"We Have Met The Enemy, And They Are Us"

Wed. May 2, 2012:

Today's title originated with Walt Kelly, creator of the mid-20th-century comic strip Pogo.

In that vein, worthy readers, your text for today is bipartisan David Brooks, "Warfare or Courtship In 2012?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/opinion/brooks-warfare-or-courtship-in-2012.html


Will history prove Brooks correct?
In 2112, will any surviving humans remember the cause of USA's self-destruction?
Our absolute political dysfunction is suspect #1.  Republicans in 2012 have decided that, to beat President Obama [AND win both the House & Senate], they will take every weakness of candidate Mitt Romney, they will claim that Obama has an even worse form of the same weakness.  Prior to 2012, Republican strategy has been more bludgeon-like -- "just say no" to every single Obama idea, and then blame him for the resulting inaction.

Peruse yesterday's news, and you will see it everywhere:

1.  "Global warming" is an indisputable fact  backed by bipartisan science -- right?  Wrong!
An MIT professor of meteorology, Richard S. Lindzen, has made a career out of claiming that clouds will save planet earth from global warming.  Though he represents only 3% of all the science on the question, he has become a hero of the rightist deniers, and gets at least 50% of air time about global warming.  "If I'm wrong," asserts Lindzen, we'll know it in 50 years and can do something."
How can a Lindzen gain as much credence as 97% of the science opposing him?
[See Steve Coll's new book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, which includes chapter & verse about Exxon's deliberate campaign of sewing confusion & obfuscation against the 97% of scientists who read the evidence of global warming as urgently real.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/earth/clouds-effect-on-climate-change-is-last-bastion-for-dissenters.html

2.  Obama prefers sanctions -- not yet another Middle East war -- to end Iran's nuclear weapons program.  No brainer -- right?  Wrong!  Republicans say he is selling out our crucial ally Israel.

3.  Obama made the brave decision to approve the Navy Seals' mission vs. Bin Laden.  Bipartisan joy and relief -- right?  And, Senate Committee on Intelligence vows that secret evidence shows we found Bin Laden without evidence gleaned from torture -- right?  Wrong!  "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order," disparaged Romney [even though back in 2007 Romney had said that "It's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person].  The very water-boarding that Obama condemned enabled the CIA to glean the crucial information that found Bin Laden, claims former CIA agent & head of its "clandestine service" wing & Republican sympathizer Jose A. Rodgriguez Jr. on CBS's 60 Minutes.

4.  The use of armed drones to take out impending terrorist plotters, in places like Pakistan & Yemen, has sharply reduced the cost & risk of warfare to its operators -- right?  Wrong!
This time, however, the opposition comes not from kill-baby-kill & pro-torture Republicans, but from more sober futurists, who express "growing concern" about a "future in which other countries also acquire drones."

5.  Environmental Protection Agency, created under Republican Nixon, wants to stop polluters in Texas & elsewhere.  No one wants pollution -- right?  Wrong!  Republicans had a hissy-fit and then hounded to resignation an anti-polluter EPA official, because he did use a stupid "crucify" metaphor to try explaining EPA's need to make examples of bad polluters.

6.  Minnesota governor Mark Dayton [D] is trying to expand health insurance coverage and remake Minnesota's insurance market toward major savings for all Minnesotans.  He has meticulously detailed advice from consmer groups, labor unions, doctors & hospitals, emplyers, insurance companies, agents & brokers, and American Indian tribes.  Huge positive step -- right?  Wrong!  "For reasons of ideology and politics," extreme right-wingers "want to bash our effort to establish an exchange, rather than join it."  Republican legislators declined an invitation even to participate in a task force to study the plan.

7.  During the Watergate Scandal of 1972-1974, reporter Bob Woodward met "Deep Throat" many times in a garage, and by 2005 Mark Felt confirmed this as he unmasked himself -- right?  Wrong!
Jeff Himmelman [Republican apologist for Nixon?] claimed Woodward's boss Ben Bradlee had doubts, in his new biography of Bradlee.  In the quote of the day, Woodward said:
"This is a classic case of manufactured controversy, as best I can tell."

8.  Conservative Supreme Court justices always proudly protect free speech, as they did with their Citizens United ruling [which has drowned the 2012 presidential campaign in superPAC billions] -- right?  Wrong!  The High Court seems to be squeamish about some forms of free speech.  Back in 1971, the Court had ruled that the 1st Amendment would not tolerate the punishment of Paul Cohen, who was arrested in 1968 for wearing a jacket in a los Angeles courthouse that bore a 3-word phrase concerning his attitude toward the draft.
[Cohen's lawyer characterized the phrase this way: "Mr. Cohen was not actually advocating sexual intercourse with the Selective Service."]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/us/a-word-heard-everywhere-except-the-supreme-court.html?ref=adamliptak


IF U.S.A DISINTEGRATES, WALT KELLY'S OBSERVATION WILL LOOM LARGE:
"WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY, AND THEY ARE US."