Our Anti-Government Hypocrisy

post from The American Prospect on 28 February 2012 07:49:44 AM. © The American Prospect

Americans, the political scientists (and common sense) tell us, are ideologically conservative and operationally liberal. On the level of ideology, they?re opposed to government?s intervention in the economy. On the level of daily life, they support such universal government programs as Social Security and Medicare.

But this split between abstract beliefs and the concrete needs of daily life doesn?t just apply to government programs: It applies to government regulations as well. Last Thursday, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a survey that revealed what Pew termed ?Mixed Views of Government Regulation.? But ?mixed,? in this case, means anti-regulatory in matters of ideology and pro-regulatory in practice. Asked whether they believed that government regulation of business was necessary to protect the public or that such regulation usually does more harm than good, just 40 percent answered that regulation was necessary, while 52 percent said it did more harm than good.

But then came the specifics. Pew asked whether federal regulations should be strengthened, kept as is, or reduced in particular areas. When it came to food production and packaging, 53 percent said strengthen, 36 percent said keep as is, and just 7 percent said reduce. In environmental safeguards, the breakdown was 50 percent strengthen, 36 percent keep as is, 17 percent reduce. In car safety and efficiency, the split was 45, 42, and 9 percent. In workplace safety and health, it was 41, 45, and 10 percent. And with prescription drugs, it was 39, 33, and 20 percent.

Pew then followed up by asking whether there were too few regulations on particular kinds of businesses, the right amount, or too many. For the oil and gas industry, 44 percent said too little, 14 percent the right amount, and 36 percent too much. For banks and financial institutions, it was 43 percent too little, 20 percent just right, and 30 percent too much. For the health insurance industry, the breakdown was 40,18, and 37.

For large corporations generally, it was 43 percent too little, 19 percent the right amount, and 31 percent too much. Only when it came to small businesses did respondents believe that the regulatory burden was too onerous. Just 21 percent thought it too little and 23 percent just right, while 49 percent thought it too much. (How this belief is reconciled with respondents? belief that we need to keep or strengthen safeguards in workplace health and safety, which applies to small businesses no less than large, is anybody?s guess.)

So the storyline of Americans? sentiments towards regulations is the same as the storyline of Americans? sentiments towards government programs: They hate them all, they love them each.

The question that these data raise is how the right has managed to win the ideological battle for so many years even as the public?s support for specific government programs and regs has remained high. Some of this, surely, reflects the left?s inability to make a good case for its worldview, but this clearly goes beyond the messaging strengths and weaknesses of left and right.

At one level, I suspect, it reflects the political consequences of government programs in a racially polarized nation, where it?s easy to stigmatize government programs for the help they provide to the ?others." (Such were the findings of Stan Greenberg?s famous late-1980s survey of working-class whites in a suburb bordering Detroit.) But it also reflects our belief in the myth of rugged individualism and our congenital anti-statism. One pretty good definition of American exceptionalism is that while both Europeans and Americans have enacted all manner of government programs and regulations, Americans like to pretend we haven?t. At its core, what makes Americans exceptional is our capacity for denial.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/our-anti-government-hypocrisy

Digg this

Our Anti-Government Hypocricy

post from The American Prospect on 28 February 2012 07:49:44 AM. © The American Prospect

Americans, the political scientists (and common sense) tell us, are ideologically conservative and operationally liberal. On the level of ideology, they?re opposed to government?s intervention in the economy. On the level of daily life, they support such universal government programs as Social Security and Medicare.

But this split between abstract beliefs and the concrete needs of daily life doesn?t just apply to government programs: It applies to government regulations as well. Last Thursday, the Pew Research Center for The People and The Press released a survey that revealed what Pew termed ?Mixed Views of Government Regulation.? But ?mixed,? in this case, means anti-regulatory in matters of ideology and pro-regulatory in practice. Asked whether they believed that government regulation of business was necessary to protect the public or that such regulation usually does more harm than good, just 40 percent answered that regulation was necessary, while 52 percent said it did more harm than good.

But then came the specifics. Pew asked whether federal regulations should be strengthened, kept as is, or reduced in particular areas. When it came to food production and packaging, 53 percent said strengthen, 36 percent said keep as is, and just 7 percent said reduce. In environmental safeguards, the breakdown was 50 percent strengthen, 36 percent keep as is, 17 percent reduce. In car safety and efficiency, the split was 45, 42, and 9 percent. In workplace safety and health, it was 41, 45, and 10 percent. And with prescription drugs, it was 39, 33, and 20 percent.

Pew then followed up by asking whether there were too few regulations on particular kinds of businesses, the right amount, or too many. For the oil and gas industry, 44 percent said too little, 14 percent the right amount, and 36 percent too much. For banks and financial institutions, it was 43 percent too little, 20 percent just right, and 30 percent too much. For the health insurance industry, the breakdown was 40,18, and 37.

For large corporations generally, it was 43 percent too little, 19 percent the right amount, and 31 percent too much. Only when it came to small businesses did respondents believe that the regulatory burden was too onerous. Just 21 percent thought it too little and 23 percent just right, while 49 percent thought it too much. (How this belief is reconciled with respondents? belief that we need to keep or strengthen safeguards in workplace health and safety, which applies to small businesses no less than large, is anybody?s guess.)

So the storyline of Americans? sentiments towards regulations is the same as the storyline of Americans? sentiments towards government programs: They hate them all, they love them each.

The question that these data raise is how the right has managed to win the ideological battle for so many years even as the public?s support for specific government programs and regs has remained high. Some of this, surely, reflects the left?s inability to make a good case for its worldview, but this clearly goes beyond the messaging strengths and weaknesses of left and right.

At one level, I suspect, it reflects the political consequences of government programs in a racially polarized nation, where it?s easy to stigmatize government programs for the help they provide to the ?others." (Such were the findings of Stan Greenberg?s famous late-1980s survey of working-class whites in a suburb bordering Detroit.) But it also reflects our belief in the myth of rugged individualism and our congenital anti-statism. One pretty good definition of American exceptionalism is that while both Europeans and Americans have enacted all manner of government programs and regulations, Americans like to pretend we haven?t. At its core, what makes Americans exceptional is our capacity for denial.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/our-anti-government-hypocricy

Digg this

Lakeside Diner

post from Firedoglake on 28 February 2012 07:45:32 AM. © Firedoglake

A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current topics that may be of interest.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/9e3AwZLpZEA/

Digg this

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Michigan tests Mitt

post from Daily Kos on 28 February 2012 07:30:03 AM. © Daily Kos

Visual source: Newseum

It's Republican primary day in Michigan! And as Paul West points out, the class fight between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney has reached a fever pitch:

The class competition played out visibly Sunday at Daytona International Speedway, which was to have opened NASCAR?s season until rain forced a postponement.
Romney flew to Florida from Michigan and put on a public display of affinity, strolling the NASCAR pits in a bright red Daytona 500 jacket and blue jeans. At one point, he walked past a car emblazoned with Santorum?s campaign logo. (Out of public view, Romney also had a private breakfast with the billionaire founders of the auto racing operation and was introduced at a meeting of racing teams, corporate sponsors and celebrities.)
For both men, biography ? or a gauzy version of it ? is driving their acrid dispute.

Looking at the Republican versus Democrat dynamic at The Washington Post, AEI's Marc Thiessen is baffled as to why Republicans are losing the "class warfare" fight:

A recent Gallup poll found that Americans reject the view of this country as divided between ?haves? and ?have nots? by a 58-41 margin (in 2008, they were evenly divided 49-49).
Moreover, addressing income inequality is low on the American people?s list of priorities: 82 percent say it is extremely or very important to ?grow and expand the economy? and 70 percent say it is extremely or very important to ?increase the equality of opportunity for people to get ahead if they want to? (emphasis added). But only 46 percent say that it should be a priority to ?reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor.?
In other words, a campaign focused on ?fairness? should be a losing campaign. Yet somehow the leading GOP presidential contenders seem determined to turn Obama?s weak hand into a winning one. First, Newt Gingrich launches class warfare attacks on Mitt Romney that would make Obama blush. Then, Romney declares that he?s ?not concerned about the very poor,? that ?corporations are people,? and brags in economically depressed Detroit about owning four cars. Then, Rick Santorum steps up to defend income inequality, declaring: ?There is income inequality in America. There always has been and hopefully ? and I do say that ? there always will be.?
Instead of defending income inequality, Republicans should be turning Obama?s income-inequality attack around on him. They should be saying: Mr. President, your policies exacerbate income inequality.

The reason Republicans are losing the "class warfare" fight is because the facts are not on their side. And as for a campaign on "fairness"...deficit issues rank in the low single digits but you don't see Thiessen writing up columns about how the Republican campaigns focused on that issue "should be a losing campaign." I love watching conservatives scratch their head as to why the president's numbers are going up. The answer: people want, as President Obama said, "a warrior for the middle class."

Michael Schear writes about "mischief" (read: Operation Hilarity) is today's Michigan primary:

[E]ven before the calls began, it was clear that Democrats could make a difference in the close Michigan contest.
Why?
Two reasons. First, the state has a history of partisan meddling in the opposing primary, a fact that makes it more accepted among Michigan voters. And second, Mr. Romney?s well-publicized opinions about the auto bailout offer the perfect issue to lure members of the United Auto Workers to the polls.

At The American Prospect, Jamelle Bouie breaks down the GOP's fractured relationship with the Latino vote:

Yes, Asians and Latinos will continue to move to the United States in large numbers, and yes, growing intermarriage rates will diversify the population even further.
But there?s nothing about either trend that guarantees Democratic dominance; if Republicans were to run counter to the administration?which has set a record for deportations?embrace comprehensive immigration reform and put themselves on the side of open immigration law, then they could build an enduring advantage with immigrants of all stripes, and maintain a competitive edge in future elections.
By digging in and demonizing Latino immigrants, conservatives have convinced many that the Republican Party stands explicitly against their interests. And in the process, they have helped shape a discrete ?Latino bloc? which leans heavily toward Democratic candidates at all levels of electoral competition. Even if they win in November, this will hurt their party for the forseeable future.

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, "Republicans are crazy, but that's perfectly normal":

I can't peer into the souls of Republicans, but I don't get any sense that they believe themselves to be doomed. People just don't think that way. Rather, I get the sense that they're true believers who think that, deep in its heart, America agrees with them. [...]
Basically, I just don't think there's a huge mystery to be solved here. When Democrats lost to Reagan, they nominated first Walter Mondale and then Michael Dukakis before finally tacking to the center and putting Bill Clinton in the White House. That was a 12-year stretch. Britain's Labor Party spent a decade moving left before they finally tacked back to the center after losing to Margaret Thatcher. It took them 18 years to finally regain power. Republicans have only been in the wilderness for either four or six years, depending on how you count. If it takes until 2016 for them to come to their senses, that would be a pretty normal progression.
Republicans don't think they have one last chance before the fat lady sings them off the stage. They're just reacting emotionally to a big defeat by convincing themselves that they were rejected because they hadn't been true enough to their principles. That happens all the time. They'll come around eventually.

Julian Zelizer at CNN points out that social issues are not benefiting Republicans like they used to:

The strategy plays into a conventional argument about how Republicans can succeed with voters whose economic interests are better served by the Democrats, namely through focusing on social and cultural issues that shift attention in a different direction.
This is a risky bet for the GOP and a positive development for the administration and congressional Democrats. While most successful Republican presidential candidates have paid lip service to social conservatism in the last three decades, the truth is it has never been an issue through which Republicans have been able to build successful coalitions that can win at the polls and get bills passed.
Currently, polls show that the public is not in favor of many of the positions espoused by the right when it comes to culture. According to a poll by CBS and The New York Times, 66% supported the administration's plan to require private health insurance to cover birth control and 61% said yes with regard to religiously affiliated employers; Catholics supported the administration 61% to 31%. In 2011, Gallup found that a majority of Americans supported the legalization of same-sex marriage.

And, on a final note...it was bound to happen sooner or later: GOP presidential candidate action figures. It's worth a click through just for the picture:

Still haven?t had enough of the GOP presidential candidates? Wait, there?s more.
Hero Builders, a Connecticut-based company, just came out with its versions of three GOP presidential action figures ? Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.
Santorum is wearing his signature vest. Romney is buttoned up and well-coiffed, and Gingrich has an uncharacteristic big grin.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/4ulHTxH9daM/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Ro
undup-Michigan-tests-Mitt

Digg this

States Get Serious In Confronting Sovereign
Citizen Movement

post from TPMMuckraker on 28 February 2012 07:01:36 AM. © TPMMuckraker

$4 billion liens against police officers. Bankruptcy proceedings against the United States government. Claims of grammar-based conspiracies or "backwards-correct-syntaxing-modification fraud."

Sovereign citizens have found bizarre and creative ways to use court filings and liens to harass public officials throughout the country -- and legislators in Georgia have had enough.

Sovereign citizens, though disparate and disorganized, generally all operate under the theory that for one reason or another, the U.S. government and its court system is illegitimate. In practice, this usually involves avoiding taxes or driving without a driver's license or license plates.

The problems begin when sovereign citizens are confronted with law enforcement officials, typically at a traffic stop. Once they have been arrested, sovereign citizens will often file false liens or frivolous lawsuits against the officers and other public officials -- known as "paper terrorism" -- which can ruin their credit or tie them up in costly legal battles.

And though the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are about 100,000 sovereign citizens across the country, Georgia's legislature is one of the first to try to crack down on the movement.

House Bill 997, introduced by state Rep. B.J. Pak (R) and unanimously passed out of committee last week, makes it a separate crime for anyone "to knowingly file a false lien or encumbrance in a public record or private record" against a public official or employee "on account of the performance of such public officer or public employee's official duties."

If passed, the law would make filing false liens punishable by 1-10 years of imprisonment, a fine up to $10,000, or both.

Pak told TPM that the sovereign citizens have been "kind of a building nuisance" in Georgia, to the point where "several of the local police officers and judges have been harassed." This law, Pak says, would give clerks who file the liens the "discretion to deny filing of certain liens that are patently fraudulent." At this point, "they don't have the discretion to say no."

In the past year, he said, there have been around five known cases of sovereign citizens filing false liens against officials, though he added that there might be others, as the sovereigns obviously don't inform the people whom they are filing the liens against. Instead, people tend to find out when they check their credit, or are trying to sell their homes.

Police Chief Tim Shaw in Temple, Georgia, is embroiled in his own legal battle with a sovereign citizen who allegedly threatened him after a traffic stop.

Shaw told TPM that the harassment began after the sovereign citizen was issued a citation for not wearing a seatbelt. At the arraignment, the sovereign said he was immune from the law, and shortly after "started harassing me, he was claiming police brutality," Shaw said.

Shaw continued that the man tried "tried to extort $800k from me, and I obviously didn't have that money to give him." Shaw didn't respond, and was sent a second demand for a payment of $880k. A third request shortly after "spelled out different remedies they could do to me to get me to pay the money," Shaw said, and included "in the envelope MapQuest driving directions from his residence to my residence, from his residence to my mother and father's residence down in Florida."

The court granted a protective order for Shaw, so that the sovereign "is not allowed to file any type of encumbrances or frivolous liens against me, short of going through my attorney." But, Shaw says, in most cases officers aren't given that kind of protection "because most of [the sovereign citizens] aren't as dumb as he was" and don't send an "implied threat."

Shaw said that Pak's legislation would help with this problem, and give sovereign citizens "one less thing for them to have in their toolbox."

Georgia had a much bigger encounter with sovereign citizens in March of last year, when twelve of them were indicted on various charges related to an alleged racketeering scheme to take over millions of dollars in properties in the northern part of the state. The twelve -- who were also accused of squatting in one of the homes -- allegedly broke into unoccupied houses, signed and notarized the deeds for themselves, filed the deeds with the courts, then filed liens and lawsuits against law enforcement officials, prosecutors and judges who tried to kick them out.

Though in cases like these, the damage is mostly financial, at other times sovereign citizens pose a more sinister threat. Shaw, who got a taste of this, told TPM that "it's not always a volatile encounter. But the potential for the volatility is there."

And both Pak and Shaw pointed to the case of Jerry and Joseph Kane of West Memphis Arkansas, who killed two police officers after they were pulled over for a routine traffic stop. The Kanes were killed in a subsequent shootout with other police officers.

In another case in Alaska, Schaeffer Cox and his associates have been accused of plotting to kidnap and kill public officials.

Incidents like these, to a large degree, explain why sovereign citizens are now on the FBI's radar. Indeed, the Homeland Security Department and National Counterterrorism Center have ranked sovereign citizens high on the list of growing threats, alongside Islamic terrorists and white supremacists, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"We are focusing our efforts because of the threat of violence," Stuart R. McArthur, a deputy assistant director in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, told the Times.

Photo from Scott Rothstein / Shutterstock.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TPMmuckraker/~3/TMbv4zNhPVQ/georgia_may_soon_crack
_down_on_sovereign_citizen_p.php

Digg this

Tuesday Open Thread

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 28 February 2012 07:00:00 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

[M]any of the people at the Republican National Convention,
for all their flag-waving, hate America.
They want a controlled, monolithic society;
they fear and loathe our nation's freedom,
diversity and complexity.

Paul Krugman

Born February 28, 1953

Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/diary/27788/tuesday-open-thread

Digg this

What's Going to Happen in Michigan Today

post from DemConWatch on 28 February 2012 06:04:10 AM. © DemConWatch

The polls are tight, and in a last ditch effort, Spawn of Satan has been robocalling Democrats. And yes, if you're a Michigan Democrat, you CAN vote today and in May in the Democratic process. Arizona is a done deal for Mittens, as there was a lot of early voting, but Michigan is still up for grabs. I was going to put up a tree picture, but the one I wanted to use is a photoshopped Mittens ad, so here's the link.

Before we go further, your opinion:

Online Surveys & Market Research

What I will be looking at tonight are the exit polls. Not so much for party affiliation, but for educational level. Spawn of Satan has made a big deal out of being the anti-education candidate. Which actually fits well with his overall belief system. I started thinking about it when I read two things. This was the first:

It’s become conventional wisdom to suggest that Rick Santorum, with his blue-collar background in Pennsylvania, will run strongly among these voters. “He has a big appeal to people we used to call Reagan Democrats,” said former Ohio Senator Mike DeWine. A recent Gallup poll showed Santorum leading Mitt Romney by double digits among Republicans without a college degree and making less than $90,000. Romney’s unfavorable rating among voters making less than $50,000 jumped twenty points in January, which Greg Sargent termed “Romney’s White Working Class Problem.”

The second is an article in the March issue of Philadelphia Magazine, called The Incredible Shrinking Man, and it's not online yet. The article is about how men in their 20's lag behind their female counterparts in all sorts of objective measures like education, employment and income (although not video games and porn) and how many still live at home or accept financial support from their parents. 59% of men aged 18 to 24 live at home, 19% of those 25 to 34 do. 60% of parents give financial support to their grown sons, an average of $38,340 annually. If it were just the recession, it would affect both genders equally, or close to equally, but that's not it. According to the article in 1950, men made up 70% of the labour force, now it's 53%. From the article: (page 64)

From 1960 to 2009, the number of working-age men with full-time jobs fell from 83 percent to 66 percent. In Philadelphia, half of all young adults are unemployed, but three in 10 young men ages 25 to 34 had stopped looking for work before the recession hit.

We know that college populations are becoming more and more female. The stats:

Overall, women have surpassed men in terms of completing secondary and post-secondary education with the gender gap almost completely reversed. In 2006, 10.3% of males and 8.3% of females dropped out of high school. In 2005/2006, women earned 62% of Associate's degrees, 58% of Bachelor's degrees, 60.0% of Master's degrees, and 48.9% of Doctorates. In 2016/2017, women are projected to earn 64.2% of Associate's degrees, 59.9% of Bachelor's degrees, 62.9% of Master's degrees, and 55.5% of Doctorates.

Let's put this together. There is certainly a lot of causality for this situation: start with the idea that most elementary and secondary schools are more geared to girls than boys. Second, you need more education for more jobs nowadays than was necessary a generation ago when strength beat brains for most jobs. (Think farming, manufacturing, construction.) Third, there's the internet. The Philly Mag article points out that before Facebook, when men got out of school, they needed women to fill a social calendar. Not just dating, but parties and events. Now, they can keep in touch with friends from college and "the old neighborhood". Add to that video games, the ultimate time suckers, and finally porn. This affects men in terms of fertility rates and an inability to want to connect with real women, plus it's easily accessible and another time sucker. Some academics wanted to do a study of the affects of porn on men under 30 but they couldn't find a control group.

So today is the Michigan primary: an industrial state where a lot of the male voters will be older, whiter and pining for the world they inhabited when they were young. (Apologies to the Paul voters, who will certainly skew younger and are the exception, rather than the rule.) Will they send the primary to Rick Santorum who certainly is the embodiment of what they see is the world that was left behind? If this demographic abandons Mittens, what does that mean for his chances in November? And most importantly, what becomes of the men? Do they become so distant from politics, in addition to work and education, that we become a female-led society? If so, where are the women candidates at all levels? I'll be watching Michigan not just because it's Mitten's home state (okay, one of them) but because it's a microcosm of what is happening across the country.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com/diary/5170/whats-going-to-happen-in-mich
igan-today

Digg this

"A Remarkably Safe and Secure Place"

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 28 February 2012 06:00:00 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

By @KYYellowDog

Some of us have known for a long time that the whole Warren Terra/Homeland Insecurity circus was a nothing but cover for massive corruption, militarization of law enforcement, metastasizing the security state and eliminating civil liberties.

But it's nice to have confirmation from the Establishment.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

There is a useful buzz this week surrounding an article in, of all places, Foreign Affairs magazine, by Michah Zenko and Michael Cohen, with the provocative title: "Clear and Present Safety." It argues that despite the regular alarms issued by national security experts and politicians of both parties (most notably the Republican presidential candidates who regularly accuse the Obama administration of potentially catastrophic weakness in the face of powerful and sinister enemies), the U.S. and indeed the whole world are much safer than at any recent juncture. Here's Zenko and Cohen's succinct summary of current conditions:
The world that the United States inhabits today is a remarkably safe and secure place. It is a world with fewer violent conflicts and greater political freedom than at virtually any other point in human history. All over the world, people enjoy longer life expectancy and greater economic opportunity than ever before. The United States faces no plausible existential threats, no great-power rival, and no near-term competition for the role of global hegemon. The U.S. military is the world's most powerful, and even in the middle of a sustained downturn, the U.S. economy remains among one of the world's most vibrant and adaptive. Although the United States faces a host of international challenges, they pose little risk to the overwhelming majority of American citizens and can be managed with existing diplomatic, economic, and, to a much lesser extent, military tools.

Why, then, don't U.S. national security policies, and the political debate surrounding them, reflect this reality? Zenko and Cohen point to a host of factors, from the mental habits of national security stakeholders to a massive and continuing (if psychologically understandable) overreaction to 9/11 (on which, they note, the U.S. has expended an estimated $3 trillion). Beyond dollars, cents and lives, U.S. policy, they believe, is still dominated by Dick Cheney's so-called "1% doctrine" whereby remote threats to national security absorb vast resources while more immediate problems, foreign and domestic, are ignored:
[T]he most lamentable cost of unceasing threat exaggeration and a focus on military force is that the main global challenges facing the United States today are poorly resourced and given far less attention than "sexier" problems, such as war and terrorism. These include climate change, pandemic diseases, global economic instability, and transnational criminal networks - all of which could serve as catalysts to severe and direct challenges to U.S. security interests. But these concerns are less visceral than alleged threats from terrorism and rogue nuclear states. They require long-term planning and occasionally painful solutions, and they are not constantly hyped by well-financed interest groups. As a result, they are given short shrift in national security discourse and policymaking.

This is a prescription for a paradigm change that is not likely to get immediate traction in a political world where Democrats are forever trying to prove they are tough enough to be entrusted with the nuclear codes, and Republicans are openly frothing for war with Iran and a confrontational stance towards many other countries (and entire religions, for that matter).
But the growing debate over this article is not a bad place to begin an effort to bring American foreign and national security policy out of its strangely anachronistic paranoid crouch and into the world we actually inhabit. It's far from being a world without many dangers and threats, but it is one where we can actually undermine our security by underestimating it.

The people who created and maintain the 21st-century American Security State know this perfectly well, and know it's irrelevant. Because the American Security State has nothing to do with the actual state of American security.

So until the Establishment recognizes that reality and addresses the real source of our un-security, we'll keep scaring ourselves so much we hurt ourselves.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/rgW8k04aUPA/a-rem
arkably-safe-and-secure-place

Digg this

Muse in the Morning

Muse in the MorningGroove Thang I know you have talent. What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent. I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I'm a pretty darn good cook. :-)Let your[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.docudharma.com/diary/29199/muse-in-the-morning

Digg this

Elitism for thee, but not for me

Well, Republicans in Michigan and Arizona go to the polls today (and in the Michigan a few independents and democrats will vote too, mostly for santorums and giggles).I predict...finally...the process of settling for Ol' one percent of the one percent to[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/zKXTaV3aHHA/

Digg this