Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

Mike Lofgren has left the Republican Party. He is not the first and won't be the last. Lofgren was a Republican staffer who worked in both the House and Senate Budget Committees.

He grew so disgusted by the corruption and lies of the Greedy Oil Party that he has left them...and has been writing about his dissatisfaction. From his article on Truth Out.com:

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages...

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.

This comes from a Republican (now former Republican) insider. He saw what was going on from WITHIN the Republican Party and found it disgusting and corrupt. He also directly addresses the destructive and cynical hypocrisy of the modern Greedy Oil Party:

This tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. If anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious...

This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

It is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink...

I do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded Bill Clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do I remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded among themselves). Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.

There is a lot more...it is a long article and represents the careful unloading of what seems like years of gradual disillusionment in the political party he had previously identified with. I suggest reading the whole thing.

Arianna Huffington is another person who made the transition from Greedy Oil Party cultist to opposing the GOP when she realized they were a bunch of liars who never actually did what they promised. She worked for Newt Gingrich and it was Newt Gingrich's own cynical hypocrisy drove Huffington away. I am no big fan of Arianna Huffington, but I respect the fact that she, like Lofgren, was able to see through the lies and theatrics of the Greedy Oil Party and reject them as one of the most destructive and corrupt forces in American politics. Lufgren is right...there is corruption in the Democratic Party as well, as I have written about frequently in regards to my own home territory of Brooklyn. But the corruption within the Republican Party, measured by comparing the numbers of politicians under investigation, indicted or convicted, FAR outweighs any corruption within the Democratic Party (see also this site for a somewhat less clearly laid out but more up to date analysis). Furthermore, many Democrats, myself included, fight to reform our own Party (to the degree of even endorsing Republican Joseph Cao in Louisiana against a corrupt Democrat). There is hardly a corrupt Republican who isn't embraced by the Greedy Oil Party and often given and maintained in leadership positions.

More interesting is the case of Pete McCloskey who was so disgusted by the behavior of the Republican Party during the Bush years that he left the party. Pete McCloskey had been a life-long Republican and a former candidate for President in a Republican primary. He himself says his family had been Republicans since before Lincoln, suggesting they were among the founders of the party. Yet the corruption and hypocrisy of the modern Greedy Oil Party drove away Pete McCloskey. Here is the letter he wrote explaining his decision:

McCloskeys have been Republicans in California since 1859, the year before Lincoln's election. My great grandfather, John Henry McCloskey, orphaned in the great Irish potato famine of 1843, came to California in 1853 as a boy of 16, and joined the party just before the Civil War.

By 1890 he and my grandfather, both farmers, made up two of the twelve members of the Republican Central Committee of Merced County. My father's most memorable expletive came when I was a boy of 10 or 11: "That damn Roosevelt is trying to pack the Supreme Court!"

I registered Republican in 1948 after reaching the age of 21. We were the party of civil rights, of free choice for women and fiscal responsibility. Since Teddy Roosevelt, we had favored environmental protection, and most of all we stood for fiscal responsibility, honesty, ethics and limited government intrusion into our personal lives and choices. We accepted that one the duties of wealth was to pay a higher rate of income tax, and that the estates of the wealthy should contribute to the national treasury in reasonable measure.

I was proud to serve with Republicans like Gerry Ford, the first George Bush and Bob Dole.

In 1994, however, Newt Gingrich brought a new kind of Republicanism to power, and the election of George W. Bush in 2000 has led to wholly new concept of governance. The bureaucracy has mushroomed in size and power. The budget deficits have become astronomical. Our historical separation of church and state has been blurred. We have seen a succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes, and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House.

The single cardinal principle of political science, that power corrupts, has come to apply not only to Republican leaders like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and John Doolittle, but to a succession of White House officials and appointees. The stench of Jack Abramoff has permeated much of the Washington Republican establishment.

The Justice Department, guardian of of our rule of law, has been compromised. It's third ranking official, a graduate of Pat Robertson's dubious law school, has taken the 5th Amendment.

Men who have never felt the fear of combat, and who largely dodged military service in their youth, have led us into grievous wars in far off places with no thought of the diplomacy, grace and respect for other peoples and their cultures which has been an American trademark for at least the last two thirds of a century. We have lost the respect and affection of most of the world outside our borders. My son, Peter, one of the U.S. prosecutors at The Hague of the war crimes in Serbia and elsewhere, tells me that people of other countries no longer look at the country which countenances torture as a beacon for the world and the rule of law.

Earth Day, that bi-partisan concept of Gaylord Nelson in 1970, has become the focus of almost hatred by today's Republican leadership. Many still argue that global warming is a hoax, and that Bush has been right to demean and suppress the arguments of scientists at the E.P.A., Fish & Wildlife and U.S.Geological Survey.

I say a pox on them and their values.

Until the past few weeks, I had hoped that the party could right itself, returning to the values of the Eisenhowers, Fords and George H. W. Bush.

What finally turned me to despair, however, was listening to the reports, or watching on C-Span, a whole series of congressional oversight hearings on C-Span, held by old friends and colleagues like Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman, Norm Dicks, Nick Rahall, Danny Akaka and others, trying to learn the truth on the misdeeds and incompetence of the Bush Administration. Time after time I saw Republican Members of the House and Senate. speak out in scorn or derision about these exercises of Congress oversight responsibility being "witch-hunts" or partisan attempts to distort the actions of people like the head of the General Service Administration and the top political appointees in the Justice and Interior Departments. Disagreement turned into disgust.

I finally concluded that it was a fraud for me to remain a member of this modern Republican Party, that there were only a few like Chuck Hegel, Jack Warner, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins I could respect.

Two of the best, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Jim Leach of Iowa, after years of battling for balance and sanity, were defeated last November, and it seems that every Republican presidential candidate is now vying for the support of the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells rather than talking about a return to the values of the party I joined nearly 59 years ago. My favorite spokesmen have beome Senators Jim Webb and Barack Obama.

And so it was, that while at the Woodland courthouse the other day, passing by the registrar's office, I filled out the form to re-register as a Democrat.

The issues Helen (McCloskey) and I care about most, public financing of elections, a reliable paper ballot trail, independent re-districting to replace gerrymandering, the right of a woman to choose not to bring a child into the world, a reversal of the old Proposition 13 and term limits which have so hurt California's once superb education system and the competence of our Legislature, are now almost universally opposed by California's elected Republicans, and the occasional attempts at reform by our Governor are looked on with grim disdain by most of them.

From Helen's and my standpoint, being farmers in Yolo County gives us the opportunity to work for purposes which were once Republican, but can no longer be found at Republican conventions and discussions.

I hope this answers your questions about the party and a government I have served in either civil or military service under ten presidents, five Republican and five Democrat ... I doubt it will be of much interest other than to our friends, but it has been a decision not easily taken.

Respectfully,
Pete McCloskey

The Republican Party has for some time now become a party of extremists where every single reasonable Republican is driven out or silenced and corruption rules the day. It is time America recognized the corrupt Greedy Oil Party for what it is: an anti-American, destructive, greedy and corrupt organization that cares nothing for actual governance but only cares about being able to freely loot the American economy for their own personal power and gain.

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Democrats Routinely Better for the Economy

I have covered this before, but it seems it is always good to review the facts. From the Democratic Policy Committee:

Since 1929:

· An investment of $10,000 in the S&P stock market index during only Republican administrations would have yielded a return of just $10,506 (this includes the abysmal 36.7 percent drop in returns over the eight years of the George W. Bush Administration).

· That same $10,000 invested during Democratic administrations would have grown to $389,320 (this includes the 29.5 percent increase in returns over the [first] 281 days under President Obama’s Administration).

[New York Times, Opinion, 10/14/08, updated by author Tommy McCall 10/28/09*]

This is a striking 37-fold difference in performance.

According to this analysis, annualized returns under Republican presidents through the end of the George W. Bush Administration, who presided over a 4.4 percent annualized drop in returns, were only 0.1 percent. By contrast, Democrats presided over a nine percent annualized gain for investors.

Stocks do better under Democrats.

The fact is that the economy has performed significantly better under Democratic administrations than Republican administrations. Between 1960 and 2008, Democratic presidents presided over stronger economic growth, larger increases in median family income and higher job creation, as well as lower federal spending, federal deficits, and inflation. [Slate, 9/16/08; New York Times, 8/30/08]

For example, over the past 48 years, Democrats have presided over:

· Stronger growth in the economy. From 1960 to 2008, real GDP grew faster under Democratic presidents (4.1 percent per year on average) than under Republican presidents (2.7 percent).



...

Better household incomes for all. Between 1948 and 2008, annual incomes grew for all income classes under Democratic Administrations. By contrast, under Republican Administrations, the richest Americans enjoyed a disproportionate share of income growth.



Over this same period, real median income, representing the exact middle of American households, grew more under Democrats (2.2 percent) than under Republicans (0.6 percent). In fact, under President Bush, real median income actually fell $2,197. Looking back as far as we have data (back to President Kennedy), only two other Administrations have had a decline in real median household income.

· Largest decreases in poverty. Since the census began tracking the poverty rate in 1959, Democratic presidents have often produced the largest drops in poverty rates, while Republicans have seen the largest increases. As an example, during the eight years of William Jefferson Clinton Administration, the poverty rate decreased by 21.17 percent and the number of Americans living in poverty decreased by 19.57 percent. Unfortunately, those gains more than reversed in the George W. Bush Administration, when the poverty rate increased by 12.82 percent and the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 21.04 percent. More than numbers and percentages, these figures reflect that, while more than 7.6 million Americans rose out of poverty during the Clinton years, nearly 7 million fell into poverty during the Bush years.

Economic Growth is BETTER and more EQUITABLE under Democrats

Lower unemployment and more robust job growth. The unemployment rate has been lower under Democratic presidents (5.3 percent on average) than under Republicans (6.2 percent).

Moreover, in the eighty years between the start of the Hoover Administration and the end of the George W. Bush Administration, job growth was higher under all six Democratic Presidents than under any of the seven Republican Presidents.



The statistical probability of that happening through random chance is more than 1,700 to 1.

Democrats Create More Jobs


And let me add (not from the same source): Even in terms of fiscal responsibility, that thing Republicans like to harp on, it is really a Democratic value as proven by the numbers:



Republicans do FAR more deficit spending that Democrats.

The numbers don't lie. It is very clear that Democrats are better for ALL aspects of the economy.


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Steve Levin and Brad Lander Let Down Constituents

I want to preface this article by saying that Councilmember Brad Lander has been doing some good things recently which I want to acknowledge before I lay into him on this issue. In particular I want to re-emphasize the good work Brad Lander has been doing with the Center for Anti-violence Education (which my wife teaches at) to get self-defense classes for women in the areas where there have been a spate of assaults on women. But there is another issue where Brad Lander and fellow Councilmember Steve Levin have made, in my mind, a serious error.

It all started with my building's resident Yenta (by her own admission) asking me why 7th Ave is no longer being cleaned up. Until recently, she observed, men in blue outfits (a collaboration between the city and the Doe Fund aimed to help the homeless and parolees transition back into society and employment) would help the city empty the garbage and clean the streets. Recently those blue-uniformed men disappeared from 7th Avenue and in their place garbage piled up everywhere adding to what my wife already referred to as the "7th Ave. Stink." I have to say 7th Ave. smells worse on average than any other street I personally walk down in Brooklyn or Manhattan. And now that the Doe Fund people have disappeared from 7th Ave. the stink is getting worse.

To me this is not, however, primarily about the cleanliness of our neighborhood. It is about a program that is one of the most successful in the nation in getting homeless and parolees back into society. Here is the description of the Doe Fund from their website:

Ready, Willing & Able is The Doe Fund's holistic, residential, work and job skills training program which helps homeless individuals in their efforts to become self-sufficient, contributing members of society. Ready, Willing & Able has helped more than 4,500 men and women become drug-free, secure full-time employment, and obtain their own self-supported housing. The program targets the segment of the homeless population considered the hardest to serve: single, able-bodied adults, the majority of whom have histories of incarceration and substance abuse. Criteria for acceptance into the program is that the applicant be ready, willing and able, both physically and mentally, to work and maintain a drug-free lifestyle.

Folks, this kind of program saves taxpayers money in the long run. Like vaccinations and education, programs like this are one of the best investments society can make with taxpayer money. And, like cutting education, cutting this program is one of the dumbest moves a government can make because it will COST us all money in the long run.

Responding to the disgusting conditions on 7th Ave these days, my building's resident Yenta asked me who to talk to. I recommended several offices she could contact including city council reps Levin and Lander, who represent the area. She got nowhere with them. Here is the letter she got from Brad Lander's office:

Dear Ms. _____, Thank you for contacting me. Unfortunately, the blue-uniformed street cleaners on 7th Avenue were lost to budget cuts. Do you know any of the merchants on 7th Avenue? The merchants on 5th Avenue have formed a Business Improvement District, that maintains the avenue at a higher level of cleanliness that the Sanitation Department can do on its own. Maybe something similar is needed for 7th Avenue or merchants there could team up with the 5th Avenue merchants? Best,Alex

Now first off, I will agree with Lander's office that perhaps 7th Ave needs a merchant's association like 5th Ave has. That would help. But I also want to say Lander's office is full of it here. The blue-uniformed men form the Doe Fund who clean our streets are at least partly funded by discretionary funding (and some City Councilmembers, like Daniel Dromm, HAVE chosen to help fund it). So it isn't just budget cuts, it is also that Brad Lander and Steve Leven CHOSE to cut this program. They are using their discretionary funding money somewhere else (Lander may well be sending money to some of these self-defense courses for women in the area affected by assaults). Discretionary spending all too often goes to rewarding political supporters, and Steve Levin, at least, is part of a corrupt political machine that is infamous for funneling taxpayer money to reward political allies. I am not sure what Brad and Steve feel is more important than the Doe Fund, but they are giving misleading information to constituents and, as I will discuss below, to the press.

Again, I want to emphasize that to me the number one issue is NOT whether 7th Ave gets extra cleaning above and beyond the minimal job done by the city. The main issue is deeper and focuses on how we handle homeless and paroled members of our society. Do we find ways of reintegrating them into society or do we let them cost society more and more money because they never are able to become functioning members of society and instead wind up in and out of prison. The Doe Fund program always struck me as a win-win situation: neighborhoods got cleaned up beyond the minimal effort the city puts in, and parolees get a much better shot at making life outside prison work, reducing recidivism and hence saving the state money in the long run. Great, no? AND IT WORKS!

From "Women Out of Prison:"

Since taking office in 1989, District Attorney Charles Hynes remains an active proponent of reentry programs, like Ready, Willing, and Able, as a viable means to reduce recidivism.

“Reentry is the most important criminal justice issue we face,” said Hynes at a Roundtable Reentry meeting last November. “Putting people back into prison is, simply, morally indefensible.”

Unlike studies that show two-thirds of all incarcerated people reentering civilian life return to prison within three years, the success rates coming out of transitional employment programs tell a completely different story.

“When we look at the graduates of our program, we are finding a recidivism rate of less than 4 percent, compared to a national average of 45 percent,” says Lee Alman, Director of Public Affairs at The Doe Fund. “They are staying out of the criminal justice system.”

According to Hynes, joint programs overall that incorporate both treatment and employment for newly released prisoners have the effect of “reducing recidivism to mere fractions.” In 1999, Hynes created the city’s first significant prisoner reentry program, named “Community and Law Enforcement Resources Together,” and partnered with The Doe Fund to provide these employment opportunities.

So far the Brooklyn model seems to be working. As the city has seen a huge rise in drug cases since Paterson’s historic reforms this past April, they have, in Hynes’ words, “hardly made a ripple in Brooklyn,” because of treatment programs like ComALERT that have been in place for several years now.

And the savings have been significant. A study conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 2004 found that the economic cost of drug abuse nationwide is $180 billion, and roughly 60 percent are crime-related costs (i.e., court costs, law enforcement, etc.). Furthermore, it costs $187 a day to incarcerate someone in the New York penal system. According to Hynes, it costs New York taxpayers $10 a day to put an offender through treatment programs like ComALERT.

THIS IS WHAT IS BEING CUT. Not just a cosmetic makeover of a fancy neighborhood that smells because Levin and Lander want to use discretionary spending on other things. It is a program that reduces recidivism and saves taxpayers money...it, based on District Attorney Hynes' numbers above, represents a net savings of $177 per day per person that goes through this program and does not re-enter prison. That is what good government is all about but it seems it is not a priority right now.

My building's resident Yenta was not satisfied with the answer she got from Lander's office and took the matter up at Community Board 6. She says they basically blew her off. But a reporter was there and came up to talk to her. The result is an article in the Brooklyn Paper:

Park Slope’s main street has morphed into a trash-ridden dump after two city councilmen allowed a street-cleaning contract to expire — a contract that only came about because the Department of Sanitation couldn’t keep the retail strip clean...

That’s because the city’s trash collection schedule is not frequent enough to keep the bustling street clean — and elected officials have chosen not to renew a contract with the Doe Fund, a non-profit that hires homeless men for clean-up crews.

The Department of Homeless Services, in conjunction with the Park Slope Civic Council, first inked the one-year, $40,000 contract in 2008 in order to maintain the street beyond the city’s duties. Now, Councilman Steve Levin (D–Park Slope) and Councilman Brad Lander (D–Park Slope) say the contract, which had been renewed for three years, is no longer cost-effective and sustainable...

Now let me stop Lander and Levin right there. Not cost-effective? Seriously? Do they not know that it saves us all money by helping prevent recidivism? Perhaps DA Hynes needs to sit these two boys down and explain some things to them. So let me be clear. This is the FIRST place where Levin and Lander are misleading...the program is about as cost-effective as you can get and far more so than average for programs funded by discretionary funding. I do know that tough choices need to be made. I hope that their constituents look REALLY carefully at the choices they make this year with their discretionary spending and see if it justifies their claim that the Doe Fund program is not cost-effective enough. Lander and Levin better be ready to defend the cost-effectiveness of each and every program they do fund after that comment. And I wish the NYC news media were better at holding city council members accountable for their discretionary spending...this would be a good opportunity, I would think. Back to the article.

The councilmen later sent a joint statement noting that avoiding teacher layoffs and firehouse closures come before The Doe Fund.

“We have had to close multi-billion dollar budget gaps,” the statement notes

Here is the second misleading statement. I am not aware that firehouses and teachers are paid for through discretionary spending. That strikes me as a straw man argument. Again, I am sure Levin and Lander do have to make tough choices with their discretionary spending, but to imply that firehouses will close and teachers get laid off if they funded the Ready, Willing and Able program is just plain misleading. And the Brooklyn Paper should have caught that, quite honestly.

Again, I do agree with Lander and Levin that perhaps it is time for a 7th Ave. merchant's association to help out. But that attitude assumes that the only benefit is a more pleasant street. That is not true. Councilmember Daniel Dromm knows that the benefits are much more than that and HE has funded the program in his district where Levin and Lander have not. That may be a justifiable decision on Lander and Levin's parts, but it is hard to tell if that is so when their statements to constituents and to the press are misleading on what the benefits of the Doe Fund are and where the money really comes from. You made your choices, Brad and Steve. If they are justifiable then tell us your real reasoning. Don't mislead us.

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One of the greatest stories ever told: Kaze no Tani no Nasicaa

One of the most magnificent stories I have ever encountered (presented both as Anime and in much more elaborate form, as Manga) is the story by Hayao Miyazaki of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. In many ways it was his rough precursor to his later Princess Mononoke, but in both the original (not dubbed) Anime, and in the Manga he made from it, there is a much richer and more ambiguous plot.

So far I am not aware of any good dubbed versions of Nausicaa. You can find pretty good dubbed versions of most of Miyazaki's movies, but Nausicaa has been an exception. Too much gets changed. Most disturbing is the tendency to get rid of the original music which, Quentin Terantino style, was considered an absolutely crucial part of the original movie.

Let me just say that the Manga has so much more to it. It was so complicated a plot that my mother (despite a Ph.D. in Anthropology) lost track of the political threads. But it is one of the richest, most beautiful and amazing stories ever told. The movie version is excellent, and the animation wonderful if somewhat dated. But the Manga goes so far beyond the plot in the movie it is almost a different story.

This story comes from the imagination of one of Japan's greatest animators, Hayao Miyazaki. Here are three trailers to give you an idea of the anime.

Naushikaa: (Korean trailer but gives the BEST impression of the story)



An adequate English trailer:



The name Nausicaa comes from Homer's Odyssey and was a deliberate break by Miyazaki with Japanese tradition, though he combined the Western myth of Nausicaa with a Japanese myth of a Princess who loved insects.

Japanese Movie trailer, with the amazing original music (with ocarina notes indicated):



The basic plot of both the Anime and Manga (though the Manga takes it so much further) is that humans destroyed the world in seven days of fire...after that remnants of humanity hung on in small pockets of safety while the rest of the world is engulfed in a toxic forest of fungi and insects.

The Manga in particular explores the political outcomes of this as well as the environmental developments, but the bottom line is that the world of humans is failing centuries after the seven days of fire. War leads to the resurrection of some of the old weapons and these threaten to complete the destruction of humanity. Into this end of days scenario comes Nausicaa, a savior who combines berserker rages with scientific discovery with tearful love for all living things. Nausicaa with all her ambiguities becomes a potential savior. In the Anime her being a savior is definitive. In the Manga it is much more ambiguous, but still fascinating.

This is one of the best stories you or your children will ever see. Check out the anime for the simpler version.



Or, if you prefer a far more complex, ambiguous story, I strongly recommend the manga version as one of the best stories ever told bar none...It always brings tears to my eyes throughout the story.



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The Middle East: When will it end?

I am a Jew raised with a gut-level LOVE of Israel

I am also a progressive who detests the political game of the likes of Bush and Netanyahu.

I also detest the terrorist actions of many who think innocents are fair targets.

Israel and Palestine BOTH have the same right to exist. Both Israel and Palestine must be viable, stable, secure and prosperous nations.

We are far from that, though we need to focus on what can bring about a stable, secure, prosperous, EQUAL Israel AND Palestine.

A very thoughtful and unusual piece on the Middle East (no one comes off well, from someone who almost never gets political)



Another, more visual, version derived from Tom Waits' version (with due honor to Waits):



Want to support peace in Israel/Palestine while also getting some really excellent food? Click here...my own local food co-op carries these delicious and peace-inspiring products.

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Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

Mike Lofgren has left the Republican Party. He is not the first and won't be the last. Lofgren was a Republican staffer who worked in both the House and Senate Budget Committees.

He grew so disgusted by the corruption and lies of the Greedy Oil Party that he has left them...and has been writing about his dissatisfaction. From his article on Truth Out.com:

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages...

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.

This comes from a Republican (now former Republican) insider. He saw what was going on from WITHIN the Republican Party and found it disgusting and corrupt. He also directly addresses the destructive and cynical hypocrisy of the modern Greedy Oil Party:

This tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. If anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. And when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious...

This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

It is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink...

I do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded Bill Clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do I remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded among themselves). Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.

There is a lot more...it is a long article and represents the careful unloading of what seems like years of gradual disillusionment in the political party he had previously identified with. I suggest reading the whole thing.

Arianna Huffington is another person who made the transition from Greedy Oil Party cultist to opposing the GOP when she realized they were a bunch of liars who never actually did what they promised. She worked for Newt Gingrich and it was Newt Gingrich's own cynical hypocrisy drove Huffington away. I am no big fan of Arianna Huffington, but I respect the fact that she, like Lofgren, was able to see through the lies and theatrics of the Greedy Oil Party and reject them as one of the most destructive and corrupt forces in American politics. Lufgren is right...there is corruption in the Democratic Party as well, as I have written about frequently in regards to my own home territory of Brooklyn. But the corruption within the Republican Party, measured by comparing the numbers of politicians under investigation, indicted or convicted, FAR outweighs any corruption within the Democratic Party (see also this site for a somewhat less clearly laid out but more up to date analysis). Furthermore, many Democrats, myself included, fight to reform our own Party (to the degree of even endorsing Republican Joseph Cao in Louisiana against a corrupt Democrat). There is hardly a corrupt Republican who isn't embraced by the Greedy Oil Party and often given and maintained in leadership positions.

More interesting is the case of Pete McCloskey who was so disgusted by the behavior of the Republican Party during the Bush years that he left the party. Pete McCloskey had been a life-long Republican and a former candidate for President in a Republican primary. He himself says his family had been Republicans since before Lincoln, suggesting they were among the founders of the party. Yet the corruption and hypocrisy of the modern Greedy Oil Party drove away Pete McCloskey. Here is the letter he wrote explaining his decision:

McCloskeys have been Republicans in California since 1859, the year before Lincoln's election. My great grandfather, John Henry McCloskey, orphaned in the great Irish potato famine of 1843, came to California in 1853 as a boy of 16, and joined the party just before the Civil War.

By 1890 he and my grandfather, both farmers, made up two of the twelve members of the Republican Central Committee of Merced County. My father's most memorable expletive came when I was a boy of 10 or 11: "That damn Roosevelt is trying to pack the Supreme Court!"

I registered Republican in 1948 after reaching the age of 21. We were the party of civil rights, of free choice for women and fiscal responsibility. Since Teddy Roosevelt, we had favored environmental protection, and most of all we stood for fiscal responsibility, honesty, ethics and limited government intrusion into our personal lives and choices. We accepted that one the duties of wealth was to pay a higher rate of income tax, and that the estates of the wealthy should contribute to the national treasury in reasonable measure.

I was proud to serve with Republicans like Gerry Ford, the first George Bush and Bob Dole.

In 1994, however, Newt Gingrich brought a new kind of Republicanism to power, and the election of George W. Bush in 2000 has led to wholly new concept of governance. The bureaucracy has mushroomed in size and power. The budget deficits have become astronomical. Our historical separation of church and state has been blurred. We have seen a succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes, and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House.

The single cardinal principle of political science, that power corrupts, has come to apply not only to Republican leaders like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and John Doolittle, but to a succession of White House officials and appointees. The stench of Jack Abramoff has permeated much of the Washington Republican establishment.

The Justice Department, guardian of of our rule of law, has been compromised. It's third ranking official, a graduate of Pat Robertson's dubious law school, has taken the 5th Amendment.

Men who have never felt the fear of combat, and who largely dodged military service in their youth, have led us into grievous wars in far off places with no thought of the diplomacy, grace and respect for other peoples and their cultures which has been an American trademark for at least the last two thirds of a century. We have lost the respect and affection of most of the world outside our borders. My son, Peter, one of the U.S. prosecutors at The Hague of the war crimes in Serbia and elsewhere, tells me that people of other countries no longer look at the country which countenances torture as a beacon for the world and the rule of law.

Earth Day, that bi-partisan concept of Gaylord Nelson in 1970, has become the focus of almost hatred by today's Republican leadership. Many still argue that global warming is a hoax, and that Bush has been right to demean and suppress the arguments of scientists at the E.P.A., Fish & Wildlife and U.S.Geological Survey.

I say a pox on them and their values.

Until the past few weeks, I had hoped that the party could right itself, returning to the values of the Eisenhowers, Fords and George H. W. Bush.

What finally turned me to despair, however, was listening to the reports, or watching on C-Span, a whole series of congressional oversight hearings on C-Span, held by old friends and colleagues like Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman, Norm Dicks, Nick Rahall, Danny Akaka and others, trying to learn the truth on the misdeeds and incompetence of the Bush Administration. Time after time I saw Republican Members of the House and Senate. speak out in scorn or derision about these exercises of Congress oversight responsibility being "witch-hunts" or partisan attempts to distort the actions of people like the head of the General Service Administration and the top political appointees in the Justice and Interior Departments. Disagreement turned into disgust.

I finally concluded that it was a fraud for me to remain a member of this modern Republican Party, that there were only a few like Chuck Hegel, Jack Warner, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins I could respect.

Two of the best, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Jim Leach of Iowa, after years of battling for balance and sanity, were defeated last November, and it seems that every Republican presidential candidate is now vying for the support of the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells rather than talking about a return to the values of the party I joined nearly 59 years ago. My favorite spokesmen have beome Senators Jim Webb and Barack Obama.

And so it was, that while at the Woodland courthouse the other day, passing by the registrar's office, I filled out the form to re-register as a Democrat.

The issues Helen (McCloskey) and I care about most, public financing of elections, a reliable paper ballot trail, independent re-districting to replace gerrymandering, the right of a woman to choose not to bring a child into the world, a reversal of the old Proposition 13 and term limits which have so hurt California's once superb education system and the competence of our Legislature, are now almost universally opposed by California's elected Republicans, and the occasional attempts at reform by our Governor are looked on with grim disdain by most of them.

From Helen's and my standpoint, being farmers in Yolo County gives us the opportunity to work for purposes which were once Republican, but can no longer be found at Republican conventions and discussions.

I hope this answers your questions about the party and a government I have served in either civil or military service under ten presidents, five Republican and five Democrat ... I doubt it will be of much interest other than to our friends, but it has been a decision not easily taken.

Respectfully,
Pete McCloskey

The Republican Party has for some time now become a party of extremists where every single reasonable Republican is driven out or silenced and corruption rules the day. It is time America recognized the corrupt Greedy Oil Party for what it is: an anti-American, destructive, greedy and corrupt organization that cares nothing for actual governance but only cares about being able to freely loot the American economy for their own personal power and gain.



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