Obama shaken by Boehner's support

Posted by Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Aides to President Obama said today that he was “visibly shaken” after receiving support from House Speaker John Boehner for his Syria campaign, adding that the Speaker’s vote of confidence was “making him rethink the whole thing.”

An aide to Mr. Obama, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that he was in the Oval Office with the President when he got the call from Mr. Boehner: “As it became clear that Boehner was going to support him on this, he looked more and more stunned.  He was trying to stay calm and all but you could see that he was really taken aback.”

After putting down the phone with Mr. Boehner, the President reportedly told aides, “Boehner’s supporting it. That’s so weird. This is still a good idea, right?”

Moments after the President had “seemed to settle down,” the aide said, he received a phone call from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who also offered his support for the Syria plan.

“That one really rattled him,” the aide said. “He was like, ‘I think I need to take a long walk.’”

The calls from Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor have created what the aide called “the biggest crisis of confidence this President has ever experienced.”

“I checked in on him later in the day, just to see if he was O.K.,” the aide said. “He was cradling his head in his hands saying, ‘I just don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.’”

While the President’s plan to attack Syria remains on the table, the aide indicated that the situation is very fluid: “If Rand Paul calls today and says he’s in, the whole thing goes away.”

Photograph by Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty.

Chili, salsa cook-off is Sept. 14

Chili Cook-Off and Salsa Tasting on Saturday, Sept. 14 at the Gila County Court House parking lot on Beeline Highway and Frontier St.  Enter your favorite Chili or Salsa, or just come to taste and judge which one you think has the best taste.

Contestants can obtain an application from the Chamber, or paysonprorodeo.com Event Schedule, or contact Tom Newcombe at: 480-580-0421, or email: t.newcombe1947@hotmail.com.

Tasting will start at 11 a.m. and continue to 4 p.m. with many fun raffles and a snow cone vendor.  Bring the family for a fun day of Chili and Salsa tasting put on by the Payson Pro Rodeo Committee.

Stray dogs victims of Detroit bankruptcy

GREED AT A GLANCE
Hedge fund kingpins, press reports indicate, are now “quietly circling Detroit, exploring ways to profit” from the city's July 18 bankruptcy filing. Their strategy: buy up the distressed city's bonds at next to nothing, then make a killing when the unelected Detroit emergency manager settles generously with bondholders. Already profiting from Detroit’s bankruptcy: a host of high-fee accounting and legal firms. Ernst & Young, the Detroit News notes, is collecting $6.6 million just to analyze the city’s cash flow. Meanwhile, add another set of victims to Detroit's ongoing tragedy. Budget cuts have left some 50,000 stray dogs roaming city streets. The Humane Society of the United States is calling the situation “almost post-apocalyptic.” Adds the Society’s Amanda Arrington: “The suffering of animals goes hand in hand with the suffering of people.”

GOP Syria strategy: defund Obamacare

September 3, 2013

Posted by Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—As the debate over Syria moves to the United States Congress, a leading Senate Republican said today that the only way to resolve the crisis in the war-torn Middle Eastern country is by “defunding Obamacare at once.”

Appearing on the Fox News Channel, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told host Sean Hannity, “If we’re trying to send a strong message to [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad, I can think of no better way to do that than by defunding Obamacare.”

Elaborating on his strategy, Sen. Cruz added, “By defunding Obamacare, we would basically be saying to Assad, ‘This is how we attack our own President, so just imagine what we’ll do to you.’ That would make him think twice before he pulls another one of his stunts.”

“You can fire off as many Tomahawk missiles as you want,” said Sen. Cruz. “But they won’t have the same impact on Syria as defunding Obamacare.”

Shortly after his appearance, Sen. Cruz’s statements drew a sharp rebuke from a fellow Republican, Arizona Senator John McCain, who called the prospect of bombing Syria “the only thing I have to live for.”

“Look, I’ve been in a very dark place since the 2008 election,” Sen. McCain told reporters. “There have been a lot of mornings when, quite frankly, I haven’t had a reason to get out of bed. It’s all well and good for people like Ted Cruz to criticize Tomahawk missiles, but hitting Syria is all that’s keeping me going.”

True test of our resolve: not attacking Syria...

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)

 
...but living up to our ideals at home

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

01 September 13

readersupportednews.org

 

e are on the brink of a tragic decision to strike Syria, because, in the dubious logic of the President, "a lot of people think something should be done," and American "credibility" is at stake. He and his secretary of state assure us that the strike will be "limited" and "surgical."

The use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens is abominable, and if Assad's regime is responsible he should be treated as an international criminal and pariah.

But have we learned nothing from our mistakes in the past? Time and again over the last half century American presidents have justified so-called "surgical strikes" because the nation's "credibility" is at stake, and because we have to take some action to show our "strength and resolve" - only to learn years later that our credibility suffered more from our brazen bellicosity, that the surgical strikes only intensified hostilities and made us captive to forces beyond our control, and that our resolve eventually disappears in the face of mounting casualties of Americans and innocent civilians - and in the absence of clearly-defined goals or even clear exit strategies. We and others have paid an incalculable price.

On Labor Day weekend we should instead be testing the nation's resolve to provide good jobs at good wages to all Americans who need them, and measuring our credibility by the yardstick of equal opportunity. And we should strike (and join striking workers) against big employers who won't provide their employees with minimally-decent wages. We need to commit ourselves to a living wage, and to providing more economic security to the millions of Americans now working harder but getting nowhere.

Mr. President, a lot of Americans do think something should be done - about these mounting problems at our doorstep here in America. We can have more influence on the rest of the world by showing the rest of the world our resolve to live by our ideals here in America, than by using brute force to prove our resolve elsewhere.

Trayvon had a dream, too

Trayvon Martin. (photo: unknown)

By Toure, Al Jazeera America

01 September 13

readersupportednews.org

 

n her new role as a neo-civil rights icon, or a modern black tragedy icon, Sybrina Fulton moves lightly, but with a steely face. I met her a few days ago, when I was moderating a panel that took place the night before the celebration of the anniversary of the March on Washington. I began by asking her how she was. She deflected the question both times I asked, saying her feelings were not relevant, that the movement, the effort to ensure that her son did not die in vain, were all that mattered. However weary or sad she might be, it was unimportant. This was a vocalization, I thought, of the stony face and the selflessness that attends what may feel like an extended out-of-body experience for her. My impression was that she is still in mourning, and still adjusting to her role as an accidental part of history. She didn't ask to be thrust onto the national stage.

That said, it's the remarkable way she and her husband breathed new life into Trayvon's lifeless body by sending the networks photos of their son on horseback and on skis, photos that showed he was no thug, and by maintaining great dignity at rallies around the country that made many think, if his mother is that regal in this moment of agony, then her boy must be worth supporting. So she was complicit in becoming a symbol; it was a choice, albeit in a moment when she probably felt she had no choice.

But when Sybrina talks about her late son - not the idea of him or the abstractions swirling around the memory of him, but of the flesh-and-blood boy she raised - well, then the grim determination melts away. That's when her face lights up as if there's a bulb inside. I asked her who Trayvon was and she smiled as she said he was a playful and childlike boy, still quick to kiss her and sit on her lap. She said he was an innovator and that he wanted to become an aviation mechanic. He is still a real person to her. For the rest of us, Trayvon is a symbol. He is, for many, a symbol of the killability of black men - how they can be murdered only to have the system shrug and wonder aloud if they deserved to be killed. A reminder for many that we are vulnerable, because young black men in particular are seen as threatening. From a distance, George Zimmerman deduced that Trayvon was a criminal with a gun who was on drugs; he told the 911 operator about the trifecta of black male stereotypes. He is a symbol of how this hyper-partisan nation can seize on the killing of a boy and turn it, too, into a political football - a cause for the left, which saw itself as protecting a racially profiled person of color, and a cause for the right, which saw itself as protecting a person of color wrongly accused of being racist who had used his Second Amendment rights to protect himself from a black thug.

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once reminded his fellow justices that there is no "war on drugs" exception in the Bill of Rights. He said this because he saw them constructing one. There's a slew of policing tactics and norms that exist outside of the Constitution, or at least outside of the normal American expectation of privacy, equal protection and freedom from illegal search, that exist in order to police black men: Stop and frisk, the policy that institutionalizes racial profiling; stand your ground, which deputizes citizens and allows white people to feel comfortable using a gun anywhere and anytime they feel threatened; mass incarceration, the way the war on drugs warehouses millions for nonviolent health choices, i.e., smoking marijuana, are but some. Whites and blacks use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates, yet blacks are over-policed, over-prosecuted, over-convicted and over-sentenced, which helps police departments and the prison industrial complex make money and helps certain politicians get elected. It also perpetuates and burnishes the image of black criminality as if that were the greatest threat to white safety, thus feeding the mind of someone like, say, George Zimmerman, who looked out of his car at a Rorschach - a black boy alone in the distance - and saw not just a boy walking home but a criminal who did not belong in the neighborhood and who was surely up to no good. Because other blacks have committed crimes, then it was easy to assume that this boy, too, was a criminal. Even though the prisons are filled with black men, Zimmerman said, "They always get away." So he followed.

This fear of black bodies persists despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of killing is intraracial. Year after year, around 85 to 90 percent of people killed are killed by people of their own race. Anti-racism educator Tim Wise points out that white people are six times more likely to be murdered by a white person than by a black person. The percentage of white Americans who will be murdered by a black person in a given year is 2/10,000ths of 1 percent. But fear of a black man is much more effective political fuel. It allows you to sell guns to protect yourself. It allows you to rail against the welfare state - why should your hard-earned money be redistributed to lazy criminals? It makes the war on drugs and tactics like stop and frisk seem sensible. It makes voter suppression laws seem righteous. It makes politicians who proclaim themselves tough on crime, who promise to protect you from the Willie Hortons out there, seem fair.

Into this matrix walked Trayvon and George, into this swirling fear of black bodies and the pride of the right to bear arms and the apprehension of a stranger in the night. They stepped out of a world of de facto segregation, a world where many of us don't know people of other races. A recent Reuters poll found that 40% of white people report no nonwhite friends and 25% of blacks report no nonblack friends. This social segregation is most pronounced, the poll finds, in the South. We have two Americas existing side by side; Trayvon and George met at an intersection, and together they stepped into history.

This is a history that can be scary for blacks because it so often adds up to the message that our bodies are worth less and that we have to manage the fear of black bodies that others feel. In my childhood home, growing up, my parents taught me that when I was out in the world it was my responsibility to mollify others, to let them know I was no danger. I was told not to run when I didn't have to, to keep my hands out of my pockets in stores, to be pliant if I was ever stopped by the cops. No matter how much time has passed since then, these are the same lessons I have to pass on to my son because they were vital to my survival, and they'll be vital to his. Such is the double consciousness that Dubois spoke of so long ago: We must hold two conflicting ideas in mind at once - we must remember that we are powerful and full of potential, and yet we must also know that others may not see us that way. That's how my father learned to live after Emmett Till's killing and how we continue to live after Trayvon Martin's killing.

Labor Day is a time to mobilize

Ralph Nader. (photo: unknown)

By Ralph Nader, Reader Supported News

01 September 13

readersupportednews.org

or far too many Americans, Labor Day is simply another day off, another store sale and another small parade. The meaning of the holiday has been dulled by both rampant commercialism and public apathy. Where is the passion for elevating the wellbeing of American workers? Shouldn't Labor Day be a time to gather, contemplate and celebrate more just treatment of all those who toil without proper recognition or compensation?

Labor Day is the ideal time to highlight the hard-fought, historic victories already enjoyed by American workers, and push for long-overdue health and safety measures and increased economic benefits for those left behind by casino capitalism. After all, it was the labor movement in the early 20th century that brought us such advances as the minimum wage, overtime pay, the five-day work week, the banning of child labor and more.

The reality is that big corporations have abandoned American workers by taking jobs and industries to communist and fascist regimes abroad -- regimes that oppress their workers and enforce serf-level salaries and hideous working conditions. America's working men and women have also largely been abandoned by the corporate dominated Republican and Democrat two-party duopoly, whatever their rhetorical differences may be. The federal minimum wage has been allowed to languish far behind inflation as corporate bosses' pay skyrockets. The gap between worker salaries and CEO pay widens, even as worker productivity rises. Corporate CEO's in America make approximately 340 times more than that of the average worker. In 1980, by comparison, CEO pay was 42 times greater.

Look to the fast food strikers around the country for inspiration. Backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), workers in cities across America are demanding fair pay at $15 an hour and the right to unionize. Beginning in New York City and spreading to other major cities, workers are beginning to rally and speak out against their poverty wages from hugely profitable fast food chains. Willietta Dukes, in a piece for The Guardian, writes:

Burger King says they can't pay employees, like me, higher wages because it would force them out of business. Yet last year it made $117m[illion] in profits and its CEO took home $6.47m[illion]. It would take me 634 years to earn that much.

I've worked in fast food for 15 years, and I can't even afford my own rent payments. We just want fairness and to be able to provide for our families. No one who works every day should be forced to be homeless.

Where are the other advocates for American workers? Now is the time to speak out and push for long-overdue action.

Where is President Obama? Candidate Obama promised that he would press for a $9.50 federal minimum wage by 2011. Now, in 2013, he has settled for $9 by 2015. This is far less than what workers made in 1968, adjusted for inflation. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be $10.70 today. If it kept up with worker productivity in the corporate sector, it would be $22.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law in 1938 -- which established the federal minimum wage amongst other things -- it was in the face of considerable opposition and criticism from Big Business, not to mention in the midst of The Great Depression. This is the type of courageous leadership we need from the White House today.

A recent piece in the Wall Street Journal cited an analysis by Mark M. Gray, a researcher at Georgetown University, who found that President Obama "mentions the poor in his speeches less than any other president in decades" -- even Ronald Reagan mentioned the poor in his speeches and public statements about twice as frequently.

What of the AFL-CIO, which represents 13 million American workers? I recently wrote a letter to its president, Richard Trumka, asking for his leadership in pushing for more attention about the plight of workers on this Labor Day. No response. The AFL-CIO has an opportunity for a major showing with rallies before the White House and Congress. Some reporters in the mainstream press have indicated they do not think the push for a higher minimum wage is serious without Mr. Trumka, President Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid exerting serious efforts.

What of former President Bill Clinton? In his speech to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, President Clinton made passing rhetorical reference to "building a modern economy of good jobs and rising incomes." But the time for simply talking about these issues is long past. What about publicly supporting Rep. Alan Grayson's bill in Congress (H.R. 1346) which provides for a $10.50 minimum wage to catch up with 1968, and allow $30 million workers to afford more of life's necessities for themselves and their children? The support of Mr. Clinton might help galvanize the media and those in Congress to make this into the front burner issue it deserves to be.

And, what about the leading Democratic Presidential candidates for 2016 -- Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden? Why aren't they seriously championing this important cause that is both good for the economy and for workers and their children?

In an ideal world, the Sunday political shows the day before Labor Day would feature various prominent labor leaders and discuss key issues like the minimum wage, income equality, trade and more.

Labor Day should be a moment for the nation to shine a light upon the rights and plights of the nation's workers and recognize the need to reform restrictive labor laws, such as the notorious Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. After all, workers are the backbone of the economy.

(See here for facts and information on our efforts to raise the minimum wage to catch up with 1968, inflation adjusted, and find out how to get involved.)