Marian's Blog

U.S. Midterms: "Appetizer for 2008" - Gergen

What was unimaginable less than 48 hours ago has occurred. Democrats have won both the House and the Senate while Mr. Rumsfeld has been shown the District line. Sayonara, Don. I couldn't have said it better than David Gergen on CNN declaring Tuesday's election results "the appetizer" for Election Day 2008. Gergen also aptly declared what's happening in America as "political high drama". A-men. In today's early hours, Thursday, 9 November, Associated Press has now declared Jim Webb winner while Mr. Webb has publicly thanked the people of Virginia (1607-2007) for electing him that state's new U.S. senator. Unlike perhaps a few folks I don't really intend to brag. At least not much. Globally and inside the U.S. all of us are dealing with many sobering things. Yet now at least there's the opportunity to begin again and to do some things which are both practical and right. Tuesday's really was a seismic vote.

Ayan Hirsi Ali: Coming to the US and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Quick. Put your thinking cap on... This is not Eddie Murphy's movie about a continental African coming to the USA. And what's the message here: if you can't persuade more indigenous US Blacks to 'go conservative' then import them? As with so many other issues and events involving the US or touching it yet rarely reported to or discussed with average US citizens, this news has potential to influence other issues. Yet much of mainstream US media probably won't report this, let alone examine what it means, until later. If ever. In Europe the news is that Somali-born women's rights activist and member of Dutch parliament, Ayan Hirsi Ali, is "renouncing" life in the Netherlands to come to the US. Ali wrote the script for the tinderbox short Submission, filmed by Dutch filmmmaker Theo van Gogh (yes, a relative of the painter) who was murdered two months later in November 2004 by a man seeking revenge against the film's message. Since then Hirsi Ali has been under heavy guard. In recent days it surfaced that apparently she lied about herself and her eligibility to seek and gain refugee status in the Netherlands when she arrived there in 1992. According to Ali and the Wikipedia article about her (linked at her name), from September 2006 she'll be in the employ of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Dio mio. Sounds like the outline of yet another film.

Impostor: Richard Nixon, George Bush - What's the difference?

Now for a history moment. What's the difference between George Bush and Richard Nixon? In my book - Nixon was impeached. In November 1973 Nixon spoke to a large group of Associated Press editors in Florida, stating, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook...." He added he was "not a crook." The American public disagreed. In 2006 it would seem reasonable that US citizens have a civic responsibility to be interested in knowing not only whether their president is a 'crook' but also whether he is competent. US citizens need to know whether our legislative branch (Congress) and the judicial branch (Supreme Court) of government are even exercising their check and balance functions. We're supposed to know who actually is running the US government, and whether or not those actions truly represent the will of the American people. If the answer to any of those things is no, we're in it deep. In October 1973 the Nixon administration appointed special prosecutor Archibald Cox to investigate the break-in at Democratic Party national headquarters then located in Washington's Watergate complex. (The late Frank Wills was the security guard who discovered the break-in.) Within days Nixon had decided to fire Cox. This led to October 20, 1973's "Saturday Night Massacre." The firing was temporarily halted by US Attorney General Elliot Richardson and deputy AG William Ruckelshaus as both chose to resign rather than obey the order to fire Cox. These days who would have that much integrity? Let's not mention courage. Enter Robert Bork, Nixon's Solicitor General in 1973. Later as Supreme Court candidate he was "borked."  After the demission of Richardson and Ruckelshaus, Bork voluntarily carried out the order to fire Cox. That was then and this is now, as another conservative by the name of Bruce Bartlett has published a rousing book titled Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. I have absolutely no nostalgia for Mr. Reagan or his "legacy", but unfortunately before long more of us probably will agree with the first part of Bartlett's premise. - "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." - Archibald Cox

Back to Burning Women at the stake? South Dakota's move to end abortion & women's most basic freedom of choice

I am a 'pro-choice mom'. I am a mother (and Grandma) - I am a mother by choice and I am highly concerned over South Dakota's state government positioning itself for its assault on Roe v. Wade - the US law that gives women the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy. My guess is that with its large population of Native Americans and including Indian "reservations" (Native 'reserves' in Canada) such as Rosebud and Pine Ridge, hard-pressed American Indian women will be disproportionately affected. Monica Davey writes in her NYTimes article, "If enacted, the bill, the most sweeping ban approved in any state in more than a decade, requires the signature of Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, who opposes abortion." Well of course; just what we need. In South Dakota's long and racially exclusionary "racially hostile" political tradition, one more white guy awarded the reins of power who pretty obviously never had an abortion and never will need to even consider one for his own body, yet politically poised to run roughshod over thousands of women's (and other men's) lives. Read my lips. In the long run any effort that might ban legal access to safe and affordable abortion will backfire. It is not going to work. You can try to destroy Roe v. Wade, but women's lives, minds and our political organisation will not turn back to pre-1973. ...Come to think of it, not even pre-2003. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mike.