Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

I’ve got an idea for a new song for the Dixie Chicks. Maybe they could sweep up the redneck capital of Nashville with it.

After sleeping late this Thursday morning, and after I got the coffee going and the laptop setup to blog, there was the mug of George W. Bush, our lame-duck president, making another one of those misleading morning speeches that define his failed eight years in office.

Then the next face to hit the screen was Sarah Palin, the diva of the so-called “New GOP,” the nitwit governor of Alaska who helped John McCain lose his bid for president, thank Dog.

I’m torn between two competing emotions.

On one hand, I want Bush and Palin off my TV.

Bush needs to go back to Crawford, Texas, and cut himself up into little pieces with his brush-cutting chain saw.

And Sarah Palin just needs to take her new wardrobe and go back to hunting wolves from helicopters in Alaska.

On the other hand, maybe it would be best to just keep these two anti-intellectual losers on the tube every day as a reminder to the independents in this country of how sad and pathetic the Republican Party is now.

If that is going to be the strategy for ratings, however, I’m just going to turn off the TV. I don’t want to see their faces any more or hear their idiocy.

A very smart man has now won the presidency. And he’s assembling a team of smart people to fix our national problems, at least the ones the federal government is best situated to deal with.

Like a majority of Americans, I have confidence that the Obama administration will be able to straighten out our economic issues, which will involve getting the U.S. military out of Iraq. And yes, it will involve helping U.S. automakers to survive.

As Bill Clinton’s former labor secretary Robert Reich has been saying in TV interviews, the federal government is the lender and spender of “last resort.”

And Obama is going to need Detroit to re-tool the American auto industry in the coming Green Revolution. Alabama could have been part of that, but they blew it. McCain won Alabama and managed a higher percentage of the white vote than any other state except maybe Oklahoma.

But now is the time to take the politics out of policy in this country. We’ve had enough after eight years of Karl Rove making all the decisions about what the Bush administration would do in order to try and create a Republican majority for the next generation. He failed in that. And he failed the country.

We now know that Bush was not “the decider” after all. Every decision Bush made was guided by the perceived effect on politics. But that is no way to run the government of the most powerful country in the world, not if your goal is long-term success.

So maybe it’s time for the Dixie Chicks to get in the studio and break out a new record, perhaps with the title song: Get Bush and Palin Off My TV!

The song that is ringing in my head for no apparent reason is Money For Nothing by Dire Straits, maybe because of the line in the song, “I want my MTV.”

[Video link]

I remember distinctly when that song came out and hit number one on the charts in 1985. I recall hearing it up loud in Johnny Wyker’s family hardware store in downtown Decatur, Alabama. I was a political reporter for The Decatur Daily at that time.

Wyker was a member of the one-hit wonder rock group Sailcat, which scored with the song “Motorcycle Mama” in 1972.

Another tragic story of an Alabama native who almost made the big time but blew it. Wyker got too drunk and stoned before a showcase performance in front of a major record label and vomited on stage. So much for Sailcat.

Karl Rove Halloween mask

The Dixie Chicks almost disappeared into obscurity when they became mired in political controversy after comments made by Natalie Maines about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Bush. Maines told a sold-out crowd in London, England, “We don’t want this war, this violence; and, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”

But they made a major comeback in 2007 and won the coveted Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Taking The Long Way.

I have made a point of playing the first and third songs on the record at least once a week on the drums for the past two years, as a way of bashing out my anger on what Bush has done to this country. I have a mask of Karl Rove hanging on the wall of The Bunker right behind the drum set.

But now that Obama has won, I think it is time to retire the practice, burn the mask and bury the hatchet. Now if only Bush and Palin would get off my TV!

by Glynn Wilson

Artur Davis, the soft-spoken and little-known Congressman who represents much of the area from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa, was in town this weekend while Congress takes a break from the August heat in Washington, D.C.

Glynn Wilson

Rep. Artur Davis at the Young Democrats cookout

Dressed casually in gray slacks and a blue buttoned-down shirt, Davis showed up to shake some hands at the Birmingham Young Democrats’ cookout in George Ward Park on Southside.

I was able to catch up with him for a few minutes to press my concerns about the threat to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against “unreasonable” searches and seizures, and to finally get some answers to questions his press staff seem incapable of responding to — electronically or otherwise.

In northeastern Jefferson County, where a concern for the Second Amendment’s protections for gun ownership are paramount politically, very few people have ever even heard of Davis. An unscientific survey of average working people in Clay, Pinson, Center Point, Trussville, and Roebuck shows that he has almost no name recognition in this part of the world.

And since the newspapers and television news stations and radio talk shows in Alabama spend almost no time covering such “trivial” things as the threat to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution from the Bush administration’s illegal spying operations over the past seven years, the average construction worker here doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about that either.

But among active Democrats who were in attendance at the cookout, there is an awareness that Davis — along with Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president to run against Republican John McCain — voted for the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which included a provision exempting telecommunications companies such as ATnT from lawsuits for their admitted role in illegally spying on Americans since 9/11.

The main reason Davis supported the bill, he said, was political.

Since Davis endorsed Obama early on, and since President George W. Bush threatened to veto any FISA bill that did not contain telecom immunity, the moderate Democrats who hold sway in both houses of Congress did not want to give McCain ammunition in the last three months of the presidential election race by allowing the spying law to expire in August.

McCain could have used that as evidence that the Democrats are “weak on terror,” Davis said — as if he wasn’t going to run ads saying that very thing anyway. He has already.

In his defense, Davis did offer a legal answer to the question as well.

Davis is a Harvard-educated lawyer who interned at the Southern Poverty Law Center and clerked for U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson — the federal judge who ordered Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments Monument out of the State Supreme Court building in Montgomery and one of my personal heroes. He also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney before running for Congress, unlike Alabama’s current attorney general Troy King, who had never tried a case in court.

Standing in the George Ward Park pavilion with the aroma of barbecued chicken in the air, Davis made the case that the new FISA bill was an improvement over the old one.

Under the old law, passed in 1978 in response to President Nixon’s abuse of federal resources to spy on opposing political activist groups, there was no provision for protecting American citizens abroad, Davis said. The new law extends those rights overseas beyond the nation’s physical borders “for the first time,” he said. It was a compromise the Democrats would never have gotten out of the Bush administration just a few months ago, he claims.

The new law also strengthens monitoring of the federal government’s spying by the so-called FISA court, he said, although critics have said the court is nothing more than a “rubber stamp” for the executive branch, no matter who is in power.

The new bill also changes the language for obtaining warrants to spy on Americans from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion,” he said, although in a country run by an Imperial President who thinks he is a king who derives his power from God and is not beholden to the law, that improvement seems hardly enough to stop the abuses.

Which brings us to the last issue, where Davis makes a good point.

Whether the law is enforced in a way that protects civil liberties “rests on the integrity of the executive,” Davis said.

So he is hoping one of the questioners at this year’s presidential debates makes sure to ask Senator John McCain the question: “Can we count on you to be responsible in enforcing the FISA law?”

Or, in other words, will you abuse the power of the presidency to spy on political opponents, like Nixon and Bush? We might also add: Will you also politicize the Justice Department to jail your enemies?

Whether Davis’s answer will assuage the critics on the left in the Democratic Party is questionable.

According to Ben Mazzara, the local organizer for the Greater Birmingham Democracy for America chapter, a group set up by Howard Dean to help register new voters, Davis’s position is much like a lot of the Democrats in Congress now, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They have so far refused to bring articles of impeachment against Bush-Cheney or to hold Karl Rove in “inherent contempt” for his role in the political prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman.

“They have placed winning elections above the Constitution,” Mazzara said at the cookout.

He said that may pale in comparison to how Bush and the Republicans have “eviscerated” the Constitution. But it certainly contributes to the low public approval ratings of this Congress and may cause problems after the election, he said, even if Obama wins.

According to Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert who often appears on MSNBC to talk about these issues, history and the country may not judge the Democrats kindly. Check out this exchange on Keith Olbermann’s show:

TURLEY: … the most remarkable if not bizarre aspect of all of this [is] that President Bush’s allies in the last seven years have been the Democratic leadership and the Democratic members that have repeatedly stepped in to protect him, not just from impeachment, but serious investigation. And it’s part of a very cynical political strategy. It has succeeded.

The Democrats know that they can retain the Congress if they just let this guy (Bush), you know, sort of ripen on the vine. And that they are afraid that there could be a backlash if they try to impeach. But of course, that’s literally all politics and no principle. They took an oath in the House of Representatives. And the most important thing they have to do as House members is to stand firm in the face of presidential crimes.

And I think history will be very, very severe, not just for Speaker Pelosi, but all of the Democrats, of how they could let this come to pass where they stood silent and did nothing in the face of such compelling criminal record.

We will see if that prediction comes true, along with another one we made awhile back when covering the issue at the time: Will the issue come back to haunt Davis if he decides to run for governor of Alabama in 2010?

Good News, Bad News Friday in Washington

Senate Passes Bush’s Spy Bill With Telecom Immunity

According to Richard Cohen, executive director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Davis is a fine lawyer with a promising future in politics.

“Two things were obvious about Artur from day one here,” Cohen said. “He was going to be a gifted lawyer and was destined for great things in politics.”

But according to William Crain, a regular commentor on one of the largest and most influential e-mail lists in Alabama, “Davis is DLC (Democratic Leadership Council).”

If you want to examine the nefarious ways and means of the DLC, he said, read this article and others like it on the site.

The key quote from Davis, which makes a lot of sense from a practical political point of view, goes like this.

“If you don’t win, you don’t get to do anything,” he says. “If you don’t figure out a way to translate your message into at least 51 percent of the vote, then you will not do very well.”

True, but is it possible to win elections and remain true to the Constitution at the same time? Some people think so. It just takes work to educate the people and the press.

“The reason that there is much dissention in the Democratic Party ranks today is caused by the leaders of the DLC, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Al Frome, Rahm Emmanuel (and others),” Crain said. “If you don’t like Neo-Conservatives you will certainly not like Neo-Liberals. And the DLC is Neo-Liberal. You don’t want a Neo-Liberal for governor.”

To learn more about Davis’s background and to read about some of the controversies on the sources of his campaign funding, check out this SourceWatch page, which shows he takes a lot of money from New Yorkers. You can also check out this page from OpenSecrets.org, which shows that Davis takes a lot of money from corporations such as Southern Company, one of the worst polluters in the American South.

Conventional wisdom in this country and in the mainstream, corporate news media holds that the American public is fundamentally conservative - hostile to government, in favor of unregulated markets, at peace with inequality, wanting a foreign policy based on the projection of military power and traditional in its social values.

But as a new report demonstrates from the non-profit Media Matters in America, that picture is fundamentally false.

Media perceptions and past Republican electoral successes notwithstanding, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, and they’re growing more progressive all the time.

This report gathers together years of public opinion data from unimpeachably nonpartisan sources to show that on issue after issue, the majority of Americans hold progressive positions. And this is true not only of specific policy proposals, but of the fundamental perspectives and approaches that Americans bring to bear on issues.

Nor is the progressive majority merely a product of the current political moment. On a broad array of issues, particularly social issues, American opinion has grown more and more progressive over the past few decades. In contrast, it is difficult to find an issue on which the public has grown steadily more conservative over the last 10, 20, or 30 years.

The Issues

The role of government

Americans support an active government that tackles problems, provides services and aids those in need.

The economy

Americans support increasing the minimum wage and strong unions, and believe the wealthy and corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

Social issues

Americans support legal abortion and embryonic stem cell research; opinions on equal rights for women and gay Americans have grown dramatically more progressive in recent years.

Security

Americans support a progressive approach to national security, emphasizing strong alliances and diplomacy over the indiscriminate use of military force. On domestic security issues, progressive approaches to crime and gun control enjoy wide support.

The environment

By enormous margins, Americans favor strong environmental protections, a core progressive belief.

Energy

Americans support energy conservation and the development of alternative fuels.

Health care

Americans clearly favor universal coverage and are more than comfortable with government solutions to the health care problem.

In summary, a look across the scope of American opinion reveals a public that holds progressive positions and supports progressive solutions on economic issues, on social issues, on security issues - indeed, on nearly all the key issues confronting the country. For years, the conventional wisdom has maintained just the opposite, but the facts are impossible to ignore.

Read the full study report here

There is nothing more heartening for a scientifically objective American journalist than to see the results of a public opinion poll that shows the American people waking up to the facts.

According to the latest Associated Press poll and story, Americans are now realizing there will be no such thing as a “clear-cut victory in Iraq,” in direct contradiction to the Bush-Rumsfeld propaganda as recently as today and yesterday.

Bush talked about “victory” in Iraq in a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair Thursday, and outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed to plead for more time as he delivered his farewell to Pentagon employees Friday.

Rumsfeld Bids Farewell to Pentagon

This quote is not in the AP story, but from watching the event on cable TV, Rumsfeld also said we could “win” in Iraq “if only the American people would give us more time.”

But the AP poll shows a growing number of Americans doubt the country will achieve a stable, democratic government in Iraq, no matter how or when the U.S. gets out of this quagmire and civil war.

Dissatisfaction with President Bush’s handling of Iraq has climbed to an alltime high of 71 percent, according to the poll, which found that only 27 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s handling of Iraq - down from his previous low of 31 percent in November.

Goodbye, Mr. Rumsfeld, and thank you very much - for blowing our country’s standing in the world and leaving the Middle East in chaos.

And good luck Mr. Lame Duck President Bush. Your time is almost up…