Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Odds and Ends: Notes from my recent travels around the internets

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1.) Barack Obama tells a largely Black and Christian Texas audience to cut the shit when it comes to homophobia. Politico’s Ben Smith describes the scene:

“Now I’m a Christian, and I praise Jesus every Sunday,” [Obama] said, to a sudden wave of noisy applause and cheers.

“I hear people saying things that I don’t think are very Christian with respect to people who are gay and lesbian,” he said, and the crowd seemed to come along with him this time.

2.) 1% of American adults are in jail.

It has long been known that the US has the most prison-happy approach to crime control in the world. China, with a population far greater than America’s, comes in second with 1.5 million prisoners, and Russia third with 890,000.

Compared with the UK, America has proportionately five times as many prisoners, with 750 out of 100,000 of its residents incarcerated, as opposed to Britain’s 148 per 100,000.

Jesus. China? The Communist state with 1.3 billion people – that China?

If America is the best country on the face of the planet, why must we jail so many of our residents? Is this acceptable? Or is America better than that? And when will the “fiscally responsible” (LOL!), tough on minorities poor people guys not named Scooter er…tough on crime Republicans realize that their version of tough on crime, vis-Ă -vis the prison industrial complex and the war on drugs, is anything but fiscally responsible?

3.) Read this Guardian article about what economist Joseph Stiglitz calls the true cost of war.  Here are three highlights:

  • “‘You lose your helmet, you have to pay. If you get blown up and you lose your helmet, they still bill you.’ One soldier was sued for $12,000 even though he had suffered massive brain damage.”

  • Bush mislead the country on the cost of the surge: “In January 2007 the administration estimated that the much-vaunted surge would cost $5.6bn. But this was only for combat troops, for four months – they didn’t mention the 15,000-28,000 support troops who would also have to be paid for. Neither do official numbers count the cost of death payments, or caring for the wounded – even though the current ratio of wounded to dead, seven to one, is the highest in US history.”

  • Stiglitz argues that the Fed colluded with Bush to make interest rates low and extend the housing bubble because the “housing bubble made [Americans] feel wealthy (and less concerned with derring-do abroad)”. Who cares about the guy down the street loosing an arm when my property value doubled?

4.) The CIA estimates that China’s current account balance is $ 363,300,000,000. The US is ranked dead last at #163 with $ – 747,100,000,000. That’s only a gap of 1,110,400,000,000 or $1.1 trillion – roughly the conservative estimate the US will owe in interest on the Iraq war. Sweet.  

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Comments

  1. Pardon my skepticism, but I can’t find a video or official transcript of that exchange anywhere.  If it is true, kudos to Obama for applying a great approach to religious-based anti-gay bias.  But then why isn’t the campaign making it possible to verify?  The Austin town hall video is all over the internets, why not Beaumont?

  2. mccain is getting lots of congratulatory mileage out of the perception that the surge “worked”.  why isn’t he being challenged to defend the dismal backslide that is happening in afghanistan?

    • What we have a year after is at least 850 military deaths, another $100B wasted, and we will still 8,000 more troops than we started with when summer rolls around.

      • that doesn;t mean that some people aren;t congratulating mccain for what they see as progress resulting from our latest inSURGEncy.

        • Certainly Obama, Clinton and McCain all do. Thus, unless there is something I am missing, there is no real point of distinction between them on that issue.

          • That the surge in Iraq caused a loss of ground in Afghanistan, where no one in the political mainstream opposes our militray presence, and from whence actual terrorist attacks on US soil were launched.

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            p>The biggest problem with the war in Iraq is that it treated a sideshow as the main event, and left the main event neglected.

  4. for saying the right thing, but I think the commenters at Politico are overdoing the “courage” thing just a bit. Does anyone really believe he is in danger of losing the black vote?

  5. I wish I had seen your diary earlier (I was off-line for a bit).  What a great diary!  

    <

    p>Thanks!

    <

    p>And yes, I actually saw the video of Obama talking to the mostly black audience (either CNN or MSNBC, since Mom and I tend to watch these rabidly).  Obama was doing his regular stump about an inclusive campaign that included his regular list, but when he got to “lesbians and gays” the audience fell silent and there were some hisses and boos.  He stopped and addressed them, head on.  I found this rather telling about his candidacy and his support of LGBT rights.  He could have pandered and omitted this part of us from his list.  He could have ignored the hisses and moved on as if it didn’t happen.  But he didn’t.  He did what every natural organizer does, what every true believer does, he used it as an opportunity to teach.  And so he did.  

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