Ready for Another War in the Middle East! Romney and the Neocons

ON THE DOMESTIC FRONT IT'S LOOKING like the Romney-Ryan ticket and the Tea Party base are planning like it's 1928. The outlines of their approach seem clear. Kill off the last unions and get the working stiff in an ever tighter economic noose. Collect multi-million dollar campaign donations from the super rich and repay them with Paul Ryan-inspired tax breaks so that they get their money back, and more, once you take office. Cut Social Security to the bone; bleed Medicare and Medicaid white.

Don't just unplug granny. Blow up the electric company with granny inside.

It's might be hard to imagine, but the trend in foreign affairs is even more ominous. Because, when it comes to foreign policy, it's de ja vu all over again, with Mitt Romney leaning hard on the same geniuses who plunged us into Iraq War. As Bill Keller noted in the New York Times yesterday, Romney has fallen head over heels for neoconservatives like John Bolton, Dan Senor and William Kristol.

If you're lucky, you've been able to purge the memory of these men from your consciousness in recent years. But we need to remember that nine weeks after 9-11, Bolton was assuring the media that Saddam Hussein had vast stockpiles of biological weapons:  "The existence of Iraq's program is beyond dispute."

Old news, of course. But now Bolton is whispering in the right ear of Mitt Romney, himself. Bolton! The man who insisted Saddam had all kinds of WMD's hidden under his bed. The man who claimed it was imperative, in 2009, that Israel launch a nuclear strike on Iran at once.

A nuclear strike!!!

"Negotiations have failed," Bolton told a bug-eyed Chicago audience, "and so too have sanctions...So we're at a very unhappy point--a very unhappy point--where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran's program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future."

Today, with only three months remaining until the election, Bolton, who doesn't blanch at the thought of possibly nuking tens of thousands of human beings, still claims that the United States must back Israel in any Iran attack.

Senor wasn't nearly so prominent in the early days of  the W. administration. But he did spend fifteen months in Iraq, as spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which tried its bumbling best to govern the fractious country after the 2003 invasion. And what did Senor tell reporters pretty much every day?




Navy medics attend to the wounded.

Hey, it's doing great!

The first car bomb that spring killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint. No sweat to men like Senor and Bolton. It's going great. Major Kevin Nave's family receives word of his death on his daughter's fifth birthday. Yep. All good. Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch catches a shell splinter in the skull that leaves him almost blind and suffering from seizures and mood swings. Great, great. Lt. Therese Frentz gets caught by a bomb in a restaurant, leaving her burned over most of the upper body, her left ear hanging by scraps of flesh. No problem. Major fighting in Falluja in 2004? Great. A Marine chopper is shot down with 31 men aboard and John House, a Navy medic, dies without meeting his newborn son? Cpl. Carlos Pineda, tries to put down covering fire during an ambush and takes a bullet through both lungs and dies?

Great!

The fighting continues; but Senor doesn't have to worry, because he's soon safe and sound at home, going to Harvard Business School, making money in big chunks in the hedge fund business. So the dirty work is left to people like Chris Dyer, a 19-year-old from Cincinnati, who joins the Marines. Before he leaves for Iraq he tries to reassure his father, "Don't worry, Dad, I'm coming home." He did--in a flag-draped coffin in 2005--after a gigantic roadside bomb flipped the heavy tracked vehicle he was riding inside, killing Dyer and fourteen others on board.

The fighting continues into 2006; and 2007 turns out to be the goriest year of all; and it isn't going great; and we can't find the hidden WMD's, either. Yet, on the advice of men like Bolton we pour the blood of tens of thousands of young American men and women into the sand, watch untold numbers of Iraqis die, spend a trillion dollars on the sorry enterprise, and can't extricate ourselves from the mess until Barack Obama takes office.

NOW, SENOR AND BOLTON AND OTHERS JUST LIKE THEM are murmuring sweet nothings in Romney's left ear, reassuring him that we can jump, head-first, into what is shaping up as a very similar Syrian civil war. And you know what?

It' going to be great.

If possible, William Kristol is the worst of the sorry lot, a leader when it came to drumming up support for the Iraq invasion. As early as January 1998, he and fellow neocon Robert Kagan were faulting the Clinton administration for relying on limited bombing attacks and calling for the United States to launch a ground assault. Again, they said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Not to worry, though. The invasion would be easy, smooth sailing across the desert, so to speak:

We can do this job. Mr. Hussein's army is much weaker than before the Persian Gulf war. He has no political support beyond his own bodyguards and generals. An effective military campaign combined with a political strategy to support the broad opposition forces in Iraq could well bring his regime down faster than many imagine.

It was easy for Kristol to say, smugly in one Fox News interview after another:  "We can do this job." Like all leading neocons, including five-times draft-deferred Dick Cheney, Kristol never did a minute of fighting for the country he claimed to love; and since he didn't have to actually see any blood, it was that much easier to believe it was necessary for others to fight and die in a noble cause.

Sadly, these are the experts who are advising Mitt Romney today.

In a July 24th speech to a meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Reno, Nevada, the GOP candidate boldly promised his audience:  “I pledge to you that if I become commander-in-chief, the United States of America will fulfill its duty, and its destiny.”

More dying to come? It looks that way if Romney wins the election. And all this from the man who gave up a chance to help the United States of America do its duty and fulfill its destiny when he skedaddled for France, and did missionary work for the Mormon Church, instead, giving other lucky young men the chance to do their duty in the mud and the jungles of Vietnam.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A LIBERAL to wonder, "Haven't we already asked our military to do enough? Isn't it a crime to send the same men and women back to the combat zones three, four and five times?"

If the neoconservatives want to start another Middle East fight, can't we agree that they should raise their own taxes to pay for the next war, sign up their own sons and daughters to do some of the fighting, and maybe jump into the blood and the gore themselves?

How many killed and wounded have there already been?

Why is Being Liberal So Hard? Romney and Ryan Bring Back the Fun

SOMETIMES, IT'S TOUGH BEING a liberal. Rush and his legions of Dittoheads call you a "libertard" and pretend they're better Americans than you. As a liberal, you think this country and the world could be better and want to help make those twin ideals come true. Conservatives warn that you're a communist and insist you and your type want to wipe your feet (or worse) on the U. S. Constitution.

And when all else fails, and conservatives start losing the case on merits, they pull out the Big God Gun. They claim to have the Lord on their side.

How do you argue with that?

Then comes a bit of serendipity. The Republicans field a ticket with a Mormon at the top and a Catholic in second position. Mitt Romney for President! Paul Ryan waits in the wings.

As a liberal, you begin to feel that healthy liberal doubt rising again. How, for example, can people like Ann Coulter insist they have God on their side, when God can't seem to get His Own message straight? Is the Bible the last and only true word from on high? Is it where we go for all answers about gay marriage and abortion and scientific topics like global warming or not? What about the Book of Mormon? Is that what God, speaking to Moses thousands of years ago, simply left out?

Ross Douthat, a leading conservative thinker, argues in today's New York Times that Romney needs to open up his campaign narrative in coming weeks. He needs to let voters catch a glimpse of his Mormon faith.

As Douthat sees it:

Romney’s years as a bishop would be woven into a biography that emphasized his piety and decency, introducing Americans to the Romney who shut down his business to hunt for a colleague’s missing daughter, the Romney who helped build a memorial park when a friend’s son died of cystic fibrosis, the Romney who lent money to renters to help them buy a house he owned, and so on down a list of generous gestures and good deeds.

In this scenario, faith is an absolute positive, and, conversely, we can assume, lack of faith is a liberal failing. Douthat argues that during a visit to Salt Lake City this summer he was struck by the emphasis the Church of the Latter-Day Saints put on "faith, family and neighborliness."

As for those bedraggled, woe-begotten liberals? They assign the key role in society to the state.

A LIBERAL ENDS UP, RIGHT ABOUT THERE, scratching his or her noggin'. A liberal believes in both freedom of religion and individual freedom. Let Mormons practice their faith in their beautiful temples, with the figure of Moroni displayed on high, blowing his trumpet. If they believe Joseph Smith found golden tablets on a hillside near Palmyra, New York in 1830, and believe these outline the last true version of the Word of God, let them pray as they like. A good and decent member of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints is a good and decent human being, first, second and last. The same is true of the good and decent Catholic. It is the same again, when we are talking about good and decent Jews or Muslims or Sikhs.

If you're a liberal you have a few questions, not because you hate religion or God or this nation. (In fact, even though you aren't sure, you think God probably loves not only all Americans, but all human beings.) First, if Romney reads one religious book and Ryan reads another and those devout Evangelicals who represent the base of the GOP believe them both wrong and put forward a third version of the truth, why must we assume these people know what they're talking about when they quote chapter and verse on subjects like gay marriage?

If the Book of Mormon goes on in great detail about the battle between Lamanites and Nephites, two ancient peoples on the continent of North America, a liberal says, "Let the Mormons worship in peace, for they are human, and they have basic freedoms and rights. They do me no harm in the practice of their beliefs."

Still, the liberal mind swirls. Why do so many right-wing types, who say they care more about religious freedom than liberals, oppose the building of mosques in places like Tennessee? How is a good and decent Muslim, reading his or her Koran, any more a threat to the individual rights and freedoms of any other American than a good and decent Mormon or Catholic? If two Mormons marry in a special temple ceremony, or even a Catholic and Mormon marry each other, how does that effect anyone else save that couple? In the same way, a liberal wonders how the equation changes if two gays marry? When a conservative says, angrily, "You want to destroy marriage as it has existed for thousands of years!" you can't help but wonder. What were Mormons leaders thinking, when they allowed polygamy, under church doctrine, until 1890?

In fact, if you're liberal, you find yourself muttering, "And this is the same church that offered all kinds of support to Proposition 8, the California referendum to ban gay marriage in that state?

Sometimes it's great fun to be liberal, as it is now, with this "liberal" mixed marriage of Ryan and Romney. Because at times like this you get to confuse conservatives with logic and fact.

Here's one to try on the next right-wing type who says you hate God and kittens and the United States of America. When they insist we need to put prayer back in public schools, ask them exactly which prayer and led by whom? When they say God is against gay marriage, and quote from Leviticus, ask them their position on the sacrifice of goats. After all, if you're a liberal you wonder why there are something like 182 verses on that topic in Leviticus and but one related to homosexual behavior.

Better yet, next time Ann Coulter opens her mouth in any public forum, to spew out more hate, can some good and decent liberal in the audience simply stand and inquire, "Ann, at 49 or 51 (there's dispute over her birthdate) are you still a virgin?" Because, let's face it, conservatives, if the Good Book isn't clear about abortion, it's certainly clear on the topic of sex before marriage.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT Rush Limbaugh, now four-times married, might say. If Ann isn't still a virgin, then she must be a slut.

IF YOU LIKED THIS TRY:

http://ateacheronteaching.blogspot.com/2015/03/ted-cruz-and-new-american-theocracy.html

What's Really Hidden Under Mitt Romney's Fiscal Bed?

UNLESS YOU'VE BEEN ASLEEP FOR THE LAST TWO WEEKS, you probably already know that Senator Harry Reid (D), from Nevada, has been taking heat for suggesting Mitt Romney might not have paid any federal income taxes for ten years straight. Reid has been called a liar by all sorts of aggrieved conservative folks.

In fact, they can't believe the mean things Harry Reid says!

Meanwhile, have they mentioned lately that "President Obama has no birth certificate. Therefore he's not a legitimate president? And did they tell you that he's a communist and so are all of his supporters and they want to destroy the United States of America?"

Well, what DO we know about Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney's taxes? We know Mitt really, really wants to lead this fine nation. We know he wants us to have the best military in the world, no matter the cost ($700 billion annually). We just don't know if the Stormin' Mormon wants to pay his share of the tab.

We don't know because Mitt has released his tax returns for only one year:   2010.

Otherwise, he's refusing to provide additional information. It's like your girlfriend comes over unexpectedly, sees your ex's car in the drive, and storms inside, accusing you of cheating on her. And you reply, "Baby, you know I wouldn't do that. I'll let you look in the living room, just not in the bedroom or closet. I love only you, honey."

That's not going to fly.

How bad could Romney's returns be? Is it possible he doesn't want us to find the fiscal bra and panties, so to speak?

We know that Governor Romney made $21.7 million and paid only 13.9% in federal taxes in 2010. That's not a lot but it's not too bad.

The question, of course, is what might be under Governor Romney's bed. Certainly, for many of the richest men and women in America it's more than a few harmless dust bunnies. According to a report released by the I. R. S. this summer, the superrich pay taxes differently from you and me. Romney isn't quite in that category mind you; but he's not doing too bad. Sure. He has secret bank accounts in Switzerland. Don't we all? Sure. He stashes cash in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, too. Don't you?

What, then, if anything does the presumptive GOP nominee for president have to hide?

Consider the top 400 American earners in 2009, the latest year for which figures are available. The average income for those 400 men and women was $202 million each. Of course, you may have heard the typical Fox News Line: These people deserve more because they work harder than you. It must be tough, alright. If they work 2,000 hours, a typical year for a plumber or police officer, they made...um...$101,000 hourly.

And now, you expect them to pay taxes?

What's your average multi-millionaire or billionaire supposed to do? You can start by hiring a good tax lawyer and a few accountants or do what the Koch brothers do, and purchase a few dozen assorted state and national politicians. Of those 400 hard-working Americans, six paid zero dollars to the federal government in income taxes. (That's like catching your boyfriend, naked, in bed, with his ex-girlfriend.) Twenty-seven paid 10% or less; and 89 paid between 10 and 15%, just about as much as most teachers and carpenters and blue collar union workers.

So, Mr. Romney, let's prove Senator Reid a liar. Show us your income tax returns for the last decade. Show us the money! If you want to lead the greatest nation in the history of the world, show us you're willing to shoulder your share of the cost and burden.


THINK THE BIG MONEY TYPES WON'T WEASEL OUT OF PAYING if they can manage?
According to Forbes magazine, a study done by British economists indicates that the superrich around the world are now hiding $21 trillion in illegal offshore bank accounts.

Only regular suckers pay taxes.

Sikhs, Muslims and America's Greatest Values

I TRY TO BE CALM. BUT THE MASSACRE in Oak Creek, Wisconsin this week makes me sick. I'm sick of the Wade Michael Pages of this world. I'm sick of the haters. I'm sick of people who lean in that direction but hide intolerance behind the Bible, the U. S. Constitution, the American flag, or all three.

It's sad and twisted, really. Page was a member of several white-supremacist bands, including one called Definite Hate. In a song called "Welcome to the South," the lyrics focused on the coming "race war" and wondered:

"What has happened to America/That was once so white and free?"

I'm sick of killers and their silent allies. I'm sick of those who intentionally or unintentionally stir up intolerant fools.

Here in Cincinnati, you might start with Bill Cunningham, the host of a radio talk show on WLW. He's not a true hater. He's no Wade Michael Page. Still, like many of the loudest voices on the right today, he's careless, and his language is dangerous. When a caller agrees, Cunningham usually replies, "You're a great American." The implication is that those "others" out there, who don't think the same way, are not. In four years, for example, Mr. Cunningham has never missed an opportunity to call the president by his full name:  "Barack Hussein Obama."

Why? What's Cunningham's point? It's simple. It's a veiled appeal to bigotry, to the worst in listeners, not their best. It's not like the "good old days," when you could spew toxic hate in public and call human beings "niggers," and no one was shocked. That doesn't mean it doesn't smell the same. "Hussein." Why not say it straight?

Tell listeners they have to vote against President Obama, first, second and third, because he's a Muslim.

Cunningham isn't guilty of Neo-Nazi thinking. But he leans ever so subtly in the same direction--he's dealing in dehumanization--and that has never been what makes America great. Bigotry isn't one of the cherished ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Those on the right might prefer to believe they alone love our country and honor the Founding Fathers. Those of us on the left realize that the Founding Fathers made sure to list all Americans' rights, not just because they feared government, but because they knew human beings have always needed to be protected from one another.

Sadly, Page isn't the first deluded "patriot" to go after Sikhs. Only days after the 9/11 attacks, a man named Frank Roque drove up to a gas station in Mesa, Arizona and shot the owner, who wore a turban and beard. Roque told police that he had wanted to kill "a Muslim" and tried to wrap his unreasoning hate in red, white and blue, saying, “I am an American.” According to his birth certificate, that might have been true. But his victim, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was a Sikh, a reform branch of the Hindu faith.

No Sikhs were in involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Still, on the right, there seems to be no concern about fostering delusional thinking. How scared are patriotic fools? In a recent poll, 30% of Republicans said that President Obama is a Muslim and the numbers among conservative Republicans were worse, at 34%. And how does fear mongering play out? Not long ago a conservative fellow told me all Muslims are terrorists. I tried to explain why he was wrong but he was a fan of Rush Limbaugh and had a case of the "Sarah Palin's." Palin probably isn't a true hater, either; but she still loves to play up the "us" vs. "them" theme. If you're out there on the right today, like Palin, you believe you are a good American, a "real American" as she put it at campaign stops all over the country in 2008. Then you warn the audience that Obama pals around with terrorists and listeners believe what you say.

Is President Obama a Muslim? No. He is not.

And let's be clear about something else. You can be conservative and make sense. You can oppose Mr. Obama's efforts at health care reform. You might fairly disagree with his stance on gay marriage or what we need to do about Iran. But you are one chock-a-block fool if you think he reads the Qu'ran for spiritual guidance.

Worse yet, it is inherently un-American to assume that if he did he would be disqualified from running this country.

Let's try to do a little public service and set a few confused right-wing thinkers straight. In 2010 there were 2.6 million Muslims living in the United States, most citizens, protected by the same U. S. Constitution people like Rush and Sean Hannity say they revere. If the fear mongers were right, those Muslims would be blowing themselves (and the rest of us) up, left and right, and at Little League games. Yet, they don't. The shooter in Wisconsin wasn't carrying a Qu'ran. The shooter in Aurora, Colorado who murdered all those people in the theater wasn't wearing a turban and beard.

Sikhs aren't Muslims and President Obama isn't, either. If you know your First Amendment, though, it wouldn't matter if he was. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Some few happen to be; and they're sick haters, too.

That's why we have law enforcement. To protect all Americans, from dangerous individuals, from rapists and murderers and Neo-Nazis and fanatics in planes.

THERE'S A REASON YOU SEE THAT LIBERALS ARE LIBERALS. It's not because we don't love America. It's because we love what American has always meant and still means. We know that Catholics were once feared, when waves of Irish immigrants began coming to these shores. Liberals who know their history remember that "Know Nothing" politicians stirred up hate and fear towards those who were "different" even before the Civil War.

Liberals know know that the Irish made our nation better in the end. In fact, it's some kind of sad irony that the cop who nearly died trying to save the Sikhs in Oak Creek was named Patrick Murphy.
A good "Mick," you might say.

In the end, like sensible conservatives, sensible liberals often fear big government, only in different ways. A liberal is more likely to remember that other people are often the gravest threat to individual freedoms and rights. A liberal remembers that 110,000 Japanese-Americans were locked up in 1942, after other people, who happened to look like them, flew other planes in an attack on Pearl Harbor. A liberal remembers that when hate and fear and intolerance swept our nation seven decades ago thousands of U. S. citizens ended up in internment camps.

A liberal remembers when women--half the U. S. population--were considered inferior, too delicate for sports. A liberal watches the Olympics and is proud of what U. S. women accomplish today. A liberal sees Sanya Richards-Ross, born in Jamaica, who moved here when she was 12, win gold for Team USA and remembers when colleges down south, like the University of Texas, from which she graduated, didn't want dark-skinned students enrolled. A liberal knows Megan Rapinoe, a star on the U. S. women's soccer is gay and still gets excited when her two goals against Canada propel our team into the gold medal game. A liberal sees Danell Leyva, born in Cuba, whose parents defected and came to the United States when he was young, on the men's gymnastics team and is proud of what this country has always meant. Hope for humanity.

Not just some white humanity. Not just straight humanity, or male humanity, or conservative humanity

All.

Obama and Romney and Reagan on Unemployment

SAD. SADDER. SADDEST. (SADIST?) THE HOWLING from the right, regarding President Obama's "job-killing" policies continues. Mitt Romney can't seem to pull his tax returns out of his own...you know...Still, he wants us to believe that if he's our next president, starting in January 2013, he's going to roll up his sleeves and reverse all the damage done by that evil job-exterminator, Barack Hussein Obama.

There's additional screeching from the right at the state level. Here, in Ohio, for instance, Governor John Kasich wants the electorate to think that every job created since he took office in January 2011 was created by him. Apparently, though, every job lost in Ohio or anywhere else in America during the last three-plus years, including jobs killed in Kenya and on Pluto, must be a direct result of the missteps of Mr. Obama.

Leave aside the fact that many jobs created in Ohio in the sixteen months since Kasich took office are related to a rebounding auto industry, which Mitt Romney, speaking like a man running for "Undertaker-in-Chief," insisted should be left to expire. Leave out, too, all the teachers, firefighters, police officers and social workers axed in recent years as a result of Tea Party tax-slashing job-gashing fervor.

Now Mr. Mitt, the man with the weather vane mind when it comes to staking out positions, is changing his tune in the middle of a song. "Did I tell you how Mr. Obama killed jobs?" he seems to whistle at breakfast. Then at dinner time he whistles a different tune ("Whistle While You Work," perhaps?).

For months, Romney and every other GOP candidate who was running for president have insisted that Mr. Obama is to blame for every job lost since he took office, including Bob the Wood Chopper, a man laid off from work while President Obama was pausing to catch a breath after reciting the oath of office.

So, what about Mitt, when he takes office next January? Same deal? No sir, no sir, no sir. In a recent interview with CNBC Romney said voters who want a strong economy should vote for him, but they "ought to give, whichever president is going to be elected, at least six months or a year to get those policies in place."

Well, for once, the Stormin' Mormon is onto something. Let's take a look at a simple graph of U. S. unemployment. In May 2007, we find, for instance, that U. S. unemployment was at 4.4%. Great news for the GOP! The magical Bush Tax Cuts were working! Unfortunately, the party of tax cuts during wartime, the party that gave us the Trillion Dollar Iraq Mistake, the party that exploded the federal deficit in the first place, also crashed the U. S. economy a year later and job losses in 2008 were staggering.

By January 2009, when the Democrats swept into power the unemployment rate had already surged to 7.8%. But, for purposes of comparisons, let's say our first "Muslim" President deserves a ten-day break.

By February 2009, 240 hours after his inauguration, 8.3% of Americans were out of work.

So, what about just ten days? If we give President Obama just that much of a pass, then he has reduced unemployment, however modestly, to today's 8.2%. Scratch your head if you want; but means any progress from here on in is cutting into a backlog of job losses created when the GOP was last in charge at the White House.

If we give Mr. Obama six months, as Romney says we should give him, then we know by July 2009 unemployment had risen to 9.5%. By Governor Romney's standard (and who knows job creation better than Mitt the Man from Bain) that would indicate the policies of the current occupant of the Oval Office have caused no job losses, whatsoever, but have instead turned around a terrible trend and saved America's battered economy.

Again:  we're at 8.2% today. Sure. We need to keep working, of course; but that's way better than 9.5%.

Suppose we use Mitt's standard of a year. Now we find that unemployment peaked at 10% in October 2009, nine months after Obama took office.

IT MIGHT EVEN BE FUN TO CONSIDER A LITTLE HISTORY LESSON about Mr. Reagan. If we go back to February 1981, giving him just that ten-day pass, we find the U. S. unemployment rate at 7.4%. Fair-minded individuals almost certainly remember that the nation's economy, when the Gipper took office, was in a deplorable state. So:  job losses soared during his first 16 months in office.

Unemployment peaked at 10.8% in November 1982.

Mitt Romney and the Tea Party leaders might genuflect at the mention of Saint Ronald of Tax Cuts, but they certainly wouldn't want you to think this all over. In fact, it took Reagan his entire first term to cut unemployment, so that by January 1985, the rate had fallen to 7.3%, hardly a stunning drop from 7.4% four years previously. Indeed, it's perfectly in line with the painful progress President Obama has managed since he took a seat in the Oval Office, although we can hope, with five months left until the next inauguration, that the final figures in January 2013 will actually be better than those under Reagan.

At any rate, at this point in their first terms, Obama and Reagan would be tied.

SO LET'S TAKE THIS A LITTLE FARTHER. Let's give the GOP their due. In eight years Reagan “tamed” the jobs problem, reducing unemployment to 5.4% (January 1989). In other words, the last great Republican president saw unemployment balloon from 7.4% to 10.8% and then drop again to 5.4% during two terms.

Unfortunately, unemployment surged again under George H. W. Bush, to 7.8%, wiping out all of the Reagan gains, plus a few hundred thousand good jobs more, by summer of 1992. By January 1993, when Bill Clinton took office, the level had dipped slightly to 7.3%. Or to put it another way:  after twelve years of GOP tax cuts and policies, we ended up right where we were when Jimmy Carter left office. (Again, fair-minded people might argue that Mr. Bush had bad luck and that the economy was turning as he left office.)

Regardless, during President Clinton’s two terms in office, unemployment fell to 4.2% in January 2001. We had a budget surplus, too—something every Republican born since 1819 has claimed to really, really, really like.

President George W. Bush, of course, came next (although Romney wants you to forget that period, too). Unemployment spiked to more than 6% by summer of 2003, and then we saw a recovery and a decline again to 4.4%--still never getting back to the level where it was when Clinton took office, and then, Bush Tax Cuts and all, the economy tanked in 2008.

So:  Here's what we know now. If you want to claim that all job losses since the moving van brought Sasha and Malia's books and dolls to the White House are the fault of Dad O., you have to stop and check the figures. Obama is doing as well as President Reagan did during his first term and far better than Bush 41 or Bush 43. All the right wing wolves need to do, if they don't mind facing reality, is check a simple graph.

THOSE BOYS WILL COUNTER BY INSISTING that Obama is a communist. Maybe, if they study the charts they'll feel a little better. And, oh yeah. We've seen Mr. Obama's tax returns and he's not hiding any money in Cayman Island bank accounts, either.

Shooting in Aurora: Can We at Least Have a Mature Debate?

IF YOU MISSED IT IN ALL THE MEDIA sound and fury surrounding the terrible massacre in Aurora, Colorado, Friday night, you might want to consider words of wisdom offered by former Arizona state senator, Russell Pearce.

In the wake of the slaughter at Virginia Tech in 2007, the shooting at Chardon High in Ohio this past spring, and the 2011 attack on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, in Pearce's own state, you might imagine that Pearce would be able to offer some useful perspective.

You would be imagining indeed.

In a Facebook post, since deleted, Pearce describes having just spoken with a good friend. That friend's niece, Kim, and two of her buddies were seated in the front rows of the Aurora theater when gunfire interrupted the showing of The Dark Knight Rises. "What a heartbreaking story," he notes correctly, at first.

Then his post goes off the rails:

Had someone been prepared and armed they could have stopped this "bad" man from most of the tragedy. He was two or three feet away from folks, I understand he had to stop to reload. Where were the men of Flight 93???? Someone should have stopped this man. Lives were lost because of a bad man, not because he had a weapon, but because no one was prepared to stop it. Had they been prepared to save their lives or lives of others, lives would have been saved. All that was needed is one Courages/Brave man prepared mentally or otherwise to stop this it could have been done.

Pearce has since tried to walk back his comments, but it's worth considering what he was trying to say. It wasn't bad that James E. Holmes, the shooter, had an AR-15 assault rifle. Lives weren't lost because he had a military weapon, capable of massive bursts of fire.

If you follow Pearce's logic, Holmes could have been armed with a creampuff instead of an AR-15. It wouldn't have mattered, if only someone had been prepared to intervene.

According to Mr. Pearce it wasn't bad that in this country it's easy, even for convicted felons and people with mental illness to purchase all kinds of weapons at gun shows, without undergoing any background checks. (Admittedly, Holmes was neither.) It wasn't bad that a killer could amass 6,000 rounds of ammo, and do it all on line, with phenomenal ease. It didn't even matter that the shooter was "wearing a 'ballistic helmet,' a bulletproof vest, leggings, a throat protector, a groin protector, [and] a gas mask and protective gloves."

It was the absence of one brave man, or maybe even some armed young woman, like Kim, prepared to step up, mentally. Then Holmes might have been stopped.

Given the fact that the United States is the most heavily armed nation in the industrialized world, with handguns, rifles, shotguns and assault rifles ready at hand, and given the fact that our murder rate is the highest by far in the industrialized world, it would seem to be clear that people of all political persuasions, and none at all, might want to see some kind of reasonable discussion about all the violence that surrounds us--and what we need, as a nation, to do.

It's time to stop thinking that doing nothing at all is a plan. It's time to stop focusing on anecdotal incidents. Sure, my neighbor stopped a home invasion because he had a gun. Well, so what, that cop in Pennsylvania just shot his own son coming home in the dark. Maybe Pearce is right in this one hypothetical case. If Kim, or some brave young man in that theater, had only thought to strap their very own AR-15 over a shoulder, yep, they could have returned fire.

If that dad in the third row, seated between his two teenage daughters, had only thought to wear his own body armor and helmet and carry six pistols along when he went to the movies to relax with his loved ones, yeah. He could have shot it out.

OR WE COULD TRY TO BE MATURE and ask ourselves what do the statistics below prove and what do we do to try to cut down on this country's incredible murder rate? Here are the results, lowest (best) to highest (worst), for thirty-two member-countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:

MURDERS PER 100,000 IN POPULATION

1. Iceland  
2. Japan
3. Austria
4. Slovenia
5. Norway
6. Switzerland
7. Germany
8. Spain
9. Sweden
10. Netherlands
11. Greece
12. Italy
13. Poland
14. Portugal
15. England/Wales
16. Australia
17. New Zealand
18. Northern Ireland
19. France
20. Denmark
21. Hungary
22. Luxembourg
23. Canada
24. Slovakia
25. Belgium
26. Czech Republic
27. Ireland
28. Scotland
29. South Korea
30. Israel
31. Finland
32. UNITED STATES

We're not just last, either, in murder rates. We're dead last by six feet and a mile. The Netherlands falls to tenth place on this list with one murder per 100,000 in population.

The Czech Republic and Ireland rank close to the bottom with two murders.

Finland lands in 31st with 2.5 murders.

The United States ranks at the bottom of the Marianas Trench with 5.2 murders for every 100,000 people.                                                                                                          

AND IT'S NOT JUST BECAUSE there were no "brave" or "courageous" men in the Aurora theater last Friday night.

Privatizing Public Schools and the Loch Ness Monster Bonus

IF YOU ARE AN EDUCATION NEWS JUNKIE, and who isn't, you've probably heard Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Governor "Candy Bar" Chris Christie in New Jersey talk about problems in education. Usually, when they mean "problems," they mean teachers and unions. Their favorite solution? Let's privatize America's public schools. It's the Tea Party Holy Grail. If we are to believe what they say we would know that government is always bad and business is pure and good. So let's see how privatizing schools is working in that place we liberals call "reality."

Frontier Virtual Charter High School (based in Philadelphia) closed down this week after Pennsylvania State Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis revoked the school's charter less than one year into "operation." Authorities said they had no choice but to take drastic measures, "citing an astonishingly long list of academic and financial problems."  Most of those problems came to light in March when John Craig, Frontier CEO, laid off the teaching staff and principal.

Minor details.

At that point the school year came to a grinding halt. Parents reported that kids sat around for weeks, pretty much doing nothing. Frontier failed to provide promised computers. Minor details. And failed to provide...classes. Minor, minor details. It gets even better. When school leaders, those still left, realized everyone was going to fail for the year they created "Save-My-Year" credit packets to stave off academic disaster. Meanwhile, authorities reported, the people who ran Frontier "spent a 'significant' amount of money on things that weren't related to the cyber school."

Next, let's give it up for Pennsylvania Cyber School! If you're a foe of privatization this one is almost too good to be true. On July 12, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported:

Federal agents executed a series of search warrants today at Pennsylvania Cyber School offices in Beaver County and several other locations in Pennsylvania and Ohio in connection with an ongoing investigation.

It's safe to say that any time the words "federal agents" and "series of search warrants" appear in a sentence about schools, well, we're not having the best educational day.

On July 15, the Post-Gazette added details. PCS, is the largest internet school serving Pennsylvania and Ohio, enrolling 11,300 students and raking in $103 million from local school districts last year. The school was founded by Nick Trombetta, 57, who announced in May that he was leaving the field to "try something else."

Read about all the spinoffs PCS created if you'd like details. Read how one "education" company begot a second and then a third and fourth, how different executives and boards at all these various entities, filled with ex-PCS executives, pocketed millions. Read how Trombetta held several paying positions at once. You might be excused if you suspected he was leaving education to try his hand at bank robbery.

Or:  working for J. P. Morgan.

STILL NOT CONVINCED THAT BUSINESS HEROES, aided and abetted by politicians like Governor John Kasich here in Ohio, can save our children? Or that they'll really care??? How about K-12, Inc. an online school operation, which owns Ohio Virtual Academy? The company spends $6,108 per pupil vs. $10,660 at traditional brick and mortar schools, mainly because K-12 pays teachers half what regular public schools do. This means...um... huge savings for taxpayers! Ohio Virtual Academy has only one building and 7,277 students (although numbers do fluctuate wildly) and a student-teacher ratio of 56-1 vs. a state average of 16-1. Assigning each teacher three-and-a-half times as many pupils and paying them less, allows K-12, Inc. to make tidy profits and...um...give taxpayers a fantastic deal. What? Not such a deal? The school's own website admits to a yearly dropout rate of 14.9%.

The average for the rest of the state:  4.3%. Really. You can look it up.

What about ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow)? According to education reformer Diane Ravitch the school enrolled 12,000+ Ohio students in 2010-11. Sadly, 6,738 satisfied customers...we mean "students"...withdrew in a period of nine months. Another 3,045 dropped out. A turnover rate of 81% in a single year! So what do you do when private enterprise really sucks?

You cover up a staggeringly bad graduation rate, 35% as recently as 2009, by donating $220,000 to leading GOP politicians.

If paying off politicians doesn't work do what Success Academy Charter Schools Inc. does in New York. The company operates ten schools and is headed up by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, who knows a money-making scheme when she sees one. Moskowitz is demanding an increase in funding of $1,350 to $2,000 per child from the state, preferably the higher figure, citing an "unsustainable" deficit. Juan Gonzalez, writing for the New York Daily News paints the picture in slightly different colors. On its annual tax forms, SAC has consistently reported year-end surpluses, $23.5 million last time Gonzalez checked.

You don't want to run a privatized school on the cheap, not when you know the State of New York is footing the final bill. So why not spend (tax dollars) to advertise?

As Gonzalez notes:

Last year alone, the [SAC] network spent an astounding $883,119 on "student recruitment"--much of it for glossy flyers mailed to hundreds of thousands of parents; bus stop and Internet ads and an army of paid recruiters to go door-to-door soliciting student applications...It paid $243,150 to SKD Knickerbocker, a high-powered public relations firm, to supplement its own in-house press people, and another $129,000 to a Washington consulting firm...But that wasn't all that Success Academy spent on marketing itself. The network's first seven schools incurred an additional $912,000 "student recruitment" expenditure last year, most of it going to big advertising and branding companies.

And how does Moskowitz do helping students? She do nicely, herself, yes she do. In 2006-2007, for example, when her network ran four schools and enrolled 1,000 students, Eva raked in a healthy $371,000 in salary.

Business people. Always putting kids first and profit second. Not like all those greedy, greedy teachers.

In related crazy-town news, lawmakers in Louisiana passed legislation three weeks ago to expand a school voucher program, "allowing educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups." Republican Valarie Hodges put up a valiant, highly unexpected, last-ditch effort to halt the move. Hodges was gung ho and ready to vote "yea," until some random thought started rattling around inside her head and she realized such legislation might mean the little Louisiana boys and girls might attend...Muslim schools!

You can't fool Valerie Hodges! No, mam, no way. The woman knows her U. S. Constitution and her Bill of Rights. “I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” Hodges assured reporters. “I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school.”

Only...not so much if parents were Muslim...or, we can probably safely assume, Jew.

(This is why many thinking individuals, such as those who cherish First Amendment rights, tend to believe we should keep the Bible, both King James and Latin Vulgate versions, the Koran and the Book of Mormon out of public schools.)

Hodges went on to sound a typical tocsin (or might "toxin" work better) of right-wing alarm: “Unfortunately [the expanded voucher program] will not be limited to the Founders’ religion.” The danger was clear. All you had to do was look under the bed and there was that terrorist Boogie Man, sort of a paranoid Tea Party person's version of the imaginary friend. "We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools," she continued. "There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

Good save, heroic defender of liberty! Honor the freedoms you supposedly cherish by imposing your ideas about religion on fellow citizens.

Finally, if you're going to fund religious schools, you have to have standards. So, we save the best for last. According to the HeraldScotland (which follows all Loch Ness-related stories, even in this country) Louisiana taxpayers' support for religious schools will include...well, not those dirty Muslims...but vouchers for "private schools [that] follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism." Those who teach ACE science like to believe "that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man then Darwinism is fatally flawed."

According to Scottish reporters, who have to be scratching their heads, ACE textbooks are also "hostile towards other religions and other sectors of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism; and present a biased version of history that is often factually incorrect."

No problem so far! The story continues:

One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: "Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

If you're a liberal you don't think Nessie appears to be anything. You think these right-wing crackpots who want to privatize public schools and spend taxpayer dollars to support all kinds of religious schools are nuts.

Use a little imagination and you can hardly wait to see what kind of science they'll be teaching at Scientology High, perhaps coming soon to Shreveport, Opelousas or Baton Rouge.

Coming soon to a taxpayer funded school near you!