If you use your imagination, you can almost hear the political gears grinding in the Oval Office over this decision. Valerie Jarrett and Kathleen Sibelius are arguing passionately for the preservation of women’s rights. You owe it to them, Mr. President⎯not just politically, but on principle. It’s everything you stand for in a nutshell.

At the other end of the sofa, Bill Daley and Joe Biden⎯two veteran Catholic pols who should know⎯imploring him to let this battle slide and live to fight another day. “The blue collar types won’t go for this,” they counsel, “even though their wives all use birth control. The Republicans’ll turn this into a ‘war on religion.’ They’ll make the slippery slope argument!”

Evangelical feelings weren’t even considered. After all, their hatred is visceral, and how many times can you vote against the same candidate?

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The birth control brouhaha" »

There were some who argued that the government should have imposed rationing of fuel, foods and consumer goods, as we did in World War II. Not because we needed to, but just to be a constant reminder that there was a war on.

It was somehow unseemly that people blithely gassed up their gargantuan SUVs while our troops were fighting in the oil fields. But the Bush administration felt that the best way to keep Americans from getting in the way of executing the strategy (whatever it was) was to keep the war below the radar. The American people, above all, should not suffer privation. Privation costs votes.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: End of the Iraq War III" »

Well, that was certainly a bust. In hindsight, it looks like our trillion bucks and thousands of casualties didn’t exactly produce the shining democratic example to other Middle Eastern regimes the neocons were hoping for.

Instead, we’re leaving behind a weak sectarian government that will be a puppet of the Iranians, the very bad guys Saddam was doing a fine job of containing before we took him out. Nice job.

Not that our troops let us down. They went in there and fought for their country, the way they wanted to and the way they were expected to. It was the civilian leadership that failed in its duty by squandering them in a pointless endeavor.

If you want to blame somebody for Iraq, blame Florida voters (and not for the reason you’d think). The late Lawton Chiles got tired of being a U.S. Senator from Florida and came back home to run for governor back in 1994. Had he not edged Jeb Bush out in that election, the smart son would have been the heir apparent to the presidency. Instead, W., as governor of Texas, was the only Bush left standing to anoint.

Jeb, whether or not you agree with his politics, would have been competent enough that Poppy Bush wouldn’t have felt compelled to attach training wheels to his boy’s administration in the form of Dick Cheney. Jeb probably wouldn’t have allowed Cheney and his paranoid fellow travelers anywhere near the White House, anyway.

Which is to say that we here in Florida had plenty of chances to screw things up, and we took advantage of every one of them.

Assigning blame to the other side when things go badly and taking credit for good news, even when credit is not due, is the stuff of politics. Any party would and should do this; it’s what parties are for.

Things get tricky, of course, when your victory strategy of hanging responsibility for the nation’s ills on the president involves, in effect, rooting for hard times to continue until your side takes power. It can look a tad unpatriotic, in fact. The only thing to do when rare glad tidings are announced is to keep your mouth shut and hope that unhappier days lie just around the corner.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The latest unemployment figures" »

It was an unlovely moment. A quintessentially American one, too, since as a nation we love to voice our true feelings lustily.

I’m sure there were many fans in the NASCAR stands who were embarrassed when their brethren booed the nation’s First Lady, and who were ashamed on their behalf for not having enough respect to at least keep their mouths shut if they didn’t approve of the way the woman’s husband is running the country. After all, she came all the way down to help the families of veterans in need.

It really isn’t about respect for the First Lady, though. It’s that many Americans (some of whom attend NASCAR races, and some who do not) feel that she is a usurper to her position, as her husband is to his office. They don’t actually see the Obamas as President and First Lady, because to them they are squatters in the White House. Their very existence sullies the institutions they represent. It’s the same attitude that allows a member of the U.S. Congress to feel perfectly comfortable shouting “You lie!” during the State of the Union speech.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The NASCAR diss of the First Lady" »

Even though Herman Cain is in the midst of his final meltdown as flavor of the month, I had to get in this last lick (sorry) before he completely dropped out of sight to join Michele Bachmann in well-deserved obscurity.

Yesterday’s performance with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was so spectacularly inept, particularly for a person who tries to present himself as the potential leader of the free world, that it couldn’t be allowed to pass without notice.

All I can conclude is that the conservatives really, really hate Mitt Romney—so much so that they have embraced a succession of candidates that resembles nothing if not the stream of characters that emerges, miraculously, from the tiny car at the circus. Let’s hope it’s just to send a message and that they aren’t really serious. Are we in for calliopes at the inaugural ball?

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Cain's foreign policy" »

I don’t blame Chris Christie. The white-hot media scrutiny was just beginning to crank up, and it wasn’t going to be pretty. In the end, he still gets to misuse a state helicopter to fly to his son’s sporting events, and that’s almost as good as having Air Force One without the attendant hassles.

It looks like this is the best the Republicans are going to do, so they might as well start getting that lovin’ feeling. How frustrating it must be to have your opponent in the White House with a 42 percent approval rating, the economy in the toilet, and all you can scrape up are these two characters.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Chris Christie bows out" »

It’s in keeping with the bizarre way the 2012 elections are shaping up that the most important endorsement any candidate of either party has managed to land so far is from a foreigner.

Considering that President Obama cannot win reelection without Florida’s electoral votes, and that our recession-ravaged state could easily swing either way a year from now, anything that might get disillusioned Sunshine State Obama voters off their sofas and down to the polls could spell the difference between national victory and defeat.

This is purely anecdotal, but I talk to a lot of people down here in New York’s sixth borough, and their sentiments about the president’s handling of Israel⎯and the Middle East conflict in general⎯range from bewilderment to disappointment to anger to disgust. “He hasn’t even visited Israel as president yet. What’s he thinking?” one person said to me. Symbolism means a lot in this thorny corner of politics.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Bibi's stamp of approval" »

“Class war.” How absurd. House Speaker John Boehner has said that pitting different income levels against one another is “not the American way.” He conveniently omits that America has been in a class war for years now, and the top 1 percent has been winning it to the detriment of the lower 80 percent. For his sponsors, it is very much the American way.

Obama’s advisers have tried, perhaps naively, to present the president as a reasonable compromiser, hoping that Republicans would respond in kind. That might have worked 50 years ago, when everybody saw benefit in getting along, but the problem now is that petulance and intransigence have been overwhelmingly effective in today’s politics. All that strategy did was to make him look weak.

The key, then, is to be equally petulant and intransigent, but in a way that resonates with the vast swath of the American people. The top one percent, while they do have most of the cards stacked in their favor, still have only one vote each, just like the poorest among us (at least, those who haven’t been disenfranchised by Republican vote suppression efforts).

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama's "class war"" »

Most self-respecting administrations, at this mature point in their terms, are reeling from at least one crippling scandal. But, as in so many other departments, the Obama Presidency has let us down.

This Solyndra brouhaha does involve the not-insignificant amount of half-a-billion dollars of taxpayer money (talk about shovel-ready), but size matters little compared to whether there is any sex involved, and there doesn’t seem to be any here. We might have derived more energy benefit out of the money by burning it directly rather than investing it in a shaky solar panel company, but on the surface, at least, it appears to be more of a case of boneheadedness than malfeasance. It’s a dry, uninteresting scandal, not even rating a “-gate.”

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Barack Obama and the Solyndra scandal" »

I’ve indulged in a thought exercise lately. What if, in 2012, a disgruntled and notoriously fickle electorate, fed up with high jobless numbers, decided that it had had it with the Obama Administration’s flounderings and voted in a Rick Perry or Mitt Romney as president? What if all the so-called anti-voter fraud laws promulgated by Republican legislatures in the various states worked as intended, disenfranchising core Democratic voters so that both houses of Congress went Republican (and a filibuster-proof Senate were created)?

If we gave the Republicans the full set of keys to the store, with unfettered access to every nook and cranny, what would they do with the privilege? Would they whack taxes on wealthy “job creators” and corporations to absolute zero? After all, if lower taxes theoretically (if not empirically) create more jobs, then logically no taxes whatsoever ought to yield a tidal wave of them, bringing in so much revenue from a newly employed middle class that the ban on upper-level taxes can continue indefinitely.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The new poverty numbers" »

When you get right down to it, there isn’t much a president can do to affect the economy in a government that is both divided by design and, as in our current situation, politically.

It ultimately boils down to “optics,” which is political jargon for how something looks to the average citizen—for example, giving a ballyhooed speech in hopes that prospective 2012 voters will come away with the impression that the president actually has his hands on the controls of commerce and is playing them like the stops of a pipe organ.

His only tools—or weapons, if you wish⎯are cajolery and shame. Judging by recent events in Congress with the debt ceiling debacle, cajolery is out as far as Republicans in the House are concerned. They will not countenance anything that might help burnish President Obama’s image with the public, even if it happens to be best for the country.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The President's big jobs speech II" »

To be fair, the Democrats were just as hard on W. whenever he went off to Crawford to clear brush.

Wait a second. By this point in his term, he’d already taken three times as many vacation days as President Obama.

Well, okay. But the nation wasn’t in a crisis, the way it is now.

Wait a second. Under Bush, we sustained the worst attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor, and we started two separate wars that weren’t going too well.

Fine, but Bush wasn’t really running the country. Cheney, Rummy and the neocon cabal were. W. was just the front man. What difference did it make if he went on vacation?

Well, you’ve got us there.

Remember President Obama’s campaign promise that he was going to “change the way Washington works?” Unfortunately, he fulfilled it. Who’d have thought we’d be pining for the good old days back in 2008 when the parties in Congress couldn’t agree on anything, but at least one of them didn’t have a death wish?

One can probably lay the rise of the tea party at Barack Obama’s feet, not for anything he did or didn’t do, but for who he is. There’s nothing he can do about that, but there is something he can do to lead this country, which is to stop pussyfooting around trying to appease its adherents.

Instead, he can stand firm and push a sweeping, budget-busting, comprehensive public works program, whether he thinks he can get it past Republicans or not. If he can rally Americans behind him on this, he will prevail, because it makes sense that getting people back to work eventually reduces the deficit.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The hope and change president" »

Remember Fred Thompson? He was one of the conservatives’ great hopes, too. He had swagger. He also boasted impeccable credentials, having played a Manhattan district attorney on Law & Order for several years. As it turned out, once he was on the stump he didn’t have much gravitas. His bid lasted about 48 hours before fizzling out. Just the other night, I saw him selling reverse mortgages in a TV ad. Guess he has enough gravitas for that.

Now, I ain’t sayin’ Rick Perry is as much of a lightweight as ol’ Fred, but when someone poised to make the plunge is surrounded by that much buzz, it’s hard for any mere mortal to live up to the hype. Maybe Perry isn’t a mere mortal. Maybe he really is God’s candidate, just like he believes himself to be.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Rick Perry waits in the wings" »

Well, they did the unthinkable. Standard and Poor’s gave us the shaft. In the suspenseful lead-up to the final debt-ceiling bill, the more conservative Republicans in Congress were talking tough and allowing as how a downgrade, or even a default, didn’t matter all that much. It must matter to them after all, the way they’re now heaping blame for it on President Obama.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: America gets downgraded" »

It’s the financial stigma Republicans won’t talk about, and average Americans won’t remember because it happened before last week.

It was the golden son, George W. Bush, who inherited a humming economy and a surplus from his predecessor. Thanks to his bumbling, and that of the two houses of Congress his party owned for six years⎯we squandered our wealth and undercut our revenue base to the point where yahoos elected in a reactionary wave to the appalling spending spree now threaten to ruin the reputation of the country we all love. The only silver lining to the crash having happened in late 2008 is that there is no way it can be blamed on his successor⎯President Obama’s detractors have to content themselves with attacking him for cleaning up the mess too slowly, and (horrors!) for spending more money in the process.

Meanwhile, President Mission Accomplished slumbers on, enjoying the undisturbed, dreamless sleep of the benighted.

Without even trying, Florida Gov. Rick Scott could turn out to be a national hero.

That’s right, after a mere seven months in office, he’s become so unpopular in the Sunshine State that he’s now a liability to his party. The Republican hierarchy is worried that, thanks to his abuses, Floridians in November of 2012 will fail to pull the lever for the Republican nominee at all, or worse, vote for Obama in retaliation.

There is no strategy for a Republican to win the required number of electoral votes next year without taking Florida. In effect, Scott may singlehandedly save feckless Obama-hating Americans from accidentally electing the likes of a Bachmann or a Palin.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Rick Scott, American hero" »

Talk about being in an awkward position. Here’s President Obama, trying to smooth over a group of gay activists in Manhattan, and instead of being greeted like a hero, he’s forced to endure jeers and catcalls for not giving them the Full Monty on same-sex marriage. Hours later, New York legalizes it, leaving him eating dust and playing social catch-up to Dick Cheney, of all people.

This is one of those times when heading the great Democratic coalition can be...challenging, to say the least. Let’s not forget that⎯unlike Republicans⎯the Democrats are a loose alliance of interest groups that have banded together to push their own agendas by agreeing to help others with theirs, much like a nationwide Amish barn-raising.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama threads the needle on gay marriage" »

Don’t you remember way back, like four or five years ago, when to talk about winding down a war was condemned as “cutting and running?” When to even question the president’s thinking on the matter of our various foreign military involvements was labeled as unpatriotic, that it was undermining our brave troops who were out there in harm’s way?

Well, today’s Republicans are betting you don’t remember, either. Now that we have a Democratic president running things, it’s all right to question motives like getting involved in a war overseas just to topple a dictator. And now that Afghanistan has lost its luster, we can simply label it “Obama’s War,” and agitate to withdraw the troops without fear that we’re undermining their morale in the process. That’s the wonderful thing about short memories.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Anti-Afghanistan war sentiment" »

I wouldn’t want to be in Mitt Romney’s shoes right now. The punditocracy is pushing the conventional wisdom that, despite having an empty account in the personality bank, all Romney needs to do is trumpet his business experience and sit tight while the economy continues to tank. No amount of Obamic charisma and charm will be able to save a president who can’t deliver the goods. In frustration, we will even turn to a stiff like Romney to save us. At least, that’s the theory.

Neither the chatterers nor Romney appear to have thought this thing through. Since he’s offering little or nothing in the way of specific solutions to our economic problems, what remains is a strategy that consists of betting on the president to fail. Unfortunately, if Obama fails it means the country has failed as well. This puts Romney in the uncomfortable position of cheering for higher (or at least, sustained) unemployment and deepening misery.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Mitt Romney, the Wild One" »

The ongoing Middle East conflict is so sensitive, so nuanced and so tinder-dry that any alteration in what is said, what is not said, the timbre of the saying of it, and which parts are emphasized and de-emphasized can cause a conflagration to break out.

Added to these variables are the one that has been occupying the news of late: Who says it. George W. Bush, who was considered a “Friend of Israel,” could say that peace negotiations should use as their basis the pre-1967 borders with mutually-agreed swaps. No ripples in the waters of the status-quo. But Barack Obama says it, and suddenly it’s an international incident.

A colleague who has been to Israel several times, and who has her finger on that country’s political pulse, says that our president is not a popular figure in Israel. This is putting it mildly. She says the general feeling there is that Obama “is too busy trying to suck up to the Arabs.”

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama's Israel stumble" »

Some would say the Israelis are being intransigent, and have always been. Of course, if you look at it from the Israeli point of view, their homeland is an area about the size of New Jersey, and all their neighbors would like to annihilate them. When they balk at making any concessions that might erode their ability to defend themselves, one can hardly blame them.

Some would say the Palestinians are being intransigent, and have always been. Of course, if you look at it from the Palestinian point of view, a bunch of foreigners arrived in their homeland carrying this sense of entitlement in their collective breast, stole their property, threw them out of their own country, and continue to squat there with no intention of ever giving it back. When they balk at making any any concessions that amount to institutionalizing and legalizing this perceived crime against their nation, one can hardly blame them.

Barack Obama is the latest American president to plunge into the fray. He must do so because every president before him has done so, at least since the establishment of the State of Israel. American presidents are expected to try to broker an accord; the rest of the world and the American electorate demand that they at least try. It’s part of the job description.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama's Middle East speech" »

Unlike candidates Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, Newt Gingrich doesn’t embark on quixotic undertakings like running for president solely out of principle. He does it because he thinks he can win.

This demonstrates how out of touch he’s become with the down-home folks who comprise his would-be base. Gingrich is a Washington creature, and as such is lionized by the beltway media and establishment GOP party leaders as a towering intellect who bubbles ideas like a champagne fountain at a Long Island wedding. On paper, he is formidable.

If you want to analyze his strategy, however⎯which is to embrace the favorite hot-button causes of the cultural right, brandish his newfound religiosity, make slanderous assertions about Barack Obama, flog fiscal austerity, and bash the entire Muslim faith whenever possible⎯then you know that his intended listeners have certain strongly-held beliefs about personal and moral responsibility. They will expect their candidate to be a paragon of probity.

Ronald Reagan was able to get away with being divorced because he was an affable guy. That goes a long way with the American electorate (see the “Who would you most like to have a beer with?” polls). Gingrich is not only twice divorced, he has openly admitted he was unfaithful to two of his wives. He asked one for a divorce while she was in the hospital, recovering from cancer. Does he honestly think women voters will ignore all this?

Combine this with his demeanor, which falls far short of Reagan’s in the “beer” category (Gingrich would probably stick you with the tab—just because he feels so passionate about his country), and it’s difficult to imagine how God-fearing souls could bring themselves to pull the lever for him, considering there will be a lot of other Republicans on the primary ballot doing the identical pander to his.

That isn’t to say we won’t be looking forward to his performance in the debates. Scorched earth, anyone?

If I were a Latino, me estaría herviendo la sangre (my blood would be boiling) right about now.

El Presidente came down to El Paso on a campaign sweep, paying lip service to the notion of immigration reform, but he was really laying it out to the Latino community this way: “Vote Democratic, because we’ll only show you benign neglect, whereas the Republicans really have it in for you.”

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama strokes the Latino community" »

Somewhere in a secret aerie high above the mean streets, Republican money men are relaxing in their high-backed wing chairs and drawing more easily on their Havanas now that The Donald has been cut down to size.

Ever since the appearance of the long form birth certificate a mere fortnight ago, the sands beneath the golden-domed dilettante’s feet have been melting away. Then came the humiliation in front of the nation’s media at the very hands of his nemesis, the pretender to the throne.

Finally, there was the bin Laden tour de force, which permanently discredited any assertion that the occupant of the White House was incompetent.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Trump takes a tumble" »

A friend of mine claims that she receives PBS signals in her head. She knows this for a fact because one day, she was out gardening and suddenly “Masterpiece Theatre” started coming in. Just to prove she was right about possessing this unique ability, she went inside, turned on the TV, and sure enough the transition was seamless. I asked her why, then, she wasted so much money on cable, and she said, “Unfortunately, I don’t receive video.”

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Birthers, Deathers and Truthers" »

A big day. More later.

So the White House finally did it. The Donald is strutting around like a gamecock, taking credit for forcing the administration to do something no one else had been able to. Effortlessly shifting gears, the pompous pompadour has moved on to questioning the president’s academic qualifications for getting into Columbia and Harvard, two institutions of higher learning that remained unattainable to Mr. Trump despite his financial advantages.

Meanwhile, the “legitimate” birthers are left scrabbling for a rationale, the way millenialists do after they’ve predicted the world will end and the sun stubbornly rises the next morning. Not to worry. They won’t believe this birth certificate any more than the last one.

The fact remains that this is the first president in history who has had to present documents to prove his origins. Some say it’s because his doubters believe he’s a closet communist. They said that about FDR, too, but nobody asked if he was born in the United States. John McCain has a much more tenuous hold on the “natural born” label than Mr. Obama, yet no birther movement coalesced to doubt his background, either.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama reveals birth certificate" »

The first polls are out since the unveiling of the Ryan Plan and the Obama response to it. It appears that a majority of Americans are in favor of including an increased tax rate on those making over $250,000 per year as part of the deficit-reduction mix.

Democrats favor it overwhelmingly. Republicans less so, but it’s still a majority. Even rich people favor it. They have said they feel they ought to pay more, but no one is asking them to. The only ones who don’t favor it are the Tea Partiers, who are against raising taxes of any kind, but these same Tea Partiers have indicated in the same polls that they don’t want Medicare to be fooled with. So they shouldn’t be taken seriously, anyway. You can’t have it both ways.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Tone-deaf Republicans" »

There were elements of President Obama’s budget speech that left us wanting more, but in one area he delivered. He was right to cast the coming battle over the deficit as a moral issue, since the main battleground will be entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which exist because at the time of their inception, this nation felt an obligation to fulfill a moral imperative.

The Republican Party, particularly its Tea Party wing, is making an amoral, purely financial argument. The argument is simplistic and cunning, yet does not stand up to the test of the American character.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the deficit must be reduced. How it is done will depend on who is able to make the most compelling case to the American people. Republicans, in their zeal not to raise taxes on anyone⎯particularly the wealthy⎯will continue to push the discredited notion that by removing any financial fetters from the well-off, we will stimulate an economy that will float all boats.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Gutting Medicare II" »

President Obama was giving his deficit reduction speech while I was inking this cartoon, and among his proposals were the expected ones about raising more revenue by closing loopholes and hiking taxes on the well-to-do.

Two questions immediately came to mind: First, why did it take so long for him to bring up the dreaded tax issue? He (and all of congress, except for a few lefties in safe districts) allowed the entire shutdown debate to continue with no mention of “revenue enhancement.” It was all about cost cutting.

Is the American public really so selfish, so irresponsible, that it cannot understand that the beneficence it has enjoyed for so long needs to be paid for somehow? And if not by us, then by our children? And is it so dense that it doesn’t understand that raising taxes on those who make over $250,000 per year is different than raising taxes on the middle class?

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Tax day for the rich" »

For a seduction to work, you need the cooperation of both parties.

Back in 2008, when Barack Obama was wooing the nation, he was saying all the things many of us wanted to hear. We were deep into Bush fatigue, especially toward the end when the economy collapsed (that’s right, it did happen during the Bush Administration, although it’s so easy to forget).

Here was a new face, telling us that he was going to come in like a fresh breeze, blow out the cobwebs, and change the way Washington did business. Of course, those of us who had been around long knew that they always say that. Nevertheless, we fell for the roses and chocolates because we so wanted to believe at that point.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama runs for reelection" »

We’ve done so well until now. Let’s not go and shoot ourselves in the foot. What little we know about this ragtag band of so-called “freedom fighters” is that they come from a part of Libya that is a popular recruiting ground for al-Qaida.

The UN mandate empowered the coalition to “do whatever is necessary” to protect innocent civilians from harm. We’re already stretching that language to the limit with our aggressive action, regardless of how you euphemize it (Did William Tecumseh Sherman really say, “Kinetic military engagement is hell?”).

“It wouldn’t be prudent,” to quote a former president, not to find out for certain that these people aren’t arsonists before we put gasoline and matches in their hands. Let’s take note, also, that the materiel we would supply to them isn’t exactly of the simple point-and-shoot variety. It’s sophisticated, as befits weaponry for which the U.S. taxpayers paid plenty in order that our defense contractors could bedazzle the bejeezus out of our military procurement people.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Arm the Libyan rebels?" »

In his speech about Libya the other night, President Obama hit all the right patriotic notes. After all, he was selling something, and there’s no better way to move merchandise than to butter up your customers.

Americans like to hear that they are an exceptional nation, and Obama, who has often been accused by conservatives of not properly accepting this notion, turned the tables and presented our exceptionalism as the key justification for intervening in the Libyan conflict.

For us to stand by and let Gadhafi massacre his own people, he asserted, would be to violate our very character as a people. It’s true that of all nations, we’re the ones most likely to involve ourselves militarily to protect the human rights of others, on the premise that to allow someone else’s rights to be trampled puts those of all in jeopardy.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obama's Libya speech" »

Admittedly, this cartoon is speculative, but it’s certainly as plausible as the brave Minutemen who fired the shot heard round the world at Concord and Lexington, New Hampshire (Even then, the Colonials knew it was going to be the first primary state, and accordingly relocated the border with Massachusetts until the skirmishes were over).

Or as credible as how someone’s passion for his country prompted him to commit adultery (“Oh, God…oh, God…oh GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!”).

One of the oddities about listening to the utterances of people like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich when they address friendly crowds is that they can say the most preposterous things, and no one among their nodding listeners ever steps up to correct them, or bursts out laughing at their inanity.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The tsunami...what really happened" »

Will they never learn?

We’ve had troops mired for years in two theaters, and they’re spread so thin that the stress of repeated tours of duty is breaking them. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Secretary of Defense said that anybody who considers getting involved in another Middle East conflict ought to have his head examined.

Yet, the armchair hawks in congress are ready to go to war all over again in Libya, and they have the gall to chastise the president for moving too slowly. Sure, it plays well back home, where people are screaming about gas prices. But it’s President Obama who, if he gets us involved militarily, will be lying awake nights with those lives on his conscience.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Send in the Marines?" »

Back in the glory days of the British Empire, the mother country was frequently accused of playing fast and loose with troops from the dominions. In WWI, for example, there was a perception Down Under that the cream of Aussie youth had been thrown into the meat grinder against the Turks at Gallipoli while tea-sipping British officers and regulars remained in the rear, thus avoiding the carnage. In the British mind, a British soldier’s life was somehow worth more, and should be conserved at the expense of others. At least, that was the perception.

It’s like that with the U. S. and the regimes we have historically propped up in the Middle East. Democracy is a beautiful thing. It begets prosperity and the freedom to pursue life’s enriching pleasures. But what’s good enough for our exceptional Shining City On The Hill isn’t good enough for the inhabitants of the oil-rich states of the Middle East.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Arab revolt" »

Nothing gets the right wing more lathered up than Michelle Obama, Wife of the Great Pretender, opening her mouth to render an opinion--even if it’s about something as innocuous and well-meaning as encouraging mothers to breast feed.

Michele Bachmann was first to screech off the mark, skillfully framing the issue as an attack on the IRS for declaring that breast pumps were medical devices for the purposes of tax deductions and medical flex accounts. Another overreach by the Nanny State, she said. This, of course, conveniently overlooks the fact that Tea Partiers are supposed to be against taxes of any kind, so technically, the decision ought to have pleased her.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Breast feeding with Michelle, Michele and Sarah" »

When I was in college, I took one of those “Physics for Poets” classes designed for art majors and other people who couldn’t count without using their fingers and toes, and who needed to fulfill a science requirement in order to graduate. Oceanography was an alternative, but it was already sold out.

Our professor opened his first lecture by saying, “This is how light travels.” He then scrawled out a ludicrously complex equation on the blackboard containing arcane symbols, superscripts, and for all we knew, Jane Fonda’s measurements. He whirled around to face slack jaws and a few signs of outright panic. “Okay,” he nodded sagely. “No more numbers in this course.”

Applause.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The Obama budget" »

To me, insistence on a punctilious, “authentic” interpretation of any document from another era is the safe haven of the small and fearful thinker.

We rightly esteem the legacy of enlightened reasoning and principles embodied by the U.S. Constitution, and the thinking that led to its writing ought to be revered and heeded as the philosophical bedrock upon which our way of life is built, but the act of divining the “original intent” of the authors from a 21st Century perspective is a form of freewheeling interpretation in itself.

Ought we modern readers to attempt to climb inside the heads of a group of men who never heard the sound of an internal combustion engine, who never conceived of machinery that could keep people artificially alive for months or even years, or who could translate “web” and “site” into Latin and Greek, but would be clueless as to the meaning of the two English words when combined?

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Egypt and the Tea Party" »

It looks like the Affordable Care Act is headed to the Supreme Court, thanks to a rash of conflicting lower court opinions.

Court kremlinologists in the media and legal communities, basing their prognostications on the previous records of the nine justices (you get a gold star if you can name all nine without cheating, and no…Judge Judy is not one of them), have already decided that “Obamacare” will be decided by a vote of 5-4, with the battlefield being the heart and mind of the Swing Justice, Anthony Kennedy (far left in this group portrait).

Why they say they know this is because the case turns on how you view the reach of government in individual lives, and at what point you feel that reach becomes an overreach. The much-reviled “individual mandate,” which is at the core of the battle, is either within the purview of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, or it’s an unjust intrusion, imposing a penalty on people for not doing something.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Obamacare headed for the Supreme Court" »

Just as we are finally becoming oversaturated with Sarah Palin, her tweets, her Facebook postings, her bull’s-eyes, her surveyor’s marks, her book signings and her narcissism, we learn that⎯like a female version of John the Baptist⎯she has only been preparing the way for the one who is to follow.

For a couple of years now, Michele Bachmann has lurked on the lunatic fringe, not exactly a household name. But she whose unabashed and unapologetic verbal bombs make Ms. Palin, by comparison, seem like a model of statesmanship is about to catapult herself onto the national stage in the form of a Tea Party (she is its self-proclaimed Grande Dame) rebuttal to both the President and the Republican establishment.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Michele Bachmann rises" »

How long do you think the outbreak of brotherly love between the parties is going to last? Well, let’s call it the appearance of an outbreak. As we know, in Washington it’s all about projecting an image for the day’s news cycle.

My guess is that we’ll be treated to some unlikely seating arrangements during the State of the Union Address (i.e. Schumer/Coburn), and then things should rapidly deteriorate to normal.

Republicans are, no doubt, heeding the latest poll numbers, which show President Obama’s approval ratings surging. If their past behavior is any indicator, they’re heeding them and coming to the wrong conclusions.

Obama’s newfound popularity is originating from the public perception that he has begun constructively engaging his political opponents for the betterment of the country. He does this whether the opposition likes it or not, and it has taken them tactically by surprise.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Big mob bust" »

So the Republicans have dutifully thrown the Tea Party people their bone. Yes, it was absurd and a waste of time, and while the Republicans won’t talk about it openly, they know just as well as everyone else how foolish it looked to pass legislation that was going nowhere.

These are the same people who accused the Democrats in the last Congress of putting their own agenda ahead of that of the American people, which purportedly consisted of jobs, jobs and jobs. This is why they inserted “job killing” into the title of their legislation, as a head fake toward relevance.

They were paying off a political obligation, and one must fulfill one’s promises. Yesterday’s vote, however, doesn’t eliminate the crosscurrent that the establishment GOP finds itself caught in.

The whirlwind that was unleashed at last year’s town hall meetings may have been directed at Democrats, but the Tea Partiers are still angry, they have no party loyalty, and they know when they’ve been played. They are not going to be satisfied with a mere kabuki dance and then quietly go back to their caves until the next election season. They will continue to clamor for the meaningful action they feel is their due.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The Obamacare repeal vote" »

Suddenly, now that the grand bargain has been struck over the Bush tax cuts, we don’t hear any whining out of the Republicans about budget-busting programs.

Remember, before the midterm elections, when President Obama was getting blamed for every penny of the deficit? It seems that since $700 billion of new debt is being incurred to finance tax cuts for the Republican Party’s most important constituency, the deficit is no longer a problem.

Oh, and let’s not forget that to Republicans, tax cuts don’t really have to be offset to balance the budget the way government programs have to be. You see, in the fantasy world of the Laffer Curve and Trickle-Down, tax cuts more than pay for themselves in increased economic activity. Just ask George W. Bush (but don't ask his father, George "Voodoo economics" Sr.).

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: The tax cut deal spreads the joy" »

The Democratic base can go ahead and scream that Obama caved on the Bush tax cut extension, but the fact is that the Republicans were going to go to the mat on this one, and the President knew it.

Making sure that corporations and the rich pay as little in taxes as possible is the core reason for the Republican Party’s existence. For Republican members of Congress to give an inch on this matter would be tantamount to throwing up their hands and admitting that they are just being obstructionist because it’s fun.

If progressives think that they can shame Republicans by staging populist votes of principle that highlight their allegiance to the wealthy over average, unemployed Americans, then they are being naïve. When it comes to this issue, there is no shame. This is existential. As Deep Throat once said, “Follow the money.”

Besides, the GOP has an ace in the hole. There's all that other stuff⎯the social issues like prayer in the schools, the death penalty, abortion, gun rights, gay bashing⎯that’s just cotton candy the GOP picked up along the way to entice the rubes in the hinterland to vote against their own economic self-interest.

It’s been working, too. Wave the prospect of, say, gays getting married in front of some God-fearing, churchgoing taxpayer, and he won’t see that behind the curtain, his earnest, sincere vote to “take America back” is being twisted to empower cynical plutocrats who are happily picking his pockets.

Barack Obama’s greatest handicap is that, as President, he must be concerned with the welfare of all Americans, not just the ones who can buy influence. The Republicans, not being burdened with that responsibility (and moreover, not caring if everybody knows it), will always hold the strongest hand in negotiations.

I used to think that Hillary Clinton was too strident, too self-centered, too opinionated and too vindictive to be President. Since then, another personage of the female persuasion has grabbed the center stage of politics, and by comparison Hillary seems like an exemplar of cool-headedness under fire.

Considering the plateful the incoming President was handed back in January of 2009, it has become more apparent than ever that simple, cold competency was and is the foremost quality needed in our leader in these tough times. The jury’s still out on Barack Obama in that regard, but Hillary has left no doubt that she possesses it in abundance.

I make light of her in this cartoon, but right now I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have in the hot seat when there’s so much ’splainin’ to do, as Ricky Ricardo might say. Not only is she handling a touchy situation with the same grace she displayed during the Monica Lewinsky circus, she might yet make a silk purse out of this mess.

Take, for example, the Gulf States’ constant behind-the-scenes badgering that we waste Iran and President I’m-A-Dinnerjacket for them. Now⎯thanks to the Wikileaks cables⎯ it’s out in the open that they, we, and Israel are all on the same side. You know that Arabic cliché, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Peace agreements have been forged on shakier grounds than this, and Hillary definitely has the resourcefulness to uncover opportunities in our newly revealed camaraderie.

May the Force be with you, Madame Secretary.

Being president is one of those jobs that is far more complex than outside observers⎯particularly the Greek choruses on both ends of the political spectrum⎯will ever be able to understand.

They look at it through their narrow prisms: Is he being the president we wanted him to be? The one we voted for? Is he being even more irresponsibly extreme than we imagined?

Only when you’re in the hot seat, though, can you truly comprehend the expectation that you’re meant to be the President of the entire United States and all its citizens, not just the Tea Party, the moderates, your liberal base, or whatever pressure group one might think of.

This is why the White House has to field simultaneous complaints that Barack Obama is both the most radical socialist who ever occupied the building, and that he is a sellout who only pays lip service to progressive causes.

Every group has advice on how he can succeed, if he would just do it their way.

But then, none of these people is the leader of the free world, when every utterance and action can have grievous consequences, and must be weighed in advance with great deliberateness. So, it’s easy to carp when you’re just doing it to hear your brains rattle, and everything is risk-free.

Just ask Sarah Palin.

My favorite period of any election cycle is the first few days after the polls have closed and the outcome is decided, when the party that won drops the façade and begins carefully recalibrating its campaign rhetoric to reflect reality.

This is when we find out how they really plan to use their newfound “mandate,” and what they admit that they can’t possibly do and never really thought they could but didn’t want to tell us until it was too late to take our votes back.

Continue reading "Chan Lowe: Post-election reality check" »

Reduce the deficit! Halt runaway spending! Starve the beast! Shrink government! It’s time to take our country back!

All lovely-sounding slogans, designed to snag votes. Something that House Speaker-elect Boehner and the rest of the Republican establishment know, however, is that actually making good on the exhortations is a much tougher proposition than shouting them out from the cheap seats.

We have learned from this election that in these times of extreme hardship, the American people are nothing if not impatient. It doesn’t matter who got us into the mess, it only matters that two years have passed since the last election and things aren’t getting better.

The Republicans and their Tea Party wing did an admirable job of getting themselves elected without having to delve into specifics. Let’s face it, there are two ways to reduce the deficit: raising revenue and lowering expenditures.

Since a Republican House will never raise taxes, that leaves cutting programs (the part they avoided talking about during the campaign). The military and national security are off the table, they tell us, so that leaves…

Social Security? Can’t cut people already getting it, or even people who are old enough to smell it. They’ve all paid into the system already. Young people? How can you expect them to keep paying in if you welsh on their future benefits?

Medicare? “Huh, whassat? We’re gonna have to start paying for Grandma’s dialysis? NO WAY, BOZO!”

And--finally--earmarks, which amount to almost nothing compared to the rest of the budget, anyway. “You mean we ain’t gonna get that civic center (or fairgrounds, or underpass, or highway spur) our congressman promised us after all?!!? We’re votin’ Democrat next time!”

Congratulations, Mr. Speaker…and our condolences.

One of the great bamboozlements of the last couple of years has been the success of special interests in convincing ordinary Americans that health care reform was an attempt by Big Government to purloin their personal freedoms.

The strategy can be encapsulated in the simplistic, bumper-sticker slogan, “Do you want a government bureaucrat making medical decisions instead of your doctor?”

Not only is this an inaccurate scare tactic, it conveniently ignores the reality that private insurance company bean counters are already making life-and-death decisions that should be made only between you and your doctor, and have been doing so for decades.

The fear strategy was so successful that candidates who voted to pass the legislation⎯rather than taking credit for their vote⎯have been shying away from it in the 2010 election campaign.

And maybe they should. Once the public option was dropped in order to get the bill through Congress, the future law was rendered toothless in terms of its ability to contain private rates through competition.

Sure, there are a few things we can be happy about (elimination of the pre-existing conditions restriction, for example), but those yearning for true reform might also want to use the pejorative “Obamacare,” in this case, to describe what might have been but wasn’t⎯by a long shot.

Think I’m wrong on this public option thing? Americans with employer-provided health plans are currently in the middle of their open enrollment periods for next year’s coverage, and what they’re seeing ain’t pretty.

I haven’t read Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, yet, but enough has leaked out (all Bob Woodward has to do is belch and it becomes a weeklong media beltway story) to tell us that we’re really stuck.

Wars are always a confluence of pragmatism and politics. A political genius like FDR was able to unite the American people behind our involvement in World War II by laying out a clear purpose. In so doing, he provided the nation with a way of knowing exactly when it had achieved its objective.

It didn’t hurt his case that the Japanese pulled a sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet, or that we were fighting organized nation-states that knew how to officially surrender and cease hostilities when they were beaten.

In other words, in WWII the politics and the resoluteness of national will were not issues that needed tending, so we could turn our focus completely and wholeheartedly to prosecuting the war.

In the case of Afghanistan, we are bogged down building a nation whose “citizens” don’t even think of themselves as “Afghans,” and where the original purpose for invading⎯to root out al-Qaida⎯may no longer even be operative.

Besides, it appears that we’re losing. Americans hate to lose. What they hate even more is sacrificing American lives when they don’t see a clear purpose.

And in case we didn’t think things could get any worse, now we all know--thanks to Bob Woodward--that nobody in our leadership agrees on what to do to extricate ourselves.

None of this would be happening if we weren’t feeling economically insecure.

When people are fat and happy, they don’t care much about politics. Why fix something if it ain’t broke? As long as you are free to splurge on flat-screen TVs, iPads, SUVs and vacation getaways, then finance your sprees by taking out another mortgage on your house, you don’t sit around whining about having your constitutional liberties taken away.

If those halcyon days were still with us, Sarah Palin would be just a better-than-average-looking footnote in history, Glenn Beck would be calling high-school football games for a small-town radio station, and Barack Obama would be sailing toward reelection in 2012.

Our current national unrest is evocative of that experienced in the 1920s during the runaway inflation in Germany, when families brought their life savings to the market in a wheelbarrow to buy a loaf of bread.

In those days, the anger and frustration reached such a boiling point that every political party had its own paramilitary wing composed of thugs who went out to crack heads in the streets. It was only a matter of time before the frantic and demoralized populace tired of their weak central government’s lack of ability to maintain civil order and provide them with a basic living. They ultimately turned to someone who promised deliverance.

The irony, of course, is that in so doing they sacrificed every personal liberty they ever had.

In other words, it’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs…in a much more far-reaching sense than merely determining which party might win a by-election in November.

We have a wry saying on the Editorial Board that there is only one editorial about the Middle East peace process. We just pull it out of the files, dust it off, change the name of the president in question, and run it again and again.

You have to give Obama credit for even trying, particularly since he has so much on his plate already. Failure, once again, is a distinct possibility. Nevertheless, the payoff is enormous for all parties involved if, somehow, this time, there is a real breakthrough.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu likes to say, it takes a hawk⎯a la Nixon in China⎯to forge a meaningful peace. In Mahmoud Abbas, he has a Palestinian partner to work with who certainly has his own problems, but who is not seeking to serve cynical ends, and who understands that Israel has certain requirements which need to be met before she can feel truly safe.

No president can call himself worthy of the office unless he makes at least a stab at resolving this intractable issue. So much follows from it; the end of killing would be enough in itself, but other benefits would include comity among our allies and a united front against the threat from Iran⎯the real enemy we all face.

What Obama is doing (in tandem with the extremely able Secretary of State Clinton) is much more than a stab. He’s putting a lot of political capital on the line. It’s a shame that the only people dumb enough to buy that garbage about his being a Muslim are Americans. If the Palestinians believed it too, it might help establish him as an honest broker (Don’t write in…I’m being facetious).

Our thoughts and prayers ought to accompany all the negotiators involved as they engage in their mission. There can never be too many attempts.

Tuesday night, President Obama gave just about the only speech that could have been given to properly mark the transition of America’s role in Iraq.

He sounded like the maid stuck with cleaning up a hotel room the morning after it has been rented by a rock band. There really wasn’t much to say about the whole endeavor that was positive, except that our troops did their jobs superlatively. The whole subject is uncomfortable for us, because while our service members did their duty and in many cases made the supreme sacrifice, we’re at a loss to know what they did it for.

We’re at a loss because our leaders violated the sacred pact the civilian leadership has always had with the military: We will ask you to go into harm’s way on behalf of your country, and in return you can have faith that we will only ask you to do so if the cause is worthy, if the mission is clear-cut, and if it has a reasonable chance of success.

We went in because they said there were WMD. Well, there weren’t any. Then it was about democracy, and we “surged” to give the Iraqis time to form a government. They still haven’t formed one. The place is a hair’s-breadth away from anarchy.

We had intentions of building a Western-oriented Arab bulwark in the Middle East. The only thing the Iranians will lack after the last Americans leave is an engraved invitation to invade.

Americans like to win wars, particularly after they’ve spent a trillion borrowed dollars when there are pressing needs at home. With Iraq, there is no surrender at Yorktown, no signing ceremony on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri, just a fizzling-out.

Years from now, after the accursed place recedes into painful memory, it will probably revert to what it was before: a dusty crossroads ruled by whichever warlord among its contentious populace happens to be the most ruthless.

So much for Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn Principle about Iraq: “If you break it, you own it.”

Just because Powell got snookered by the Cheney-Rummy tag team into being a shill for the bankrupt WMD argument doesn’t mean that everything he ever said ought to be disbelieved.

Sadly, even though he’s right on the Pottery Barn thing, it looks like we are leaving the place broken and only partially pasted back together with bubble gum and masking tape, ready to fall apart again at the slightest jarring.

What’s even sadder is that we don’t care anymore. We don’t care after spending a trillion dollars, sacrificing thousands of our best young people, maiming thousands more, and leaving even more thousands with psychological damage. And we can’t even begin to fathom what our altruistic act of political liberation has done to the Iraqi people.

Geopolitically speaking, we’ve removed the only counterbalance the West and the Arab world had to keep Iran in check. Saddam may have been a bad man, but he was doing some pretty effective work in that department. We’re enjoying the fruits of removing him from power now.

Knowing what we know now, was it all worth it? As a nation, we shy away from that question, because the answer might be too painful, and could throw doubt on our core belief in the myth of American exceptionalism; that we are a force for good in the world.

At this point, we just want to wash our hands of the whole mess. The Iraqis can keep the pottery shards, courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Those of us who have heard the story are reminded of the famous Halloween hoax of 1938, when Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast a production of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. The radio play, disguised as a series of perfervid news reports, was so realistic that many Americans, actually believing they were under attack from extraterrestrials, packed up what they could and attempted to escape. Wells made a disclaimer at the beginning and the end, but many chose not to hear it.

This just proves, once again, that people will swallow anything if they’re scared enough. The year 1938 was a time of uncertainty and fear, just like 2010. The Great Depression had been grinding on for almost a decade, and as if that weren’t enough, Hitler looked poised to take over the world—at least all there was of it on the other side of the Atlantic.

Just substitute radical Islam (to a lot of ignorant people, the term is a redundancy) for the Nazis, and you have a vile-smelling brew of deception simmering on the current stove of state.

It does not help that there are opportunists out there willing to stoke the fires of hatred for their own immediate gain, whether it’s to win an election in a couple of months or to attract more listeners and viewers to their radio and TV shows.

What they are doing by taking advantage of the fears of those who don’t know any better is tearing holes in this nation’s fabric that will take a long time to mend, certainly longer than the span of our lifetimes.

All of us—liberals, progressives, moderates, and conservatives—rallied behind President Bush after 9/11. There were aspects to the man many of us didn’t like, but he was our leader, and we were smart enough and scared enough to know that we needed one, for better or worse.

We need one just as desperately now. Why is it so hard for some of us to accept the man who was duly elected by a majority of the people?

The National Rifle Association told senators that they were going to "score" the confirmation vote on Elena Kagan, which is to say that it would be factored into the gun-rights "grade" they give each legislator.

Those who did not show proper fealty would be retaliated against at the polls by single-issue NRA members who march in lockstep to orders issued from Washington headquarters, not to mention all the campaign funding that would be choked off.

That may happen, but evidently the strong-arm tactic didn't work. Every Democratic senator from states where this might matter, with the exception of the reliable Ben Nelson of Nebraska (a DINO, or Democrat In Name Only), voted to confirm her anyway.

It would be intemperate and unrealistic to infer from this that the NRA is losing its clout. I think the Democratic senators made the clear-eyed calculation that most NRA members were going to vote Republican in November anyway, and that they had a lot more votes to lose among Democrats if they voted against her.

It is also not to be inferred that they won't scurry like scared rabbits the next time an NRA vote of consequence comes up.

This should tell you something about the shifting, treacherous sands we find ourselves in while fighting the longest war in our history: Leaked classified documents reveal to the American public that we’ve been indirectly financing our own enemy, and government types in the know dismiss it as “old news.”

Which is worse…that a website released the information, which is surely damaging to our cause, or that our leaders have learned to accommodate this travesty as part of the cost of doing business with the Pakistanis?

The Bush team thought they were the sharpest guys around. After 9/11, they were going to go in there, shoot ’em up, and show the Rooskies the right way to tame those Afghans. Bring back Osama’s head on a plate.

They should have known they were getting this country embroiled in a part of the world where, if the locals didn’t actually invent intrigue, they certainly refined it to an art form.

There’s a story about a meeting in the Holy Land during the Crusades between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, the local warlord. It’s probably apocryphal, but that doesn’t mean it can’t teach us something:

Richard, in order to demonstrate his military might to Saladin, draws out his huge, heavy double-handed broadsword and, in one blow, smashes a rock to pieces with it.

Saladin smiles, and pulls out a silk handkerchief. He tosses it in the air and unsheathes his scimitar of fine Damascus steel, holding it out cutting-edge up while the kerchief flutters down across the blade, splitting itself in two.

That’s what we’re up against over there.

Ultimately, this is a story about fear.

Fear on the part of Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, that a racist time bomb was about to blow up on his watch and embarrass the administration.

Fear on the part of the White House that the rabid right would use this as an excuse to accuse the administration of harboring racism within the ranks of the executive branch, a rap to which it is particularly sensitive, since the African-American president’s popularity is sinking among whites.

Fear on the part of the NAACP that it would not appear as pure as Caesar's wife when it came to condemning racism, no matter what quarter it came from.

And, of course, Fox News—in what is the most egregious motive of all⎯leaping to profit by stoking the fears of those who have never been comfortable with the Obama presidency.

In their fear, all parties started flapping their mouths without putting their brains in gear, or doing even the most rudimentary of background checks to find out the nature of the entire story. Everyone involved, except one, covered himself with shame.

The one person who did not show fear was Shirley Sherrod, who confronted her fears a quarter of a century ago, realized they were misplaced, and went on to back up her convictions with actions. Naturally, she’s the only one who got screwed.

The Spanish expression for “to patronize” is, “tratar a alguien con condescendencia.”

Now, when President Obama just happens to give a speech in favor of immigration reform, and its intended audience knows he knows there’s nothing he can really do about it--given this Congress and the current public mood--it doesn’t matter if he’s treating them with condescencia or not; that’s they way they’re going to read it.

It doesn’t help that the speech came just as the polls show that Obama’s support with Latino voters is slipping a few months before the November election, when all Democratic hands are on deck to minimize the inevitable losses.

People get ticked off when they think they’re being taken for fools. It’s an affront to their dignidad. They went along on this ride the first time around, and now they’re being asked to get back up on the bronc after it already threw them into the mud and rode off into the sunset without them.

The political calculus in the White House is that Latinos aren’t going to suddenly vote Republican; the principles of that party are inimical to Latino self-interest. But they are worried they’ll stay home on election day out of disgust with the way they and their issues have been kicked to the back of the line. Hence, bring out the old silver tongue and woo them once more.

Words are nice, but action is all that counts at this point. The word in Spanish for “word” is “palabra.” Interestingly, there's a cognate to that in English: “palaver.”

David Petraeus may be a bigger hero than most of us realize.

Here’s a guy who doesn’t just salute and say, “Yessir!” when called upon by his commander-in-chief, but he does so knowing there’s a good chance that in the end, he may be associated with the failure of the longest war in our history.

When you listen to all the supporters of the President’s Afghanistan policy, there appears to be a lot of wishful thinking involving the Afghan “police” suddenly identifying themselves as Afghans (instead of Pashtuns or Tajiks or whatever), and Hamid Karzai experiencing a spiritual conversion wherein the scales fall from his eyes and he emerges reborn as an enlightened Jeffersonian democrat.

I’m guessing that after the November mid-term elections, the White House will begin a gradual campaign to prepare the American people for failure, and come August of 2011, the nominal date for the beginning of the pullout, we will have been reasonably convinced that the fabled “conditions on the ground” have developed to a point where we can extricate ourselves with something approximating honor.

While reason would indicate that we might as well abandon our effort now as a year from now, politics does not. Obama cannot afford to be known as the man who “lost Afghanistan,” which is the way he would be cynically portrayed by those who secretly agree the situation is hopeless, but would hasten to profit in the short run from that very hopelessness.

It will be up to General Petraeus, the most respected man in uniform, to tell us that we did our best, and that we’re leaving the place better than we found it.

And for that, he’ll deserve yet another ribbon on that chestful of fruit salad.

You can go ahead and fault Gen. Stanley McChrystal for insubordination, but you have to give him credit for his impeccable timing.

Everyone is wondering why on Earth a smart guy like McChrystal would allow such intimate access to a reporter from Rolling Stone, of all places. Was he crazy? Maybe like a fox. Here’s a theory, admittedly far-fetched but plausible:

If you’re going to torpedo your own career, it’s best to do it now just as the situation in Afghanistan is really beginning to go south. That way, you may be written off as a frat-boy who couldn’t control his mouth, but your war-fighting prowess will never be called into question. Walking away in the middle of battle marks you as a quitter. You must be forced to leave.

To put a modern twist on Douglas MacArthur’s famous aphorism, “Old soldiers never die; they just end up on TV news as in-house military analysts.”

With the new cred McChrystal has just acquired by holding Obama and his team in open contempt, he’s a shoo-in to be Fox News’ next celebrity battlefield poo-bah. For all we know, Roger Ailes was already on the horn asking Big Mac to simply name his price before Obama had even finished his speech announcing his dismissal.

Meanwhile, the ever-dutiful and heroic General Petraeus, answering his commander-in-chief’s call, will preside over a degenerating mishmash involving military and civilian brass who don’t get along, locals who simply want us out so they can return to their feudal ways, and a corrupt puppet in Hamid Karzai whose only saving grace is his snazzy wardrobe.

It is Petraeus who will be tarred with the way things turn out. If, by some miracle, our final exit isn’t a debacle, then good for him.

Does anyone have a better explanation?

First, a word of thanks to all you readers who kept faith with the blog while the Lowe-Down was off in the lush, rain-kissed mountains of Western Massachusetts attending his college reunion.

To those who posted comments hoping to see their deathless prose online, my apologies. Even cartoonists have to take a break once in a while to rest the fingers.

As for President Obama’s speech last night, I found myself unsatisfied. Sure, we elected the guy partly because he was cool and unflappable under fire, but sometimes circumstances call for more than a reasonable, analytical approach. They call for a little kick-ass.

Some say we shouldn’t blame him, because there really isn’t much a president can do besides show up at the scene and look concerned.

They are wrong. Were the president an FDR-style leader⎯a man with a sense of theatricality who was not afraid to display his emotional side with a nation in need of an emoter-in-chief⎯he could harness the inchoate babble of public anger and⎯like a laser mirror⎯forge and amplify it into a monochromatic, coherent beam of pure political energy.

He could focus this beam ⎯ a beam so white-hot that no lobbyist could quench it, not even with a fire hose spewing campaign contributions⎯on an inert and fearful congress, making its seats sizzle to the point where members would jump out of them to pass a set of meaningful laws that would finally break our addiction to fossil fuels and get us on the road to sustainable, clean energy, Manhattan Project-style.

Oh, well.

Artist's note: Why no color today? I was evoking a speech given in 1941. Everything back then happened in black and white...just ask your grandparents.

This is a Manhattan Project moment, as was 9/11. And we’re squandering it the same way we did then.

Had George Bush surrounded himself with advisers of broad vision and foresight, he could have molded the world into an interdependent, terror-proof network. He could have laid the foundation for a crash program leading to energy independence for America. Instead, he started a couple of wars.

Now a nation that is just beginning to grasp the true scope of the unfolding tragedy in the Gulf cries out for leadership, as it did in 2001.

Rather than provide it, the Obama Administration has gone into bunker mode, uttering empty platitudes and hollow ultimatums in an attempt to divert blame and responsibility in an election year.

We are awakening to the reality that our government is powerless to deal with the mess. A victim of its own lack of political will in not requiring that adequate safety provisions be put in place before drilling even began, it now reaps the whirlwind of its corrupt impotence.

We as a nation are forced to entrust the rescue and restoration of our environment to the very same soulless private sector whose cutting of corners resulted in its rape.

We are angry at the oil industry, the way a debtor is angry at his loan shark. We know that the oil companies are exacting what amounts to a national indemnity by providing us what we cannot do without. We are in their thrall, and we look to our leaders to extricate us.

But we don’t elect leaders anymore; we elect people who tell us what we want to hear. They reflect us, with all our weaknesses and addictions. If we can’t do anything ourselves to stop the madness, why should we expect them to?

Small government, in theory, is an intoxicating idea until you suddenly need the benefits of big government.

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who turned down federal stimulus money for his state last year in a fit of partisan pique, is now screaming about how little the feds appear to be doing to save his coastline.

Sarah Palin is out there, too, condemning the Obama administration for its ineptitude.

These are Louisiana’s wetlands being ruined, though, so isn’t this technically a state issue? Why should the people of Montana have to help pay to clean it up?

I’m being facetious, of course. We all know that BP is going to pay for everything and make us all whole again…the same way Exxon did after the Alaskan spill.

As for blame⎯it’s a long bar, and there are plenty of us who ought to be bellying up to it. Every time we hop in the SUV to tootle down to the store when we could have walked or ridden a bike, every time we leave the engine running to keep the AC cool when we duck into the dry cleaners, we stoke the beast’s appetite.

It’s fine to vent our spleen at BP for plowing up the Gulf in search of riches without a disaster plan, and it’s fine to rail at the government for not regulating enough or not enforcing the few regulations we have.

But it’s a lot like the drug trade. There wouldn’t be the murders, the kidnappings and the cartels if there weren’t a market for the product. Prevention of future disasters must begin at home.

If the past is any indicator, we’re in for a poison-pen version of “This Is Your Life,” where every utterance ever made by Elena Kagan will be unearthed, deconstructed and evaluated for its damaging potential.

And that ain't all.

Just this morning, not twelve hours after the definitive leak that Ms. Kagan was to be President Obama’s nominee to fill the coming vacancy on the Supreme Court bench, the Internet honchos at my paper informed us that “Kagan and lesbian” was the No. 1 search term on Google.

The hunt for damning personal shortcomings will be especially thorough in this case, because Ms. Kagan has never been a judge. Her lack of a paper trail frustrates those who would destroy her candidacy in hopes of handing President Obama a defeat right before the midterm elections.

If Ms. Kagan is in fact a lesbian, one has to wonder why this matters any more than being a heterosexual when it comes to interpreting the Constitution and deciding matters of law.

There will, of course, be a whispering campaign larded with what Chicago’s original Mayor Daley used to call “insinuendo.” It will be ugly and stomach-turning, but I’m sure Ms. Kagan knows what’s in store for her. If she can weather this, Antonin Scalia will seem like a pussycat by comparison.

Let’s face it, the image of wealthy financiers crying the blues doesn’t exactly tug on our heartstrings.

If the Republicans in Congress make an issue of preserving a laissez-faire policy toward Wall Street after what has happened to this country, they’re singing to an empty house.

The Dems know this, and they’re itching for the GOP to rise in defense of their natural constituency: the fat cats. Most Americans hate big government in the abstract, except when it’s applied to restrain the rampant greed of the plutocrats who got us into this mess.

As President Obama has said, it’s a fight he’s looking forward to having.

We may finally see the cracking of the solid Republican bloc that would rather do harm than deliver Barack Obama a victory.

After all, to a pol, self-preservation comes first and foremost. Wall Street and all its lobbying dollars aren’t worth anything to a member of Congress who can’t win the next election.

So maybe the declaration of Confederate History Month was just the Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell using code to assert that his state was not about to knuckle under to the overlordship of the federal government (particularly when it came to reforming health care for its citizens).

After all, the Confederacy, so they say, was all about the preservation of “states’ rights"-- which in turn was code for preserving the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery.

You don’t need to be a cryptologist to detect the tone-deafness here, particularly when the man sitting in the White House is African-American. That’s assuming the governor was only being insensitive, and not intentionally sending a more pointed message that resonated merrily in the ears of his more extreme constituents.

Florida “celebrates” Confederate history, too⎯which is a little presumptuous since the state, before air conditioning was invented, was mostly swamp and didn’t count for much.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you are about to extol the virtues of a period in history that remains an open wound to a large percentage of the general population, maybe it’s best to just do it behind closed doors. Go ahead and be proud, but be private about it.

Before my usual claque of commentators gets its nose out of joint, I will acknowledge that the type of behavior alluded to in this cartoon is practiced by both extremes of the political spectrum. It is inappropriate--and unhelpful--no matter who is doing it.

We happen to have a Democratic president and Senate right now, so the protesting of whomever is nominated to fill Justice Stevens' seat will be the province of Conservatives.

I think it was John McCain who said, "Elections mean something." It is the constitutional prerogative of the president to present a nominee in the event of a court vacancy, and it is the Senate's job to decide whether that person is qualified.

It made sense to the Founding Fathers. What wouldn't make sense to them are the ideological hoops we make the nominees run through, thanks to our poisonous political atmosphere, and the attempts to discredit them by digging through their pasts to find out if they talked back to their kindergarten teacher during recess.

One of these days, Justice Scalia, Roberts, Alito or Thomas will want to retire. Chances are he'll wait until a Republican president is in office to do so. This is as it should be.

Then, it will be the Liberals' turn to make a public display of their unreasonableness, which they will do without a doubt.

While the Obama administration, in a nod to the base, is splitting hairs over whether or not its new "intelligence-based" terrorist screening system is profiling, that's what it's beginning to look like.

Physical characteristics, where they're from... if those are going to be the criteria, then let's cut the doublespeak.

It used to be that we could afford the luxury of treating everyone as an equal threat, but with limited resources, and the consequences of a system failure so catastrophic, it may be time to rethink whether it's worth sacrificing Lower Manhattan just to ensure that someone's feelings don't get hurt.

If little old church ladies in tennis shoes had been found to be the preponderant cohort of those who performed terrorist acts, then it would make sense to single them out for special treatment. The innocent little old ladies who were searched unnecessarily would no doubt be grateful that we had focused our efforts on the most likely suspects.

I think many of us, in a perfect world, would wish to preserve the dignity of certain groups, and not ask that they be temporarily humiliated for the sins of a few among them.

In this imperfect world, how many of us are willing to risk our lives and those of our loved ones to defend that principle?

The White House's chess game is verging on being a little too clever for its own good.

The calculation is that throwing a sop to the Republicans in the form of relaxed offshore drilling restrictions will buy cooperation from them later. In fact, they will be so disarmed by this gesture that they'll dance with Obama on more ambitious energy initiatives.

Meanwhile, the Democratic "base," which counted on Obama to rectify some of the environmental misdeeds of the Bush administration--and certainly not ape them-- will have nowhere else to turn in November.

Even if the Republicans don't play ball, their slapping of this outstretched hand will prove to the public that they are, indeed, the party of obstructionism, and it will punish them on election day.

There are two things wrong with this scenario: First, it looks like the Republicans, far from being charmed, are saying that the gesture is so flimsy, it's almost an insult. Saying "no" has worked for them so far. Why change the strategy now?

Second, what Obama did was just enough to infuriate the environmentalists. Yes, they have somewhere else to go on election day, which is to go hug some tree in the backyard rather than head to the polls.

The grand plan a gamble, and not even a smart one. He could well lose, and so will the environment.

The reason that health care reform has inflamed so many passions on all sides is that it goes to the very core of what each American believes his relationship to his government should be.

Because we are a nation founded on principles, not ethnicity, it is a stand-in⎯for better or worse⎯for what “being an American” means to many people.

This has been a conflict of fundamental world-views. If, through your prism, you view the providing of health care as primarily an economic issue, then you embrace the argument that if the nation can’t pay for it, we shouldn’t have it (A more rugged variant is “Why should I pay for someone else’s?”).

If, however, you believe that health care is a citizen’s right, and that it is the moral obligation of government (as an expression of the people who empower it), to provide it to every American, the same as it does their national defense⎯then you accept that as an imperative, and find a way to pay for it.

If you adhere to the latter view, you prioritize. Maybe depriving the rich of some extra lucre is the way to go. They won’t miss their next meal, and it might save someone whose child has a catastrophic illness from missing theirs. Un-American? Depends on your point of view.

Or maybe you want to pay for it some other way. Fight fewer pointless wars, perhaps. Whatever. If you truly believe, you’ll find a way.

There is no right or wrong way of looking at the role⎯or the reach⎯of government. Deciding what it will be is the function of elections.

The rest of the industrialized world scratches its head in wonderment as the greatest economic power on earth--the shining city on the hill--squabbles over something they've all taken for granted for generations.

Why are we so far behind even our Canadian cousins when it comes to health care? It's our uniquely American way of viewing the solution to societal needs through the prism of the free enterprise system.

From the days that the Declaration of Independence was written and before, government has been viewed as something individuals need to be protected from, while other countries see it as the collectivization of individual needs under one paternalistic umbrella.

Both approaches have their pros and cons. Unfortunately, looking after the medical health of all citizens, including the underprivileged, is not one of free enterprise's strong suits.

Obama is trying to get Congress to go out on a limb with this one, and Congress is never comfortable treading where its immediate self-interest does not lie. One thing the Republicans are right about: If health care reform does pass, it'll be with us for good, because no member of any party will be willing to take back something the have-nots have begun to enjoy for the very first time.

It's a testament to how trust and cooperation have deteriorated in Washington that when President Obama first called a televised bipartisan health care summit, the Republicans immediately branded it a "trap."

Since then, some GOP members of congress have grudgingly agreed to attend, presuming--rightly--that it would play better in Peoria if they at least looked like they were trying to accomplish the people's business.

After all, with everyone's health care premiums continuing to rise at multiples of the inflation rate, even the Republicans' core business constituency is squawking.

If you deconstruct Republican logic, the only thing they would have to fear from revealing the elements of their health care reform plan to America is that it might be something Americans won't like. Otherwise, why not jump at this opportunity to stand their plan up against the Democrats' in a bully televised forum?

Either that, or they simply don't have one.

Even if you are repulsed by Barack Obama and everything he stands for, you have to agree with one thing he said in his speech last night.

"Not every day is election day." By that, he meant that members of each party are so preoccupied with scoring points at the expense of the other that the welfare of the nation is forgotten in the melee of ego-stoking.

Early on in the health care reform process, for example, the Republicans realized there were short-term political gains to be made by not engaging in the give-and-take. If the whole ugly piece of legislation--warts and all--fails to pass, they will crow with jubilation that Obama's presidency has been mortally wounded. Meanwhile, where does this leave the poor and those with preexisting conditions? Worse off, even, than before.

This hostility hasn't developed overnight. It has taken several decades to fester into what it is today. It has been the norm for so long that there remain very few old-timers who remember the good old days, when parties compromised on legislation just to get it passed, knowing everyone would benefit if there were something in the bill each pol could bring home and point to with pride.

And when the old-timers finally shuffle off, they will take the faded memories of those days with them.