Game Changed

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to watch the HBO movie “Game Change”. To be honest, I am not a big fan of Caribou Barbie but it made you feel sorry for Sarah Palin? More to the point, watching it was absolutely smashing and, in fact, terrifying to think how close we were to utter insanity or to America's ruin.

The movie has been scalloped out of the book by the same name and focuses on Palin, rather than on the entire 2008 presidential campaign. The decision to do so was absolutely correct. With her selection as John McCain’s running mate, American politics lost its way — and maybe its mind as well.

I want to be fair and give credit to Washington Post Opinion Writer Richard Cohen. This was a very good piece to which I will quote from it because it was perfect:

“The movie portrays Palin as an ignoramus. She did not know that Queen Elizabeth II does not run the British government, and she did not know that North and South Korea are different countries. She seemed not to have heard of the Federal Reserve. She called Joe Biden “O’Biden” and she thought America went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein, not al-Qaeda, had attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Not only did she know little, but she was determinately incurious and supremely smug in her ignorance.”

How can someone aspire to being a heartbeat away from the Oval Office without a firm grasp of basic history and current events? Of course John McCain defended his choice of Palin as running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign. In the movie she was portrayed as a liar. In fact, she was called exactly that by McCain’s campaign chief, Steve Schmidt, who came to realize, a bit late in the game, that one of Palin’s great talents was to deny the truth. When confronted, she simply shuts down — petulant, child-like — and then sulks off.

The thing that struck me was the movie has been endorsed by most of Palin’s top campaign aides to put its veracity in doubt. Some of them had come to revile the Alaska governor — enough to leak some awful facts but not quite enough to go public. Had the election been really close, I wonder if they would have run out into the street yelling that Palin — a heartbeat away from the possible presidency — was a monster.

It seems to be the norm in today’s political environment where we see a deluge of dysfunctional presidential candidates. For example, we saw Herman Cain for a while was a front-runner. He had a nonsensical tax plan, zero knowledge of foreign affairs and had never held elective office. Yet, for a brief but terrifying moment, many Republicans were saying he should be the next president of the United States.

Michele Bachmann told a touching fib about vaccinations and slick Rick Perry did not know squat about who governs Turkey, a NATO ally and a vitally important Middle East power. He got wrong the number of justices on the Supreme Court — he said eight — and could not remember a Cabinet department he had vowed to eliminate.

Let’s not forget Rick Santorum who pretends to know his stuff, but his stuff includes a wild denunciation of John F. Kennedy’s famous speech about the proper role of religion in public life and a characterization of President Obama as a snob for extolling the value of college. Newt Gingrich has the wattage to be president, but so does Hannibal Lecter, if you get my drift. As for Ron Paul, he appears to be running for president of some theme park.

I have excluded Mitt, you know the guy the Republicans call “Him”, from the list of fools and knaves because he has too many other issues. But there once was a time when “Him” would not have stood out as the only candidate who knew something about the issues that confront a president. Since Palin, though, ignorance has become more than bliss. It’s now an attribute, an entire platform: Vote for me, I know nothing and hate the same things you do.

I want to repeat as Mr. Cohen said:

Palin is no longer an anomaly. McCain didn’t choose her for her intellectual or experiential qualities, nor because he was geographically or ideologically balancing the ticket. She was an antiabortion woman with a pulse: Enough! She, like the out-of-nowhere Obama, had the stuff of celebrity — the snap, the dazzle, the self-assurance, the sex appeal. She didn’t need to dance with a star. God told her she already was one… The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.

And in my opinion for the worst!

Former Alaska governor, who abandoned the post, is increasingly irrelevant political figure who continues to make some interesting remarks about President Barack Obama. Like the comment made during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where she said, she thinks President Obama is trying to take America back to the days before the Civil War. She went on to say that she believes that all of us are “created equal,” and that President Obama is seeking to divide the nation.

This was such a powerful commentary that I could not expound upon and wanted to share my sense of it. I will say this: I am so thankful that Caribou Barbie is on Fox and Fools and not in the White House, and to that I say God Bless America.

And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

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Queen of the Extreme

We are about to enter Black History Month that was a hard fought battle to speak truth to facts concerning the reality of American History and the important contributions African Americans made to it. I have written articles suggesting awareness concerning those who go to great lengths to charge or revise true history and its facts. These people who attempt to do this are, in my opinion, the real scourge upon the nation.

Until recently, I thought Caribou Barbie was the scariest person on this little rock called earth but just when I thought it couldn’t get any worst, here comes the latest possible contender for president from the far right. This would be the Minnesota Congresswoman and self proclaimed nemesis of our African American president. I should say, she is not new to the scene, just more brazen, maybe because she is sponsored by the Tea Baggers. She reminds me of “Glenda” from the Wizard of Oz in many ways and not just because her remarks defy words. Frankly, she make Caribou Barbie look like a genius and that’s saying a lot.

Not only did she promote herself by going rouge offering a response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address which was true to form – misleading and deceptive. Her misrepresentation of facts, with a straight face, is mindboggling. Where was she when the last guy and his administration created many of these problems? Not a word! As an American citizen I can appreciate the rights of expression but we must remember, and understand, that because someone says it, does not mean it’s true.

For example, she gave a speech last weekend that was very disturbing, particularly if she wants to be President of the United States, let alone that she is in congress charged with making policy that affect so many lives. In that speech, she claimed “the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” What!!! They all, or most, owned slaves and slavery was written as the “law of the land”. She went on to say, "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status. Once you got here, we were all the same." Really!

She continued with her erroneous assertions by saying, “I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.” Wrong again. I think she was talking about his father although it’s true that Adams became a vocal opponent of slavery, especially during his time in the House of Representatives. But Adams was not one of the founders, nor did he live to see the Emancipation Proclamation signed in 1863 (he died in 1848).

What is problematic, particularly for someone on the national stage with an obvious desire to run for the highest office in the land would surely be detrimental to the poor and no question African Americans. The release of her own blueprint for massive federal budget cuts of 400 Billion dollars would be devastating to the social fabric of America. She suggests that she would eliminate farm subsidies and many other federal grants, dismantle the Department of Education, eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency and repeal the Democratic healthcare overhaul, the Democratic financial regulation law and a recently passed food safety bill.

These are just a few extreme examples from her long list of great hits. So I will only offer my Thought Provoking Perspective on this, the latest: since the fiction of the founders and actual history represents her deep held beliefs might cause her to send invitations to all African Americans asking us to return to “slavery” - because it was so wonderful. Or change the Constitution back to the original document where African Americans were considered three-fifths a person.

We should be afraid – VERY AFRAID!

A Manifestation of the Right - Armed and Dangerous

We've witnessed another sad day in America’s history to which I extend my condolences to the families of the dead and wounded. On Saturday in Tucson, Arizona where the savage murders that took the lives of a federal judge, a nine year old child, seriously wounding a Congresswoman and many others was simply a despicable act of terrorism. But what is disturbing is that I have not heard anyone from the right who screamed “Terror” for much of the last decade use the word.

I want to commend Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, who is leading the investigation into the shootings, for his honesty. He did not mince words in saying that vitriol spewed, mostly by Republicans, contributed to the tragedy in Tucson. He said, "There's reason to believe that this [suspect] may have a mental issue. And I think people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol… People tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it's not without consequences."

America has a long history of such tragic situations. There was the Oklahoma bombing, the murder of an abortion doctor, and the Holocaust museum shooting in recent memory. If we go back to the 1960’s, there was assassination after assassination: Dr. King, President Kennedy, his brother Bobby, Medger Evers, Malcolm X – get my point. No! Well the common thread linking such acts of violence were WORDS used by those who possessed views from an ideologically extreme perspective.

These self-righteous Tea Baggers and conservatives whose been doing what is tantamount to yelling fire in a crowd don’t seem to understand that what they are saying has a dangerous impact upon society and unstable individuals. Words are powerful and there are some in our society who are not equipped to understand that these people are making a living by using this divisive speech causing some to take much of this vitriol literally. It might even be a more sinister reason; playing to the hatred and bigotry that exists.

Let me start at the top with the new leader, a man who cries at the drop of a dime might have shown some emotion over this tragedy, if for no other reason than there was a nine year old innocent child killed, but there were no tears. During his remarks at a news conference Sunday, “the newly elected House speaker was as dry as tumbleweed,” said Courtland Milloy. Why had the man who cries just by thinking about the welfare of children not shed a tear over the death of a 9-year-old girl in that rampage?

We’re talking about a rampage that arguably can be contributed to the insane vitriolic language that the right has spewed since President Obama, an African American, began campaigning and was elected. It is Obama's opponents who carried guns to his speeches and cited Jefferson's line that the tree of liberty "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Mr. Speaker told the National Review just last year that then-Rep. Steve Dreihaus (D-Ohio) "may be a dead man" because he voted for President Obama's health-care law. "He can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati". Stephen Broden, a tea party-backed former Texas GOP congressional candidate, has said, "Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table… I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms."

Rep. Michelle Bachmann said, "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people - we the people - are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country." Then there was Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate in Nevada, who suggested “Second Amendment remedies”. These are just a few examples of discord that creates such a charged political climate which can cause an unhinged person to act in horrendous ways with dire consequences.

Am I suggesting that the shooter's motive in this case could have nothing to do with the statements of these people – possibly! But, no one should be surprised when misguided ideologues start showing up at town meetings armed with assault rifles - or at supermarkets with handguns. Remember, the Tea Party rallies when they gleefully brought them to where the president was speaking.

The conservative leadership must finally take on their fringe when it uses language that intimates threats of bloodshed. That means more than just highly general statements praising civility. I am all for and support the right to bear arms. However, I am also sane enough to know that everyone who buys a gun should have one. Its kinda like you have the right to jump off a bridge but that does not mean it is a good idea.

There is one statement that I will leave you with and it’s from the Congresswoman who struggles for life today. "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list," she said, "but the thing is that the way she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there are consequences…"

Whoa, let's take a step back here.

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