You are excused if you missed the memo, but the annual Values Voters Summit is taking place this weekend in Washington, DC. I’m not going to write extensively about the summit, because quite frankly, it’s little more than another gathering of angry 24%’ers who think that George Bush has been too liberal on “values issues”. If you really want a blow-by-blow rundown of the summit (no, Larry Craig was not invited, as far as I can tell), go here.

Still, it’s always kind of interesting to check out the list of speakers at these kinds of events. Here’s a short run down of some of the highlighted guests, who are lecturing America this weekend on how to behave:

William Bennett – noted gambler and addict
Tom Delay – noted crook and future felon
Newt Gingrich – noted adulterer
Rudy Giuliani – see Gingrich, above (and noted cross-dresser)
Stephen Baldwin – noted “D”-list actor and drug and alcohol addict
J. Kenneth Blackwell – noted voter suppressionist & minority disenfranchiser

Draw your own conclusions.

Anyway, a big hit at the VVS has been the sales of Obama Waffles. (No, I’m not going to link to their site – I assume you, unlike John McCain, know how to work the google.) This culinary delight was apparently selling like hotcakes (no pun intended) to the fundie crowd, until event organizers took heat for the vendor booth and shut it down on Saturday afternoon. Here’s what the box looks like. Check out the top and the sides, as well as the front:

It’s going to be Cuba, folks. The GOP is going to get a bunch in their underwear about Barack Obama working to change the direction of US policy towards Cuba. There’s a photo on virtually every front page int he country today with Barack Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Obama recently eased restrictions on the long, long economic embargo of Cuba. That’s enough ammunition for the whack jobs in the GOP to seize on this. Perhaps the sex-crazed teabagging didn’t alienate enough independent voters (MSNBC has video), so they’ll work this issue. From the Washington Post we have a glimpse of yesterday’s actions, which will spark the faux Republican outrage:

“The United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba,” Obama countered in his own speech. “I know there is a longer journey that must be traveled in overcoming decades of mistrust, but there are critical steps we can take toward a new day.” Earlier this week, Obama lifted restrictions on travel to the island by Cuban Americans.

The administration has been careful to accompany its outreach to Cuba with demands that the government allow more political and personal freedoms before the embargo is lifted. “They’re certainly free to release political prisoners,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday. “They’re certainly free to stop skimming money off the top of remittance payments as they come back to the Cuban island. They’re free to institute a greater freedom of the press.”

But events appeared to be outpacing the administration’s efforts to adjust its Cuba policy on its own terms. Earlier yesterday, the secretary general of the Organization of American States said he would ask its membership to readmit Cuba – ejected in 1962 at U.S. urging – when that organization meets next month. Bipartisan bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress to lift all travel restrictions and ease the embargo.

And it was not at all clear that Cuba is ready to grasp the olive branch Obama is extending.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that a reported willingness by Cuban President Ra–ºl Castro to discuss “everything” with the United States was a “welcome overture.” Her comments followed news accounts from Cuba that quoted Castro as expressing willingness to talk with the United States about “human rights, press freedom, political prisoners, anything they want to discuss,” as long as it was a conversation between “equals” that respected Cuba’s sovereignty.

There we have it, Obama reaching out to mend fences and begin with a new relationship with Cuba. His handshake with Hugo Chavez can be seen in the same light. There’s nothing here, though, to indicate that Barack Obama is giving away the store or anything. He’s simply showing himself and his administration as ready to improve those relations, and he’s getting at least a glimmer of positive response from Chavez and Castro. How could the Republicans possibly try to exploit that? Well, you can bet they will.

The Republican teabagging debacle played to the Republican whackjob base and alienated independents partly because of its ludicrous imagery and the whackjobs it attracted, but it also alienates because with its rallying against supposed socialism it is fighting the Cold War again, 20 years after the Cold War ended. The only vestige we have of the Cold War now is the relationship the US holds towards Cuba and Venezuela. Just take a look at how Presidents of the past dealt with Cuba. The results have been almost no change in Cuba, and a hardening of the radicals on the subject. But, hey, those radicals on the subject of Cuba are already voting Republican, and the small “c” notion of conservatism suspicious of change of any kind is a notion they embrace, even when conservative voices such as The Economist in December called for change in the US stance towards Cuba:

All this means that for the Castros, Barack Obama may turn into a far more formidable foe than his predecessors. The danger starts with his example: after all, a young, black, progressive politician has no chance of reaching the highest office in Cuba, although a majority of the island’s people are black. Mr Obama has already promised to reverse the restrictions on remittances and travel by Cuban-Americans imposed by Mr Bush. Once he is in office, the new president should go further and urge Congress to lift the embargo altogether. It is wrongheaded and ineffective. If it went, Cubans would know they had nobody except their rulers to blame for their plight.

That’s good policy thinking there. 50 years of the US embargo on Cuba has done nothing, so why not make a change, show the Cuban people what change means to them and their lives? There’s a lot of chance for success here, and the next three and a half years could see a thaw in relations where tourism flourishes in Cuba and Americans in general come to embrace happier relations with the country. Oh, the Republicans will howl that easing the embargo and encouraging tourism will put money in Cuba’s economy, but they’ll appeal only to the GOP base, and will alienate independents, if this issue shows up on the radar screen of anyone at all but the Republican base.

That’s the bottom line, I suppose. The Republicans will try to fight the Cold War all over again by whining about Obama’s attempts to change policy towards Cuba. Not a doubt about that. The leaders of the Republican Party, Hannity and Limbaugh and Gingrich and G. Gordon Liddy, will whine and howl, but nobody really cares besides the hardcore Republican base. Sure, much of that base consists of Cuban-Americans in Florida, but I’m thinking even they will be won over eventually as they are able to visit relatives and see their homeland. And surely the Cuban-Americans do not rive the Latino vote in this country, not if you look at the results of the last Presidential race.

The big thing is that the Republicans will stand foursquare in the way of progress and reconciliation on this issue as just another facety of their “Just Say No” agenda. They’ll likely put together sugar cane parties to go with the teabagging (is there a sexual innuendo to go with “sugar cane?”). Mojitos will be downed among Republicans, or poured into the Miami harbor, or whatever, and independent voters will be turned off.

Ah, Republicans are so predictable!

If this election turns out to be about religious ideology…while ignoring the real implications of electing a candidate who supports the same policies of the president who created the troubled economy we’re now enduring…it may well be appropriate to call this “The Loaves and Fishes Election”…although I doubt either will be abundant…and they most certainly wont be free.

Troubling as it is, a number of voters seem poised to place matters of morality in front of their own economic self-interest. What remains to be seen is the depths to which voters are willing to sacrifice their pocket books in deference to the religious rhetoric being bantered about by the GOP.

Perhaps the news of the decision by the government to take over the troubled mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will provide the impetus for voters to think twice before granting the GOP another four year…on top of the eight during which the national debt nearly doubled and personal income failed to advance.

Let me attempt to make this simple. Under the Bush administration, huge tax cuts were enacted…primarily for the wealthiest of Americans. At the same time, mortgage interest rates were kept artificially low. That allowed for a housing bubble which enabled millions of Americans to borrow and spend newfound equity. It also allowed for those with capital (think those who received the tax cuts) to invest in and profit from the financial market.

Jump forward to the end of 2008. The Bush administration and John McCain favor extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans…arguing that we can’t raise taxes in a down economy. The problem with that logic is that the tax cuts helped facilitate the shoddy economy we have. It also allowed the rich to get richer and it allowed millions of Americans to borrow what they thought was an expanading equity in their homes. That ability to access equity served as the candy coating on an otherwise unsound economy.

However, as they say, it’s now time to pay the piper. So what does this mean for the average American? Well, it means that millions of Americans will see their home values decline, their debt increase, their access to better jobs diminish, and ownership of an expanding national debt that will have to be addressed.

And what does this mean for the wealthiest Americans under John McCain’s more of the same administration? It means that they will have benefited from years of a reduced tax burden. It means they were able to invest this and other money in a finance industry that was fueled by artificially low interest rates…w

If you need to recall how globally reviled George W. Bush became during the last few years of his presidency, check out this video (it’s short and very good; hit the play button):

And, if you want to know the general consensus of world leaders, in terms of the Obama administration, take a look at this shot from the just-concluded G20 conference:

I have been, and will continue to be, critical of Obama administration policies with which I do not agree. But it’s quite clear that Obama himself has become a symbol to the world that the lone cowboy attitude of George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney) is a thing of the past.

We really need to remember, forever and ever, how absolutely reviled Bush became on a global basis. The only place he’s going to be welcomed in the world is in the protected confines of gatherings of the GOP faithful. Assuming they’re both still alive in 2012, it will be interesting to see if either Bush or Cheney will be allowed to show their faces at the next Republican National Convention.

Come to think of it, I’d love to see it.

It’s comforting to know that the adults are back in charge.

Major tip of the hat to Al Rogers @ Daily Kos for his great video and photo gallery.

It goes like this. Sarah Palin was making a rambling speech the other day to a GOP Dinner in Alaska. Well, don’t ya know, those Alaskans surely wanted to know what was going on down in the lower 48, so Sarah set off on a little whine about the campaign. Then she tells the story about looking for someone to pray with before her debate with Joe Biden. Here is a little bit from CNN:

“So I’m looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little extra,” she said of the moments before the debate. “And the McCain campaign, love –em, you know, they’re a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray.”

As the audience laughed, Palin noted that she meant no disrespect to the McCain campaign and that ended up saying a prayer with her daughter Piper.

It is not clear exactly why Sarah Palin snubbed the staffers at prayer time. Perhaps she has a thing about germs and they didn’t have very clean hands. Or maybe Sarah Palin has supernatural powers and can see into the souls of McCain campaign staffers. What is obvious, though, is that Sarah Palin made a bad choice.

Sarah Palin ended up praying with her daughter Piper. Now Piper is a darling little girl, but Sarah Palin settling on her to pray with ended up costing her that debate with Joe Biden. Yes, Palin was right that she needed to pray, given her inexperience and tenuous hold on facts. So she picked Piper, who might have the best intentions in the world and a cute outfit from Nordstroms, but evidently doesn’t have much pull with the Almighty. The results are the results, after all – Palin lost that debate badly, and it was one any MILF worth her salt could have pulled off, if just she’d chosen a prayer partner with a little clout with the guy upstairs.

I’m guessing Sarah Palin chose Piper to pray with again just before Redoubt exploded last week. What we may have here is a woman with dreadful judgement as concerns choosing prayer partners. Heck, if I’m going to a tea party, or maybe looking for someone to skip stones with, then Piper is among my top choices. Not a doubt. But as a prayer partner? I’m thinking she may have cost her mother the debate, and maybe the election as well.

When he lost the nomination for President from his Party, Mitt Romney focused on his PAC, the Free and Strong America PAC. The goal of the PAC was to support Republican candidates, but the Boston Globe reports that only 12% of the funds actually went to support those candidates. Here’s the scoop from the Boston Globe:

Republican Mitt Romney is laying the groundwork for a possible White House campaign in 2012, hiring a team of staff members and consultants with money from a fund-raising committee he established with the ostensible purpose of supporting other GOP candidates.

The former Massachusetts governor has raised $2.1 million for his Free and Strong America political action committee. But only 12 percent of the money has been spent distributing checks to Romney’s fellow Republicans around the country.

Instead, the largest chunk of the money has gone to support Romney’s political ambitions, paying for salaries and consulting fees to over a half-dozen of Romney’s longtime political aides, according to a Globe review of expenditures.

Romney founded the Free and Strong America Committee shortly after dropping out of the 2008 presidential primary. He filled its coffers by telling conservative contributors around the country that their money would be used to support Republican candidates and causes.

According to the Globe analysis, he spent $244,000 on contributions to congressional and other candidates between April and the November elections. He has spent more than twice as much on staff salaries and contracts to hire professional fund-raisers, who are compiling contributor lists that will serve Romney well in a future presidential campaign.

In essence, Romney is financing a political enterprise that he can use to remain a national GOP leader and use as a springboard should he decide to launch another presidential bid for 2012.

What the Romney funds from the Free and Strong America PAC went for was for Romney to stump around the country for Republican candidates, and I suppose that would have been fine, but as a strategy for his future political aspirations, Romney spent money far better keeping his face in front of voters than he did for the Republican candidates. In a follow-up article from UPI, Romney’s people are a bit honest about that purpose:

“The main purpose of Mitt Romney’s PAC is to enable him to travel around the country on virtually a full-time basis to campaign and raise funds for candidates and to promote policies that will strengthen America,” Fehrnstrom said.

Still, that statement conflicts from the Boston Globe report. It’s an attempt to put out the fire. But let’s say Romney WAS working for those candidates. His web site has a list of the candidates he supported. How did they do?

Well, Romney’s money was spent on some sure winners, like Thad Cochran, Lamar Alexander, James Inhofe, Jeff Sessions and Dana Rohrabacher, for instance. did those candidates really need a boost from Mitt romney? No, they needed neither the money nor Romney’s appearances. But Romney needs these heavy hitters if he has a chance in 2012, that’s for sure. There’s the real reason he made an effort on their behalf.

Romney also spent some money on some losers. Gordon Smith, John McCain, Sarah Palin, etc. I’m thinking Romney’s efforts did zero good in helping these candidates. But some of these candidates are very popular on the extremist right wing of the GOP, so Romney standing next to, say, a Sarah Palin, probably helps his stock among the whack job religious conservatives who are still suspicious of Romney’s funny underwear. Hey, the Mormon Church is taking a beating what with its supoort of Proposition 8, and I’m thinking that probably helps Romeny in the extremist Christian wing of his party. Still, he’s got to go a long way to heal that rift.

And then Romney supported certifiable whack jobs like Michelle Bachman and Saxby Chambliss. If Romney has any hope of reaching across the aisle and drawing independents to his side, he needs to ditch these folks, but it appears his aim with the Free and Strong America PAC was to elect Republicans, not to elect people who are for a free America. Bachman is on record wanting to rid the Congress of members who

Once a year, I and a few dozen other reporters and columnists write a Labor Day story. And, like most Americans we don’t remember our history.

We don’t remember that the Knights of Labor created the first Labor Day in 1882 and that Congress made it a national holiday in 1894.

Almost none of us will write about the personalities of the labor movement. About Mother Jones (1830-1930), the militant “angel of the coal fields” for more than six decades. About “Big Bill” Haywood (1869-1928) who organized the Industrial Workers of the World, a universal coalition to fight for the rights of all labor. About cigar-chomping Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), the first president of the American Federation of Labor, a job he held for 38 years.

We won’t be seeing any stories about Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) who led strikes in 1916 to reduce the work week to 48 hours, from the standard 54–60 hours, and then helped create the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) before becoming a major political force for workers during the labor-friendly Roosevelt administration. Missing will be remembrances of Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), known as the “father of grassroots political campaigns” who worked alongside Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) who used Alinsky’s tactics to organize the United Farm Workers.

Hardly any of us remember Heywood Broun (1888-1939), one of the nation’s best-paid columnists who risked his own financial stability to create The Newspaper Guild in 1935 to help those reporters making one-hundredth of his salary. Most reporters never heard about him or the history of the Guild. After all, we may believe that unions are acceptable for factory line workers, but we’re “professionals,” and mistakenly believe we don’t need unions; we’ll just continue to get assigned unpaid overtime and split shifts, while working for low wages, minimal benefits, and without a minimally-accept

Earlier today, I posted a link to a New York Times article on the heat that AIG executives are currently feeling. Needless to say, I’m not particularly sympathetic. While I don’t think anyone in the progressive blogosphere is overtly calling for a Marie Antoinette-style social accounting, there’s a certain visceral satisfaction in knowing that the AIG bonus kerfluffle is causing a bit of angst among the upper crust.

The NY Times article implies that AIG execs are scared for their families and children due to anonymous / unsourced “death threats”. That’s completely understandable, if true. However, I find it odd that according to the same article, none of the unidentified execs who’ve expressed this concern have actually contacted their local authorities. Wouldn’t it make sense that if someone were receiving such threats, that they’d be getting on the phone to their local constabulary and demanding that someone in law enforcement investigate the threats? Or that they’d at least be packing for a quick getaway to the house in Aruba for a week or two until the current shitstorm passes?

One other thing that’s caught my interest over the past few days is a variety of comments I’ve read regarding the potential for a populist uprising – AIG bonuses only having been the straw that broke the camel’s back. While some of the comments seem supportive, many of them work a variation on an old Beatles theme: “You say you want a revolution; we’d all like to see the plan.”

The funny thing is, the lyrics to the song, Revolution can be viewed as Lennon and McCartney’s parody answer to the concern trolls of their day. Or not. Pick your interpretation.

In the late 1960′s, at the height of the Vietnam war, The Beatles were trying to tell us something:

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world…

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
We’d all love to see the plan…

Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney were visionaries. We can argue all day (and probably a college semester worth of academic analysis) over the meaning of the lyrics. But if you view the lyrics in terms of current day discourse in internet forums, the words make a lot of sense as applied to the online “want a plan” concern trolls.

There has been no revolution in the course of history, including America’s own revolution in the 18th century, that really had a plan, per se. Revolution, peaceful or otherwise, has always been the spawn of perceived social injustice.

True social change happens because we, the people finally hit a breaking point. Revolutionary incidents just happen – there aren’t flow charts, power point presentations, war gaming, etc. – just a critical mass of pissed off people of regular means who have finally gotten tired of the status quo.

Revolution tends to be preceded by attempts to change the system internally. When those attempts are co-opted from the inside, or fail due to brutal oppression, people start to try to force the desired social change from the margins of society. Incident by incident, the margins start to push toward the center, and if / when momentum for change builds to a rolling boil, either the lid flies off the pot (violent revolution) or cooler heads from both sides reach for the heat controls and turn down the flame via accommodation of grievances.

But let’s be clear: revolution never starts with a plan. It begins with true anger (and disparate incidents) that eventually coalesce into a larger action. When that larger action grows sufficiently to become self-sustaining, change finally happens – and then the power point slides can be developed to map out a path forward.

Revolution is messy and untidy, by lack of an inherent plan or design. Lennon and McCartney parrot today’s concern trolls:

But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright…

It’s hard to believe that anyone in a civilized society in 2009 would actually view violent civil unrest as a desirable outcome of social injustice, and we can all hope that it will never come to such a conclusion. But many years ago, long before the Beatles pressed their first vinyl, Thomas Jefferson expressed a “natural law” that even Clarence Thomas could get behind:

…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…

We’ve reached a point of national self-examination where it’s time to truly reconsider the direction we’re heading, and America’s contribution to global society.

Barack Obama was elected president on a platform of step-change, not incremental improvements. The 2006 congressional tidal wave that carried over to 2008 was born from the same desire. I opined many months ago that to affect real change, Obama had to be willing to be a one term president, and totally dismantle the status quo, no matter how loud the howls from the right wing oligarchs.

That’s the first stage of revolution described above: where attempts need to be made to work from the inside. And that’s OK, as far as it goes. If Obama is not willing to take the chances, and is not willing to be a one term president, then it’s easy to imagine that the margins will start to push on the outside of the envelope. That’s when it gets ugly.

We can all hope and pray that the need for such a radical social overhaul will never become so black and white, because there will always be charismatic (and less desirable) potential leaders ready to fill the void from the margins. The end result could be truly less desirable. Unfortunately, that is exactly the outcome that our government and its corporate benefactors seem to be courting.

Some days, it’s almost like they’re daring us.

The young ingenue is named for the home of ESPN in Connecticut, deep in the liberal east coast of our fair land, though she was raised in a home in far away Alaska with a view of Russia outside her windows. Her mother is a political leader on the rise, according to some, and her father is king of the Irondogs. The would-be husband is named after a pair of jeans. Their romance has dominated the tabloids and legitimate news outlets since last September, when the would-be bride’s mother announced the budding romance, or at least the issue from that romance. In December that same mother announced the enduring nature of the couple’s realtionship, as quoted here in the Anchorage Daily News:

She had said in December that her daughter and Johnston “are committed to accomplish what millions of other young parents have accomplished, to provide a loving and secure environment for their child.”

Yesterday it was confirmed by young Levi Johnston that the storybook romance between Bristol Palin and himself was over. Also from the Achorage Daily News:

Johnston, 19, told The Associated Press that he and 18-year-old Bristol Palin mutually decided “a while ago” to end their relationship. He declined to elaborate as he stood outside his family’s home in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage.

He also said some details of the breakup, rumors of which had been swirling on the Internet, were inaccurate.

In other words, don’t believe the Star, which has some bit of carping from Levi’s sister, who evidently was named for a German car. Mercede had claimed that Bristol was making it difficult for anyone on Levi’s side of the family to see the baby that issued from this marriage, rumored to have been named for a Matthew McConaughy character. (OK, I started that rumor, but it has about as much fidelity as anything else coming out of the Alaska Governor’s office, doesn’t it?)

Tabloid journalism will mourn this storybook romance gone awry. American politics will likely go on, and has an opportunity to focus on real issues. Perhaps this will help Sarah Palin fade into the background of American poltiics, but not if she has anything to say about it. This reporter, at least, hopes that Bristol Palin and her son Tripp find happiness and success in that cold state of Alaska, and hopes that Levi Johnston finds a way to finish his schooling and also to serve as a fine father to Tripp. I also hope this is the last I ever write about them, or that the rest of the media does, for their sakes.

In last fall’™s election campaign the GOP used an ad in Ohio that ripped off the Jackson Browne golden oldie, ‘œRunning on Empty.’ The point they were trying to get across was that the Obama campaign energy policy would leave us without gas, or something like that. Jackson Browne was offended by the ad, and has sued all of the above, John McCain, the RNC, and etc. Turns out John McCain’™s defense is that he never approved the use of the song. The man helped write the campaign laws, for Christ’™s sake, and he can’™t take personal responsibility for this kind of bungling? Here’™s his defense, from Wired.com:

I was not involved at all in any way in the writing, creation, production, distribution or dissemination of the video, nor do I have any knowledge whatsoever of how this video was written, created, produced or disseminated or who was involved in any aspect of the writing, creation, production, distribution or dissemination of the video. I was completely unaware that this video even existed until I was informed of it after this lawsuit was filed.

The judge didn’™t buy it.

Despite McCain’™s claims of being a hapless dupe for his party, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner said (.pdf) the RNC and McCain were so intertwined ‘” what the judge called an ‘œagency relationship’ ‘” that McCain stays in the case. The judge wrote that, even if McCain’™s statement were true, ‘œonce an agency relationship is established, the principal is liable for the acts of her agent, even if the principal does not expressly authorize or instruct her agent to take any action.’

The judge also did not agree with the Republicans and McCain that Browne’™s lawsuit was bogus. Among other things, the judge kept the lawsuit alive to give the defendants a chance to demonstrate how using about 20 seconds of the song in the commercial was a fair use.

Yes, persons running for political office are responsible, just like we are, for using and paying for the artistic products they want to emply to back their own ambitions.

In the interest of full disclosure, my son goes to sleep quite well to Jackson Browne’™s ‘œJamaica Say You Will.’ I have not played ‘œRosie’ for him.