Tag Archives: Karl Rove

Point of View Columns

Weekend Edition – December 7, 2012

There is a reason why people who perform extraordinary deeds are called heroes and it seems on a midday subway platform in New York City this past week there were none to be found. Meanwhile New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez can console himself with the knowledge that he was only benched for one half of a game, Fox News has banished Karl Rove to the pines for a much longer time. And finally, Senator Jim DeMint has announced that he is resigning from the Senate to become president of a think tank – the word “oxymoron” immediately comes to mind.

We May Need Another Hero

Earlier this week Ki Suk Han was standing on a subway platform one moment and the next moment he was pushed to the subway tracks in front of an oncoming train. What we do know is that Mr. Han tried to get back on the platform for twenty seconds.
What we do know is that no one on that midday subway platform tried to help him climb to safety.

What we do know is that one R. Umar Abbasi, a photographer for the New York Post the time to take a number of pictures with his camera.

What we do know is that Mr. Han was struck by that oncoming train and died on the scene.

What we also know is that it is very hard to be a hero, which is why they are so few and so deserving of honor and praise.

What we do know is that there were no heroes on that New York City subway platform last week.

Benched!

During this football season the New York Jets have led the league in gratuitous drama if not wins. Last week, keeping it interesting, Jets coach Rex Ryan benched starting quarterback Mark Sanchez and the third string backup quarterback led the team to victory. And then Mark Sanchez was re-anointed as the starter, at least for now.

Not to be outdone in the gratuitous drama department Fox News has benched Karl Rove and Dick Morris. One has to believe that the real time election night meltdown of Karl and Dick had something to do with the Fox suits deciding that it was time for Rove and Morris to ride the pine for a while.

And while we will miss their adamant stupidity and their dedication to falsehood, the nation and the world are better off without them on the air.

The Oxymoron of the Year

The basic definition of “oxymoron” is basically a figure of speech which is self-contradictory – expressions like “jumbo shrimp” and “military justice” come to mind. Now, thanks to soon to be former Senator Jim DeMint we can add one more.

In his infinite wisdom Senator DeMint, one of the godfathers of the Tea Party movement, has accepted the position of president of the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank. That would be the same Jim DeMint who has authored or enthusiastically supported the wackiest elements of the Tea Party including birther strategies, the denial of evolution and climate change as well as welcoming the national default that was barely avoided.

“Jim DeMint and think tank” – an oxymoron for the ages.

Have a great weekend!

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Point of View Columns

Weekend Edition – November 9, 2012

To paraphrase R&B legend Billy Preston, the good guys win every once in a while and Barack Obama has been elected for a second term. The pleasure of seeing the continuation of the Obama legacy is countered by what seems to be a Teapublican death spiral. However, there are some lessons that the Republicans can learn from 11.6.12. Meanwhile Donald Trump and an assortment of Karnival Klowns simply refuse to let reality get in the way of a good rant. And finally, is it time for President Obama to make Africa a major agenda item during his second term?

Lessons to be Learned

While the supporters of Barack Obama start planning his second inauguration on January 21, 2013, the Teapublican Party leaders must be wondering what happened. Historically incumbent presidents with high unemployment rates don’t get reelected. Typically, presidential candidates with the most money almost always win. But Mitt Romney lost – and he lost in almost every state that he had to win in order to prevail on Election Day.

So what lessons can the Teapublicans learn while sorting through the ashes of defeat?

1. The Teapublican Party will almost certainly never win another national election by centering their focus on white men. The demographics are simply not there and there aren’t enough white men to provide victory except in the South.

2. Voter suppression is not such a hot idea. The blatant and transparently racist voter suppression tactics pursued by Teapublican governors and legislators throughout the country fired up minorities who were incensed by the notion that the government apparatus was being used to deny their right to vote. Right now David Axelrod is probably writing a thank you note to all the voter suppression advocates.

3. Treating women as stupid and compliant is not such a hot idea either. President Obama received 55% of the female vote and part of the reason had to be the Teapublican embrace of “forcible rape”, transvaginal wands, the defunding of Planned Parenthood and misogyny in general. The Teapublicans are learning, very slowly, that women are neither stupid nor compliant.

4. Money can buy a lot, but it is really hard to buy a national election. The Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court of the United States opened the money spigots for the 2012 campaign and the Koch brothers, Shelden Adelsen and other right wing billionaires did their very best to simply drown the Obama campaign in dollars. The thing is that in 1992 buying a million television ads might have worked. But in 2012 people receive their information not only from television but also from the social media. Guess the Teapublicans never got the memo.

There are many other lessons to be learned but it will be interesting to see if the Teapublicans double down on their right wing trajectory and end up in a museum display case right next to the Whigs.

Voices in the Asylum

One of the more interesting aspects of President Obama’s victory has been the response of Mitt Romney and his supporters. Governor Romney was actually gracious, graceful and pitch perfect in his concession speech. Indeed, if that Mitt Romney had been campaigning the election results might have been closer. But that Mitt Romney could never have secured the Teapublican Party nomination.

Even after CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times had declared Barack Obama as the winner on Tuesday evening, Karl Rove refused to accept the reality. He actually spent several hours awaiting some magical, mystical message from Ohio even after the Republican Secretary of State of Ohio confirmed the Obama victory and went home.

Sadly, Karl Rove reminded us of one of those legendary Japanese World War II soldiers who was left on a lonely Pacific Island continuing to fight a war that ended a long time ago.

Donald Trump went on a Twitter rant claiming that an Obama victory was a “travesty” and that it was time for a revolution. He then went on to call for a march on Washington.
As it turns out the only march on Washington coming up will be the thousands of Obama supporters coming for Barack Obama’s second inauguration.

Time for Africa?

Africa has an expanding economy. Democracy is taking root and flourishing in many countries. While challenges continue on the continent, there is no doubt that the countries of Africa represent one of the greatest market opportunities remaining on the planet and it is a market in which American companies are not full participants.

This week in an appearance on CNN Rowland Martin proposed that President Obama move Africa up on his second term agenda beginning with personal visits as well as serious policy initiatives. The American economy needs new markets, new customers and new opportunities.
The Chinese, Indian and European companies have already figured this out, but the American brand is still preferred.

Making Africa a trade priority is a great leadership opportunity for President Obama in his second term.

Its been a great week – Have a great weekend!

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Point of View Columns

G.O.Tea Party

It was with great interest and no small sense of irony, that I read a recent article about Democrats debating whether or not to link the Republican Party to the Tea Party movement that is surging and deluging the right wing of the right wing. I actually wonder if predicate debates involved determining if the sky is in fact blue or if the law of gravity is a scientific fact.

My unsolicited advice is to simply state the facts – the Republican Party has become the carrier for the virulence and ugliness that is the Tea Party and is as dangerous and as toxic as the legendary Typhoid Mary or Gaetan Dugas, also known as Patient Zero (reputed as having been responsible for introducing the AIDS virus to North America).

The historical legitimacy and institutionalized stature of the G.O.P. has been hijacked and has been used to camouflage the nihilism and racism and extremism that are the true hallmarks of the Tea Party movement. And the traditional Republican leadership has been a willing participant to the hijacking, kind of like the Stockholm Syndrome gone wild.

Exhibit A: The REPUBLICAN senatorial candidate in Nevada, a Tea Party alumna by the name of Sharron Angle, is on record as saying that if a woman is impregnated as the result of rape she should not be permitted to have an abortion. Instead, according to Ms. Angle, the woman should look to “make lemonade from a lemon moment” and forego abortion and have a baby conceived by force and violence. Not one Republican leader has refused to support Ms. Angle’s candidacy.

Exhibit B: The REPUBLICAN senatorial candidate in Delaware, another Tea Party savant by the name of Christine O’Donnell, is on record as saying that women in the American military academies tends to weaken the capabilities of the armed services. Despite the fact that women in the military as an issue was decided many years ago, Ms. O’Donnell felt compelled to dredge up the bones of this moldy corpse of discrimination. Not one major Republican leader has refused to support Ms. O’Donnell’s candidacy despite the fulminations of Karl Rove to the contrary (he is supporting her, by the way).

Exhibit C: The REPUBLICAN gubernatorial candidate in New York, a Tea Party troglodyte by the name of Carl Paladino, has admitted to distributing e-mails containing pornography, titles like “Run Nigger Run” and has referred to the Jewish Speaker of the New York State “the ant-Christ”. While it is amazing that thousands of New Yorkers would find Mr. Paladino qualified to serve as governor, it is even more amazing that not a single Republican leader is sufficiently repulsed or revolted by his commentary to speak out against him.

We are witness to the Republican Party hierarchy remaining silent while their Tea Party spawn refers to President Obama as Hitler and an enemy of America. We have heard Republican candidates and wannabe candidates use terms like socialist, communist and Nazi when referring to President Obama and his Administration and I no longer wonder when they will hit bottom. The answer is never.

The silence of the Republicans, and too many Democrats and independents, is dangerous because hyperbole begets more hyperbole until the entire political discourse becomes overheated and potentially destructive. When “the tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of tyrants” becomes a campaign slogan we should be concerned. When “Second Amendment solutions to our political issues” becomes a political strategy we should be afraid.

America does not do metaphor very well. Not too long ago a misguided fool and Tea Party advocate flew his plane into an IRS office building to protest big government. He not only killed himself, he also killed an innocent IRS employee who thought he was serving his country and was not its enemy. We should be afraid to ask what is next.

But we should not be afraid to speak out against the madness that is being foisted upon the American people. The bright light of public attention and scrutiny must shine on the bizarre, fallacious and misanthropic rants and ravings that are thinly disguised as campaign rhetoric.

In point of fact we are witness to an effort designed to fundamentally change this country. Talk of “taking this country back” is not idle chatter. This is a clarion call to take this country back into a time when civil rights and social compassion were simply not a part of the national dialogue. It is a call to take this country back into the hands of an almost entirely white, monochromatic segment of this population, relegating everyone else into the class of the “other”.

That is why the Lower Manhattan Islamic center controversy is so important. Today it is the Muslims and the Arabs. Tomorrow it is the immigrants who can be racially profiled. It is always the black people and the day after it may be gays or Jews or any other “other”. The stampede towards mindless prejudice in the name of some barely articulated concept of patriotism and nationalism is a story that has been told many times in history. It never has a happy ending.

It is time for those of us who have a different vision to be heard. Silence would be a greater sin than all the clarion call for injustice.

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