COLUMN: OBAMA’S VISION OF “SHARED PROSPERITY” AND REPUBLICAN MYOPIA by John P. Flannery

President Barack Obama addressed the democratic convention last Thursday evening advocating a “new vision of America in which prosperity is shared.”

That’s democracy, small “d,” the sentiment that “we are all in this together.”  Our inscribed nation’s seal bears the inscription, “e pluribus unum,” meaning, “out of many, one.”  Our American constitution embraces, “We the people of the United States,” meaning all of us.  We formed a Constitution because the confederation of separate states lacked the shared strength for this nation’s survival and the need to provide and promote for its general welfare. 

Our government is a reflection of our human condition, as John Donne said, that “no man is an island, entire of itself,” and that each of us “is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

That’s why I was taken aback by the Republican reaction to the President’s vision of “shared prosperity.”

Driving east of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina past a tobacco field on our way toward Creedmor, we heard a local Republican Congressional Challenger for the Fourth Congressional District, Tim D’Annunzio, attack the President’s “vision” in a freshly minted radio ad.

D’Annunzio said the President’s “vision” was a “deceptive way of saying his future includes more socialism.  And it’s a perverted version of the American Dream.” (Listen for yourself: http://www.timvote.com/media/ )

My wife, Holly, and step-daughter, Alex, couldn’t imagine how our constitutional principles could be considered a “deceptive way.”

D’Annunzio nevertheless insisted that the President’s vision of “shared prosperity” would lead us “to national decline, chronic unemployment and the cannibalization of national wealth.” 

D’Annuzio’s fractured view is that, when the Declaration of Independence says we have “the right to pursue happiness,” we are otherwise on our own.  Tim should have read the Declaration of Independence more carefully including the rudimentary principle that “Governments are instituted among Men…” in order “to secure these rights” including the right to pursue happiness.

Cognitive dissonance is a term from psychology where a person or party holds conflicting beliefs, irreconcilably contradictory, at the same time, causing a feeling of guilt or anger. 

We know Republican leaders, as well as friends and neighbors, who say they can do it on their own without government but, in their individual daily lives, that’s not what they do; they seek out other friends and neighbors to share responsibility to mutual advantage on an array of projects.

How do our leaders and friends reconcile claiming they need no help from government but expecting aid and comfort from friends and neighbors? 

More to the point, how are they able to disregard the fact that they accept and expect help from the government as well.

When we consider more closely all these individuals who claim they can exist native, rugged, without any government assistance, we see that they drive on highways we all pay for, use water and waste systems shared with others, enjoy community supported fire and police protection, their children attend public schools, are protected by our national defense, use weather and satellite information, and so many other services they take for granted, seemingly  ignored as factually irrelevant, by atomistic Ayn-Randish citizens, who insist they need no one else, but especially no government.

This cognitive dissonance, they call independence, is really about indifference to our national challenges.

Consider the contradictory Republican messages this presidential season when Republican leaders and supporters claim they are for creating jobs by forgiving taxes to the wealthy who have created no jobs previously while they otherwise resist any jobs program that would get this nation back to work.  They say they care for the unemployed, the homeless and the hungry, but lift not a finger to lighten their load, even slandering families that feed their families with food stamps.  They are the party of women we are told even as they dictate to women what they may do with their own bodies.  They support the right to vote but suppress it with legislation calculated to restrict access to the voting booth among seniors, minorities, students, and the poor.   They are for an all-inclusive nation but resist pluralism and would cast out immigrant children who have never lived elsewhere.   They proclaim proudly, in one breath, how this nation is exceptional, and, in the next, they bash and trash our nation top to bottom.

We can’t expect a winning plan for our nation from a party that doesn’t know its own mind.  Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, said, if elected, he’ll take 8 years to balance the budget.  President Obama has a head start on a plan in place to clean up the mess that President Bush created.  Let’s stay the course.

COLUMN: THE REPUBLICAN CONFECTION by John P. Flannery

Eastwood Unplugged

We’ve grown numb to the unworthy process of cage fighting pols busting each other with unsubstantiated slanders and impossible policy claims.

Romney’s campaign team has just finished regaling us with their “vision” of America as seen from Tampa, Florida. 

Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, charged that a sensational factory closing in his home town, Janesville, Wisconsin, arose because of Barack Obama’s failed promise to keep it open; in truth, GM announced the closing in June 2008 because of sagging SUV sales while Bush was President.  

Ryan charged that S&P downgraded U.S. debt because of Obama when it was the Republicans in Congress including budget maven Ryan who refused to raise the debt ceiling until the last minute.

Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice claimed street cred’ for international neophytes Romney and Ryan.  She overlooked the war in Afghanistan.  No doubt that was because President Obama’s administration found and killed Osama Bin Laden when Bush and Rice could not find him or the chimerical weapons of mass destruction they posited as the reason to invade Iraq.

Romney needed an assist on his foreign policy acumen given how he botched what should have been no more complicated than a walk in Hyde park.  Romney dissed his Olympic hosts in Great Britain and couldn’t keep secret he had also met with British military intelligence.  In Israel, he eagerly signed onto Netanyahu’s forced march to Teheran, apparently relinquishing America’s prerogative to refuse another preemptive war.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christy, a bombastic blow bag, warmed to a litany of his own “accomplishments,” but could hardly bring himself to mention Romney, the presidential nominee.

Ann Romney talked about her husband, the nominee, because we don’t see him the way she does.   

And we still don’t see him that way. 

Frankly, who cares if Mitt is charming if he can persuade us that he’d make a make a difference for the better.     

Romney tells older American they won’t lose their social security, just the younger adults who fund their retirement, suggesting the Romney social security system is not so secure.

Romney tells the sick they should have planned better and must learn how to take care of themselves -- even though presidents, senators and congressmen don’t.

It’s hard to believe Romney’s policies will add a single job when he’s for firing public employees including teachers, refusing unemployment insurance, rejecting public job training, and resisting public works projects that would repair our declining national infrastructure and put men and women to work.

Romney repeats the cant that by collecting less taxes from the filthy rich, they’ll create the jobs they failed to create when Bush gave them an earlier tax holiday.

There is an abiding selfishness in the Republican platform disfavoring the middle class

By contrast, Democrats believe we are in this together to help each other.

Pope Leo believed that the role of the State was to promote social justice through the protection of rights.  The modern Republican party denies any such responsibility.

Pope Leo insisted workers have bargaining rights to defend against unbridled capitalism.  The Republican party doesn’t see it that way.

Leo said, “If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”  In this recession, we have seen families with jobs that paid less and suffered indignities by employers who knew their workers had few, if any, alternatives.

The current Republican Party compromises the working man and woman for their business’ bottom line.

We’ll do better with President Barack Obama.

COLUMN: “LEGITIMATE RAPE” – THAT’S CONGRESS FOR YOU! by John P. Flannery

Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO) infamously claimed that forced sexual encounters cannot lead to pregnancy because, and I quote him precisely, “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

In other words, rape prompted by date rape drugs, or threats are not “forced” and this is then what?, “illegitimate” rape, meaning that’s okay?  Wrong!  Definitely wrong!  The critical element of any rape is the woman’s refusal, the withholding of consent to having sexual intercourse; this is true no matter how the violation of the woman’s soul and person is done, whether by trick, threat, force, or lack of capacity or consciousness by the victim.  Rape is rape. 

Senator Claire McCaskill, Akin’s opponent for her Missouri Senate seat said, “It is beyond comprehension that someone can be so ignorant about the emotional and physical trauma brought on by rape.”

When I studied sociology, Margaret Mead, a world renowned anthropologist, reported from her excursions to the South Pacific that Trobriand Islanders believed that a woman became pregnant when she swam at low tide.  We need someone like Mead to find out what tribe taught Todd that the female body can repel a rapist’s unwanted sperm.  It is scarily ironic that Todd has a vote as a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Congressman Akin’s sexist and ignorant declaration about rape brought on an almost universal rage as Akin revealed himself as a throwback to the knuckle dragging days when women couldn’t vote and were treated as property rather than persons.

Nor is this new for Akin.  In the bill, HR 3, offered for consideration last year, with Akin as a co-sponsor, Congress was forced to re-consider a long standing policy (more than three decades old) of not funding abortions with taxpayer funds except in the case of rape or incest.  The fight was over the breadth of the exceptions. The current Republican Vice Presidential Candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), joined Congressman Akin and 225 other Republican members who wanted to re-define rape by a “new and improved” definition, affixing the word, “forcible,” to narrow the exception for rape, and to cut back on past protection afforded teenage girls who were raped.  Every Republican Congressman in Virginia signed on as a co-sponsor to this hateful sexist revision (Reps. Cantor, Forbes, Goodlatte, Griffith, Hurt, Rigell, Wittman, and Wolf); no Democrat in Virginia supported this wrong-headed initiative (not Rep. Connolly, Moran, nor Scott); in the end, mercifully, this heartless ruse was seen by the public for what it was and struck from the bill.  Congressman Akin’s recent quote only reminded us of the unvarnished malicious intent of these 227 members of Congress.

There is more – sad to say.  31 state legislatures including Virginia do not prohibit and thus enable the rapist to seek visitation with and custody rights for any child that issues following any rape.  When the rape victim decides as a matter of religious belief or other reason to have the child, she may face the horror of the rapist demanding his right to visit with and/or have custody of the child when s/he is born.  Suzanne Powell, a mother herself, said, “Hell No.”  Ms. Powell couldn’t believe it.  Few can.

Whatever anyone’s belief about terminating a pregnancy, I would like to believe that, as a national and local community, we all agree that rape disqualifies the rapist from having any rights of custody or visitation should the rape victim give birth. 

Rebekka Prinz said, “Rape is about control, so the idea that a child would be handed over to someone who has already demonstrated a willingness to dehumanize another person to the point of physical assault is, frankly, terrifying.” 

Our model should be the 19 States that have established affirmative safeguards against just this happening, and that disqualify a rapist having either visitation or custody rights.

Nor should it matter, that this may sometimes be difficult to determine, for example, when the woman was raped by her husband.  To my mind, it doesn’t matter who commits the rape.  He should be barred from visitation or custody.  Of course, the rapist may concoct the impermissible defense of threatening to seek custody or visitation to coerce the rape victim into withdrawing her charge of rape.

Women should be on guard this election at what these Republican throwbacks want to do to their rights, and we should see that every state includes a prohibition in its code that no rapists shall have any rights to custody or visitation for any child resulting from their rape of the mother.

COLUMN: “PRESIDENT” PAUL RYAN AND HIS PATRON by John P. Flannery

Ryan getting ready to hold us up.



Mark Twain said that, while “history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme.”  The arrogance of politicians is the unalterable belief that the outcome will be different for them.

Four years ago, Senator John McCain, a ‘Nam hero because he was held prisoner at the “Hanoi Hilton” after crashing his plane was imprisoned again but this time, in 2008, it was by the far right wing of his own party. 

The party muzzled John’s celebrated rogue manner, especially his inconvenient campaign finance reforms, and forced him to choose a not-ready-for-prime-time running mate from Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin, who didn’t know what she didn’t know, not even the constitutional provision that defined her job as VP.  Palin couldn’t name any publication she read to keep informed, and her myopic view of foreign affairs, she bragged, was the sight line from her back porch through the Aleutians to the Russian shore.  Palin prompted an incurable national epidemic of confidence jitters at the slimmest possibility that she might ever have to succeed the senior McCain as President.

This year we have former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney promising us 12 million jobs that will appear, as if by magic, if we allow him to implement his “secret plan,” can you smell the snake oil, once he’s elected, oh yeah.  You can hear the barker at the carney, “step right up and give up your tax money to save the wealthiest from paying taxes, and your rich friends will deign to rain down upon you whatever excess monies they don’t need, even go so far as to hire you middle class folk – although you may have to move offshore to Bangalore to work.”  The words of a seeming angel cast a veil over the face of the devil.

Mitt announced his running mate, his doppelganger some say, another nationally unproven tyro from the far right, Congressman Paul Ryan, an Ayn Rand cultist devotee (who rankles at Rand’s atheism but loves her take-no-prisoner Darwinian capitalism).  Paul has passed only two bills of his own in Congress in thirteen years, but he’s been busy as a beaver more recently proposing a budget bill the bane of seniors nationwide who fear the loss of Medicare and Medicaid benefits.  This was hardly the book move for a presidential candidate, going around scaring the bejesus out of all those retirees in the nation and in Florida – a critical battleground state for the White House.  Mitt’s campaign drifted into a current running against him, so he had to “do something.” McCain thought the same thing in 2008.

I truly believe Romney recognized he’d lost the nomination as he wanted it, on his own terms, when he made the (Freudian) slip, announcing Ryan as the “next President of the United States.”

If Romney has a recognizable philosophy, it may not be what he needs to get the nomination. 

Romney is a lot like Senator Bob Dole who broke the indoor speed record for crossing the political spectrum, with a Guinness world record of inconsistent policy statements, just like Mitt, from the more neutral shades to far right red to land the nomination.  President Bill Clinton then pinned Dole down in the far right corner never letting the Dole of the rightward countenance to move toward the middle where the nation’s votes live in a general election.  It was a rout for Clinton that November. 

Now, I’m not saying that what Romney has done, in his R1-R2 strategy, will lead to a free fall failure as it did for Dole – I am prepared, however, to watch the bleeding begin.

GAZETTE COLUMN: SICK CHICK by John P. Flannery

In an obese society, you would think folk would stay away from heart attack centers like fast food Chick-Fil-A for that reason alone, that it’s not healthy, but now we have another reason, its owner’s avowed intolerance of gays and same sex marriage.

About fast food, consider that a chargrilled chicken club, a dab of mayo, waffle potato fries, sweetened iced tea, and a small chocolate milkshake at Chick-Fil-A is worth a whopping 1,430 calories with 60 grams of fat, and 111 grams of sugar.  (Calculate your own meal - http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Food/Meal )  Ouch!  Let out your pants if you’re eating here regularly.  Feel your heart grow sluggish lubadub at the last shake sip.  You might pause, however, to worry about the onset of diabetes.  Of course, this is our national epidemic – eating badly.  Nearby West Virginia has the nation’s highest obesity rate at 33%, and the lowest state is in the low 20s; Virginia is “sandwiched” in the mid-distance between the best and the worst.  If this is not discouraging, and you still want to pig out, you can find on-line a Chick-Fil-A near you (http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Locations/Locator).  Keep in mind, however, that the USDA calorie counter, based on age, height, weight, and activity, teaches us that you really shouldn’t eat very much more on any day you’ve devoured a “snack” like this. http://www.newcaloriecounter.com/articles/goverment/usda/usda_national_nutrient_database_for_standard_reference.html . 

Of course, choosing to eat badly yourself is different than attacking and advocating intolerance against others. 

Dan Cathy, the owner of Chick-Fil-A, said he supported the “biblical definition of a family” and said that Americans have a “prideful, arrogant attitude” about same sex marriage that risks “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”  He also bragged about the men in his family for “still being on their first wives.”

Cathy’s attack on gay marriage, on the patriotism of those who support same sex marriage, and on the alleged harm to the nation he attributed to those who supported same sex marriage was both hateful and intolerant speech.

This has nevertheless prompted folk to defend Mr. Cathy’s First Amendment right to be intolerant against gays and gay marriage. 

It’s no surprise that Sarah Palin is intolerant about gays and same sex marriage when she’s not killing wildlife and field dressing her kill.  It is marvelously ironic, however, that erstwhile Presidential Candidate and Fox contributor, Mike Huckabee, himself a diabetic, having once bragged he lost 100 pounds dieting, has since suffered a relapse regaining his fuller figure, and invited America to join him by eating the fast food that he once railed against, at Chick-Fil-A, to show “appreciation” for the owner’s hateful intolerance.  It turns out that Huckabee has been eating the chain’s chicken (not so secretly) for 35 years and knew the company’s founder.

The fast food owner, Dan Cathy, might have given a second thought when making his remarks given that gays in same sex marriages likely work for him, and eat his food – at least they did before his recent charge they were ruining the nation.  You have to wonder now if he refuses franchisees who are in same sex marriages, and what his policy is about his employees’ sexual preferences. 

One of Cathy’s employees in Tucson, Arizona was asked while being videotaped about the “hateful corporation” she worked for.  She said, she was “staying neutral on this subject … my personal beliefs don’t belong in the workplace.”  Too bad Owner Cathy and his Dad’s best customer and guardian angel, Huckabee, didn’t see it the same way.  

Mr. Cathy might learn something from Bill Marriott who also believes in same sex marriages as a Mormon but does not impose his belief on his employees who work in 3,700 Marriot properties.  In a recent Bloomberg interview, Mr. Marriott reportedly said, “We have to take care of our people, regardless of their sexual orientation or anything else.”  Mr. Marriott noted how, by way of analogy, “Our Church is very much opposed to alcohol and we’re probably one of the biggest sales engines of liquor in the United States.  I don’t drink.  We serve a lot of liquor.”  More to the point, when his church opposed the same sex marriage initiative in California, he publicly stated Marriott’s commitment to gay rights through domestic partners benefits and services aimed at gay couples.

Dan Cathy would have done well to say his personal biases have no business in the workplace.  That he hasn’t is a good enough reason to exercise your First Amendment right to say that he’s dead wrong, and to practice a consumer’s right to get your fast food elsewhere.

COLUMN: IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE … NO IT’S A DRONE by John P. Flannery

Just when you stopped being surprised about black helicopters flying East and West to and from Mount Weather, we have Drones (unmanned aircraft) in America, one crashing to the ground in Northern Virginia recently, so we know they are no longer just in the Mid-East seeking out and blowing up terrorist targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen; they’re also here surveilling us.

Drone-mania started in the Bush White House and continued, as enthusiastically, in the Obama White House.  These flying drones can stay aloft for sixteen hours, controlled by radio signals via satellite to the theater of war 8,000 miles from Nevada where the pilot sits, before a video screen, manipulating “game controls,” from what looks like a portable ship container, relying on live-feed super high resolution video, with ready real destructive power, Hellfire missiles and bombs.

Indeed, every Tuesday, at the weekly counterterrorism meeting, attended by a phalanx of our national security apparatus, drone targets on cards and in PowerPoint presentations are designated in a ghoulish “whack a mole” ritual.  The process is somewhat suspect insofar as we pay $5,000 in bounty for intelligence from local nationals to inform us who the “real” terrorists are.  At least, this has simplified the Guantanamo detention question as to taking any more prisoners.  

Our government has defined away the killing of “innocent bystanders.”  “Combatants,” by official definition, are any “military age males in a strike zone …unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”  A “posthumous” judgment of innocence is awfully Alice in Wonderlandish and disserves our avowed counter insurgency initiatives in Pakistan and Yemen when we rain down Hellfire missiles transporting innocent nationals to Allah.

When we killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, hiding in Yemen, with a drone, we also killed Samir Khan, another American who was with him but not on the “whack a mole” list.

There has been alleged disparity in our government’s reports – that our targeted kills are overstated and the innocent dead are grossly understated.  U.S. Officials on different occasions say we’ve killed “over 20,” then “closer to 50,” finally conceding they really couldn’t say how many. 

Another dangerous genie has escaped.  Our drones manufacturers are selling them overseas to other governments.  

Closer to home, we shall be awash in some 15,000 drones in the United States by 2018.

Public Intelligence, a non-profit, has released a map that shows more than 60 bases in the United States with drone activity.  http://publicintelligence.net/dod-us-drone-activities-map/

 

There are 50 companies, universities and government organizations producing and developing 155 unmanned aircraft designs.  The FAA has recently disclosed all the public and private entities that have asked to fly drones in the United States.  https://www.eff.org/document/faa-list-special-airworthiness-certificates-experimental-categorysacs

 

State and county governments want these drones to view, record and tape what we do and say. 

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell can’t get our drones quickly enough; Fairfax County’s Police Chief, David Rohrer, proclaimed he wants to use them “in this region…”

We have to be on guard for privacy violations.  Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) proposed a bill to outlaw the use of drones in the United States without a warrant approved by the court.  That’s a good start.  The Supreme Court in Kyllo v. United States found unlawful any warrantless search of a home conducted from outside the home using thermal imaging.  In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court objected to a warrantless GPS attached to a car for 24/7 surveillance.  This trend may favor further protection for any expectation of privacy from drones hovering above us, dodging black helicoptors.

If you are interested in self-defense, you may want your own more reasonably priced drone operated from your iPad or smart phone (a Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Quadricoptor)(for $300) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqkklVI7WBo&feature=youtube_gdata_player ) in order to watch the government watch you, or to broadcast a birds-eye view of your next political demonstration, perhaps to bust the errant cop compromising someone’s First Amendment rights, or, if you are unsavory, to catch your neighbor sunbathing.

The bottom line is that our public dialogue is arid when we fail to object to how we use drones to kill innocents abroad, export them too freely to other nation-states, and allow them to invade our privacy without our express knowledge or consent.