View From Mary Flynn's Bench

View From Mary Flynn’s Bench

The view from Mary Flynn’s bench is sublime in early spring.

Legions of gray cumulus wash over the Berkshires

Leaving traces of dappled shadow much as the ripples of spent waves on ocean shores.

The meadow grass bends to the fresh west wind

Halting only momentarily at the edge of the forest upturning the new green of maple and beech; the rust of oak.

Great fortune in being on the right planet, beside the right star at the right time.

The Power of Words

There may well be over one million dead in Iraq, and George W. Bush said he could have used "better rhetoric" in the lead-up to the war.

Ralph Nader

Only one candidate would bring about any measure of change to the political environment in the U.S. Ralph Nader would confront the power of U.S. corporations if elected president. He would end the war in Iraq. He would reverse environmental destruction and restore civil liberties that have been gutted by Bush-Cheney.

Gross distortions about Nader as a presidential candidate have surfaced since the loss of the Gore presidential ticket in 2000. The Democratic Party, and their lack of resolve in failing to confront the illegitimacy of the Florida vote, and the deceit and betrayal by the Republican Party, are the only reasons for the disaster of the 2000 presidential campaign!

Enter the G.O.P.

"G.O.P. Now Sees Obama as Liability for Ticket," (New York Times, April 26). Now the Right-Wing Republican Party begins hate mongering!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/us/politics/26ticket.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Obama v. Clinton

Democratic primary election results in Pennsylvania ought not to surprise anyone. First, it must be stated clearly that both Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton represent a neoliberal political philosophy. That philosophy allows the military and the business elite to get away with about as much mayhem as they wish globally, while shrinking the middle class in the U.S. and severely diminishing the ability of the working class to keep their collective proverbial heads above water vis-à-vis the economy. The neoliberal strain of thinking allows U.S. imperialism to continue around the globe with no real limits on the projection of U.S, power. Also, few real or effective limits are placed on the environment’s ability to recoup the environmental degradation of the past half century.

That said, there is a very real difference in the kinds of votes each of these candidates received, and probably will receive in upcoming primaries, and that difference involves racism in the U.S. An analysis of the voting patterns and demographics in Pennsylvania on April 21 showed that Obama did poorly everywhere in the state except the area in and around Philadelphia. In Philadelphia he literally swept to victory, while the rest of the state, quite conservative, strongly supported Clinton. There were no surprises in Pennsylvania, a state that has supported many reactionaries in the past! What is quite illustrative, however, is that Obama could do better in a Southern state such as South Carolina, where large numbers of Black Americans came out to support him.

There is no question that racism, whether of the personal or institutional variety will continue to haunt Obama’s campaign, while the Clintons, with a family history of supporting the bill that sped up the process of getting the condemned to the death chamber, and supported another bill that severely limited the ability of poor Americans to take advantage of what’s left of the social “safety net,” will remain as spoilers in his attempt to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Support Our Troops

Both the Army and the Marine Corps accepted more recruits with so-called “moral waivers” in 2007 than in 2006. Congress, and “curiously” not the Pentagon, released the new figures. The Army brought in 511 recruits in 2007 with the waivers, compared to 249 in 2006. The Marine Corps accepted 208 soldiers with moral waivers in 2006, while it took in 350 last year.

What kinds of crimes do these recruits with waivers commit? The felonies run the gambit from manslaughter, robbery, terrorist threats, and bomb threats to aggravated assault and weapons charges. The figures and crimes speak for themselves. The military, unable to attract recruits to fight the unpopular and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must turn to felons to fill their ranks.

With the human rights abuses at Abu Grahib, Guantanamo prison camp, and gross violations of the rules of war at places like Haditha in Iraq, one wonders why even more moral waivers aren’t issued.

The Death Penalty

This week (April 16) the U.S. Supreme Court approved the resumption of the death penalty through the use of lethal injections (Baze v. Rees). In its decision, the court approved the so-called three-drug protocol used in Kentucky, the state which provided the test case for this ruling. States that adhere to these guidelines are now “free” to resume executions that have been on hold since the court took this case and many states began an informal and voluntary freeze pending this decision.

The death penalty is heinous! It turns the state into the perpetrator of a crime, with generally far more time to develop a motive and premeditation than the criminal. A significant issue in the use of the death penalty has been the attempt to bring justice to the victims of horrific crimes and those who survive the victim. That argument states that the death penalty gives a sense of finality to victims, and is offered as justification of the use of the death penalty for those who experience lasting repercussions following the horrors of violent crime. The latter keeps the cycle of an eye for an eye going on and on, providing an illusory sense of finality.

But none of this analysis analyzes the actual reasons for the use of the death penalty in the U.S. First, there is a strong sense of vengeance in the U.S., both on an individual and state-by state level: it is states’ rights carried to an extreme. Those elements, by themselves, are reason enough for the explanation of such overwhelming support of the death penalty among a majority of the population. But secondly, and more importantly, the death penalty is a means by which society can apply the ultimate punishment to those who don’t fit its economic needs, the poor, and finally, those who fit into racial groups that have historically borne the brunt of intolerance. These are the people who traditionally are found on death row. These people have become spurious to the economic and political systems. Once defiling the legal line in the sand, they become disposable!