Tag Archives: US Congress

Ted Cruz and the New Crusaders:

05 Sunday May 2013

Posted by in International Politics, Religion

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Senator Ted Cruz

Senator Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz, the 42 year old Texas Senator and a likely 2016 GOP candidate for president, recently addressed the Republican Party’s Silver Elephant Dinner in South Carolina. According to Politico, “He brought the crowd to its feet by denouncing the administration for cracking down on proselytizing in the armed forces.”

Cruz was quoted saying, "The United States government has no authority to tell any American, in the military or not, that he or she cannot share their faith with others,” Cruz said, exclaiming: “You know, there comes a point where you just can’t make this stuff up!"

Read more:
• Ted Cruz’s red-meat Republicanism (Politico, 4 May 2013)

What The Pentagon is cracking down on is not people who pray but people who aggressively proselytize, particularly in sensitive zones like Afghanistan.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen said in a statement. “The Department makes reasonable accommodations for all religions and celebrates the religious diversity of our service members.”

“Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization),” Christensen added.

Crusader-crossCultural sensitivity would suggest against a unit of the US military, headed for Afghanistan, changing its nickname from the “Werewolves” to the “Crusaders”, complete with the medieval red cross, crusader shield insignia and a crusader knight as its mascot. But the VMFA-122 USMC fighter squadron’s new commander, Lt. Col. Wade Wiegel, was determined to do just that. Equally, going into battle in Afghanistan with your “Jesus rifle” complete with the Biblical references: John 8:12 and Second Corinthians 4:6, etched into its scope, would seem arrogant and just plain stupid. But, there are Christian soldiers who were incensed by The Pentagon’s directive to scrape them off. There are many in the military who welcome the comparison with the holy wars of the past that pitted 11th century Christian Crusader Knights against Muslim warriors in almost two centuries of merciless bloodthirsty conflict in Palestine. That The Pentagon is attempting to wipe out this influence seems only sensible in a region where ‘death from the sky’ drone strikes make the locals hypersensitive and where self-righteous, Bible carrying, western Christian soldiers are not particularly welcome.

Deep within the military, though, there is also the pernicious impact of unit commanders and other senior ranks, pointedly inviting their subordinates to attend Bible classes and prayer groups. When such Bible study and prayer groups grow from small informal gatherings into large, exclusive and influential cliques then The Pentagon is right to worry about unit cohesion and freedom from religious exclusion and conflict. It’s easy to see why a minority of non religious or non Christian lower ranks might liken this type of ‘invitation’ to a subtle form of intimidation, coercion or bullying.

So when a likely GOP candidate for president decides it’s important to make a stand against The Pentagon crackdown on aggressive Christian proselytizing, he’s also making a stand for intimidation of non-religious and non-Christian minorities while also holding up the standard of the murderous medieval Christian Crusaders for the US Military.

It beggars belief that Americans just don’t get why they are so despised in the middle-east, but someone like Senator Ted Cruz goes a long way to illustrating why.

If you’re a Christian from a majority Christian country put yourself in a different space for a moment and imagine you’re a Christian from a Muslim majority country and you’re being constantly harangued by Muslims urging you to abandon your infidel ways and worship the one true god, Allah.
So, how do you feel about the possibility of aggressive Muslim proselytizing then… Not so comfortable is it?
So, why do Christians do it to non-believers and non-Christians?

:: Please leave a comment ::

Why Obama can’t do a deal with Congress:

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in International Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

House of Representatives Speaker, John Boehner seems to be quite an amiable fellow (and certainly sensitive, judging from his frequent tears). He also has a hell of a job with the lunatic fringe comprising 1 in 3 of his caucus. This makes his task of leading his party and the House through a legislative program very difficult. House Democrat Leader, Nancy Pelosi’s got it easy by comparison… Her liberal wing (the left of the party, Jay Rockefeller, Barbara Boxer etc) is only 1 in 10.

Speaker Boehner can’t get anything reasonable through his present caucus with such a large chunk of his members (Tea Party and fanatical Ron Paul-like libertarians) locked into uncompromising, fantasy positions that prevent him reaching any compromise with President Obama and/or Congressional Democrats.

It must have been humiliating for Boehner to handball the new year ‘Fiscal Cliff’ temporary fix to Senate Democrat Majority Leader, Harry Reid and Republican Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, knowing that his only chance of getting a deal was a tacit alliance between a small rump of Republicans and the overwhelming majority of Democrats when the fix came back to the House from the Senate.
Unfortunatley for him, this inability to make deals and legislate, renders his hold on the Speakership pretty shaky.

The parties (in particular the GOP) are now so entrenched in their own version of the Battle of Flanders, that even a Christmas Truce would be impossible because anyone venturing out of the trench with a hint of Christmas goodwill towards the enemy would be cut down with a hail of bullets from his own side (Tea Party Primaries and the enemy of reasonable, Grover Norquist).

So, I can’t see any ‘big deals’ being done between President Obama and the Congressional G.O.P., in the near future, unless it’s done by Boehner using the deflection device to the Senate, outlined above.

I think that’s one of the main reasons why Obama has adopted the long-term ‘Theodore Roosevelt’ strategy of taking his message out on the road and through ‘Oganizing for Action’ (which is still filling my in-box) instead of going the traditional ‘Lyndon Johnson’ legislative route. I think Obama knows that the possibility of doing ‘Johnson’ type deals in this Congress is nill. Instead, Obama is hoping to discredit the Tea Party and Norquist from outside, by slowly changing the current ‘Deficit Hawk’ media narrative and moving the conversation back to the middle and away from the current ‘slash government spending and burn the economy’ political orthodoxy that seems prevalent in the USA (and which has resulted in a triple-dip recession in one country where it was unleashed, the UK under Cameron). It was this continuing campaign strategy that President Theodore Roosevelt adopted, at the turn of the last century, to fundamentally change the way Americans saw corporate regulation and the promotion of the interests of the average citizen instead of powerful political and wealthy elites.

Encouragingly, talk of the need for investment in the future (education, R&D, infrastructure etc) coupled with revenue increases – eliminating some industry subsidies (corn, oil etc), closing some tax  loop-holes for the rich, and means-testing safety net welfare for the wealthy (Social Security and Medicare payments) – and long-term deficit reduction (instead of the Sequester’s ‘Shock and Awe’), is already beginning to gain traction.

That the Sequester is a very blunt, indiscriminate instrument that is going to cause a shock to the US and World Economy, is almost beyond question. And, In the short term, there’s not much that can be hoped to wind it back. Obama’s strategy of continuing the ‘fairness’ tour campaigning, banging on about Republican’s protecting generous tax loop-holes for the rich while demanding cuts in programs benefiting the poor and middle-class, might just provide enough media cover to force a narrative change.

So, although a chorus of commentators, including the New York Times’ David Brooks, are urging Obama to quit his campaigning and get back to deal-making and governing, I think Obama is doing precisely what he needs to do to win the long game. He’s not thinking of the next 10 minutes (like Congress, commentators and the media), he’s thinking of the next 10 years and a possible seachange in America. I hope he succeeds.

Gee that boy can prattle on…. Enough!

Check out Nobel Economics Prize-winner, Paul Krugman’s New York Times Column and his piece on the Sequester:
• Sequester of Fools by Paul Krugman
(NYT, 22 Feb. 2013)

For the geeks:
* Although Theodore Roosevelt was a successful president, his long-term legacy was tarnished by his successors who ensured he was the last of the progressive Republican Presidents. From Taft on, the GOP became the ‘cut government’ conservative party of the rich and powerful and the hitherto generally conservative Democrats became the progressive party under the presidency of the husband of Theodore Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor Roosevelt.
* Yes indeed folks, Franklin Roosevelt was a distant cousin of Eleanor, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1918 launched her career as the most powerful political spouse in American History, before or since, with the possible exception of Edith Wilson, who in late 1919 effectively and secretly assumed the Presidency after Woodrow’s catastrophic stroke.

Is there any hope that Congress can get anything done on issues like immigration, gun slaughter, the budget, the sequester?

:: Please leave a comment ::

Washington’s Political Sclerosis:

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in International Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

I was reading a recent Washington Post report about the redoubtable Sth. Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s threat to ‘put a hold’ on the confirmation of nominees, Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel and CIA Chief, John Brennan. At first glance, I wondered… Are you a right-wing lunatic hiding beneath a relatively moderate Republican skin?… But then I remembered that the competition, these days, isn’t between Republicans and Democrats at elections but within the parties at Primaries; meaning that Graham was pitching to the rabid base to shore up his position against a primary attack. The new reality is, the enemy within is more dangerous than the foe across the aisle.

How has this anomaly of the democratic process arisen that has made compromise between parties, impossible and government, sclerotic?
In the 2012 elections, 85% of House seats and 60% of Senate races, were considered Safe (a winning margin of at least 10%). In the past, staking a claim to these prized pieces of Congressional real estate could give the holder a job for life. Many incumbents took the opportunity to grow fat and comfortable while many others took the relative safety of their position to carve out meaningful and illustrious legislative careers. Until the recent past, ‘lunatic fringe’ primary challenges were rarely successful but with the rise of the rabid right-wing Tea Party within the G.O.P., that all changed. The threat from this intractable faction has led previously rational Republican legislative negotiators to behave like cornered Rottweilers. That coupled with the ludicrous 60% Senate vote (close to that often required to change a national constitution elsewhere in the world) now needed to enact simple legislation; and national government, in any meaningful sense, has ceased to exist in the USA.

It is grievously frustrating to see the lurch from crisis to crisis of Congress’ own design. The members don’t seem chastened by the flirtation with recession, in last quarter 2012, said to be the result of uncertainty generated by Congressional brinkmanship over the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ or the sledgehammer surgery applied to the US economy by the ‘Sequester’ as a result of Congressional failure to act last month.

Republican House members and Senators seem only to be concerned, like Senator Graham, with potential Primary challenges from Tea Party fanatics. And why need they care how low the esteem of the G.O.P in Congress sinks in the eyes of electors, when the only threat to their Congressional survival lies within their own ranks.

Until the threat of a party losing a seat becomes greater than a Primary loss, this sorry state appears destined to continue. In Australia, seat (district) boundaries and redistricting is established by an independent Federal Commission rather than the incumbent majority party in each State. With the Republicans in the ascendancy in ‘State engineered redistricting’ in recent years, the electoral map greatly favours the G.O.P. I noted with interest that at the November election, Democrats won millions more votes than Republicans but 33 fewer seats; a product of majority party redistricting, the Texas Perry-mander etc.

I remember looking at gerrymandering in my political science classes at university and discussing it as a quaint relic of the 19th century ‘rotten borough’ era in England and 1812 Massachusetts (where the term originated). But then I became interested in modern USA politics… Such a glaring and catastrophic democratic flaw would be an amusing subject of harmless banter if the country in question was Chad but when manufactured crises in the Congress of the USA, such as the 2011 ‘Debt Ceiling’ and the recent ‘Fiscal Cliff’, and ‘Sequester’, can cause the US credit-rating to be downgraded and other financial ripples around the world then it becomes a worry for the rest of us.

I just watched Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a documentary about Jack Abramoff and the way he allegedly bought the Republican Party. It was horrifying.

Read New York Times Columnist, Sam Wang’s piece on the 2012 Election:
• The Great Gerrymander of 2012 by Sam Wang
(NYT, 3 Feb. 2013)

I can see China with its booming economy, looking on with envy at the remarkable excercise of democracy in the USA, with its sensible Senate rules that prevent anything getting done. Will any other American organisation adopt the requirment of a 60% vote in favour of any action or would they just laugh? Would any democratic institution anywhere in the world, outside the USA, ever adopt a 60% rule to get anything done? Will the Congressional gerrymander ever be exposed and fixed?

:: Please leave a comment ::