Gingrich: Make Ground Zero A National Battlefield To Stop The Supposed Mosque
Rachel Slajda | September 2, 2010, 6:26PM
The majority of New Yorkers want the developers of Park51, known to its opponents as the "Ground Zero mosque," to voluntarily move the community center further from Ground Zero -- but the majority also acknowledges the developers' right to build there if they want.
Newt Gingrich doesn't feel that way. In a radio interview today, he said he wants the national government to step in and stop the developers from building the Islamic community center by whatever means necessary.
"I think the Congress has the ability to declare the area a national battlefield memorial because I think we should think of the World Trade Center as a battlefield site; this is a war," he said, apparently thinking that if Ground Zero was a national park, Park51 would be restricted from building near it.
And if that fails, he said, the state government should step in and use its considerable power to stymie the development.
"The Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, could intervene because frankly he has the ability to slow it down for decades if he wants to."
Ah, yes! Newtie was just like Haley Barbour, part of the GOP's "New South" that had nothing to do with segregation, no siree!
There is, of course, a precedent for this not-so-colorblind interpretation of "states' rights." It's called the "Fugitive Slave Act." It basically said that non-slave states had no rights at all to stop the invasion of slave state terrorists.
Ain't Newt grand? Jefferson Davis would be so proud!
In response to my quick hit on UK public opinion strongly favouring having the Labour party abandon the "New Labour" neoliberal agenda, sTiVo has the following to say:
The thing about Britain is that their debate is closer to the real meat and potatoes of what this argument is all about. Ours is frustratingly diverted into "Like or Dislike Obama" or "Is the Tea Party Racist" and other tangential questions.
Britain makes it clear: it's really about social democracy vs. neoliberalism.
It is important that [Open Left] understand this. This is the debate that is barely allowed to be mentioned on our side of the pond but it's the crucial distinction.
When Paul Krugman argues for Keynesianism he's taking the social democratic side of this argument. But he's not allowed to say so, or at least not willing.
The mistake of our side in the past period was in not understanding how strongly our opponents believed in the other side of this argument. It was indeed their central rationale. It wasn't "just politics".
cont
Now Alan Simpson and Pete Peterson both make a fetish out of saying that the reason they want to "reform" social security is so it will be there for their grandkids. It's the emotional thrust of their whole argument. They also offer constant reassurance that the "greedy geezers" will not suffer any loss. So why then, knowing that their grandkids are already going to see a benefit shortfall of 20%, are they trying to make the situation even worse and cause a shortfall of another 15 to 20%? It doesn't make sense. Doesn't logic call for them to find more revenue so their precious grandkids could have the same amount seniors get today? Or at the very least, if they can't bear to raise taxes even for their own noble cause, why won't they leave it at only a 20% shortfall rather than cut benefits even more?
....
Maybe it's too complicated, but in debates this fall I'd really love to see Democrats pose the question to their GOP rivals: if social security is going broke why are you trying to cut it more? I'd at least be interested in hearing how they explain why they are trying to destroy the safety net in order to save it.
Keep it simple, stupid!
p.s. As a clarifying subtext for why Simpson, Peterson & Co. are in such a self-contradictory place, digby points out:
Back when they were pushing privatization, they could say that they wanted to offer their grandkids the opportunity for a better "return" by allowing them to invest what's left after the cuts in a roaring stock market. But privatization isn't on the table this time, for obvious reasons. Now they are just nonsensically saying that their grandkids are being cheated and because they love them so much they need to cheat them even more. I've heard of tough love, but this is just cruel.
p.p.s. As for contradiction #2, for which there really is no explanation I can think of other than the sheer brilliance and hubris of our President: This is supposed to be a deficit/debt reduction commission. By law, Social Security cannot add to the debt. It's separately funded. So why is it even up for discussion?
Disregard the sideshow controversy over whether or not Matt Bai in the New York Times misrepresented Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer as describing Social Security as "existing on make-believe money." Blumenauer now says that he was misrepresented (Bai did not place this phrase in quotes so I can't exactly say 'misquoted').
Regardless of what Blumenauer said or meant, let's focus on the deeply repellent Mr. Bai, conventional wisdom's most faithful weathervane. Even if Blumenauer uttered the repugnant stuff that Bai says he said, let's talk instead of Bai's rush to embrace that toxic sludge. If Bai also committed the further sin of lying about Blumenauer, well, so much the worse for him, but even without it, Bai's article was bad enough.
The liberal groups that are already speaking out against the debt panel's unfinished work have chosen to start with Social Security because it is likely to be at the center of any budget compromise. "If there's a place where it looks like Republicans and Democrats can reach agreement, we're afraid it's Social Security," says Frank Clemente, the director of Strengthen Social Security. (In other words, the two parties might actually work together on something. They must be stopped!)
Classic Versailles, unadulterated. Bipartisanship regardless of content, is always a good thing. But never ask it of Republicans. It's always a matter of Democrats giving up their "unrealistic dreams" like Social Security in spite of its seventy-five year history of success.
Let's also note the projection by which liberal Democrats can be accused of blowing up bipartisanship - when it's as obvious as the nose at the end of Bai's face that it's Republicans who have been gleefully about the business ever since Obama was elected of spurning all of the President's increasingly pathetic efforts to secure "bipartisanship". It never occurs to the Bais of the world that seeking agreement with an adversary who "negotiates" by moving further and further away from your position is basically negotiating with yourself.
However, it's not quite unadulterated Versailles. In its pure form of course, Versailles logic simply accepts Republican talking points as undebatable, thereby protecting itself from inconvenient facts.
But this is the New York Times, America's liberal paper of record. So the devil must appear to have been given his due. Thus, Bai actually deigns to make an "argument" about the facts of the matter.
The coalition bases its case on the idea that Social Security is actually in fine fiscal shape, since it has amassed a pile of Treasury Bills - often referred to as i.o.u.'s
often referred to as i.o.u.'s by Republicans and Wall Streeters, that is - who in their own businesses and investment schemes are more than happy to leverage all kinds of debt to the hilt
- in a dedicated trust fund. This is true enough, except that the only way for the government to actually make good on these i.o.u.'s is to issue mountains of new debt or to take the money from elsewhere in the federal budget, or perhaps impose significant tax increases - none of which seem like especially practical options for the long term. So this is sort of like saying that you're rich because your friend has promised to give you 10 million bucks just as soon as he wins the lottery.
Sigh. As Paul Krugman repeatedly notes on the pages of the same newspaper, Wall Street money owned by the deficit hawks is currently flowing massively into these same T-Bills, these supposedly worthless Ponzi Scheme papers. Lottery tickets indeed.
Ah, the "Liberal Media".
Can you do as well or better this week? Only if you try!
The most dramatic reversal in the pattern of electoral maps in US history between two presidential elections separated by just 8 years.
What possible reason could account for that???
Yesterday, Rachel Maddow did a segment "We Can Fact-Check, Gov. Barbor", which I think astutely recognized at least one part of an unfolding dynamic: It's not just Glenn Beck, there's a expanding effort to pull a Karl Rove against Obama, and re-position the Republicans as the post-racial party, as illustrated by an interview that Haley Barbour did with Human Events in which he tried to portary himself as part of the first generation of South--Republican's, natch!--who grew up with integration and experienced it as no big deal.
Of course, Barbour was lying through his teeth. Integration was barely getting started when he was in college, and he placed his own children in private academies that were all-white until the last year his eldest son was in attendence. Her guest, Eugene Robinson, outdid himself, and even pointed out the unusual nature of the 1964 election in which Goldwater, who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, only carried five Deep South states plus his native Arizona. But he didn't bring the full weight of this fact to bear, which I think can only be gained by comparing the 1964 map with the 1956 map. The 1956 map was the most stripped-down version of the Democratic "Solid South" which can be found from 1876 onward (except for the Dixiecrat Revolt eleciton of 1948). And the 1964 map, just 8 years later, was an almost exact mirror image. Taken together, the two maps are perhaps the most dramatic representation of the overwhelming power of race in American politics you will ever find.
As the Republicans struggle mightily in the next two years to eradicate that history, we progressives would do very well to start amassing such images, particularly campaign ads, that can--at a single glance--bring the past that Republicans desperately want to eradicate, replace and re-write--vividly to life.
Amy Goodman's off this week, but co-host Juan Gonzales has written (and researched) a great deal about education policies, practices and deform, and he did excellent job today with guests Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, and Lois Weiner, professor of education at New Jersey City University, in a segment "Educators Push Back Against Obama's "Business Model" for School Reforms".
Lewis had hopeful news about growing local movements like the one she's part of in Chicago, where roll-over-and-play-dead union leaders have been ousted, and teachers have increasingly begun to organize with parents. But I want to focus on a couple of things that Weiner had to say. Not that they're new, really, to those of us here at Open Left, but it's good to hear them so powerfully validated.
First is that what we're seeing here with "Race to the Top" is part of an already-proven-to-fail global pattern of neo-liberalism ("Shock Doctrine" at school):
JUAN GONZALEZ: Lois Weiner, you've been, in your research, conducting what I would, I guess, call a macro analysis of the education reform-
LOIS WEINER: Right.
JUAN GONZALEZ:-comparing not only what's happening here in the United States, but around the world, in terms of these so-called reform initiatives. Could you talk about that?
LOIS WEINER: Absolutely. And I think it's important to understand that Race to the Top is not unique to the United States, and what Arne Duncan did in Chicago is not unique to Chicago. And in fact, the contours of this program were carried out first under Pinochet in Chile. And this program was implemented by force of military dictatorships and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Latin America. And the results have been verified by researchers there. They produced increased stratification. So I think what we're seeing right now are the results of that increased stratification, a stratification, inequality of results, because if you think about it, No Child Left Behind is almost a decade old. And what are the results? The results are a growing gap between poor minority-achievement of poor minority kids and those kids who come from prosperous families who are-who live in affluent suburbs and in those suburban schools.
And I think it's also very important to understand that this focus on educational reform is replacing, is a substitute for, a jobs policy. We need to understand that. Education can democratize the competition for the existing jobs, but it cannot create new jobs. And when most jobs that are being created are by companies like Wal-Mart, education cannot do anything about that. So, we need to-we really need to look critically at Race to the Top and understand the way that it fits into this new economic order of a so-called jobless recovery and that what's really going on is a vocationalization of education, a watering down of curriculum for most kids, so that they're going to take jobs that require only a seventh or an eighth grade education, because those are the jobs that are being created in this economy.
And so, I think that while we--while it's important to look at the particulars of each state and each city, each school district, it's also important to see this large picture, because almost anything that you can point to me that's being done in Chicago or New York or San Francisco, we can find another place in the world that it was already done, and we can look at those results. And the results are not good.
This is not surprising. Neoliberalism has already failed, just as conservatism has. Education is just one policy realm among many where this is so. It's only a battle of ideology to the extent that we're fighting for facts to matter--as well as people.
The day after Beck's rally for incohence, last weekend, he appeard with Chris Wallace, and attempted to impose a whole new set of interpretations on what he'd been up to. Early on in the clip below, he spoke of:
Reclaiming the civil rights. Meaning people of faith that look at equal justice and look at every man the same. Not the politicians. Not the parties. Not white people or black people. People of faith.
Of course, this was no more historically accurate than anything else he's ever said in his life, particularly about civil rights. First off, there were all sorts of "people of faith" opposed to civil rights--indeed, the modern religious right (post Billy James Hargis, that is) was born out of opposition to the civil rights movement. Their big "civil rights" battle was trying to preserve the tax-exempt status of the segregationist Bob Jones University. That's what side they were on. And secondly, on the other side were a lot of secular Jews like me and my family, along with everyone else. And without the politicians and the parties, it wouldn't have meant a thing, because it was about changing the laws of the land.
So, pretty much the same incoherent farrago of lies routine, just with a new set of lies.
But that's not what I wanted to focus my primary attention on. What I really wanted to focus on comees later in the clip, where he says:
The real agenda should be equal justice, an equal shot. The dream was judge a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. That's something that everybody can take part in.
So everybody can take part in it--including the parties and politicians who it shouldn't have anything to do with. You see what a babbling idiot he is?
But that's not my central point here. That would be how he characterizes "the real agenda", as "equal justice, an equal shot."
Well, I'm here to say that King wasn't talking about just giving people "a shot", even an equal one. He wasn't coming from a market perspective. He was coming from a visionary perspective, and that vision was what he called "The Beloved Community." If you're not familiar with the term, then there's an entire dimension of Martin Luther King's thought that you've yet to become familiar with.
