Frank Funk Vs. the Nazis

 A picture someone posted of Allies storming the beaches of Normandy tonight reminded me of my own dad's World War II experiences. He didn't talk about it much, but he spent time in a German POW camp, and saw the actual, historical Nazis close up.

From an interview with my dad, Dr. Frank E. Funk. Randall Library Oral History Collection, 1990 - Present right-pointing arrow Series 2: Southeast North Carolina (SENC) right-pointing arrow Sub-Series 2.10: Volunteers right-pointing arrow Item 7: Interview with Frank Funk, August 14, 2007

(Any typos or mispelling are from the quoted source.)

Frank Funk: As a World War II combat vet, I decided I would go [to a class on World War II]. And what was interesting to me is that while I had experiences during World War II, but I had a narrow view of a war, because of my own experiences., flying out of Italy in a B17 bomber as a navigator. But Wilbur's course gave me more of a global sense of that total war, including the Pacific as well as European war and all that.

I flew out of Foggia, which is north of Naples, as I say, in a B17 bomber. After three missions, I think, our plane went down in Czechoslovakia. We were captured by the old guard and taken to prison.

They took us to an interrogation camp where they tried to squeeze what they can out of you. It was an interesting experience, because they understand, if you get isolated and nobody talks to you, then you can play the good cop, bad cop. Bad cop suggests you might leave feet first. And good cop says, "For you, da var is over. Ve is flyers together. Ve understand these things, und have a zigaretten." And I said, "No thank you." 

So an interrogation camp, and then to an officers' camp. See, under the Geneva Convention, officers were not supposed to have to work, whereas enlisted me had to be in work camps. And so I was in Stalag Luft I north, about 60 miles from Sweden, north of Berlin, for seven months I think, seven or eight month. We eventually were liberated by the Russians, believe it or not, and they were very unhappy with us, because our high command had decided that the would keep us locked in, because if they let us scurry around the countryside, people would get in trouble, easily. We were half starved, and if you overate, you could actually die from acute gastritis and stuff. 

Anyway, I'm coming up to my favorite World War II story. So we were finally, after drinking vodka with the Russian high command and radioing frantically to France, we were flown out from a nearby airport to Marseilles in France. So here we are, ex Krieg Gefangeners, was the German name. Krieg for war, war prisoners, on a chow line, watching German POWs go through the line with their trays piled high with food, and we'd eaten sawdust bread and scooped maggots of the top of stew and so on. So that was not a very good thing for us to see, but we had tried to understand. And there was a commotion at the end of the chow line. You could tell from retinue that somebody important was coming along. By gum, it was Ike Eisenhower.

Yeah, we were in Marseilles, on a chow line, ready to be shipped out. And usually, by boat, which gave them a chance to fatten us up on the way over to the States. Anyway, the story goes like this. We noticed this commotion, and here comes Ike Eisenhower and a whole retinue of people with him. And he stopped and it sounds like I'm making this up, but I swear, I'm not. He stopped the guy next to me and he said, "Where are you from, son?" 

And the guy said, "Kansas, sir." 

"Oh, the hell you are. You know, I'm from Kansas too," and they both laughed. And he says, "Got a question to ask you," says Ike. "Would you rather go home quickly, or in style?" 

And this kid, without missing a beat, said, "Both, sir." And he laughed and moved on. And that's a wonderful memory of a world renowned figure and humanizing. And he was that way with the troops, and it was genuine. You know, it wasn't phony. "Oh, the hell you are. I'm from Kansas." You know, it was like-- it made him very human and special. That's my World War II story.

We had a quick home visit and then went to a convalescent hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. And they had ex prisoners of war go there. They thought that we might have post traumatic stress syndrome. And so they gave us what is called truth serum, to have us talk about horrible things that happened and so on. Well I read recently, that don't assume that everybody has automatically post traumatic syndrome. I don't think I had a lot of it. I saw a guy get shot through the window, because we weren't supposed to be near the windows during an air raid. And somebody was drawing his picture and wanted him near the window for light. I saw a guy get shot because he went after a ball, and he thought the guard had nodded to say, yes you can get it, and the guard didn't. So, you know, and we were starving and all kinds of things. And we were shot at, as we went over targets and saw planes go down and so on. But anyway, then we talked earlier. We came back and got the GI Bill. I'd gotten out of high school in 1940, and you could tell the war was coming. You know, the march into Poland and all kinds of things. And Britain was in it early and so on. So I was saving money to go to college. Nobody else in my family had gone to college. I have four sisters.

So I didn't go to college. I went to work for a valves company and did all kinds of other things. Eventually, after Pearl Harbor, all young men wanted to get into the service, and most of us wanted to be a hot pilot [makes engine noise]. I went to get a physical and was rejected because of a deviated septum. I went and got it operated on and went back the same day. And I remember the doctor looked at me and pulled the cotton out and said, "I can't even see, but I can tell you've had an operation done on your nose. Accepted." And then you went to basic training, Atlantic City, then to a classification center in Nashville, where you had all kinds of tests. Then you'd go to the bulletin board, and if your name was on it in the right way, you'd go to an officer's school. If it wasn't you'd go to a gunnery school and be a noncom, or an enlisted man, a gunner. I evidently made it to navigation school at Monroe, Louisiana, and the government spent about $87,000 on each of us and taught us to navigate by the stars, celestial navigation, and then they sent us to Europe. And my sextant to do the star sighting was in a polished wooden box at the corner of my muddy tent in Italy. But if they needed to, they could have sent me the Pacific, you see. So that's the way it was.

After the war, I used-- yeah, I went back to Syracuse. Oh, I forgot. When I first got in the service, as so many men were going in soon after Pearl Harbor that the classification center was jammed. So what they did was to send you to a campus in a college training detachment, and I went to Syracuse University. And so, I wanted to go, I knew it, and it was a beautiful city, and I wanted to go back to it, and I did. And eventually, you know, got my undergraduate degree there, on the GI bill. Went to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as an instructor, working on a master's. Finished my master's, went to Purdue University to get my doctorate in 1955.

End quote.

Yes, it was a different time, but the same Nazi regime that imprisoned my dad also killed millions of Jews, gays and others for the crime of merely existing. The Nazis of yesteryear are now being emulated by twenty-somethings and others who carried Nazi flags, torches and guns in Charlottesville last weekend. Anyone who marched and chanted with such people, some carrying Confederate battle flags, some not, is allying himself or herself with evil. Anyone who equates the counter-protesters (many of them clergy, many of them trying to help and protect others, very few of them violent in any way) with armed and violent neo-Nazis and their allies as "equally to blame" for what happened in Charlottesville is giving aid and comfort to the forces of hatred and oppression.

Karen

The Line to Hear Rachel Maddow

Here are some shots I took on Saturday night while waiting to hear Rachel Maddow speak about her book, Drift. The venue was Centennial Hall st the University of Arizona. I think this was only my second or third time there, ever. The first time was to see Robert Goulet in a production of Camelot twenty years ago.

Here is part of the line to get in, which people tried to get around, on the theory that they had their tickets, so why couldn't they just go in? But pretty much everyone had their tickets already. It was sold out, 2,500 tickets. I thought it was appropriate that we passed the Women's Plaza of Honor on the way to the Centennial Hall entrance.

I never managed to capture the size of the crowd with my iPhone camera, but this gives you some idea.

An activist for the Green Party did her best to interest people in her petition as they passed by. Her dog wore a placard promoting the petition, but seemed personally uninterested in participating.

I just thought it would be fun to use a few FX on this shot.

One reason it took so long to seat 2,500 people was that most of the tickets included a copy of Drift in paperback. So they had to read each ticket to make sure the person was eligible for the book, give them the book and punch the ticket to prevent double dipping. Then they had to direct the person to the right entrance, where a fourth person handed out programs and a fifth directed the ticket holder to the correct seat. Quite a production!

Rachel Maddow got a long standing ovation at the beginning, and another at the end. Reference was made to a "blue dot" in a "red state," but this was more like a large, bright blue bubble. Rachel was her usual smart, funny, humble, endearing self. Foreign policy isn't an area in which I have a strong interest and expertise, but I do think the point she makes in her book is a valid one. 

After she talked for a bit, she sat with a U of A professor who moderated and read out questions submitted beforehand. Most of them were from U of A faculty, but that's okay. It was over all too soon, but considering the speaker had laryngitis it seems churlish to complain. It was still an enjoyable and thought-provoking evening.

K.

Fear and Loathing and Gabby

I was cooling my heels at a local car dealership this morning (my Eagle Vision has about had it) when John called on my cell. He had been caught in a traffic jam on Oracle Road near Ina on his way to work. He saw helicopters in the air and cops arriving to divert traffic, but didn't know what had happened at the Safeway until a few minutes later. All day I've been hearing from people around the country, wanting to make sure I wasn't at that particular Safeway today. As it happens, it's half an hour from "my Safeway," but about five minutes from where John works.

Gabrielle Giffords at a September 2009 town hall. Photo by KFB.

Poor Gabby.

I got the car dealership (owned by a prominent local Republican) to switch the showroom tv from a football game to Channel 13, KOLD. At first they just had a crawl about the shooting of my Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, over a Phoenix auto race. Soon, however, they went to continuous live coverage, which lasted for the next ten hours at least.

Gabrielle Giffords is a Blue Dog Democrat, a moderate who is well liked by everyone from President Obama to Governor Brewer. When I saw her at that town hall meeting in the fall of 2009, she struck me as a very patient, level-headed, caring adult who listens to the concerns of all of her constituents, and tries to gently educate when she can. She isn't a liberal or a firebrand by any means, but she is someone who really does try to find common ground, perhaps too much so as far as my personal politics are concerned.

Yet this moderate, described as kind and caring by Republicans and Democrats alike, was absolutely villified in the last election season, painted as a toxically liberal legislator who was personally responsible for all the ills of the world. Check out some of the campaign signs made by the 2010 Jesse Kelly campaign:

This is just one of a series of misleading, fear-mongering signs made by Jesse Kelly's 2010 Congressional campaign against Gabrielle Giffords. It implies that 1) Gabby personally made the health care bill go through by some nefarious means, and that 2) "Obamacare" is a terrible, onerous thing. Yes, she voted to end exceptions for pre-existing conditions, to stop insurance companies from dropping you when you get sick, to let your kid stay on your insurance until age 26, and to cut the Federal deficit along the way. Good for her!

This one implies that the voter's personal Medicare benefits have been cut. This is pretty much the news from opposite-land. The bill cuts waste, not benefits, and helps seniors in the "donut hole" on their prescriptions. Kelly was a much bigger threat to Social Security and Medicare than Giffords.

Here's another one. Republicans supported the Wall Street bailout too at the time - and most of the banks have paid this money back with interest. Wall Street is far from blameless, but the bailout turned out to be a necessary and reasonably effective investment in stabilizing an economy in crisis.

There were more, but I don't have pictures of all of them. You get the idea. Voters were led to believe that Gabrielle Giffords was personally out to ruin their health and their finances, when in fact she was dedicated to the opposite. The rhetoric was so extreme that it has inspired extreme reactions from members of the lunatic fringe. Last year, someone smashed the glass door of Gabby's office with a brick - or something. Neighboring Congressman Raul Grijalva, far more liberal and outspoken than Gabby, had a gunshot and a suspicious package at his office.

And now this. The main suspect in the shooting seems to be pretty delusional, but the form of his delusion is mostly political. Who knows whether the killer (Gabby lives, but six others are dead) was influenced by the hateful and violent words and images that have made their way into recent political discourse? Who knows whether he was partly inspired by Sarah Palin's map with crosshairs over 20 "targeted" Congressional districts, including Giffords' CD8? Who knows whether he attended Jesse Kelly's campaign event that included the opportunity to shoot off a semi-automatic weapon? (A web ad promoting this event said, "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.") Who knows whether the shooter believed that "Obamacare" was part of a grand mind control conspiracy, and that Gabrielle Giffords was part of it?

Perhaps none of those things had an impact on this 22-year-old alleged killer, or anyone else involved in the shooting. Nevertheless, this political climate, in which a high profile Senate candidate spoke of "second amendment remedies" in case Republicans and tea party candidates didn't win, and gun-toting protesters appeared ready and willing to "water the tree of liberty" with blood, seems exceedingly likely to incite actions like this. I've been worried for over a year that sooner or later, someone was going to be shot, out of a sincere but crazy belief that such an act was right and necessary. I'm just shocked that it was Gabby who took the first hit.

She surely didn't deserve this. Nobody does.

Karen

Keith and Gabrielle and Raul and All

I almost bought Keith Olbermann's book tonight.

His new hardback, Pitchfords and Torches, is a compilation of short pieces (and not-so-short ones) written for and presented on his MSNBC show, Countdown With Keith Olbermann. Today Keith was suspended indefinitely without pay by his boss, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, for making three last-minute campaign contributions last week. NBC News, which oversees MSNBC but not CNBC, has a policy against news staff making campaign contributions without prior permission. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough gave money to a Republican campaign in 2006, but apparently the rule was not in place until 2007.

 

Gabrielle Giffords at a 2009 Health Care town hall appearance

What makes this story kind of freaky for me is that two of the three candidates to which Olbermann contributed the individual maximum amount of $2,400 each are my local Congress people. Our two Southern Arizona members of the House of Representatives, Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, were both reelected this week by the skin of their teeth. (Olbermann's other contribution was to Rand Paul's unsuccessful opponent.) Giffords, whom I heard speak at a heath care town hall, is a blue dog Democrat, a little to the right of me but smart and sensible. I not only voted for her again this year, but also made a small campaign contribution. Raul Grijalva, from Congressional District 7, is the congressman for the other half of Tucson and co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus. I met him once two years ago, and liked him a lot. He's smart and funny and fierce, and although he makes the occasional misstep, I trust him to fight for the same ideals I believe in. Raul got himself in trouble this year by calling for a boycott of Arizona because of the vile SB 1070 our horrible Governor signed into law. Grijalva later regretted the boycott. Intimidation tactics against him this year have included a bullet through his office window (Giffords got one of those too), an envelope of suspicious white powder and your run-of-the-mill death threats. Don't ever let someone tell you that only Muslims are terrorists, because that is terrorism too. There was also a lot of money poured into the campaign of his opponent, the unfortunately-named Ruth McClung. Gabrielle Giffords, meanwhile, was targeted with hundreds of the most vicious and misleading campaign signs I have ever seen in a political campaign.

Congressman Raul Grijalva in 2008

Both the Giffords and Grjalva races were so tight that even with 100% of precincts counted in this week's election, no one had been declared the winner in either district. Both Democrats were ahead, but not by much. The delay in calling it was due to by-mail early voting ballots hand-delivered to polling places, and also provisional ballots from people who attempted to vote at a given precinct but were not listed in the precinct's voter registration logs. (Basically the Board of Elections has to check whether these folks are registered voters somewhere else, or were accidentally omitted from the lists. If they are legitimately registered to vote in those electoral races, their votes are then counted.) The Associated Press just called the CD7 race for Grijalva on Thursday, if I recall correctly. The reelection of Gabrelle Giffords was just called late Friday afternoon with the release of new numbers by the Secretary of State's office, by which time she was up nearly 4,000 votes. The results still must be certified, but basically they've won - finally.

Anyway, Keith happened to have Raul on his show last week, I think for the sixth time. I think Raul managed to sneak the web address of his campaign site into the interview, something Keith has criticized Fox for allowing their guests to do. After the interview and the show, according to reports, Keith discussed the upcoming election and these particular races with a friend, and then privately went to a Mailboxes Etc. (why not online?) and made his contributions. His heart was in the right place, but it was against the rules, as his colleague Rachel Maddow acknowledged on her own show tonight. Rachel also took the time, however, to point out the false equivalence between Olberman's secret donations and the open donations to, endorsements of and campaigning for Republican candidates that goes on at Fox.

Okay, so it's not a good idea to base your ethics on the questionable ethics of the other guy. But is the policy Keith violated a good and fair one? If applied across the board to all MSNBC on-air personalities, it's fair enough; if Keith is singled out, not so much. It's certainly not a violation of Keith Olbermann's First Amendment rights, as Keith himself frequently pointed out when others got in trouble for what they said on tv. This is not a case of Congress abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. This is an employee working for an employer that has certain rules, and the right to enforce those rules. If an employee does not agree with those rules, they can obey them anyway, or try to change the system, or try not to get caught, or go work somewhere else. Keith broke his company's rule, although whether he was aware he was breaking it is somewhat in question. The company has the right to suspend him for that.

But should they suspend him, and is it a rule worth having in the first place? I'm on the fence about the suspension itself, as long as it's a fairly short one, just to show that the network enforces its rules and stands on its principles. But I'm not so sure the policy should apply to an MSNBC primetime host in the first place. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz are clearly, unabashedly liberals. They make no pretense to the contrary. Chris Mathews and Lawrence O'Donnell are perhaps a tad less so, but they are not shy in airing their opinions, any more than "Morning Joe" Scarborough is shy about offering his right-leaning opinions on the same network. All of their respective shows are steeped in political commentary. That's what they're for. They back up these opinions with actual news reporting, checking facts to a degree that's entirely absent over at Fox. That makes them vaguely journalists, and subject to the NBC News designation. However, a distinction should be made, I feel, between political commentators who also report news, such as Keith and Rachel, and "straight news" reporters and anchors such as Brian Williams et al. There is no question about Keith reporting a story impartially. He doesn't. He presents the facts along with his opinion about those facts, liberally sprinkled with satire, sarcasm and pop culture references. That's his job, and he's good at it. His career since about 2003 has been predicated on his expressing political opinions. So where is the impropriety in his contributing to a political campaign, privately and without advocating for that candidate on-air? Does this change in the least public perception of his standing as a journalist or the relevance of his political opinions? Not at all. Indeed, I'm surprised that any such rule applies to Keith and his colleagues. It makes no sense to me.

What does make sense to me is that on a network that decries the Citizens United ruling that allows corporations to spend millions on political advertising without disclosure, Keith and other paid on-air personalities should disclose their political contributions on air, particularly when interviewing someone whose campaign they support financially or plan to support a few hours later. The interview itself should have no more than one reference to a campaign website, and no call for the viewer to make a contribution. But that's it. Beyond that, the journalist-commentator should be free to make contributions as his or her conscience dictates.

As for the current mess, Keith should admit that he screwed up, apologize and be reinstated.  Given the paucity of left-leaning media compared with the fact-challenged behemoth of right-wing media, we need as many Keith Olbermanns as we can get.

I haven't told you about the book thing yet. Tonight John wanted to cheer himself up with a trip to a local bookstore. Locally-owned new bookstores are all but dead, so the choices were Borders or Barnes and Noble. I have a discount card for B and N so off we went.

The first thing that happened when we walked in was me spotting a sign in the cafe for an upcoming appearance by Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, right there in the store. This bummed me out, and made John angry. As John went off to check the Peanuts books, I decided to take a look at Keith's new book, and see whether it was something I had to own, or at least buy as a matter of solidarity. I checked the new hardbacks, the bestsellers, and other featured displays in the front of the story and along the center aisle. No Keith. Glenn Beck and a few other right-wingers, yes, but no Pitchforks and Torches. Eventually I asked. It was in the back of the store near the kids' books, in the newly arrived section of the Current Evens rack, in the History section of the store. It wasn't someplace I would think to look for a new book by a major tv political commentator, at least, not as the only place it was shelved.

Between that, the Huckabee sign and the fact that B&N only had the Peanuts books John wanted as a two-book boxed set, John was highly displeased with B&N and the whole shopping experience. It hadn't cheered him up one bit. So we went on to Borders. They had three copies of Keith's book in the featured new arrivals display, although when I went back for it someone had childishly turned the book over so Keith's face has not displayed. They also had the Peanuts books, both as the box and separately. I looked over the Olbermann book, and decided I didn't need printed versions of words I'd already heard him speak on air. But we bought the Peanuts books. At the register, I converted my Borders Rewards card to an upgraded version that gave me the same 10% off on the Peanuts books that I would have gotten down the street.

I probably won't be going to Barnes and Noble again. Not for a while, anyway.

Karen

What the Democrats Did - and Didn't Do

Wheeler School: my favorite polling station.

As pollsters and pundits talk of an "enthusiasm gap" between Democrats and Republicans, with pro-Democrat percentages of "likely voters" lagging behind those of "registered voters," it's worth taking a look at what we should be enthusiastic about, what we should and should not fear, and what is at stake this Election Day. Republican tea partiers have boogiemen set before them daily in place of the real President Obama and other actual Democrats, substituting what they supposedly want to do in place of what they've actually done or tried to do. Let's do a reality check:

Below are a few of the accomplishments Obama and the 111th Congress have made, as listed on the political blog "Rescue Truth." Lest you fear that as a blog it's a dubious news source, it's backed up with lings to actual news stories backing up its substance:

25 Tax Cuts Passed By Obama and Democrats^[3]

Individuals

1. “Making Work Pay” tax credit
2. Earned Income Tax Credit increased
3. Increased Eligibility for Refundable Portion of Child Credit
4. “American Opportunity” Education Tax Credit
5. First-time Home Buyer Credit
6. Temp. Suspension of Taxation of Unemployment Benefits
7. Tax Credits for Energy-Efficient Improvements to Existing Homes
8. Sales Tax Deduction for Vehicle Purchases
9. Premium Credits for COBRA Continuation Coverage for Unemployed Workers
10. Economic Recovery Credits to Recipients of Social Security, SSI, RR Retirement, and Veterans Disability Compensation Benefits
11. Computers as Qualified Education Expenses in 529 Education Plans
12. Plug-in Electric Drive Vehicle Credit
13. Tax Parity for Transit Benefits
14. Health Coverage Tax Credit Expansion

Small Business

1. Extension of Enhanced Small Business Expensing
2. 5-Year Carryback of Net Operating Losses for Small Businesses
3. Extension of Bonus Depreciation
4. Exclusion of 75% of Small Business Capital Gains from Taxes
5. Temporary Small Business Estimated Tax Payment Relief
6. Temporary Reduction of S Corporation Built-In Gains Holding Period from 10 Years to 7 Years

Other Business

1. Advanced Energy Investment Credit
2. Tax Credits for Alternative Refueling Property
3. Work Opportunity Tax Credits for Hiring Unemployed Veterans and Disconnected Youth
4. Delayed Recognition of Certain Cancellation of Debt Income
5. Election to Accelerate Recognition of Historic AMT/R&D Credits

Fun Fact: 1/3 of the $862 billion stimulus was for tax cuts, something Republicans claim to support … although they still stand against stimulus.  I suppose it depends on who gets the tax cuts.

As has been noted by the New York Times and elsewhere, many Americans have no idea that Obama and Congress have cut taxes. Most tea partiers simply assume that the "tax and spend Democrats" have raised their taxes. Plus the supposed "Obama tax hike" looms on the horizon, which is actually the built-in expiration of a tax cut instituted early in the Bush administration. President Obama wants to extend these to all but the richest 2% of Americans, who would still get a tax cut on part of their income but not to the extent that their getting it now. This "tax cut for the rich" translates to an increase of "$36 billion to the federal deficit next year" compared to the Democrats' plan," according to the Washington Post. That's more than can feasibly be made up by cutting spending on trivialities like education, safe food and drugs, safe mines and oil rigs, a cleaner environment or unemployment benefits. Check out the graphic - is this the fiscal discipline you're looking for?

More accomplishments listed by "Rescue Truth":

Women’s Rights

• Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
  
  • Protection against pay discrimination
  • Restores interpretation of Title VII of Civil Rights Act that protected women and other workers

Financial Rights

• Credit CARD Act
  • Prevents retroactive rate increases
  • Requires companies to provide 45 days notice before changing rates and other contract provisions
  • Additional restrictions placed on fees
  • Prevents companies from taking advantage of students
  • Ends unfair double-cycle billing practices
• Financial reform bill
  • Establishes Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which seeks solely to ensure financial institutions are being fair to consumers, and improvement in the simplicity in contracts
  • Prevents taxpayer bail out of financial institutions
  • Allows the GAO to audit the Federal Reserve
  • Various mortgage and derivatives reform, etc.

Education

• Student loans^[1]
  • Ends “socialistic” federal subsidies to banks and other financial institutions (Interestingly, Republicans are okay with the kind of socialism that redirects taxpayer money to banks and other financial institutions.)
  • Eliminates unnecessary “middle-man” in student loan process, which placed financial burden on taxpayers while banks took in profits
  • Annual student loan payment capped at 10% of income
  • Saves an estimated $61 billion over 10 years

Health Care

• Children’s health insurance bill^[2]
  • CBO said bill will allow states to cover more than four million uninsured children by 2013, in addition to seven million already covered
  • Requires states to provide dental and mental illness coverage to children
• Tobacco regulation
  • Provides graphic warnings on tobacco use risks
  • Restricts advertising to prevent marketing to minors
• Health care reform
  • Insurers cannot cancel coverage when a person gets sick
  • Requires health insurance corporations to cover preexisting conditions
  • Eliminates lifetime limits
  • Allows insurance purchase across state lines
  • Allows young adults to stay on parents’ health insurance policy until 26

Crime and Civil Rights

• Hate crime legislation^[4]
  • Provides protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people
• Tribal Law and Order Act
  • Provide additional means to reduce high rates of violent crime, including rape & sexual assault within Native American reservations
  • View the rescuetruth.com post on the Tribal Law and Order Act

Other

• The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act
  • Expands service and volunteer opportunities
  • Benefits education, health care, energy, etc.
• Stimulus
  • Cash for Clunkers successfully contributed to 680,000+ vehicle sales in summer 2009
  • Largest clean energy investment ever made
• Reduced deficit by $122 billion^[5]
• Reduced federal spending by 2%^[5]

Sources

1. ABC News. Obama Highlights Student Loan Reforms Within the Health Care Bill
2. Obama Signs Children’s Health Insurance Bill
3. PolitiFact. Axelrod claims Democrats passed 25 tax cuts last year without the help of Republicans
4. CNN. Obama signs hate crimes bill into law
5. Raw Story. Democrats shrank US spending, deficit in last fiscal year, figures show
   

That's a pretty good list of accomplishments in two years, especially with Republicans doing their best to kill or water down every bill, with the stated purpose of making Obama's presidency a failed one. To be sure, they have not accomplished everything they've tried for, largely because of attempts at bipartisan compromise; but it's still pretty impressive: saving the U.S. car industry, making the financial industry less predatory, ending preexisting condition clauses in health insurance, making student loans more cost-effective for both students and the government, etc. Now let's look at what the Democrats have not done, despite claims to the contrary:

• Place the government in the hands of a secret Muslim terrorist born in Kenya. For the birthers to be right, not only do the many people who have examined the actual Hawaii birth certificate have to be lying, but someone has to have had the foresight to place fake birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers when the baby with the funny name was born.In addition to this, Obama has a long, well-documented history of regular church attendance. If he were a terrorist, wouldn't we have seen some evidence of this in the past two years? Heck, he hasn't even managed to close Guantanamo!
• Take away your guns. Putting aside the fact that not everyone owns a gun or wants one, this threat seems entirely empty. Although the NRA sent out mailers making this claim, and many people still believe it today, Obama's stated position is quite different. According to his 2008 position papers, as reprinted on FactCheck.org, "Barack Obama believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms. He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns." He is, however, in favor of "commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets." This is a far cray from the NRA claims that Obama wants to "ban use of firearms for home self defense" and "ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns." So much for the claims. The reality? In two years of legislation by the mostly-Democratic Congress under Obama's leadership, no attempt has been made to take away the average person's guns. Almost nothing appears of a list of active legislation in the Senate, and what has passed has been mostly gun-friendly, as an article in The Hill points out: "Quigley noted the 111th Congress has not debated closing the gun-show loophole or reauthorizing the assault weapons ban, which Obama promised to pursue on the presidential campaign trail. Instead, Democrats have passed gun-rights measures, including the “Protecting Gun Owners in Bankruptcy Act of 2010” and legislation that would allow guns in national parks and on Amtrak trains."
• Indoctrinate your children in school. Although the federal government does help to fund children's education, what this comprises is determined at the levels of the state and local school board, leading to frequent battles over the teaching of evolution, book bannings and the content of textbooks. When Present Obama addressed schoolchildren on a national basis for the first time, right-wingers fearfully kept their children him to protect them from the harmful effects of hearing what the President of the United States wanted to tell them. Obama's insidious message: stay in school and work hard. Shocking!
• Institute Sharia Law. Never happened. Never attempted.
• Steal elections with massive voter fraud. The Republican nominee in my Congressional district, Jesse Kelly, made a spurious claim last week that people are bused in from Mexico to commit voter fraud on behalf of Democrats. Aside from the small problem that they would have to already be registered to vote in the precinct and be able to show idea, there's the fact that it simply has not happened, according to Arizona's Republican Secretary of State, who called such rumors "a kind of urban legend": "As Arizona’s chief elections official, I take seriously any allegations of fraud in our election process. As soon as these accusations came to light, we got in contact with elections officials in Yuma County and across Arizona to determine if a fraudulent scheme was afoot. With our initial inquiry complete, I’m happy to report that these latest allegations of rampant registration fraud are without merit." Part and parcel with this local story are similar claims about ACORN (which not longer exists thanks to scapegoating and an entirely deceptive videotape) The New Black Panthers (just a couple of guys, apparently) and "at risk" districts which just happen to be populated by minorities and others likely to vote Democratic. At what point does poll-watching become intimidation? We may find out tomorrow, as Tea Party poll-watchers look for people they can accuse of voter fraud. Actual voter fraud cases, by the way, are exceedingly rare.
• Institute Death Panels to determine whether Grandma must die. The actual passage in the health care reform bill said simply that if you want to consult your doctor before making your own end-of-life decisions (i.e. a "living will"), insurance should cover the office visit. Ooh, scary!
• Put you in jail for not buying health insurance. There never was any such provision in any of the health care reform bills.
• Take away your freedom. Are you less free than two years ago? People have openly carried firearms at political rallies, shouted slurs at members of Congress and spat on them, and carried signs depicting Obama as Hitler, the Joker or a tribesman with a bone through the nose. Nobody's been taken to an internment or reeducation camp, or even prosecuted for such things.

Much of the argument on the Republican/Tea Party side this year is based on fear-mongering, trying to convince you that Obama is a scary foreigner who wants to hurt you, or at least cost you money, and that Muslims and Mexicans are all out to get you. The vast majority of the claims made, against them and against your particular Democratic candidate, are distortions and fabrications. Meanwhile, many of the Republican contenders are the most extreme they've been in decades, looking to privatize or "personalize" or even end Social Security, close down the EPA, resist food safety regulation (you have a personal taster, don't you?) and protect the Constitution by getting rid of amendments they don't like, such as the one that lets you vote for your Senator. Much of the Republican money machine this year is bankrolled by billionaires and corporate fat cats who know that Republicans will support their interests over those of the average person, and by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which takes millions in contributions from foreign and domestic corporations that outsource jobs as much as they possibly can. These folks want to scare you into voting against your own interests: your own safety, your own freedom, your own financial well-being. They want to convince you to value greed over fairness, "us" over "them," fear over facts.

Don't let fear and greed rule this election at the nation's expense. Vote Democrat.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #330: Baja Arizona Libre!

I was going to call my entry for Weekend Assignment #330: Op-Ed "Fear and Loathing in Arizona," but I'm in too good a mood for that. Let's start by listing what the assignment actually is, and then I'll tell you about my unexpected WA-related adventure:

Weekend Assignment #330: Op-Ed

Time to flex your writing muscle again, because for this week only, the Weekend Assignment blog is being changed to The Weekend Assignment Chronicle! Now, we need some Op-Eds to make things a little more interesting around here. Your assignment is to pick a current event and write your opinion regarding it. Anything goes. Write about politics, the economy, or maybe even your opinion about an incident in pop culture. It's all good. It's good to exchange opinions, especially when it's done with respect. So, feel free to speak up here!

Extra Credit: Do you read the Op-Eds? Yes? No? Tell us about it!

Originally I was going to rant a rant about Congress reducing food stamps and refusing to extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans, squeezing our poorest people and people made chronically jobless by our faltering economy. But then last night on The Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel mentioned that her executive producer, Bill Wolff, and producer/Maddow Blogger Laura Conaway, would be in Tucson Tuesday evening after a morning spent along the Arizona border near Nogales. Further details were announced on the Maddow Blog: Bill and Laura would be at a meet-up and watch party at the Hotel Congress at 6:30 PM. That was all I needed to know. I'm very fond of The Rachel Maddow Show, an MSNBC show of news and comment. Rachel is one of the smartest people in political broadcasting, someone devoted to factual research and rational thinking. She refutes factually-challenged claims nightly on TRMS, typically with an amused smile and the occasional chuckle. She is friendly and polite, even to people on the political right, who tend to be afraid to appear on her show, lest she disprove everything they say, usually with footage of those same people saying the opposite. She is, in short, a national treasure.



Bill Wolff, her executive producer, is the Lorne Michaels of broadcast news, just as funny but younger and cuter. (Sorry, but you are.) I like him a lot from his tv and online appearances, and I wanted his autograph; so I printed out a page of the Maddow Blog on which was printed a car's thermometer reading of 106 degrees. I'm sure lots of people told him today that it gets much hotter than that here, some days. It wasn't all that humid, so 106 today was relatively painless. Anyway, I brought a printout of that downtown to be signed, on the grounds that he couldn't autograph my tv.



There were about 150 people at the bar in the historic Hotel Congress, one of my favorite places downtown (the hotel, not the bar). Bill Wolff said he'd been expecting about twelve people, including his dad, who lives on the west side of town. They ran out of The Rachel Maddow Show hats before I got there, but I got a TRMS phone cover and a deck of MSNBC playing cards.


Getting "wired"


Producing from the bar with BlackBerry and webcam.

Shyness and courtesy prevented me from formally approaching Bill Wolff before or during the TRMS broadcast, but I stationed myself just a few feet to his right as he produced the show from his laptop. He had a not-very-good webcam and an earpiece, and the people at the other end of his live feed had a little trouble hearing him over the roar of the crowd. At one point shortly before the Arizona segment, his laptop's battery started to run down, and producer Laura Conaway scrambled to get it plugged in to an outlet behind the bar.



The time came for the Arizona segment, which opened with Wolff's interview with Sheriff Tony Estrada of Santa Cruz County, Arizona. Wolff was very impressed with the guy, who had a good sense of what's really going on along the border, and how at odds the reality is with the fear-mongering claims of politicians. The sheriff pointed out that the anti-immigrant fervor mostly comes from people in "the State of Maricopa County" (read: metro Phoenix) in the upper half of the state, several hours from the border. People in Tucson and the rest of Southern Arizona tend to be much more moderate in their views. The sheriff believes that politicians in Maricopa County fan the flames of xenophobia for political gain, and will move on to something else once they're safely reelected.



After the broadcast, other fans of the show told Bill Wolff about "Baja Arizona," the humorous concept that Democrat-leaning Southern Arizona would love to secede from the rest of the state, with a cutoff at the Gila River south of Phoenix. He liked that idea.

xxxxx

xxxxx

BAJA ARIZONA LIBRE!

xxxxx

xxxxx

By the way, when I Googled "baja arizona libre" I got a hit from husband John on the first page of results, from a two word comment on the Huffington Post. I told him about it and he laughed.

Eventually, with the intercession of a kindly stranger, I introduced myself to Bill Wolff. I told him that a few months ago I forwarded to him an email accidentally cc'ed to a Democrat by Russell Pearce, the fearmongering politician behind SB 1070. The email makes it clear that the purpose of a then-pending tweak to SB 1070 was to make it easier to harass Hispanic people in Arizona:

From: KS

To: Undisclosed-Recipient:

Sent: 4/29/2010 1:41:23 AM

Subject: Russell Pearce Message

 Hi All,

Following is an email I've received, obviously by mistake, from AZ State Sen Russell Pearce to his legal advisor, Kris Koback of the University of Missouri Law School. Looks like they want to amend 1070 so that they can profile people with, say, cars up on blocks or too many people in a rental...in other words, poor people.  I didn't quite know what to do with this, but noticing the confidential nature of it, thought I should forward it as widely as possible.  God works in mysterious ways.

--ks

PS  I'd already sent this to some of you, but thought that I should explain myself in this additional email.

From: russellpearce

Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 11:23 PM

To: Russell K. Pearce ; ks

Subject: Fw: One more change!

This needs to go to Sarah on the amendment to clarify SB1070

----- Original Message -----

From: Kobach, Kris W.

To: russellpearce ; rpearce@azleg.gov

Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 7:42 PM

Subject: One more change!

Russell,

I discussed all of the changes with Mike Hethmon and he concurred.  But there is one additional point that he suggested--which you will certainly agree with.  When we drop out "lawful contact" and replace it with "a stop, detention, or rest, in the enforcement a violation of any title or section of the Arizona code" we need to add "or any county or municipal ordinance."   This will allow police to use violations of property codes (ie, cars on blocks in the yard) or rental codes (too many occupants of a rental accommodation) to initiate queries as well.

I have not received anything from the people on the phone this afternoon.  Please ensure that they make this addition as well.  Thanks!

Kris

***This communication is protected by attorney-client privilege.  Do not share with others.

Then we chatted briefly about St. Michael's, and my parish's collective understanding of the human tragedy stemming from our broken immigration process. I said that most people from St. Michael's care about social justice, and that there's something seriously wrong when a thousand people die in the desert in a single year, just trying to make their way to a better life in a country where they can earn, by their standards, a living wage. Bill Wolff enthusiastically agreed. He said it was the most natural thing in the world for someone in a country with very little by way of money, jobs, or food to want to cross a border into a country where these things can be earned. He said that in all their mostly-"made-up" statistics, supporters of SB 1070 and the repeal of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (!) neglect to consider that these are human beings. That's very true. They're human beings, and they're suffering. But xenophobic politicians and their followers prefer to demonize these people, to think of them as mostly murderers and drug dealers, people who will break into your home, steal your job and use all the social services so there's nothing left for you.

Baloney. People in the country illegally pay sales taxes, in some cases property taxes, and in most cases payroll taxes, and take little or nothing out of the system. An undocumented worker often uses a fake Social Security number. Taxes get paid in, but because it's a fake number, benefits can't be paid out for disability or retirement. Meanwhile they buy food and goods, helping to support the Arizona economy. True, they send money home to Mexico as well, but on balance the effect is a positive one. But don't tell that to the Republicans, the tea partiers and the xenophobes. It doesn't fit what they want to believe, and what they want you to believe.

Bill Wolff (who never did get a beer in the two hours I was there) said one more interesting thing, and I told him one more interesting thing. He said that the lack of enforcement along the border is a myth. Wherever they went down there, the Border Patrol turned up within minutes, making their rounds. I can tell you that the Border Patrol office in Tucson is a huge complex, just a few miles from me at the corner of Swan and Golf Links. I imagine the Nogales contingent is even larger.

My interesting thing was that a group called BorderLinks (I had to look up who it was later this evening) put on an interactive presentation at St. Michael's this past spring. They cast ten or twelve parishioners to role play as would-be legal immigrants, each with a different background and scenario. About half of these fictional immigrants, based on the actual laws and statistics, had a positive result: they were allowed to get a green card and a path to citizenship - eventually. The timetable for this successful attempt at legal immigration tended to be a decade or longer, in some cases much longer, just for permanent residency status. The exceptions were for rich sports stars, and for professionals with Stateside companies actively advocating for them and smoothing the way. Equally deserving applicants, including some of those with family members in the U.S., had no chance at all of immigrating legally. And it's not fair.



The other side of this argument is not working from facts, but from fear and bigotry. The average undocumented worker is not a drug dealer or a human smuggler, although such people do exist. Harassing people in a state that's one third Hispanic, on the suspicion of being in this country illegally, does not help law enforcement go after the actual criminals; it merely ties up resources in a state that's not exactly flush with money right now. Undocumented workers tend to take jobs that "Anglos" don't want, for less money than other workers demand. They are the day laborers, the crop pickers, the seasonal construction workers. Enforce the laws against hiring them, and Arizona businesses may be forced to pay more money to hire people who are here legally. If that is done, people who come here specifically to get work will be less likely to make the dangerous crossing for jobs that aren't there. Already, law enforcement statistics show that fewer people are coming in, because the recession has made all jobs more scarce.

But that doesn't matter, because "They" are brown and scary and evil, and taking over. Aren't they?

Well, no. They're not.

Karen

More photos from the meetup can be found on my Flickr set.

Addressing the Issues - In a Jury Pool

You'll never guess what I did today, unless you read last night's entries, of course. Even if you did, you may be interested in the details.

I had federal court jury duty, for a very specific case. It was for the murder trial of a Mexican national. He was accused of murdering someone on the Tohono O'odham reservation in 2003.

The Federal courthouse - no cameras allowed!

First off, I was a day late and then some. I forgot to call the phone number over the weekend, and so missed my Tuesday reporting time. So I showed up on Wednesday instead. I missed the turn for the parking garage, because it was on the right side of the street and I was looking on the left. By the time I doubled back, parked and walked the city block to the courthouse, I was later still. Then I had to double back to the garage, to ditch my camera, which wasn't allowed in the building. I should have thought of that!

Anyway, I eventually arrived back at the courthouse, out of breath and coughing from the combination of heat, exertion, dehydration and the remains of my cold. It probably took me a good half hour to stop coughing, by which time one of the two other people in the room had moved far away for me. No problem otherwise, though. It was hours before anyone else joined us in the Jury Assembly Room.

Finally we got underway. This mostly consisted of filling out out a 15 page (or something) voire dire questionnaire. And oh, boy, the questions! Have I visited the reservation? (Yes, I photographed Mission San Xavier del Bac, and attended a Tony Bennett concert there in 2002.) Do I know the victim or the accused? (No.) How about anyone in law enforcement? (Yes, a retired judge.) Would I be disturbed at looking at graphic photos of the victim? (Yes - I can't even watch fake gore on House.) Have I ever been the victim of a crime? (Yes.)

Mostly, though, the questionnaire was about the whole immigration issue, through the prism of a specific murder trial. Would my attitude toward Mexicans affect my impartiality? (No.) Do I belong to or support any groups that want to change any laws, and if so what groups? (Does the Democratic Party count? I said I supported that subversive group, the Social Action committee at St. Michael's.) What is my attitude toward illegal immigration? Do I think the immigration laws are too harsh, too lenient or just right? And on and on!

I ended up writing and writing, lots of explanations of "Yes" answers. I wrote about my belief that unnecessary impedments to legal immigration lead to legal immigration. Enforcement of illegal immigration laws, including stupid SB 1070, use up resources better spent going after actual criminals such as drug runners. And so on. I was almost the last person to turn in my questionnaire.

Then we waited for an hour, when they said 20 minutes. Finally the bailiff came in and said, they were short on the jury yesterday, but as of noon today they had enough with one to spare. So we were dismissed. Relief! I probably wouldn't have been selected anyway, but I really, really didn't want to sit there contemplating graphic photos of a real, murdered person.

So I left the courthouse, and headed back to the garage with a stop off at the Arizona Geological Survey gift shop, which was on the way. From there I went to Tucson Botanical Gardens, splurged $6 to cover the RR Challenge for this weekend. The temperature was up in the 90s by then, and I ended up dehydrated and a little overheated, with only hot water from a water fountain for refreshment. Great place, though.

After that I met someone at church for lunch, followed up on some documents needed by our outside auditors, and went home. A distraught call from my disabled friend,  a mislaid piece of paper and every possible red light between here and Craycroft meant that I just barely missed out on reaching the local DES office (to file a form) before they closed at five.

So it's been quite a day. Especially on fewer than two hours of sleep!

Karen

History in a Closet

NPR just tweeted a story about an envelope found in the Cochise County courthouse late last month. Inside was a series of handwritten eyewitness accounts from a coroner's inquest into the shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881. NPR published one of the badly-yellowed, tape-damaged pages in PDF form, and I couldn't resist doing a dramatic reading for my own amusement of the words found there. Here it is, verbatim:

"...and there was 3 other gentlemen who some one told me was the Earps. Mr. Holliday was standing next to the buildings on the inside he had a gun under his coat he had on a long coat and I The way I noticed the gun is that his coat would blow open, and he would try tried to keep it covered. I stood in the door until these gentlemen passed and until they got to the second door and what frightened me and made me run back I heard this man on outside kind a looked looked at Holliday and I heard him say let them have it and Doc Holliday said Al right before I could get from the door then y I thought that I would run and run towards the back of the shot but before I reached the middle of the shop I heard shots - I don't know how many. an

I don't know who said give it to them I can not describe the party it was one of them that was with Holliday. -- Mr. A King"

Dramatic stuff, and like most Americans my age who grew up with Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, et al. I find the whole Tombstone legacy fascinating and kind of cool. I've written before about the appealing historic kitsch of The Town Too Tough to Die and its sometimes laughable attempts at tourism, like the tiny figure of an Earp falling down with an audible clack during the Historama show. That was over 20 years ago, so maybe it's all high tech and flashy by now rather than endearingly low-tech. I should go back and see. Back in the days of non-digital cameras I took lots of pictures of the tombstones, drank sarsaparilla in the bar and toured the Bird Cage Theater. I'm clearly overdue for a return visit, especially now that Father Ireland of St. Michael's is now the Vicar of Tombstone. People from St. Michael's sent him down there with a cowboy hat, a tin badge and GPS.

But there's the thing I want to say about this. Much as I love Tombstone, and tales of the Old West recounted at the safe distance of well over a century, I don't consider the ethos of that time a good model for modern Arizona, or anywhere else. Those were the days when Cochise and Geronimo and other native leaders were unable to protect their people from the white folks who had taken over their lands, either through negotiation or through wars and skirmishes that included horrific acts on both sides. They were the days (well, okay, it was 20+ years later) of Pancho Villa, that famous, charismatic and controversial figure in the days of the Mexican Revolution. A century ago, and for a few decades before that, people in Arizona thought nothing of wearing a gun for a walk down the street, and arguably really needed to do so. Those were days of racism and individualism, of local sheriffs in conflict with US Marshalls, of a hundred little mines springing up with a hundred little towns around them, and no particular thought given to safety or sustainability.

Those days are gone, or should be.

Carly's been asking me to say a few words about the stupid, bigoted goings-on in the Arizona legislature recently that have made Arizona both the nation's laughingstock and the object of horrified scorn. All I can tell you is hey, it's not my fault. You've got to remember that Phoenix is largely Republican, as are some of the rural parts of the state. Together they outweigh Tucson Democrats at the state level, and we are unable to prevent the state from doing stupid things, such as passing a "birther bill" requiring Presidential candidates to come to Arizona, birth certificate in hand, before getting on the ballot; a law that allows concealed weapons inside bars as long as you're not drinking, and a newer one that allows a concealed weapon statewide without a permit.

Worse than any of these is a newly-passed bill the new Governor, Jan Brewer, has not yet vetoed, requiring Arizona cops to demand proof of citizenship of anyone "reasonably suspected" to be an illegal alien. You've heard of being pulled over for "driving while black?" Try "breathing while Hispanic." That's where Arizona seems headed, despite pleas from churches, public officials, newspapers and law enforcement organizations. The law was proposed by State Senator Russell Pearce, a right wing xenophobe who has posed for pictures with a notorious neo-Nazi white supremacist, so you just know he's got the Right on his side, one way if not the other. What makes this especially outrageous is that Arizona is 30% Hispanic. Brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking (often bilingual) people have lived here since long before Arizona was a state. We have plenty of Hispanic U.S. citizens whose families have lived here all that time, including, for example, the Ronstadts. We also have legal immigrants, and Mexican residents who legally cross the border to go shopping and then return home. And yes, we have undocumented immigrants too, sneaking across the border for the privilege - if they survive the dangerous desert crossing - of picking lettuce in Yuma or working some other job most Americans would not want.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Back when Janet Napolitano was the Governor of Arizona, she would veto nonsense like this "papers please" bill, but then she accepted the post as head of Homeland Security. All we can do now is hope that all the unflattering attention, demonstrations and phone calls in opposition to the bill will shame current Governor Jan Brewer into vetoing it. If she doesn't, expect the first lawsuit about an hour later.

Somebody needs to bring people like Russell Pearce into the current century. This isn't the Wild West, and this isn't a war of the white people versus the brown people. That kind of thinking should be as outdated as a shootout between Earps and Clantons. The time is long past for societal conflicts within these not-so-United States to be settled at gunpoint. We're better than that.

Aren't we?

Karen

Update: Gov. Brewer signed this horrible, terrible bill into law today. Please read Episcopal Bishop Kirk Smith's open letter on the subject: An open letter to our Spanish-speaking Arizona Episcopalians

Round Robin Challenge: Pictures of Politics, Town Hall Division

Our latest Round Robin Photo Challenge, Politics was suggested by Carly of Ellipsis. We have a sparse turn-out this time; evidently, either everyone is busy this holiday weekend or a lot of people are too nervous about this touchy subject to post politics-related pictures. Some of our friends might think less of us if they knew our political affiliation, and besides, a photo meme is about picture-taking, not imposing controversial opinions on each other. Right?

Well, maybe. I personally get nervous whenever writing about politics online, for those very reasons. But this Challenge is about photographing the wild world of politics, not arguing the merits of a particular candidate or issue - although it can be!

With all that in mind, let us venture forth to a high school on the East side of Tucson, host to one of the last of this summer's "town hall" meetings on the subject of health care. With 2200 people in attendance and more on the periphery, there was a lot there for the camera to see!

Watching from the Sidelines

To Capacity - and Beyond!

In the courtyard, it's standing room only for latecomers.

The first wave of arrivals after the auditorium was full got to sit on folding chairs and watch the two tv screens. The rest of us had to stand off at the side, and try to see the tv through the trees. I listened to several minutes of opening remarks before realizing that our local member of the House of Representatives, Gabrielle Giffords, wasn't outside in the courtyard with us.

In front of the school, pro-reform demonstrators carried signs, which were not
allowed inside. The other side of the debate was also in evidence there.

Notices were posted around the venue that "banners" were not allowed in the auditorium, which I (and everyone else, apparently) took to mean in the courtyard area as well. The protest signs, the leafleting, the vintage style flag, the harmonica player and the man who repeatedly called another man a "baby-killer" while wishing him a pleasant evening were all in the sideshow out front. Both pro- and anti-reform forces were represented in the parking lot and on the steps...

The street belonged to the tea party demonstrators - and police directing
traffic. People had to park up to a mile away on neighborhood streets.

...while the sidewalks along the street itself were tea party territory. The whole area was parked up, with cars lining every side street for miles around. Even before they reached the school, a lot of people worried, with good reason, about finding their cars again in the dark afterward. I searched for my own car for about half an hour, despite memorizing the name of the second street I walked down after parking.

As evening wears on, some people leave. I can finally sit and watch Gabby on tv.

Maybe the parking situation was why people started to leave as it grew dark, or perhaps it had something to do with people asking the same questions that had already been answered, or making the same points that had already been refuted. Shortly after the first seats emptied, I claimed one, as did another woman who had been standing along the side near me. When someone whose number had been called got her chance to speak and made some wild accusation, I murmured, "That's not true," whereupon the woman next to me got up and moved to the other end of the row. I can only assume she didn't want to risk contamination!

As far as I could tell from the courtyard, there was no shoving or other outrageous behavior. Nearly everyone who spoke was interrupted by applause from people on one or both sides of the issue (yes, occasionally both sides agreed). There was also lots of booing, nearly all of it from the right. Giffords sometimes had to play the role of a fifth grade teacher, telling people off for drowning out speakers from the audience with booing, and saying that to waste time with extended reactions to every sentence was not productive. I estimated the crowd as 60% anti, 40% pro, but a reporter later wrote that it was more like 50-50, and the righties were just louder.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm for health care reform and the public option, and against people being manipulated with lies about President Obama's secret origins and agendas. But let's not argue about that now. Instead, let's go see everyone else's politix pix! And don't forget these other memes:

The Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot - hosted by Carly every Monday
The Weekend Assignment - hosted by Karen every Friday.



Linking List:

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Suzanne R - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com

Margaret - Posted!
Facts From a Fact Woman
http://factwoman.blogspot.com/

Peggy - Posted!
Holmespun Fun
http://holmspunfunmemesandthemes.blogspot.com

Karen

I CAN HAZ HEALTHCARE?

Nothing like a well-reasoned argument...!

Weekend Assignment #280: Volunteers

Okay, we had zero responses to last week's Weekend Assignment. Perhaps this will be more to your liking - or not:

Weekend Assignment: #280: Have you ever been actively involved in a campaign or a cause, to the point of doing more than just donating or voting? Tell us about the phone calls, the food drive, the charity walk or other civic-minded work you've done, if any. And if you've never done this sort of thing, why not? (It's okay if you haven't - I'm just interested in the reasons.)
Extra Credit: Do you have a favorite charity? Which one?

Extra credit first. I'm rather fond of the Red Cross. And St. Michael's of course.

Years ago, John Scalzi had a volunteer-related Weekend Assignment, but I don't think it was this particular question. I doubt anyone really cares if I recycle a four-year-old idea, not when the whole meme is on the verge of extinction.

Anyway.

I had a call last week from the local Democratic Party, asking if I'd be willing to do data entry work again over at their HQ. I said I'd be in on Friday afternoon. The day got away from me, though, adding two more chapters to the saga of my unemployment claim. (Short version: you don't qualify for the new claim after all, so a supervisor will reinstate the extension instead. Hey, wait: what's all this income you've been reporting since the beginning of June? Oh, that changes everything; you qualify for the new claim after all. What's the exact name and tax number of your church? It's not in our database. No, that number isn't long enough. Well, we'll get it in there, but it will take longer. Sorry.) So I didn't actually make it to HQ until after 4 PM, when it was nominally closed.

That didn't stop me.

The local coordinator, Gil, put me to work anyway, showing me the software (which I used in a slightly different form last fall) and giving me a stack of paper petitions (sort of) to enter. There was to be a sign-making party at 5 PM, but the data entry was more helpful than waiting around for five o'clock would be. As if turned out, it was more helpful than me making signs, too. There were plenty of other people to do that, people with far more manual dexterity than I have. But I was the only one in place at that moment to catch up with the record-keeping. Besides (and I didn't mention this at the time), I had no brilliant ideas for sign slogans, especially within the parameters given.

What were the signs for? President Obama is the short answer to that question. He's going to address the VFW in Phoenix on Monday morning. The signs are about Tucsonans and other people from Baja Arizona (a joke term for the Democratic/relatively liberal part of the state) welcome Obama and supporting his health care plan.

Thing is, I've been watching all this malarkey unfolding on tv for weeks and weeks now, people getting all upset and nasty, yelling and carrying fearful, hate-filled signs, mostly because they've swallowed a series of lies from a noxious cocktail of racists, lunatic fringe types and people with a political or financial interest in the status quo. No death panels are proposed or contemplated. Health care will not be rationed. (In fact this will help stop the insurance companies from the rationing they do now in their quest for profits.) Nobody is making you pull the plug on grandma. There is nothing in the fill to cause the government to pay for abortions, or sex change operations, to get between you and your doctor, drive the insurance companies out of business, drive small businesses out of business, take away your Medicare, or turn this country into a totalitarian state. The best argument anyone can make, short of a bald-face lie, is a "yeah, but" argument. "Yeah, but, if this passes, they'll add all that stuff later!" Um, no.

I'm not an argumentative or confrontational person. Calling a stranger on the phone practically gives me an anxiety attack. A Republican and a Democrat loudly interrupting each other on tv will make me turn the tv off. When John wants me to explain a religious belief - my own or someone else's - I want to run screaming from the room. I hate strife and standoffs and ill-will. And this aversion to conflict tends to make me a bit of a moral coward. Just the other night, I took a Facebook poll about whether people stand by the votes they cast last November in the Presidential election or would chance them today. (From what I saw, almost everyone stood by their choices.) The poll had a comment wall, and I made the mistake of looking at if. It had more than a few rather nasty anti-Obama remarks, some so incoherent I couldn't even tell what the poster was trying to say beyond "Obama = bad." I hesitated before adding my own, mild comment about right-wingers believing lies rather than discussing the real issues involved in health care reform. But I wrote it, and nothing bad happened. On the other hand, I didn't revisit that comment wall. Who needs that stress?

But that's not much of a contribution to the cause - me and my paragraph vs. any number of ill-informed shouters on tv. So I was glad to come in and volunteer, even if it was just a little data entry, even if it was late in the day.

And then.

"Do you have a camera?"

The question wasn't directed at me. It was Gil asking someone else who worked in the office.

"Want to borrow mine?" I said. I reached into my bag and brought out my trusty Canon.

Gil was amazed and pleased.

"I never go anywhere without it," I explained.

So Gil took a couple of pictures, and when I finished entering my stack of pages I took a bunch more. Here are the best of them. Maybe they'll contribute to the cause, somehow. And I didn't have to make a single phone call.

How about you? Have you worked for a candidate, or run for the cure? Helped out at your church? Organized a blood drive? Worked in a shelter or soup kitchen? Done dentistry in a remote Guatemala village? Sold Girl Scout cookies? Tell us about it in your blog, and please, please include a link back to this entry. I'll be back next Friday with a roundup of your responses.

And if, like this past week, nobody participates, you will instead see an announcement of the demise of the Weekend Assignment. Sorry, John Scalzi, I tried to keep it going. Really I did. But after writing 80-something entries continuing the meme you started, I may have to admit that it's a lost cause. I seem to be running dry on crowd-pleasing questions, and haven't had any good topic suggestions in a while now.

Sigh.

Karen