All posts tagged Anson Burlingame

No Peace, As Long As Tr-mp Remains

Anson Burlingame, former blogger and current contributor to the Joplin Globe’s editorial page (as a concerned conservative citizen), wrote a response to my post about Paul Ryan being “The Most Corrupt Man in America.” Here it is in full:

Duane,

I note that only a few, three actually, have commented on your last three blogs, all three just more rants of everything wrong with Trump. No reason for me as the lone conservative to comment as your only solutions offered are to impeach and remove from office Trump, “unpresident” Pence, and imply the same path must be taken with the third man in line for the Presidency, the “most corrupt man in America”. In other words clean house and restore government to single party power, your party. My column in Sunday’s Globe was my response to you and yours.

In the meantime I have now been introduced to three ideas that offer insight into American politics today. The first is McMaster’s book, Dereliction of Duty. What happened related to Vietnam after JFK’s death is still going on today, particularly during the Bush/Obama Years. Read the book to get my gist.

Second is the new Netflick movie, War Machine, a glimpse at the McCrystal months in Afganistan.

Finally is a new initiative called Poverty Inc., new to me at least. If one watches the video (PBS) and considers how our local Water Gardens program tries to help the poor (teach a man to fish, not just giving away free fish) you see a counter argument to the way the world tries to deal with, say, poverty in Africa, today.

The information provided on all three “things”, how we screwed up in Vietnam, big time, why McCrystal (and everyone else commanding our military (starting with two different Commanders in Chief) in that sad affair called Afghanistan) failed and why current efforts related to world poverty are failing are all ideas that need exploring, today, again.

In the meantime, all you contribute to those issues is wait 2-4 years, clean house and start again to screw it all up, again!!

My point is America will not make headway against complex issues as long was we try to govern with Hatfield’s and McCoy’s in charge, one or the other.

Anson

I haven’t had time lately to answer too many of the comments posted on this blog, but I quickly wrote the following response in reply to Anson, and I post it here because I think you all need to be reminded as to why I am so fixated on the damage Tr-mp is doing to the country and to our interests around the world. It’s not just a matter of Republicans versus Democrats, liberals versus conservatives; it’s not just a matter of me wanting my party, the Democratic Party, to rule:

Anson,

While I appreciate the fact that you are willing to explore what are new ideas for you, I don’t see what any of them have to do with our present dilemma. McMaster’s book on Vietnam is an elaborate detailing of what we already knew (I have written at least twice about Johnson’s colossal mistake of escalating that war for bullshit reasons). War Machine is a look at what anyone can see is a difficult problem in Afghanistan, considering the complications involved (how many times have we discussed that on this blog?). And the “Water Gardens” idea is not a new one, (I have written about it—quite critically—at least once or twice now and maybe more).

You continue, though, to ignore the dangerous situation Tr-mp’s “presidency” is putting us in, in terms of U.S. strength, both moral and political, in the world and what losing that strength can and probably will mean. As I recall, you were quite critical of Obama’s “leading from behind” strategy (whatever that was supposed to mean) and other aspects of his international leadership or, in your case, his lack of it. Now, all of a sudden, world affairs and how the U.S.’s role in them is quickly diminishing—we are in fact becoming a laughingstock—is secondary to some new or newly expressed or newly valued notion of yours that we need to make peace between the Hatfields and McCoys.

Well. I will not make peace with people who think Tr-mp is the cure for whatever is making us sick. Why? Because Tr-mpism itself, which predates Tr-mp, is the disease. I have laid it out before: changing FCC rules on equal time led to Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk radio, which began the whole “fake news” bullshit. That led to Fox “News,” which televised the same bullshit. Drudge and Breitbart on the Internet was another form of the same destructive bullshit. And now, voilà, we have the bullshitter-in-chief. No surprise. He didn’t spring from a vacuum. He sprang from a shallow pool of know-nothings, people in the conservative media complex who figured out how to monetize the deprecation of real journalism in favor of a web of misinformation and lies.

So, no. I will not make peace with such people. We are surely in a slow-moving, non-shooting civil war in this country. Just as Lincoln figured out there was no peace-making with people who not only valued slavery as an institution, but valued it over their own goddamned country, so have I figured that out. Until Tr-mp and Pence are gone, and until Tr-mpism is pushed back (it will never die, as the Civil War and its aftermath has taught us), you will get no peace from me, in terms of a willingness to compromise with people who think Tr-mp and his behavior are good for the country—and, unfortunately, that includes most Republicans. And, quite unfortunately, that includes people like H.R. McMaster, who once enjoyed well-deserved sterling reputations, but now find themselves corrupted by Tr-mp.

Duane

by R. Duane Graham on May 31, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 31, 2017

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/no-peace-as-long-as-tr-mp-remains/

The Trump Dilemma And An Appeal To Anson Burlingame

As all you locals know, Anson Burlingame is a man with whom I have spent considerable time and effort debating on this blog and in the Joplin Globe and on his own (now retired) blog. I would characterize him as a conservative with a libertarian streak. Recently I, and others, have been interacting with him over the “Trump Dilemma”: should a conservative opposed to Trump vote for a third party (Anson’s tentative position) or swallow hard and vote for Hillary Clinton in order to make a vote against Trump doubly effective?

The following is my latest, and perhaps last, attempt to convince him to take the latter course:

Anson,

Sorry this is so long. But passions are high.

Nobody is trying to lecture you. We are trying to reason with you. You love your country and you have served it honorably. We love our country, too. And we want to keep loving it. How, we ask, can you (or anyone) turn it over (or risk turning it over by not voting for Trump’s only viable rival) to someone so temperamentally unqualified and imbalanced, so ignorant and bigoted, so self-serving and demonstrably corrupt? 

If you think I am going to spend any time, any time whatsoever, trying to convince you that Hillary’s policy proposals (domestically, especially) are something you, as a conservative, could accept, you’re mistaken. That wouldn’t do one bit of good and we both know that. She is a Democrat with left-of-center views. You’re not. You have right-of-center views. There isn’t much of a match there. And besides that, I realize how much Hillary has been demonized in the conservative press and, alas, in the “mainstream” press. That is tough to overcome in a few blog posts. Thus, my appeal is directed elsewhere.

There is one thing that we all can see with our own eyes: Trump is truly an existential threat to the America we have known. That’s not election year hyperbole. You can see it and I can see it and all but the willfully blind can see it. He doesn’t make much of an effort to hide his instability and ignorance. He merely uses bluster to bully his way through. There isn’t an inch of depth to anything he says. He doesn’t understand our history. He has no clue about the military. He has no conception of how world relations work. He doesn’t know the difference between Shia and Sunni or, for that matter, the difference between a nuclear triad and a triathlon. Our allies fear he will win and wreck what is right with the world. Our enemies, particularly Russia and ISIS, want him to win. Think about that. And then think about it again.

Once-respected Republicans in the national security and intelligence business have overwhelmingly voiced their fear of a Trump presidency. They have said he is a dangerous man. Many of them have said that although they disagree with Hillary Clinton on a number of things, that they have to overlook those disagreements because the stakes are so damned high. That is all I am trying to say here. Sure, you would have a lot of problems with a Clinton presidency, no doubt about that. But at least you will know there will be another election to follow (and potentially correct the previous result) because with Hillary Clinton you have good reason to believe the world won’t go completely to hell in between. We have no reason, absolutely no reason, to believe such a thing under a “President Trump.”

Finally, I have tried to think of the reverse situation, one in which you would be asking me to vote against my ideological or partisan or other preferences in order to stop a Trump-like Democrat from taking office. I confess I can’t think of any potential candidate on my side who would fit. Not one. I have, though, come up with a man from recent history that I will use as a type of candidate I can honestly tell you I would vote against, if he were around today and had received the Democratic nomination. That man is George Wallace.

I hesitate to use Wallace (Democrats rejected him three times as their presidential candidate) because although he was a segregationist and populist (before he repented later in life of his racism and ran, again, as a Democrat in the 1972 primaries), he wasn’t a totally ignorant fool like Trump. He knew how government worked, and if he had become president during his days as a segregationist, there isn’t any reason that I know of to have feared his starting a nuclear holocaust (accidentally or on purpose) or some other such thing. 

Having said all that about Wallace and stipulated that he wasn’t in Trump’s league in terms of an existential risk to the country, I will use him to stand in for a candidate that might set up a “Trump Dilemma” for Democrats like me. If a Wallace-like segregationist were, God forbid, to ever get the Democratic Party nomination, I can assure you that if the polls showed him with even a slight chance of becoming president, I would not vote third party. I’d vote for the candidate with the best chance of beating him. That candidate would, by default, have to be a Republican. And so long as that Republican opposed the bigotry and racist politics of my Wallace-like figure—and showed at least a minimum understanding of how the world works—he or she would have my vote—even if I otherwise stood in ideological opposition to such a candidate. You have my word on that, even as I appreciate the cognitive dissonance of it all. Merely electing such a racist demagogue to high office would do more damage to the country than, say, another tax cut for billionaires.

That lands me here: I, in fact, have voted for Republicans for president. I now vote for Democrats, but it isn’t inconceivable to me that someday I would, depending on how the political parties conduct themselves, vote for a Republican again. And that is the key, Anson. It depends on how the parties conduct themselves. Just look at what has happened to the Republican Party under Trump and ask yourself if that is the proper conduct. Of course it isn’t. And then ask yourself: what is the best way to send a message to the offending political party?

I sent a message to the GOP in 2004, when I voted for my first Democrat, John Kerry. My message was simple: the Republican Party no longer represented my interests and I refused to vote for a guaranteed-to-lose third party that would have only helped the GOP stay in power. I wanted my vote to essentially count twice by not only withholding it from the Republicans, but by giving to the Democrats. It turned out Bush stayed in power anyway. But my conscience was clear, especially when the economy collapsed in 2008. No one could blame my vote for that. 

Again, there is no lecturing here, Anson. I am just trying to, as I said, appeal to reason and common sense. In the end, you and I cast just one vote each. Neither is likely to affect the outcome in the slightest. My efforts to convince you not to vote for a third party and thereby theoretically enhance Trump’s chances to win are somewhat personal. We have gone at each other, mostly with civility, for more than 7 1/2  years. I continue to believe that I have not misjudged you, in terms of your understanding of and appreciation for what is at stake here, when it comes to Trump and the national and world threat he represents—and when it comes to “throwing away” your vote (I think those were your words). My plea is not to throw away that vote. Make it count. At least to those of us who have known and argued with you over the years, mostly with what I won’t hesitate to call mutual respect.

Maybe in the end it will turn out my judgment is faulty. If so, that’s on me not on you. You are who you are and obviously not subject to my judgments or expectations. Both of us are responsible for our own choices, in this case our own history-making votes. I can at least say that my old sparring partner will not actually vote directly for Trump—a prediction I confidently made to someone earlier this year. That may not be enough to stop Trump in this third-party-heavy race (where Johnson and Stein are polling too high for my comfort), but it does say something good about you in that you refuse to follow most conservatives and Republicans into a very dark place.

As far as the larger picture, the collective electorate, I am hoping that there are a lot of Anson Burlingame conservatives out there who, in the end, will do the best thing for the country and hold their noses, if they have to, and vote against a dangerous demagogue by voting for Hillary Clinton.

Duane

by R. Duane Graham on September 21, 2016  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on September 21, 2016

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/the-trump-dilemma-and-an-appeal-to-anson-burlingame/

“I Am Not A Racist”

tribe: any aggregate of people united by ties of descent from a common ancestor, community of customs and traditions, adherence to the same leaders, etc.

—Dictionary.com

Many of you know Anson Burlingame, either by his comments on this blog, his postings on his own blog, or by way of his contributions to the Joplin Globe editorial page. Recently, another commenter called Anson a racist, claiming that “to some degree all of us have it.” Naturally, Anson didn’t accept the designation. “I am not a racist,” he wrote. He added,

At my advanced age I know pretty well what my motives and fundamental “instincts” are in most situations.

In a later comment, he wrote:

I freely admit that, using today’s standards for calling someone a racist, I was raised as a racist in the 1940’s and 50’s. But over the years, 54 years (since HS graduation) and counting I have read and talked myself beyond, out of, such [animus], like many other older Americans have done during that period.

I know I have written a lot about issues involving race lately, but so be it. It is important, as far as I’m concerned. I think cultural angst among whites is a major reason we have such gridlock in Congress, as Tea Party Republicans, representing such anxious and fearful folks, have essentially been holding the legislative process hostage since 2010.

I wrote a long response to Anson’s comment on my piece about the sad racism that occurred here in Missouri, when marching black demonstrators passed through a couple of white small towns last week. My response included the following, which is related to the charge of racism:

As for the accusation that one or more commenters have now and in the past made against you—calling you a racist—let me say that I am very careful in applying that word to individuals. As you know, “racism” strictly means the belief that one’s race is superior to another’s race, necessarily implying the idea that the superior race should rule over the other. Historically, there is no doubt that America was founded by, and for years was governed by, racists, as black slaves were used to economically benefit white people.

You have never given me any reason to suspect that, despite your admittedly racist upbringing in Kentucky in the 1940s and 1950s, that you think white people are inherently superior to black people. But just like it is true that America still has a lot of work to do to rid itself of the legacy of slavery and white supremacy—our cultural institutions, after all, were built and maintained for years in that context—individual whites living in this culture also have work to do. That includes you and that includes me.

Without going into detail, I was also raised with the idea that somehow blacks were inferior to whites. For whatever reason, I never consciously embraced that idea. Perhaps it was because in my lower working-class neighborhood, most of the kids I played with when I was very young were black kids. My next-door neighbors to the east, less than 30 feet away, were black. Across the street lived black people. Across the alley in the back lived black people. Down the street lived even more black people. I was surrounded by African-American kids my entire young life. In all the ways that I could see, they seemed just like me.

In elementary school and junior high, one of my best friends was black (forget the cliché). I spent a lot of time in or near his home, a few blocks away from mine. I walked the streets with him and played neighborhood sports with him. In high school, my best friend was a black kid a year older than I. We spent nearly every school night together, riding around in his car delivering newspapers (it was his job, not mine) and then later cruising and listening to music (some might find it odd, but he was a fan of Steely Dan like I was).

But having said all that, I still catch myself getting a little irritated by, for instance, certain things I see in hip-hop culture, including the attitudes in some, but not all, of the music. I have to check myself sometimes. I have to remind myself that a thing like wearing your pants in a certain way is just an expression, a way of fitting into a specific “tribe,” if you will. I have my own specific micro-tribes I belong to. You have yours. We act and dress accordingly. We should be open-minded enough to allow others the luxury of belonging to, and conforming to, their own smaller tribes. But sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we look down on other tribes. Sometimes we think ours is superior.

In the same way, you and I belong, by birth, to a larger tribe of “white people.” Because we belong to that tribe, we have inherited certain benefits that come with our skin color. And we have inherited certain prejudices against that other larger tribe of “black people.” If we work hard, we can overcome many of those prejudices. But it is often really hard work. Some of the prejudices we hold we may not consciously be aware of. We may think we have rid ourselves of all the bad qualities of our upbringing, but it is inevitable that at least a few remain. That is just the nature of the case. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we react to black people in ways that look a lot like a form of, a much milder form of, the racism that not only served as the cultural backdrop for much of our nation’s history, but as the backdrop for our childhoods.

I will also suggest to you that because you and I belong to that larger tribe of white people, it is very hard for us, as part of the historically dominant tribe in this society, to get inside the heads of members of the black tribe. We may think we can do so, but it is really hard to pull it off. Our tribe was the oppressor, their tribe was the object of the oppression. That reality makes for very different ways of looking at the world, for understanding the way things work, for teaching children how to make their way through life.

As whites, we may think it is pretty simple: the old laws have been changed to reflect racial equality, so, dammit, just get on with it! Work hard and you will prosper now, we might say. You are every bit as free as we are! Except it isn’t that simple. Black people still face a lot of race-based resistance in this society. Some of that resistance is structural—see voting restrictions that disproportionately affect African-Americans, for instance—and some of it is found in the fact that feelings of white superiority still exist among members of our tribe, members who still mostly run things. You grew up in the ’40s and ’50s with it. I grew up in the ’60s and early ’70s with it.

And while it is true that such attitudes of white superiority have diminished, they still exist. An AP poll a few years ago found that “51% of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes.” The legacy of white supremacy, from slavery to Jim Crow, still infects white minds and still harms black people in so many ways, ways that you and I might be tempted to discount because we don’t experience them, don’t feel them in our bones.

All this is a long way of saying that you are not a racist in the historical sense. But like so many white people, including myself, we carry in our heads some residue of racist thinking, of thinking that our group of people with white skin is in some way or another superior to that other group of people without it. So, when you say, “I have read and talked myself beyond” racial animus, you may be right. I don’t believe for a second that you harbor any malevolent ill will toward black people simply because they are black. But neither you nor I can read or talk ourselves beyond all the racial prejudice that still lingers somewhere in our tribe-conditioned minds, especially when we interpret what it means when we see a black kid with drooping pants or when we watch a cop choke a black man to death on the streets of New York City.

Duane

by R. Duane Graham on December 9, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on December 9, 2014

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/i-am-not-a-racist/

The Joplin Globe’s “Monkey House” Problem

In his response to my post about a local Joplin Globe columnist’s racist tweet, Anson Burlingame, a local blogger who sometimes contributes to the Joplin Globe and who often contributes to the comment section of this blog, wrote in to defend columnist Geoff Caldwell’s use of the term “monkey” in reference to President Obama:

…a monkey is another word for a funny and scatter brained like “thing”. When one is accused of “acting like a monkey” I never considered it a racist comment. Get off this liberal racist accusation against any and all opposing Obama.

Another frequent contributor to this blog, King Beauregard, wrote in response to Anson’s claim:

“Monkey” carries racial baggage and you know it, and more importantly, Geoff knows it. That was the entire point of his tweet.

Exactly. That was the entire point of the tweet, whether Anson realizes it or not. And another commenter, Henry Morgan, put some force behind King Beauregard’s claim:

Anson tells us that “a monkey is another word for a funny and scatter brained like “thing.”
Yes, and a “coon” is a small animal of American forests known for its fastidious eating habits.
And an “ape” is a member of a family of primates inhabiting tropical environs.
A “buck” is a male deer.
A “boy” is a young human male.
And most certainly, as Anson implies, one’s first meaning attached to these words when African-Americans are part of the discussion, is the denotative, not the connotative.
Gee, just nice, kindly words.

Brilliant stuff.

Another frequent contributor, Jim Wheeler, doubted whether Anson was unaware of the obvious fact “that the monkey reference is terminology historically used to deprecate the inferiority of the black race.” Jim writes:

Anson presents an apparently blind eye to this, despite having grown up in Kentucky. That he really didn’t understand the slur is about as likely as believing that Archie Bunker wouldn’t. But wait. I can picture Archie using it and not even realizing its effect, so never mind. 😉

Okay. I’m going to assume, for the sake of argument, that Anson genuinely was not aware that the term “monkey” has historically been used as a racial epithet and worse. I’m going to assume that Anson didn’t see the story earlier this year about North Korea’s state media describing President Obama as a “wicked black monkey.” I suppose it could be that the North Koreans were just saying that our wicked president was a “funny and scatter brained like ‘thing.'” They’re known for their playful chatter, right? Not even Anson Burlingame would believe that, I am sure.

In any case, in order to help make Anson—and others tempted to think that a local columnist comparing our first African-American president to a monkey was just a playful form of criticism—aware of the awful history behind the connection, I’m going to introduce them to Ota Benga, a Congolese man who actually became part of an exhibition at the Bronx Zoo in 1906.  According to Encylopedia Virginia,

…tens of thousands of people came to see the famous Pygmy who shared a cage with an Asian orangutan, several chimpanzees, and a parrot…The so-called man and monkey show was immediately controversial. 

As Wikipedia notes, Benga was displayed in the zoo’s famous “Monkey House,” which closed in 2012. But pay particular attention to this historical fact on the Wiki page:

Displays of non-Western humans as examples of “earlier stages” of human evolution were common in the early 20th century, when racial theories were frequently intertwined with concepts from evolutionary biology.

It’s no accident when someone who wishes to disparage an African-American uses the term monkey. It’s not just “another word for a funny and scatter brained like ‘thing,'” as Anson claimed. And it is especially no accident when someone who literally despises Barack Obama tweets the following:

caldwell and monkey tweet

Geoff Caldwell, a disturbingly reactionary columnist for the Joplin Globe, may never have heard of Ota Benga and his appearance as an exhibit in the Monkey House at the Bronx Zoo in 1906. But he most certainly knows the awful and racist meaning behind calling President Obama a monkey. And that is precisely why he did it.

The only question remaining is whether the Joplin Globe will tolerate such behavior.

by R. Duane Graham on November 25, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on November 25, 2014

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/the-joplin-globes-monkey-house-problem/

The Lingering Poison Of Cynicism

“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it.”

—Stephen Colbert, in a commencement speech to Knox College, 2006

A regular conservative commenter on this blog, who also writes a lot of “guest columns” for our local paper and used to be one of its paid bloggers, wrote in recently expressing a rather cynical opinion related to a piece I wrote on the restoration of the Duck Dynasty patriarch. You can read his entire comment here, but I will post below my full response. The reason I think it important to do so is because I think this particular conservative expresses a brand of cynicism that a lot of conservatives still cling to these days, even after the radioactive fallout produced by Mitt Romney’s “47-percent” nuclear blast that surely helped doom his low-denominator campaign and continues to contaminate the Republican Party.

Before I get to my response to this local conservative, I want to share with you a headline from a right-wing “news” site, one that claims with a shout that it “is here reporting THE TRUTH”:

 benefit recipients and full-time workers

That story generated a lot of buzz on the right (among others, Fox’s website picked it up, Bill O’Reilly did a segment on it, Towhhall.com featured it, etc.) because it supported (and still supports) the right-wing’s Romneyesque view of contemporary, Obama-led America. The story is false, of course. A nice summary of why it is false you can find here, but the idea persists that there are too many “takers” among us, and the country will eventually collapse because of them.

With that brief background, here is my response to the local conservative who wrote in:

Just now catching up with the comment section. I saw your post here and, well, I just don’t understand why you continually fail to empathize with others not in your shoes, or who have not walked the paths you have walked. I believe (or at least hope) you are better than this post indicates. 

You expressed your concern regarding “what to do about heterosexual ‘slugs’ always asking for more money for other people and not working to earn it themselves.” Then you added:

Top it all off and look at public education, a factory producing more and more people that demand more and more from government and fail to achieve the basic skills needed to produce more and more for themselves.

All that makes homosexuality and even discrimination (white against black or the reverse thereof) pale in significance as matters of real concern in America today!!

First, your ridiculous indictment of public education would require a much longer response than I am prepared to offer at this point. Suffice it to say that to claim public schools are factories that produce an increasing population of moochers is insultingly outrageous.

Second, you and your right-wing friends—most of whom have at some time or another benefited in some way from the help of others—have this strange fixation on the relatively small number of non-working adults who get relatively ungenerous government benefits for a relatively short period of time. I just don’t get what that fixation is all about, especially while the moneyed class is making off with the country’s wealth and trying to use some of it to bend the nation’s political will to theirs.

Third, because of your strange obsession with the poor “slugs” who get government help, you then fail to imagine just what it would be like to be discriminated against as a homosexual or an African-American. I would bet that if you had ever suffered from institutional and structural discrimination, such as getting fired from your job for being gay (or for merely being perceived as a gay person), you would feel differently. I would also bet that if you were ever told you couldn’t piss in a white toilet because the law suggested you were some kind of inferior being, you would most definitely not say that such things would “pale in significance” to “Democrat over spending.”

Alas, though, you have enjoyed, as a white man in a white-dominated culture most of your life, the relative privileges of that position, and you now fail, as that same white man, to understand or appreciate what every person who has ever suffered from law-blessed discrimination feels in their very bones. 

And that is too bad for you personally, even though it is problem you share with many white conservatives these days. And that sad fact, that so many white folks are so cynical about the country we all claim to love, makes it too bad for all of us.

Duane

by R. Duane Graham on January 6, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on January 6, 2014

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/the-lingering-poison-of-cynicism/

Remarks And Asides

According to himself, conservative Globeblogger Anson Burlingame is going to work for the Obama administration as a consultant on “nuclear issues resulting from the Japanese quake and Tsunami.”

Now, I don’t know if the President himself called Anson to work for the Centers for Disease Control, but Obama does have a reputation for neutering his political enemies by appointing them to positions in his administration.

In any case, Mr. Burlingame offered a parting shot at yours truly:

But I will have my computer and will be watching carefully as local liberals try to destroy the country, piece by piece or blog by blog.

I hope you are as comforted as I am by the fact that Anson, who has such an odd relationship with reality, will be hard at work making us safe from Japanese radiation, or whatever it is he will be doing in Atlanta.

____________________________

Hamstrung by Congress, the Obama Justice Department will now have to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.  The announcement comes on the same day Obama is launching his 2012 campaign, a campaign, no doubt, that will feature less promises like the 2008 pledge to close Gitmo.  He promised. He tried. He failed.  

Ironically, Republicans, who are mostly—but not completely—responsible for this decision and who have demonstrated a lack of confidence in U.S. civilian courts, may have made it easier for KSM to avoid the death penalty (even if he doesn’t want to) because there is some legal uncertainty as to whether the tribunal can sentence him to death upon a guilty plea.

So, if KSM lives on at the expense of American taxpayers, we have the GOP to thank.

[KSM photo: AFP/Getty]

____________________________

Joke Of the Day:  On Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan, the GOP budget czar, said his soon-to-be-released plan for “saving” (it’s safe to read: “dismantling”) Medicare and Medicaid and “repairing” (it’s okay to read: “killing”) entitlements,

will be giving our political adversaries things to use against us in the next election—and shame on them if they do that.

Yes, shame on them for doing to Republicans what Republicans did to Democrats before the last election.  Remember how Democrats were slashing Medicare to pay for Obamacare?

In any case, why is Ryan so afraid, if his proposal will save the day?

____________________________

Bonus Joke of the Day: Glenn Beck is “uncomfortable” with all that Trump-talk about Obama’s birthplace.  Leaving aside the strange fact that someone has actually out-Becked Beck, here is the joke:

On Bill O’Reilly’s show, Beck said, laughing all the way to Wells Fargo Bank,

The last thing the country needs is a showboat…I would hope we could get serious candidates who could shake things up by not saying provocative things…

____________________________

According to Roll Call, John Boehner’s “top lieutenants”—Cantor, McCarthy and Hensarling—are warning him they can’t guarantee passage this week of the please-don’t-shut-down-the-government bill unless it has at least $40 billion in cuts.  And even that much may not work.  Some Tea Party Republicans are demanding the whole enchilada.

Democrats, who have been too quick to play this one on Republican budget-cutting turf, do seem to be sticking to their $33 billion offer and it is now likely that any deal with that number in it will have to pass the House with Democratic votes. 

All of that will mean that Boehner will lose face this time with the Tea Party and during the upcoming debt ceiling debate will have to try harder to prove to teapartiers that he is as mad—in both senses—as they are. 

That should be fun.

by R. Duane Graham on April 4, 2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on April 4, 2011

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/remarks-and-asides-20/

Remarks And Asides

Dear God,

Please talk Donald Trump into running for president. I take back everything I’ve ever said about Your Party, about Michele Bachmann, about Sarah Palin, even about Anson Burlingame.  Just please let him run and let the GOP pick him as its nominee.  Pretty please?

Prayerfully,

Duane

________________________

Everybody’s making a big deal out of Newt Gingrich’s egregious flip-flop on what to do in Libya. First he can’t wait to go in, then when Obama goes in, he says he shouldn’t have gone in.  If a man can’t make up his mind about which woman with whom he wants to live happily ever after, why should anyone think he can make up his mind about which dictator we should bomb?

________________________

A new Pew poll shows that “nearly half (47%) of registered voters say they would like to see Barack Obama reelected, while 37% say they would prefer to see a Republican candidate win the 2012 election.”  The overview of the Pew survey, though, says,

In part, Obama is benefitting from the fact that the GOP has yet to coalesce behind a candidate.

All the more reason, God, to get Donald Trump to run.  Please?

________________________

Speaking of Republican candidates for president, Herman Cain, famous for broiling Whoppers for Burger King (actually, he’s somewhat famous for running Godfather’s Pizza), attended a rally of home-schoolers yesterday in Des Moines. 

Along with other candidates present, he, of course, trashed the public school system, obligatory behavior for anyone wanting to be the GOP nominee.  But Cain, an African-American Tea Party favorite from the South, said something I found interesting. He reportedly denounced all government involvement in education and then said this:

That’s all we want is for government to get out of the way so we can educate ourselves and our children the old-fashioned way.

The “old-fashioned way“?  Hmm.  Was he talking about the real old-fashioned way, back when there were no schools, no books, and no teachers?  That far back?

Or was the 65-year-old Herman Cain, who admits to a working-class pedigree, talking about the old-fashioned days in the 1950s when he would have spent his formative years in Georgia public schools?  

The old-fashioned way in those days in the South was to segregate-then-educate kids like Herman Cain, and despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, some parts of Georgia did not even begin to integrate the schools until 1970.

According to Professor Michael Gagnon,

In defiance of Brown v. Board of Education, The Georgia School Board required public school teachers to sign a pledge that they would not teach in integrated schools in 1955 or they would lose their teaching license.

Is that the old-fashioned way the GOP candidate for president pines for?

________________________

Finally, James O’Keefe, the scoundrel whose creative video edits have killed ACORN and wounded NPR, while simultaneously giving Sean Hannity a Viagra-like boner, is in debt.  In fact, he claims he’s in debt up to $50,000.  Fifty G’s.  He has sent out a fund-raising email to supporters, saying he had to finance much of his wonderful work on the credit card:

We made a lot of sacrifices—personally and financially —because we fight for what we believe in.

It’s not clear to me how he can both claim he has sacrificed financially and yet beg others to pay his bills, but in any case, I am setting up the James O’Keefe Relief Fund here at The Erstwhile Conservative.  Just send in your donations and I will be sure he gets the money. No amount is too small.

Trust me at least as much as you trust him.

by R. Duane Graham on March 24, 2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on March 24, 2011

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/remarks-and-asides-18/

Where Has All The Wickedness Gone?

“We fear that Joplin is a naughty place; so many naughty people live there.”

—Carthage Daily Patriot, 1880

Monday’s Joplin Globe featured a story on local author Larry Wood, whose latest book about Joplin is called, Wicked City.  The title came from a Springfield Times article in 1878 about our fair city.

Man, things were different back then, no? The most wicked acts in Joplin these days may be Anson Burlingame’s editorials.

In any case, being a mining town, naturally things got a little rough around here and naturally there was a need for “117 whiskey shops.” But I liked best this vision of Joplin found in a paragraph from Debby Woodin’s story in the Globe:

The Joplin Daily Herald opined in May 1880, according to Wood’s book: “We venture to assert that there is no city in the United States that allows lewd women as much latitude to pursue their sinful avocations as does Joplin.”

Now I think I see why local conservatives long for the good ol’ days.

Sadly, Larry Wood’s book doesn’t contain the answer to the intriguing question of where Joplin’s north-south route on the west side of the city—Maiden Lane—got its name. Wood thinks it was due to a horse racing park just north of 20th Street and the lane, and not a reference to women. Darn.

Wicked City is not yet available on Amazon, but five other books by Wood are available here.

by R. Duane Graham on March 15, 2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on March 15, 2011

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/where-has-all-the-wickedness-gone/

Dueling Globe Columnists

Okay.  So, a contributing writer to the Joplin Globe editorial board, Anson Burlingame, got pissed about a piece written by a guest columnist, Elliott Denniston, so he shot back with a column of his own:

Elliott Denniston really crossed the line in negative “campaigning” in his guest column (Globe, Oct. 3) and must be rebutted, strongly. I vigorously challenge his shallow research and obvious partisan conclusions in trying to paint all Republican candidates nationally with only the colors of the few.

Denniston’s apparent sin was daring to point out that some of the candidates running as Republicans this fall were, well, let’s just say, extremists of one sort or another.

Here is a summary of what Denniston noted:

Christine O’Donnell: Believes that there are mice with fully functioning human brains.  Believes that witchcraft is a sin but once dabbled in masturbation.  No, wait. I got that wrong. She believes masturbation is a sin and once dabbled in witchcraft.  Whew!  And finally, O’Donnell owes back taxes and “has lived off her campaign contributions for many years and has no other apparent income.”

Although Burlingame challenged Denniston’s “shallow research,” the things he said about O’Donnell have the virtue of being factual. So, let’s move on:

Abortion: “Five Republicans nominated for the Senate want the government to ensure that women who are raped are required to have their rapists’ babies,” Denniston wrote.  He then went on:

Yes, Sharron Angle of Nevada, Jim [sic] Miller of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ken Buck of Colorado, and O’Donnell, although they hate government intrusion into our lives, believe that the federal government should force women to give birth to babies forced on them by rapists or created through incest.

Although Burlingame challenged Denniston’s “shallow research,” the things he said about these five Republicans and their extremist views on abortion have the virtue of being factual. So, let’s move on:

Sharron Angle: “Implied that armed insurrection against the federal government might be a plausible course of action if the government does not change course,” what she called “Second Amendment remedies.”  Denniston also wrote that Angle once spoke against fluoride as “a Communist plot to undermine Western democracy,” and he said, “Ms. Angle also believes that autism is a phony condition that people use to get extra health benefits.”

Although Burlingame challenged Denniston’s “shallow research,” the things he said about Sharron Angle have the virtue of being factual. So, let’s move on:

Social Security: Denniston says there are Republicans running who want to “eliminate” Social Security “as it now stands and replace it with a system of privatized funds.” He names them: Mike Lee, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, and he lists Ken Buck as an opponent of any federal involvement in health care and retirement and Marco Rubio as an advocate for raising the retirement age to 70 and who wants “to cut benefits to younger workers.”

Although Burlingame challenged Denniston’s “shallow research,” the things he said about some Republicans relative to Social Security have the virtue of being factual. So, let’s move on:

Various: Denniston offers that Mike Lee of Utah “wishes to eliminate the income tax“;

that Joe Miller of Alaska “believes that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional“;

that Rand Paul of Kentucky “would scrap the Americans with Disabilities Act and believes that the Civil Rights Act went too far in requiring restaurant owners to admit black Americans“;

that Rick Scott of Florida ran “a health care company that systematically defrauded the government on Medicare charges, earning the company the largest Medicare fine in history — $1.7 billion“;

that Carl Paladino distributed “racist jokes and very explicit pornographic photographs to a large group of supporters; one of these was a photo-shopped image of Barack and Michelle Obama as a pimp and a prostitute.” (Apparently, Denniston wrote his column before Paladino threatened to “take out” a New York Post journalist.)

Although Burlingame challenged Denniston’s “shallow research,” the things he said about the Republicans above have the virtue of being factual. So, let’s finish up:

You see, it really wasn’t the “shallow research” that spiked Anson’s piss meter.  It was Denniston’s “obvious partisan conclusions,” and his “trying to paint all Republican candidates nationally with only the colors of the few.”  As if the editorial page isn’t a place for partisanship and advocacy; as if Republicans aren’t themselves trying to nationalize the election and tie every Democratic candidate to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama.

But I will say Anson has a point about one thing:

If you want to understand, in principle, where many Republicans are “coming from” or “headed,” go read and think carefully about the Pledge to America.  There is more than enough in that broad, even sweeping, statement of principles to scare any Democrat.

Yes, it’s true.  The really, really scary thing about Republicans and their non-specific Pledge, is that it represents a sycophantic salute to the Tea Party and that movement’s extremist generalities about government.

And I think Denniston was just using a few Tea Party extremists, who happen to be Republican candidates for high office, to point that out.

by R. Duane Graham on October 5, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on October 5, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/dueling-globe-columnists/

Civics 101: The Burlingame Addition

Anson Burlingame, fellow Globe blogger who in my estimation usually qualifies as a “sensible” Republican (the bar, however, is very low*), recently engaged in a virtual tête-à-tête first with me, and then later, John McKnight, frequent contributor to The Erstwhile Conservative, over the issue of “liberty.”

Anson’s last reply involved a hypothetical in which he owned a business that employed only recovering addicts at $1 million a year. I butted in an addressed the hypothetical specifically, but Anson’s general question was:

Should I have the “liberty” to implement such hiring practices or should the government tell me what to do?

 Here is my answer:

 

The Graham Institute For Advanced Erstwhile Conservative Studies Presents:

CIVICS 101, The Burlingame Addition

In a sense, the government, either explicitly (by statute) or implicitly (by not enacting a statute) is always “telling you what to do” because it establishes the parameters of your behavior.  You may have the allusion that you begin life as a totally autonomous being, free to do whatever you want (your “boundless liberty” concept), but, of course, you are not.  If the government orders you to pay taxes, you will—or you will end up in prison.  If the government says you owe it 20% of your income, then you are “free” to keep the other 80%.  In that sense, and in that sense only, are you “free” to behave any way you want.  If you spend the remaining 80% hiring former addicts, then you can do so because the government permits it.

Now, I realize that this conception of government seemingly contradicts our romantic notions of “unalienable rights” that are given to us by God, or that are inherent in our humanity.  I enjoy such notions immensely and employ them myself from time to time, rather inconsistently I might add.  But in the end, what liberty we have is the result of a governing authority granting it to us, even if such liberty were genuinely endowed by God. No doubt, in our history and in the history of the world, it was useful to advance the idea of “natural rights” to counter the then-dominant “divine right of kings.”  But notwithstanding useful philosophical (or theological, for some) arguments, practically speaking it makes no difference.

If you doubt this, think about our Revolution.  The Founders who conceived of people as possessing inherent rights, nevertheless set about obtaining them by fighting the British and driving them out of the colonies.  It simply didn’t matter that God equipped us with libertarian freedom because the British Crown was in charge and they were making the rules.

So, while our civic meme includes references to “God” and “unalienable rights,” in reality liberty is achieved and maintained by government, in our case a representative republic.  In a real sense, in America, liberty—yours and mine—is in the hands of the people.  If any one person dislikes the amount or quality of liberty he is given by the people, he can exercise his right to vote or rebel.   If enough people dislike the liberty available, and if they are organized, they might overtake the government through the ballot box or rebel and begin their own. 

But in so doing, what would be their first act?  A new Constitution, which does what?  Defines the parameters of their liberty.

And here we go again.

Professor Duane

 

 * (!)

by R. Duane Graham on January 4, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on January 4, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/civics-101-the-burlingame-addition/

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