Month: November 2010

Political Compassion

Meg Whitman’s former maid, Nicandra Diaz-Santillan, an illegal immigrant, was in the news again recently, settling for $5,500 to cover back wages owed to her. Not present at the negotiations was her former employer and the former candidate for Governor of California.

Whitman claimed that she did not know Diaz-Santillan was an illegal immigrant when she ran for governor. Four months into her campaign, she fired Diaz-Santillan without compassion, told her that she never knew her, and tried to keep the whole affair secret. When it came out, Whitman shifted the blame onto the housekeeper. She even said in one interview that the woman should be deported.

Now Whitman may think the housekeeper incident is to blame for her loss in the governor’s race. However, had Whitman gone about it the right way, she could have come across as compassionate, and the whole affair might have worked in her favor.  (See my post of October 5, 2010 “ Meg Whitman’s Housekeeper.”)

The California governor’s race shows how important it is to appear compassionate. Whitman spent close to $150M on her campaign. By comparison, Jerry Brown’s funds were puny. Whitman’s ads attacked Brown, as expected, but ads that were meant to extol Whitman were cold and clinical, often appearing more like Powerpoint presentations. Brown’s ads substantiated this by depicting Whitman as a heartless CEO, in it only for herself. More importantly, when Brown appeared at the end of his ads, he came over as passionate and caring.

The same situation appeared in the other big California race, the one for Barbara Boxer’s senate seat, a race that the GOP thought they could win with a high profile candidate. Carli Fiorina’s ad campaign was based around attacks on Barbara Boxer, but Boxer’s campaign took a similar approach to Brown’s, showing Fiorina as a non-caring CEO out for herself only, in contrast to a caring Boxer. Since the voters knew Boxer as a long serving senator and did not know the newcomer Fiorina, the attacks on Boxer largely failed, while the depiction of Fiorina as cold and heartless stuck.  As the election neared, the Fiorina ads took a cue from Jerry Brown’s campaign and tried to show Fiorina as personable and passionate, but by then it was too late.

We don’t just want capable leaders; we want leaders that feel. The unpopularity of the former speaker of the house and present minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, is because she shows no compassion. By contrast, the new speaker John Boehner may be less capable, but he has shown genuine emotion on national TV, and that will work for us.

I think one reason for President Bill Clinton’s popularity was that people knew he cared. When he said, “I feel your pain,” people believed him. Even now, I still think he genuinely did.

What about Clinton’s successors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama? I am prepared to say that both Bush cared and Obama cares. With Bush, this did not always come across. The most notable time when it did not was during the Katrina disaster. There is no question that that damaged Bush’s standing. Now with Obama, when a large part of the country is hurting, the sense of compassion is not seen to be there. His words are always fine and appropriate, and he may be able fix the problem and get the economy moving again, albeit slowly, but what we need to see is that our predicament hurts him too.

A Conservative Moron

Voters on Maryland’s Eastern Shore should now realize what an idiot they elected when they chose Republican Andy Harris over the incumbent Democrat Frank Kratovil.

Harris ran on a heavily anti-health care platform, attacking Kratovil on health care reform, even though Kratovil actually voted against the health care reform package.

So far so good, but when Harris arrived at the Monday orientation session for newly elected representatives, he demanded government sponsored health care for himself, not just when it was due on February 1, 2011, but 28 days earlier.

How ironic! No government sponsored health care for my constituents, but government health care for me, Andy Harris!

What a schmuck!

Sarah Palin 2012

The 2010 mid-term election was the first test of the tea party on a national stage, and the overall result must be encouraging.  A large part of the swing to the conservatives was engineered through and by the tea party. As a result they will remain a political force in the conservative movement to be reckoned with going into the 2012 presidential race.

In 2010, the main beneficiaries of the tea party movement have been the Republicans in regaining control of the House of Representatives. Now the tea party has demanded its pound of flesh: elected Republicans must keep their campaign promises or face defeat in their next primaries.

In the longer term, it is Sarah Palin who gains from the tea party’s successes. She has aligned herself very closely with the tea party movement, and this will stand her in good stead when she seeks the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Palin has been unfairly blamed for the failure of John McCain’s presidential bid in 2008. It is true that she put her foot wrong in a number of minor ways, but her selection as running mate revitalized a flagging campaign. And she was not allowed to campaign freely on her own merits.  Since then, she has shown herself to be a very effective campaigner.

Now with the showing of “Sara Palin’s Alaska” on TLC, we are seeing her in a different light. The program is non-political, but it nevertheless works as an effective promotion of Palin, softening her image and filling out the human aspects.

The old Republican guard, if there is still an effective one, may pale at the idea of Palin running, but as it stands at present, she must be considered the front-runner.

The Tea Party in a Republican House

The 2010 US elections have gone as expected, the Republicans taking the House, but not the Senate. This follows the usual pattern that takes place in a “mid-term” election. It also happened with George Bush in 2006, when the Democrats made the large gains.

Not surprisingly, the Republicans see the 2010 results as affirming their agenda. The gains made by the Republicans were greater than the usual mid-term swing, and this can be attributed to the influence of the tea party. Now the tea party has served notice that it expects its agenda to be followed; otherwise, it will work towards taking out those Republicans that do not cooperate.

Unfortunately, we don’t really know what the Republican agenda is, except to continue the huge Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, to overturn health care legislation and to make sure that Obama is not reelected in two years time. The agenda of the tea party Republicans is primarily to cut the deficit. It also includes getting rid of earmarks (pork barrel projects) and the health care legislation, and uncompromising non-cooperation with the Democrats.

Where does this take us? The Bush tax cuts, an overriding issue with the Republicans, run in direct conflict with the tea party’s desire to cut the deficit. Continuing the tax cuts would add $650 billion to the deficit. How does this sit with the tea partiers?

As for health care, labeled ObamaCare by its detractors, it is difficult to see how the Republicans can overturn it while the president has the power of veto. It is unlikely that the tea party wishes can be met on this issue. Also, despite the election results, 57 percent of voters are in favor of the so-called Obamacare, a percentage that is likely to rise as new provisions come into effect.

Non-cooperation with the Democrats is certainly possible. So is bringing the business of government that has to go through the House to a complete standstill. Will the Republicans do this and risk the consequences?

The truth of the matter is that tea party demands cannot be met 100 percent. The Republican Party is not so irresponsible as to make government impossible. At least some cooperation is necessary to ensure that the party is not blamed for stalemating and bankrupting the country.

Step Down, Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi has her place in history as the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives. This is her legacy and, after the 2010 mid term elections, she cannot add to it in any positive way.

It is time for her to step aside and have someone else to be the minority leader of the House.

While Pelosi has been an effective leader for the House Democrats, she is a negative polarizing force to the wider voting public. Her popularity has never been high, even among Democrat voters.

In the last elections, the Republicans seized on her unpopularity and  ran ads focused on attacking Pelosi as part of the strategy to win control of the house, ads costing around $65 million, an excellent tactical move that paid off handsomely. This expenditure shows what an asset to the GOP she has become. There is no doubt that a large part of the Democrats’ loss can be attributed to Pelosi.

It is the right thing to do for a leader to step down when there has been a loss of majority. In this case, there is even more at stake than doing the decent thing. It goes right to the top. The Republican Party would be very happy for Nancy Pelosi to continue as the minority leader, since she can do no more than assist them in the defeat of the Democrats and help them to win the presidential office in 2012.

Where Was Moses Again?

The answer to the question where Moses was when he died (see the post “Where was Moses?” October 4, 2009), seems to lie in a mixture of traditions that crept into the Biblical account.

In Deuteronomy 3, as the children of Israel are on the verge of entering Canaan, Moses leaves them and goes up to the mountains east of the river Jordan. There the Lord gives him a glimpse of the Promised Land before he dies. The mountains are named, the land is naturally irrigated and it contains a “sea.” None of these have been identified near Canaan, but, as the previous post shows, they are all names and features that can be found in Kashmir, India. Even the tomb of Moses that cannot be found in Deuteronomy is clearly identified in Kashmir.

With Joshua now leading the children of Israel at the end of their long wanderings over the river Jordan into Canaan, it defies common sense that at about the same time Moses is climbing the slopes of Mount Nebu in Kashmir to get his glimpse of their destination.

What appears to have happened is that a story from one oral history has become inserted in another when the Hebrew bible was first written down. Scholars tend to agree that the writing down mostly took place during the years of exile in Babylon.

After the death of King Solomon in 931 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel split into the northern kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Israel (based in Samaria), and the southern kingdom, the Kingdom of Judah (based in Jerusalem). The northern kingdom lasted until 722 BCE when Assyria started destroying the kingdom. By 720 BCE, the population was exiled and the kingdom was no more. These Israelites, now known to us as the ten lost tribes, never returned. They were most likely assimilated as the Pashtuns into the areas of Afghanistan and eastern Pakistan, as well as into northern India, notably Kashmir.

The Kingdom of Judah suffered a similar fate around 586 BCE, when the Jews were exiled by the Babylonians. These Jews were allowed to return in 539 BCE when the Persians conquered the Babylonians. They were permitted to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and they brought with them the written version of their heritage, the Torah.

In the Torah is that passage in Deuteronomy about Moses seeing the Promised Land, but it comes from the tradition of the northern tribes in exile, and this is why there is a discrepancy with the rest of the narrative.