious carefree atmosphere made you feel young and rejuvenated.

And it reminded me that while getting old is inevitable, acting old is optional.

Ron Hart is a columnist and investor in Atlanta. He worked for Goldman Sachs and was appointed to the Tennessee Board of Regents by Lamar Alexander. His e-mail: RevRon10@aol.com.