Saturday, January 31, 2009

LIMBAUGH, COULTER AND THE WING NUTS ARE IDEOLOGICAL SUICIDE BOMBERS TESTING REPUBLICAN ATTACK THEMES WITH PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY

The right is struggling to climb back up from the cliff they drove over. Attack dog wing nuts like Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the Republicans ideological suicide bombers. They can repeatedly blow themselves up in the market place of political discourse, without hurting their core neanderthal demographic while far enough away to give Washington republicans plausible deniability.

When Obama told congressional leaders this week they have to do better than follow Rush. He knew he was shining a flashlight on the usually hidden wires between Limbaugh and Republican leaders to make it harder for them to run for cover whenever he says things that even Republicans can't say in public.

In Obama's interview on Al-Arabiya TV last week he spoke to millions of Arabs about "a new way forward" in peace and with mutual respect. Mutual respect between the Arab world and the US is the mirror image of the Bush foreign policy built on cold war style "axis of evil" fear mongering to grease the skids for unilateral military action.

The NY Post responded by wheeling out Amir Taheri, their in house fringe right bloviator. On January 29, 2009 they gave him an enire "opinion page" with the large print startling headline;


PATHETIC MESSAGE - Obama's odd Islamic outreach



If you don't read the Post, Taheri is not a household name. According to a Wikipedia article Taheri has a documented track record of simply making up incendiary smears. In 5/06 he made a false claim- disavowed by the journal that published it- that the Iranian parliament passed a law requiring color schemed clothing to make Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians identifiable). He made a claim that Iran’s UN Ambassador was one of the 1979 hostage takers when he was in fact a graduate student in San Francisco at the time and in 10/08 he wrote that Jesse Jackson told a World Policy Forum that Obama would change US policy towards Israel. Even though Jesse Jackson was not a speaker at that event. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Taheri


In his Post column Taheri uses the time honored simple technique known as setting up and knocking down a straw man. Taheri shows us how its done;

First you distort the opponent's position into an easily attackable caricature that bears no relationship to reality.

Step two - knock down the straw man and do a victory dance while claiming to have easily won the argument.

Its simple but WARNING - be careful before you use this technique at home - it can be harmful if used in marital and parent/child arguments.


The truth. Here is the terrific thing that Obama actually said;

And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.


Here is Taheri’s straw man distortion


Obama looked to the past rather than the future to give such platitudes a tinge of political vision. He said he wanted a return “to the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago”
The problem is that few people in the Muslim world will welcome his back to the future approach. Thirty years ago Obama was a teenager in Indonesia, Vice President Biden, however was already a junior senator and a champion of President Carter’s strategic retreat”


Taheri spends his remaining two columns giving us his list of US- Arab foreign policy failures of the last 30 years, including murder of Americans and hostage taking, which he then scotch tapes to the President using Obama's hopeful reference to better times in US/Arab relations. Somewhat weak if reality is your cup of tea but as arts and crafts - nice job Amir.

Then Taheri wraps it up;

Casting himself in the role of "bridge" and dreaming of a return to an illusionary past, Obama appeared unsure of his own identity and confused about the role that America should play in global politics.


Who said there is no more large scale manufacturing in New York City?

There is no greater threat to world peace and the personal safety of Americans than the anti US hatred on the Arab street. The neo con philosophy of Arab relations has been Defense Department first and State Department maybe later - the UN? - fuggetaboutit. From within this world view you can see why these guys would be horrified that a President would want to build international bridges across today's dangerous divides. That kind of talk undermines everything they stand for. They also get it, that if such "odd" and "pathetic" behavior catches on they could be spending a lot more time over that cliff.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

A Knee Jerk Bleeding Heart in the Third World

We did the gawking tourist tip toe through the soul crushing poverty of Peru this December. A tourist visit to the third world is a little like walking on the moon. As you wander around in the world of undrinkable water, and a virtually non existent health and education infrastructure it may look like you're in the same time and place as the locals around you but you're not. Why? Because you're actually in a bubble tethered to the mother ship by a lifeline -also known as your passport, and a reserved seat on the deep vein thrombosis express back to Newark.





In addition to luggage we all bring our psychic baggage with us when we travel. Mine is particularly annoying for my fellow travelers - Im an overtipping chump. If I was standing on the wing of that Airbus floating in the freezing Hudson while Captain Sully was checking the empty cabin twice I'd be thinking - "Gee I wonder what the usual gratuity is for this kind of thing?"

This need to tip everyone in sight stems from the same reasons that my knee jerks and my heart bleeds every time my feet hit the New York City sidewalk. For example, as a New York City cab ride from hell is ending and we are hurtling back to within range of the earth’s gravitational pull a normal person might be writing down the complaint number. Not me. I'm busy doing the tip math to stay in good graces with my new friend from another land - Mr Knievel.

Fast forward to a street vendor on the shores of Lake Titicaca. My daughter, with her upgraded Spanish from a semester in Argentina negotiates with a lady selling bracelets. She’s getting close to closing the deal - I take a good look at the 6 year old helping his mom and suddenly Im the bracelet ladies agent urging my daughter to bump up our last offer.





Negotiating with taxis is such a part of life in Lima, that when you hail a cab another cab always pulls up right behind to be there when the haggling with the first guy fall apart.

Im pretty sure Im on an international tipping chumps list. Cab drivers seem to spot me instantly as I cram myself into the shotgun seat next to the driver with my family in back. After some polite mumbling in my pathetic Spanish one driver suddenly pulled out a picture of himself, taken many years ago with a woman and a young girl - Before I could make an approriate noise - he tells me its him and his wife with their schizophrenic daughter. Like a fish in a barrel I’ve been hooked and then he reels me in - from the glove compartment out comes a handwritten list on a prescription pad which he tells me are the medications that he cant afford. The back seat watches helplessly knowing that I been harpooned right before their eyes - and the prenegotiated cost of the trip just got bumped up.













The cab driver passenger relationship can sometimes take an interesting hop. Our taxi from the hotel to dinner in Puno was stopped for a paperwork check by a traffic cop on foot. As the cop walks away with the driver’s documents our guy suddenly takes off. Our cabbie/customer relationship has been upgraded and now we're Bonnie and Clyde on the lam zooming thru Puno rush hour. Eventually we blend into traffic, calmly pull up to the restaurant and of course I give him a nice tip. We got away didnt we?








Gaping out from the tourist bubble the cavernous gap between rich and poor hits you right between the eyes. Private guards in bullet proof vests mill around on the street corners and in front of hotels. In the Lima neighborhood of Miraflores wealthy homes with nice cars in the driveway are completely wrapped in metal security gates with barbed wire at the corners.

Crime in Lima is a problem. The cops in Lima and all over Peru seem pretty good at standing around in heavily armed clusters looking tough, clueless and corrupt. The armored vehicles and machine guns are reminders that Peru's 20 year bloody civil war ended only 8 years ago.