American Gods

Michael Jackson has ascended to the throne of the Gods. He has become what Americans needed him to be, something he grasped he had to be . . . infinitely maleable, all things to all people. The formless matter suitable for any person to fashion into whatever idol was needed.

No surprise that Jackson worked so hard to refashion himself. He was American culture's Frankenstein monster, simultaneously a masterpiece and a horror.

Now he has done what Elvis did before him, and so too the lesser god John Lennon . . . . He's made a good career move. Now he can be fully commodified. Utterly vilified by that petty moronic bigot, Congressman Peter King. Canonized by that self-serving greasy opportunist, Reverend Al Sharpton.

Elvis departed to the realm of Graceland, Lennon to Strawberry Fields, Jackson to Neverland. The manufactured realm of the unreal.

So I have a response to the response to his death. I do not understand the popular reaction. I did not understand Michael Jackson. I rarely thought of him in any connection. Nevertheless, on hearing of his death, I called my ex with a sense that something that marked our youth had passed. So be it.

I am more interested in the contempt thinly veiled in the remarks of some in the media and elsewhere, a contempt expressed unambiguously by Peter King. King himself can be tossed aside. Anyone who's had the misfortune to hear two syllables uttered by him knows him to be one of the stupidest idiots in a Congress of Idiots.

What was so clear in the reactions of some, like Brooke Shields, was genuine compassion. And in truth, I feel great pity for Michael Jackson. Who knows what was really going on for him. But the sight of his daughter breaking down on the stage of that mass market fare-thee-well must move any person (but not Peter King).

He was indeed destined. Destiny is the application of force by a higher power. For him, the higher power was his father. His Son had to die for somebody's sins. Might as well be the father's.

So, deprived of any childhood, he spent his life trying to invent one, recover one, discover one — the search for lost time.

And let's be perfectly honest. Let us suppose that Michael Jackson really was the person that Peter King claimed. In the scheme of things, the also recently departed Robert McNamara was vastly worse. McNamara, a true war criminal, was treated with the greatest respect by many of the same media hacks marvelling at the send-off for Jackson. But Jackson, even under the worst possible light, did nothing remotely as reprehensible as McNamara.

In time, other gods of the powerful will kick off — Henry Kissinger, Ariel Sharon, Dick Cheney, George W . . . take your pick. Every one of them will be treated with near-reverence by the likes of The New York Times or CNN or NPR. Yet every single one of those icons of power is guilty of vastly greater crimes — crimes against humanity — than Michael Jackson.

No prominent figure in government or the media will dare speak ill of any of those war criminals when the time comes. Obama, President of the United States, won't dare speak ill of them now.

So a word to all those who sneer at the hullabaloo over Michael Jackson. If you are capable of lionizing some of the worst Americans ever to crawl across the Earth, what does that make you?

Biden Relays an Obamal Bull on Foreign Policy

In the flea circus of Sunday morning blab sessions among politicians, pundits and 'experts', Vice President Joseph Biden dropped a clanger. Asked by George Stephanopoulos about a possible Israeli attack on Iran, he said, "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else." (For example, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories of Palestine.) Biden said further that the US cannot "dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."

This directly contravenes the express American position with respect to North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and of course, Iran. It's a position we all know the US takes; thus, according to the BBC, "White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Mr Biden was not signalling any change of approach on Iran or Israel."

Some nations, we know, are more equal than others. Israel is the first among equals in timid, sheepish, money-grubbing Washington. So Israel has blanket immunity. Other friends do not. Britain's sovereignty does not give it the right to investigate American war crimes. The US threatened to withhold key intelligence info, purportedly vital to British security, if Britain did not quash any investigations into torture and other crimes at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Spain is certainly under similar or greater pressure.

While this does not mark a major shift in American policy, it does serve as declarative punctuation in the US position on Iran. It marks the official cessation of any US government concern or support for pro-democracy activists in Iran. Iran must be popularly demonized to lay the foundation for American acquiescence in a new round of Israeli war crimes.

The Mountain Men, Modern and Old, and Those Who Follow Them

The New York Times runs a story on July 5th on the story and mystery of Everett Ruess, a young, 'modern' mountain man, who disappeared in Utah three quarters of a century ago — in 1934 — at just 20 years of age.

His remains were believed found and confirmed by DNA analysis until the Utah State Archaeologist raised questions about the dentition.

I put "modern" in scare quotes (thus, 'scare') because some might dispute 1934 being "modern" and Utah was far more wild then than it is now.

Ruess "followed his bliss", as Joseph Campbell would have said, lived very much by his own devices, traded his woodcut prints for food, trekked about with a horse or burro. Lived Henry David Thoreau's imagined ideal — simple.

Jon Krakauer writes of Ruess briefly in "Into the Wild" (briefly, because there is little to be said about him).

It's a mystery. A young wanderer probably murdered. Of kind, I think, with Kit Carson, John Colter, Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass, and others who seemed to prefer comparative isolation, the wilderness.

I am among their admirers, even idolaters. The idolaters of those who go alone, or near alone, into the wilderness (rarely, but nevertheless occasionally, against the wilderness). A simpler life. A life of pure beauty, pure art.

I sound like a fucking self-help book.

More to come.

Questions and At Least One Comment for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Doesn't the Gov look like the cat that swallowed the canary?
(Bush still manages those "please don't hit me!" eyes.)

Some questions and comments for Gov. Mark Sanford:

1. Did you use a love glove, Gov?

2. Argentina and Appalachian both start with "A" but that's as far as it goes.

3. Did you study at the Strom Thurmond School of Family Values?

4. Do you now see a need for stimulus money? Could go to spelling skills. Compare "Argentina" & "Appalachian"

5. How surprised were you when the space aliens dropped you in Argentina? Did they 'probe' you?

6. Are you being un-American for passing over American affairs for Argentine?

7. Do you plan to join the Silvio Berlusconi Club?

8. Do you plan to join fellow Republican Bob Dole as a spokesman for Viagra?

9. Given your special needs, was Viagra enough?

10. Governor, how much did it cost taxpayers for you to 'go south'?

Suddenly, There Is a Martyr

Then can a I drown an eye, unused to flow. . .

Barack Obama seemed near to a tear on speaking of "the 'heartbreaking' video of a 26-year-old Iranian woman whose last seconds of life were captured by video camera after she was shot on a Tehran street."

"'While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful,' he said, 'we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.'" So he was quoted in The New York Times.

"No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness." But his iron hypocrisy is. He has quite effectively "shut off the world from bearing witness" to American crimes at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and elsewhere.

Obama did not show anything like his emotion over Tehran when Israel took the lives of 1500 Palestinians standing up for justice and self-determination just before he took office. Indeed, he defended Israel's war crimes (as most of the world seems the assault). Many members of Congress were even more enthusiastic in their support for Israel's rampage, including some (like John McCain) who now decry Iranian government crimes in Tehran.

Obama has shown no emotion at all for the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in an unjust, unjustified and unjustifiable American war in Iraq. No emotion for the tens of thousands of civilians dead in Afghanistan, numbers bound to grow as he expands the war there.

The most recent tragedy in Afghanistan? The deaths of some 60 people attending a funeral — killed by in American Predator drone attack. The New York Times picked up the story almost a full day after the BBC had first run it. The Times headlines the report on page A6 of the June 24 edition, but devotes only four column inches (including the standard caveats about 'nothing being confirmed') of about seventeen devoting most of the report to Pakistani efforts against specific members of the Taliban.

The New York Daily News (granted, no 'newspaper of record') splashes "Obama grieves for Iranian martyr Neda" above it's full-page headline "Death That Broke His Heart". The Daily News carries no mention of the Predator attack in Pakistan.

The Wall Street Journal, front page, proclaimed "Obama Rips Iran in Tactical Shift". On page A11, under the headline "Rival of Pakistan Taliban Chief is Assassinated", the paper devoted two paragraphs, two column inches, saying "up to 50 militants were reported killed in suspected missile strikes by U.S. pilotless drones" [emphasis mine]. Militants. Both the Times and the BBC refer to the dead as "people". Only the BBC reports that people on the ground say only five of the dead were militants.

The American media mirrors the president's responses. Outrage over Iran. Silence or actual support for Israeli attacks in Lebanon, in Gaza, in the West Bank.

If the Iranian government were to use the standards endorsed by Obama, they would ban (as indeed they have) the distribution of footage like that of suffering protesters on the grounds that it might inflame opinion against the Iranian regime. That is the 'justification' that Obama has used to ban further release of photos of American crimes at Abu Ghraib.

Is it possible Obama does not see the parallel? Is it possible that he has not seen those photos? Not one? If he has seen them, has he not been moved by the injustice of American war criminals?

Obama Decries 'Unjust' Violence

She is dead. A crime justified by nothing more than a brutal determination to silence dissent. Now ask yourself a question: Have you ever seen so graphic an image of an innocent killed by an American attack?

I can think of one — the young girl burned in a napalm attack running naked down a road in Vietnam, over 35 years ago. I can think of no such image, certainly not one receiving such coverage, from an American attack in the past 20 years.

Unjust. Unjustified. Violence.
___________________

President Obama hardened his tone toward Iran on Tuesday, condemning the government for its crackdown against election protesters and accusing Iran’s leaders of fabricating charges against the United States.

In his strongest comments since the crisis erupted 10 days ago, Mr. Obama used unambiguous language to assail the Iranian government during a news conference at the White House, calling himself “appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the past few days.”

So reports The New York Times on the new found indignation of Barack Obama.

"Appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments. . . ."

Is it possible that this man is so small-minded that he does not see the absurdity, the hypocrisy in an American president, in this American president, saying such things?

This is the president who refuses categorically to prosecute or even investigate the Americans who drove this country into a war that has seen tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of deaths — for nothing — for the trumped up fictions eagerly accepted and elaborated by American media and politicians .

This is the president who has hired a significant number of leftovers from the Clinton years, Clinton being the man responsible for years of sanctions and bombings in Iraq which caused something like half a million deaths among children. His henchmen including his partner Hilary, Dennis Ross (now ensconced at the White House), among others.

This is the president who has endorsed continued denial of basic human rights to people who have been imprisoned without charge of due process of any kind for years. The justification for continued imprisonment? "If they weren't guilty before, they are likely to have been radicalized by their imprisonment."

The president who has expanded a war in Afghanistan which has to date seen at least 30,000 civilian deaths at American hands.

This president, who has to date done nothing more than pay lip service to Palestinian democratic aspirations for self-determination. Indeed, Obama endorsed Israel's atrocities in Gaza at the end of the Bush term. He has repeatedly reiterated exactly the 'justifications' Israel itself offers for killing hundreds of civilians to get at one (if any) 'militant'.

And he is only months into his reign.


Unjust?

Unjust. Just. Unjustified. Justified. Violence.

The Iranian despots clearly think themselves justified. Theirs is an act, they think, of self-preservation. The Chinese thought themselves justified in their attacks on Tibetans before, during and after the Olympics.

Most notably in recent history, Israel thought itself 'justified' in a murderous campaign against all 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. In that case, many American politicians, pundits and 'journalists' applauded Israeli 'justice'.


The Principle of the Excluded Left

There is actually a principle at work here, one described at length and repeatedly by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and many many others (all from the excluded left).

An act is justified and just by definition, if it is carried out by the United States. This is a broad statement of the principle stated explicitly by Nixon: "If the president does it, that means it is not illegal."

This principle is widely used in the United States. It is the principle in use when The New York Times or NPR or CNN fail to call torture by Americans torture. It the principle at work when Americans react with genuine indignation on the suggestion that the United States has committed crimes against humanity.

It is more than just a dictionary-style definition. It is a defining element of the way most Americans think. It is certainly not isolated to the US. The Chinese clearly just cannot imagine why anyone would oppose their actions in Tibet. The Israelis, in large majority, cannot grasp that people might think that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon. The British, the French, take your pick. Very nearly every aggressive power simply does not see itself as an aggressor.

Journalists and Professional Liars

Excellent 2007 talk by John Pilger — a journalist strictly excluded from the pages of The New York Times, the airwaves of CNN or NPR.

NSA Spies On US — Let's Spy on the Spies

More on this soon. In the meantime, click here or on the image below for the list of US nuclear sites, here in the US and abroad. The big thing here is not the locations — they're widely known — but what is at those locations. Some foreign governments may be surprised by how the US is playing them for patsies. (The US pulled a big one on Iceland during the Reagan years by storing nuclear weapons in Iceland, unbeknownst to the Icelandic government and in direct violation of Icelandic law and promises made by the US to Iceland.)

This is placed on this site as an Act of Political Defiance
of a US Government and an Obama administration
that is spying on US citizens
in direct violation of Article IV of the Bill of Rights
of the Constitution of the United States.

Do not forget that Barack Obama has supported FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), the prison at Bagram in Afghanistan (where prisoners have been abused every bit as much as at Guantánamo). Obama has defended American war criminals, defended American banking criminals.

A Lexicon of Childhood

Here's an ongoing dictionary of the great expressions kids come up with. No particular order, not very long, and depends on whatever they come up with.

nastarola (adj.) generically, mildy nasty.

lasterday (n.) similar to yesterday, but specifically referring to the day of an event. (e.g., "Lasterday, when we went to the zoo, we got cotton candy." Thus, not the immediately preceding day, but the probably recent day when the zoo was last visited.)

the first beginning (n.) As adults, we think of a book beginning on the first page of the story or text, perhaps on the title page. But "the first beginning" is the first page of the book, literally — perhaps a flyleaf or an endpaper.

baby in a bird's nest (n.) A Christmas tree ornament of the infant Jesus in a cradle of straw.

Jesus Crisis (expletive) Corruption of Jesus Christ.

damage (expletive) Corruption of "damn it"

baby Zeus (proper name) Greek American child's answer to "Do you know what Christmas is about?"

"Fix the law." Anything that is broken can be fixed. So in response to "They broke the law," the response might be "Can you fix it?"

chocolate (adj.) Anything that tastes about as good as a thing can taste. Vanilla soy milk is 'chocolate'; Peach smoothie is 'chocolate'.

ganges (n.) Corruption of "gadgets," of the kind that Batman frequently uses.

stupidhead (n.) Means exactly what it sounds like. "Head" can be appended to many derogatory adjectives to produce an unflattering noun.

babyhead (n.) Much the same meaning as "stupidhead". Often said by an older sibling.

na-nana-poo-poo (?) Usually precedes "you can't catch me!" Meaning obscure.

ballgum (n.) Corruption of "gumball".

Elmo Juice (proper name) More generally N juice, where N is the commercial pop-figure used to get kids to buy the product, in this case juice.

Hot tub powers (n.) The special category of superpowers acquired after a first childhood experience of a hot tub.

"If you shoot the moon, it will make fireworks."

Clark Klent (proper name, Tue. April 7, 2009) Alterego or alternative identity of Superman.

The Clue (proper name, Sat. June 13, 2009) Confusion of the name "Riddler" from Batman.

more to come . . .

Obama Welcomes America's Grand Old War Criminal

'President' Obama again demonstrated his commitment to justice and law with his warm welcome to that fat old mass murderer Henry Kissinger.

The Obamobile

Barack Obama Pontificates on 'Values' (Whatever They Are)

According to the BBC, 'President' Obama has said that "the US cannot impose its values on other countries."

But he insisted that "democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion" were "universal values".

"These are values that are important, even when it's hard," he said.

Sounds like a Second Grade reader. "Even when it's hard." How hard would it be to investigate Bush-era war crimes? How hard would it be to refrain from committing more of the same crimes?

Democracy. The majority of Americans, when asked outside the push-poling of the Republicans, Democrats, New York Times, CNN and NPR, overwhelming support single-payer health care. The 'president' has categorically ruled out single-payer. The majority of Americans oppose the Obama-Geithner-Bernanke kickbacks to Wall Street. Most Americans are tired of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan. Most Americans think torturers should be prosecuted.

So much for Obama's Democracy.

Rule of Law. Torture, bombing civilians, bankrupting the United States while passing the bill on to common people of modest means.

'President' Obama has made clear his values: Serve the rich, hobble everyone else. Apologize to foreigners even as you bomb them. Cultivate the Obama Cult of Personality.

. . .

O, who r u, little i?
all z z zing away
the daze of our li(v)es?

Jonathan Turley on Obama'sAnti-Democratic, Unconstitutional Tyrany

Transforminators — The Future Is Yesterday

Rachel Maddow Skewers Obama'sAnti-Constitutional Proposals

Liars, Damn Liars, and Barack Obama

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship offer comments on Barack Obama's reversal on single payer health care — a nice summary of how the discussion on health care hasn't jumped the tracks, it's never even left the station.

Moyers and Winship are fair, insightful and keep their opinions modest and moderate.

I'll state things more dramatically. Barack Obama is a self-serving liar who, as with the bailout, is sacrificing the well-being of the American people in the pursuit of political gain.

I see no evidence of any kind that Obama is making unavoidable sacrifices to the political reality of the United States. Almost wholly, systematically excluded from Obama's 'team of rivals' are the voices of Labor, Human Rights, Single Payer health care, . . . . I say almost because, as Amy Goodman revealed in an interview with Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Obama will tip his hat to, say, human rights lest he be susceptible to the charge of hypocrisy by ignoring preogressives absolutely.

But this is the president who began the discussion of health care reform by ruling out single payer, just as Bill Clinton did in 1993. This is the president who, through his puppet Timothy Geithner, ruled out nationalizing banks despite numerous calls to do so by leading, non-right-wing economists. This is the president who has repeatedly turned to the very architects of economic calamity to 'oversee' and 'regulate' the reform.

I cannot overstate how revolting I find this 'democrat', a liar in the deepest sense, a con-artist, a traitor to the people who (still overwhelming delusional) voted for him in droves.

Here the text of the Moyers/Winship essay:

Rx and the Single Payer

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program."

Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two-to-one.

There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: "All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House."

Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed -- Democrats in control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress. So what's happened to single payer?

A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked him exactly that. "If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense," the President replied. "That's the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.

"The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health care from their employers and you've got this system that's already in place. We don't want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy."

So the banks were too big to fail and now, apparently, health care is too big to fix, at least the way a majority of people indicate they would like it to be fixed, with a single payer option. President Obama favors a public health plan competing with the medical cartel that he hopes will create a real market that would bring down costs. But single payer has vanished from his radar.

Nor is single payer getting much coverage in the mainstream media. Barely a mention was given to the hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who came to Washington last week to protest the absence of official debate over single payer.

Is it the proverbial tree falling in the forest, making a noise that journalists can't or won't hear? Could the indifference of the press be because both the President of the United States and Congress have been avoiding single payer like, well, like the plague? As we see so often, government officials set the agenda by what they do and don't talk about.

Instead, President Obama is looking for consensus, seeking peace among all the parties involved. Except for single payer advocates. At that big White House powwow in Washington last week, the President asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him. "What's brought us all together today is a recognition that we can't continue down the same dangerous road we've been traveling for so many years," he said, "that costs are out of control; and that reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait."

They came, listened, made nice for the photo op. and while they failed to participate in a hearty chorus of "Kumbaya," they did promise to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years. The press ate it up -- and Mr. Obama was a happy man.

Meanwhile, some of us looking on -- those of us who've been around a long time -- were scratching our heads. Hadn't we heard this before?

Way, way back in the 1970's Americans were riled up over the rising costs of health care. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter started talking about the government clamping down. When he got to the White House, drug makers, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors -- the very people who only a decade earlier had done everything they could to strangle Medicare in the cradle -- seemed uncharacteristically humble and cooperative. "You don't have to make us cut costs," they promised. "We'll do it voluntarily."

So Uncle Sam backed down, and you guessed it. Pretty soon medical costs were soaring higher than ever.

By the early '90s, the public was once again hurting in the pocketbook. Feeling our pain, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried again, coming up with a plan only slightly more complicated than the schematics for an F-18 fighter jet.

This time the health industry acted more like Tony Soprano than Mother Teresa. It bludgeoned the Clinton reforms with one of the most expensive and deceitful public relations and advertising campaigns ever conceived -- paid for, of course, from the industry's swollen profits.

As the drug and insurance companies, hospitals and doctors dumped the mangled carcass of reform into the Potomac, securely encased in concrete, once again they said don't worry; they would cut costs voluntarily.

If you believed that, we've got a toll-free bridge to the Mayo Clinic we'd like to sell you.

So anyone with any memory left could be excused for raising their eyebrows at the health care industry's latest promises. As if on cue, hardly had their pledge of volunteerism rung out across the land than Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. and chair of the lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans, assured his pals not to worry abut the voluntary reductions. "We believe that we can do it without undermining the viability of companies," he said, "and in effect enhancing the payment to physicians and hospitals." In other words, their so-called voluntary "reforms" will in no way interfere with maximizing profits.

Also last week, John Lechleiter, the chief executive of drug giant Eli Lilly, blasted universal health care in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "I do not believe that policymakers have yet arrived at a full and complete diagnosis of what's wrong and what's right with U.S. health care," he declared. "And I am very concerned that some of the proposed policies -- the treatments, to continue my metaphor -- will have unintended side-effects that make our situation worse."

So why bother with the charm offensive on Pennsylvania Avenue? Could it be, as some critics suggest, a Trojan horse, getting the health industry a place at the table so they can leap up at the right moment and again kill any real reform?

Wheelers and dealers from the health sector aren't waiting for that moment. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, they've spent more than $134 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 alone. And some already are shelling out big bucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.

The Washington Post's health care reform blog reported Monday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has hired an outside PR firm to put together a video campaign assaulting Obama's public plan. And this month alone, the group Conservatives for Patients' Rights is spending more than a million dollars for attack ads. They've hired a public relations firm called CRC -- Creative Response Concepts. You remember them -- the same high-minded folks who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the gang who savaged John Kerry's service record in Vietnam.

The ads feature the chairman of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, Rick Scott. Who's he? As a former deputy inspector general from the Department of Health and Human Services told The New York Times, "He hopes people don't Google his name."

Scott's not a doctor; he just acts like one on TV. He's an entrepreneur who took two hospitals in Texas and built them into the largest health care chain in the world, Columbia/HCA. In 1997, he was fired by the board of directors after Columbia/HCA was caught in a scheme that ripped off the Feds and state governments for hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus Medicare and Medicaid payments, the largest such fraud in history. The company had to cough up $1.7 billion dollars to get out of the mess.

Rick Scott got off, you should excuse the expression, scot-free. Better than, in fact. According to published reports, he waltzed away with a $10 million severance deal and $300 million worth of stock. So much for voluntarily lowering overhead.

With medical costs rising six percent per year, that's who's offering himself as a spokesman for the health care industry. Speaking up for single payer is Geri Jenkins, a president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee -- a registered nurse with literal hands-on experience.

"We're there around the clock," she told our colleague Jessica Wang. "So we feel a real sense of obligation to advocate for the best interests of our patients and the public. Now, you can talk about policy but when you're staring at a human face it's a whole different story."

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers. Research provided by editorial producer Rebecca Wharton.

SEE ALSO

The Bill Moyers Journal, 22 May 2009. And, from The Bill Moyers Journal website:

Public Citizen Health Research Group
"Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization founded in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts"

Physicians for a National Health Program
"Physicians for a National Health Program is a non-profit research and education organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance."

Side-by-side comparison the major health care reform proposals.
Assembled by The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

"Why Not the Best? Results from the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008"
THE COMMONWEALTH FUND, July 17, 2008.

Senate Finance Committee white paper on health care
White paper by Senator Max Baucus's committee discussed in the interview.

"Obamacare to Come: Seven Bad Ideas for Health Care Reform"
By Michael D. Tanner, CATO INSTITUTE, May 21, 2009.

"The Moral-Hazard Myth"
By Malcolm Gladwell, THE NEW YORKER, August 29, 2005.

"TIMES TOPICS: Health Care Reform"
THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Rights? Who Gives a Damn. (Not Barack Obama.)

Rumor has it that (President) Barack Obama taught constitutional law — at the University of Chicago. Given the right-wing leaning of many at Chicago, he might be forgiven if he is hazy on the notion that human beings have rights. But he also, according to rumor, studied at Harvard, home then to the late John Rawls (though also to the likes of Charles Fried and Alan Dershowitz).

One way or another, it seems at least plausible that Obama may have, at least once, have come across this line:

Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.

This comes from John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. It expresses one of the core principles of Western moral thought, one that has spread around the world and motivated countless movements for human rights.

It a notion that Barack Obama is, despite his rhetoric, abandoning in his support for Bush-era crimes supposedly in the name of "national security".

The simple fact is this: There are some acts that cannot be justified, no matter what the 'good' that is promoted by the act. This is a notion that Americans embrace with near universality (the likes of Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez, Condoleezza Rice being among the few exceptions). It is worth noting that no one is promoting the "ticking time-bomb" argument with regard to strictly domestic criminals.

The only reason that Obama might get away with his criminal denial of rights to Guantánamo detainees is that they are (1) Arab (or Afghan, or 'Middle Eastern') and (2) Muslim. There is a long history of due process being accorded to the most dangerous, most reprehensible individuals. Think of some American organized crime bosses, or Nazi war criminals, or serial killers. Surely profoundly dangerous. In the case of organized crime figures, surely individuals with wide networks that could threaten communities home to the prisons holding these criminals.

I find ite nearly impossible to believe that Barack Obama, whom people routinely describe as the 'smartest person' they've ever met, doesn't grasp this. That he is willing to sacrifice so fundamental a priniciple of American law for the sake of political expediency condemns him and his presidency to the same moral status as his loathesome predecessor.

Alien — The Musical

Coming soon to Broadway! Alien — The Musical!

Check back here for more on this exciting new musical extravaganza! Auteur Hugh Sansom is currently seeking a composer to collaborate on this new, innovative musical.

AlienTheMusical.com will soon be live with updates on creative development.

Barack Obama Is a Public Servant

Neither President Obama nor his predecessors nor any of his peers in Washington or in state and city governments around the nation seem to remember that they work for us. They are our servants.

Why do people stand as the president enters a room? Why do they say, "Mr. President"?

They should be address us — The People — with honorifics.

But now, rather than respect public demands, Mr. Obama is treating us again with the contempt for the common people that he has displayed throughout the bailout. He and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have resolved that none shall be prosecuted in the case of Bush administration war crimes. Granted, this has not been officially proclaimed, but we now have reports that Holder's justice department has determined not to press criminal charges against the authors of the "torture memos" (Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury). I'll eat my hat if they do anything more than offer vague criticisms of the conduct of even the most reprehensible of the Bush brigade.

Just to review, here is the short list of Bush-era war criminals:
Remind us, Mr. Obama, why did we vote for you? Why did we choose you to work for us? And just what is it, if anything, that you plan to do for us? You've made it fairly clear:

• no national health care (rather, some handwaving that will keep insurers happy)

• bailouts for billionaires, lifetimes of tax burdens for The People

• coddling of Republicans and right-wingers

• continued war in Iraq, and ramped-up war in Afghanistan and Pakistan

• rumblings of attacks on social security

• the beginnings of a capitulation to major corporate polluters

Yep, sounds like a mighty big change.

Manhattan, President's Aide, . . .

The newest developments in the spread of swine flu include a 20 year old student at Pace University in Manhattan and an aide to President Obama. This follows one day on the first death in the United States (a terribly sad case of a 23 month old toddler).

What is notable here is not the spread of the illness, but the persistent misrepresentations of government officials from President Obama down to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York and on. These officials have consistently said that the spread is something to take seriously but that there is no substantial reason for concern on the part of the public.

Mayor Bloomberg's response has approached being dismissive, even glib.

Honesty combined with calls for calm and caution is needed here. Not dismissiveness and not belittling of concerns people have.

Economic Treason?

At what point does an official's abrogation of duty cease to be mere incompetence and rise to the level of crime? At what point does a public official's crimes rise to the level of treason, particularly when those crimes seem entirely domestic in scope?

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

So reads the Constitution. George W. Bush gave us a new definition of "enemy," one President Obama has yet to reject. Nevertheless, it is little more than rhetoric to charge Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner with treason. To do so seriously, we would have to suppose that the Oligarchs of Wall Street are enemies of the United States. That case could be made. They have enriched themselves at the expense of 300 million Americans. But we know that case will never be made by anyone other than lefty ranters like yours truly.

As president of New York Federal Reserve, Geithner was merely a conniving, grovelling servant of the American Oligarchs. Now he is conniving, grovelling servant endorsed, abetted, and presumably directed by President Obama. (Obama is playing the political plausible deniability well by just keeping largely silent, except for the occasional pitch for stocks.)

This administration, a public 'champion' of transparency, has recently been forced, by lawsuit, to make its and Bush's scheming public. So we now know who Geithner, a public servant, really served.

The New York Times reports,

Last June, with a financial hurricane gathering force, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. convened the nation’s economic stewards for a brainstorming session. What emergency powers might the government want at its disposal to confront the crisis? he asked.

Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer. He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.

The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.

[...]

But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription. Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation’s financiers from their own mistakes.

And more often than not, Mr. Geithner has been a leading architect of those bailouts, the activist at the head of the pack. He was the federal regulator most willing to “push the envelope,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent Wall Street lawyer who spoke frequently with Mr. Geithner.

Today, Mr. Geithner is Treasury secretary, and as he seeks to rebuild the nation’s fractured financial system with more taxpayer assistance and a regulatory overhaul, he finds himself a locus of discontent.

Even as banks complain that the government has attached too many intrusive strings to its financial assistance, a range of critics — lawmakers, economists and even former Federal Reserve colleagues — say that the bailout Mr. Geithner has played such a central role in fashioning is overly generous to the financial industry at taxpayer expense.

An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions.

His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry’s interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records.

[...]

[F]or all his ties to Citi, Mr. Geithner repeatedly missed or overlooked signs that the bank — along with the rest of the financial system — was falling apart. When he did spot trouble, analysts say, his responses were too measured, or too late.

In 2005, for instance, Mr. Geithner raised questions about how well Wall Street was tracking its trading of complex financial products known as derivatives, yet he pressed reforms only at the margins. Problems with the risky and opaque derivatives market later amplified the economic crisis.

As late as 2007, Mr. Geithner advocated measures that government studies said would have allowed banks to lower their reserves. When the crisis hit, banks were vulnerable because their financial cushion was too thin to protect against large losses.

In fashioning the bailout, his drive to use taxpayer money to backstop faltering firms overrode concerns that such a strategy would encourage more risk-taking in the future. In one bailout instance, Mr. Geithner fought a proposal to levy fees on banks that would help protect taxpayers against losses.

The bailout has left the Fed holding a vast portfolio of troubled securities. To manage them, Mr. Geithner gave three no-bid contracts to BlackRock, an asset-management firm with deep ties to the New York Fed.

To Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia and a critic of the bailout, Mr. Geithner’s actions suggest that he came to share Wall Street’s regulatory philosophy and world view.

[...]

A bill sent recently by the Treasury to Capitol Hill would give the Obama administration extensive new powers to inject money into or seize systemically important firms in danger of failure. It was drafted in large measure by Davis Polk & Wardwell, a law firm that represents many banks and the financial industry’s lobbying group. Mr. Geithner also hired Davis Polk to represent the New York Fed during the A.I.G. bailout.

Condoleezza Rice — War Criminal

Condoleezza Rice, guilty of crimes against humanity.

Britain's Guardian newspaper, among others, has confirmed what we already knew — that Condoleezza Rice was just as vile a war criminal as anyone in the Bush administration. Indeed, it now appears that she provided the first official approval for waterboarding. She has worked harder than most of the Bush war criminals to cover her tracks, but the report newly released by the Senate intelligence committee lays bare her role.

Moreover, this means that she lied to Congress and the American people last fall.

Rice gave early approval for CIA waterboarding,
Senate report reveals

• Go-ahead in July 2002 is first known official approval
• Finding suggests greater Rice role than she admitted

Condoleezza Rice gave permission for the CIA to use waterboarding techniques on the alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah as early as July 2002, the first known official approval for the technique, according to a report released by the Senate intelligence committee yesterday.

The revelation indicates that Rice, who at the time was national security adviser and went on to be secretary of state, played a greater role than she admitted in written testimony last autumn.

The committee's narrative report (pdf) also shows that dissenting legal views about the interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly. The mood within the Bush administration at the time is caught in a handwritten note attached to a December 2002 memo from Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, on the use of stress positions. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" he asked.

The intelligence committee's timeline comes a day after the Senate armed services committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the harsh interrogation programme of the CIA and abuses of prisoners at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

The latest report, which compiles legal advice provided by the Bush administration to the CIA, indicates that Rice personally conveyed the administration's approval for waterboarding Zubaydah to the then CIA director, George Tenet, in July 2002.

Last autumn, Rice acknowledged to the armed services committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed. She said she did not recall details. Within days, the justice department secretly approved the use of waterboarding. Zubaydah underwent waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002.

In the years that followed, according to yesterday's report, there were numerous internal legal reviews, suggesting government lawyers were concerned that methods such as waterboarding might violate federal laws against torture and the US constitution. Bush administration lawyers continued to validate the programme, but the CIA voluntarily dropped the use of waterboarding after 2005.

The 232-page armed services committee report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of torture, undercut the claim of the then deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was the work of "a few bad apples".

Its release yesterday added to the debate raging within the US after President Barack Obama, who regards the techniques as torture, opened the way for possible prosecution of members of the Bush administration.

Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said: "The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots." The report shows a paper trail going from Rumsfeld to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq.

The report says: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees."

The report, the result of an 18-month inquiry, revealed that the administration rejected advice from various branches of the armed services against using more aggressive techniques. The military questioned the morality and the reliability of information gained.

The report condemned the techniques adopted, saying: "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

The report disclosed that waterboarding and other techniques used were based on a faulty premise. The methods were lifted from a military programme known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, but the armed forces pointed out this was intended to train troops in resisting torture during the Korean war, rather than establishing whether these were useful interrogation methods.

A New York Times report says that, even then, it was appreciated that the techniques induced false confessions from the American personnel on which it was tried. The paper adds that the US prosecuted torturers who employed waterboarding in war crimes trials following the second world war and that it was a technique known to have been used by despots including Pol Pot in Cambodia.

The New York Times says administration officials briefed by Tenet were not aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading the CIA to use waterboarding had never conducted a real interrogation and that the justice department lawyer most responsible for declaring the method legal had "idiosyncratic ideas" that the department would later renounce.

Bush administration memos released by Obama last week were confined to interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA secret prisons around the world, but the Senate report goes wider, including prisons run by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the Year of Our Obama . . .

The cult of Obama is taking some hits. The "hope and change" mantra is proving to mean change, as in the loss of hope. Obama is looking like a coward or an accomplice in Wall Street's looting of the United States. He is looking like a coward or an accomplice in the immunizing of Bush-era war criminals against prosecution for crimes domestic and foreign.

The issues of economics are so complicated and so veiled by the secrecy guaranteed by Geithner, Bernanke, Summers — all under the aegis of Obama — that it is difficult even for those well-versed in economics to describe clearly what is happening. Not so in the case of torture.

Moreover, in the case of Bush torture policy, the public sentiment is unambiguously and overwhelmingly in favor of investigation and probably prosecution. Yet the coward Obama won't even go so far as to investigate.

Jeremy Scahill, author of the key study of Blackwater's crimes in Iraq, has an excellent essay examining Obama's stance on investigation and prosecution.

This development [release of a new report on Bush torture policy] comes as the movement to try to hold senior Bush administration officials, their torturers and their lawyers accountable for their crimes is gaining new momentum. President Obama’s comments on Tuesday, made during a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, has been reported in the press as Obama keeping the door open to prosecuting former Bush administration officials. What he actually indicated is that he may take the position that it “is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws” and is open to Congress forming a bipartisan commission to conduct an inquiry. The statement on Attorney General Eric Holder is perhaps a small step forward, but the “commission” idea is very problematic (more on this in a moment). The fact is that the president already did incredible damage to the accountability movement, and possibly acted unconstitutionally and in contravention of international law, by publicly—and repeatedly—stating that he will not allow prosecution of the CIA torturers because they were “in good faith” following evil orders. One of the most recent comments by Obama about this was made at CIA headquarters:

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.”

Legal experts have pointed out that the decision not to prosecute the torturers was not Obama’s to make. “The attorney general is entrusted with upholding the law where crimes are committed, not making a political decision as to whether the president believes it is expedient to do so,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

[...]

Scahill notes that Senator Diane Feinstein seems to be taking a "sit on it 'til things blow over" approach, much as the Senate did in the Iran-Contra investigations during the Reagan administration.

President Obama seems be a master of nothing so much as the balancing act of political neutrality, in the service of . . . what? Self-preservation, I think. Anyone from a country with a more blatantly corrupt government would recognize the pattern. Corrupt officials of one party ensure their own immunity by guaranteeing that of the other equally corrupt parties. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Just as Wall Street is proving wholly immune to accountability for robbing the American people blind, so too are our elected leaders proving immune to accountability for crimes against humanity. This is an essential feature of oligarchy.

It's 35 years since we last really held a president - Nixon - even remotely accountable. Reagan committed impeachable offenses, and Congress ultimately did nothing. (I remember well seeing Rep. Thomas Foley responding to a reporter's question saying that it seemed that impeachable offenses might have been committed.)

George W. Bush surpassed Nixon and Reagan combined in the sheer criminality of his administration. But Obama, who will in due course commit his own crimes in Afghanistan or in abetting the annihilation of the American economy, will in due course seek his own immunity. And in the case of torture specifically, plenty of Democrats were happy to applaud as long as it seemed the president enjoyed some popularity.

The general point is, that the United States has a leadership -- public and private, Democratic and Republican -- that wants, expects, demands immunity from the will of the people. It has passed the point of a mere desire to being understood as a right. The Divine Right of Oligarchs. Look at the response of Jane Harman to being subjected to a legal version of the very invasion of privacy that she supported in illegal instances.

The Quiet Sun

Amateur astronomers have probably already heard that the weather on the sun has been remarkably tame all year. The BBC has a story on astronomers scratching their heads and on possible climatic effects on Earth.

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers
By Pallab Ghosh

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.

"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".

This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.

According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too simplistic.

"I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that is not the case," he said.

Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun's activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.

"If you look carefully at the observations, it's pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that's been going on for a couple of decades.

"If the Sun's dimming were to have a cooling effect, we'd have seen it by now."

'Middle ground'

Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.

Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.

He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.

"We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood.

"We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum."

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.

No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works. However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.

According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique opportunity.

"This is very exciting because as astronomers we've never seen anything like this before in our lifetimes," he said.

"We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could not have done so in the past."

Follow-Up on Obama's Tacit Endorsement of Torture

Two days ago I wrote, "Obama's rejection of law could itself constitute a violation of international law." The BBC now reports that Manfred Nowak, UN special raporteur on torture has said that, "US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it."

CIA torture exemption 'illegal'

US President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA agents who used torture tactics is a violation of international law, a UN expert says.

The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says the US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it.

Mr Obama released four "torture memos" outlining harsh interrogation methods sanctioned by the Bush administration.

Mr Nowak has called for an independent review and compensation for victims.

"The United States, like all other states that are part of the UN convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court," Mr Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.

The memos revealed by Mr Obama approved techniques including simulated drowning, week-long sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and the use of painful positions.

Torture trials

Mr Obama on Thursday said he would not prosecute under anti-torture laws CIA personnel who relied in good faith on Bush administration legal opinions issued after the 11 September attacks.

Mr Nowak - who is due to travel to Washington to meet with officials - said that could be a mitigating factor, but does not absolve those involved.

"The fact that you carried out an order doesn't relieve you of your responsibility," he was quoted as saying by AP news agency.

Mr Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said US courts could still try those suspected of carrying out torture, as Mr Obama has not sought an amnesty law for affected CIA personnel.

He called for an investigation by an independent commission before suspects were tried and said it was important that all victims receive compensation.

Human rights groups have criticised President Obama's decision to protect CIA interrogators, saying charges were necessary to prevent future abuses and hold people accountable.

President Obama banned the use of the controversial interrogation techniques in his first week in office.

Olbermann on Obama

Too simplistic a view offered here, especially on what happened post-WW1, but refreshing to see that a moderately liberal voice will challenge the lies that Obama is offering.

Obama Rules: "Torturers are OK If They Were Following Orders"

It is "time for reflection, not retribution."

"In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carrying out their duties relying in good faith upon the legal advice from the department of justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."

Thus Barack Obama joins the ranks of apologists for American war crimes, offering the conclusively rebutted defense that "they were following orders." Pathetic, shameful, revolting. And sufficient reason to reject a second term for a 'compromising' toad who seems bent upon joining the ranks of American war criminals with an expanded war in Afghanistan. And, as if this were not enough, Obama has embarked on the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the rich in American, and perhaps world, history.

Eric Holder, already distinguished in his contempt for the average American, added "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the justice department." One wonders how far this insane illogic could be carried.

And Leon Panetta, CIA Director, jumped in also, promising legal and financial help for any CIA employees who might face Congressional or foreign legal or court actions: "CIA’s detention and interrogation effort was authorized and approved by our government. For that reason, as I have continued to make clear, I will strongly oppose any effort to investigate or punish those who followed the guidance of the Department of Justice.... In addition, the Department will provide legal representation to CIA personnel subject to investigations relating to these operations."

Even investigation is being ruled out. (Wouldn't want to turn up any info that might undermine the Obama line.)

The Obama administration understanding of law is nothing more than an assertion by Obama that "I am the law". It is legal just in case the executive branch says it is legal. Remember Nixon saying that "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal"? Obama has tacitly endorsed the legal strategy of the Bush administration: An officially contrived legal excuse is all that is needed to act illegally.

The American Civil Liberties Union has noted that this effective immunity is being granted before we know all, or even most, of the facts. Much remains, and will remain, secret and uninvestigated.

Also unaddressed, though the implications seems clear, is whether Obama will hold accountable the higher-ups who provided the legal excuse — Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Rice, Yoo, Addington, Bybee, and others. And could Obama administration figures become liable if they provide safe harbor for known war criminals?

It must again be noted that Obama was a professor of law at what is routinely touted as the nation's leading law school — Harvard, once and future home of war criminals, apologists for war criminals and training ground for architects of economic disaster.

Sadly, Spain has backed away from the precedent it established in the case of Chilean president Augusto Pinochet. Spain's attorney general said, "If there is a reason to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local courts with jurisdiction, in other words in the United States."

Let us summarize some of the points that are either lost on a dimwitted Obama or deliberately ignored or dismissed by a malicious Obama:

• The Obama administration is still keeping classified most of the Bush documents and is swearing off investigation of Bush actions.
  

• Ignorance of the law is no defense. Willfully twisting the law certainly isn't.

• Obama, AG Eric Holder, and CIA Director Leon Panetta have effectively granted federally-backed immunity for American war criminals.

• The US has repeatedly and explicitly rejected exactly the kind of defense Obama now offers for American war criminals. This includes both the precedents of US actions against foreign nationals and several long-standing American treaty obligations. Indeed, Obama's rejection of law could itself constitute a violation of international law.

• The defense is the notorious Nuremberg defense: "We were following orders." Wrong wrong wrong.

The issue ultimately is one of Justice, and once again the United States is telling the world that there is one standard for the world and another for the United States.

When does Justice apply? Common Sense emphatically says always. President Obama says "when it suits us". This is commonly called 'pragmatic' or 'realistic'. In truth, it is cowardly, craven, criminal. If 'pragmatism' and 'realism' are frames for justice, when will a crime be a crime? If Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez (or or their Obama adminstration counterparts) say killing civilians is legal and US forces simply kill people on the street, are they exempt from prosecution because they 'believed they were acting legally'?

On the Bright Side

A terrific surprise on something called Britain's Got Talent. Also available in its entirety on YouTube.

And the Military Budget

ABC, NPR, CNN, The New York Times were falling all over themselves to applaud the 'drastic change' in the approach to the Pentagon and the military budget. A four percent reduction was described as "huge", "drastic", etc. Meanwhile, cutting entire social programs is routinely described as 'trimming waste'. It is true, of course, that the Pentagon's gravy train has finally been superceded by something more important — the Bailout for Billionaires. So now we see the true hierarchy in the US — rich fucks first (including our 'representatives'), then the military, then the rest of us sorry shites.

Once again, it took lefties and comedians to get it right. So here is Jon Stewart's take:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Military Budget Cuts
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Stephen Colbert Says About Ted Stevens What the Times, CNN and NPR Won't Dare Say

I have never heard NPR come to the defense of a liberal, much less a lefty, but they sure as hell sounded like they were in Ted Stevens's camp this past week as the former senator's conviction was overturned on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct.

There is little if any evidence in Stevens's record of support for the rights of the accused against prosecutors or even of upholding long-standing constitutional principles like habeus corpus. Yet here he is standing on his constitutional rights. It took Stephen Colbert to note this irony because the Times and NPR are to cowardly or too conservative to do so.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Alpha Dog of the Week - Ted Stevens
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

President Obama Tells Muslims, "Some of My Best Friends Are Muslim."

Before the Turkish Parliament, President Obama has asserted that the United States "is not and never will be at war with Islam". Never mind that the war currently under way, now to be prolonged in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was early characterized by George W. Bush as a "Crusade."

President Obama has to be given some credit here. No president before him and few American political leaders have spoken warmly to Muslims. Moreover, he still faces an American population with a significant minority that persists in insisting that he is Muslim. We live in a nation where members of Congress and prominent popular speakers (almost all on the right wing) happily assert that no Muslim should be allowed to serve in Congress, that Muslims should be forced to take loyalty oaths, and worse.

As the Times noted in an April 6th story, "Mr. Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, is calculating that the benefits of demonstrating to the Muslim world that Americans are not antagonistic toward it outweigh the potential political fallout back home." It is a sobering commentary on the state of tolerance in the United States that the President must fear the political repercussions of merely seeking closer ties with another people.

Defense Secretary Announces 'Cuts' — A Whole Lot of Nuthin', Like Many Obama Measures to Date

President Obama's budget includes at least $534 billion for 'defense' — "at least" because that total does not include the black budget, secret government expenditures which go almost exclusively to the Pentagon and spying (an amount probably in the neighborhood of $50 billion).

Among the programs cut is the Lockheed VH-71, the new presidential helicopter. Seven of the nine planned have already been delivered. The cost for those nine? $3.8 billion ... originally. Costs had ballooned to $13 billion. Do the math — from over $400 million to over $1 billion per helicopter. One billion dollars for one helicopter!

The F-22 fighter will be cut back with production ceased at 187 aircraft. Officially, the F-22 costs $140 million each, but that excludes the development costs and all the overruns then, which brings the effective total to somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 million each.

Star Wars, first begun in the Reagan years, will not be cut. It will just undergo another metamorphosis "to focus on threats posed by 'rogue' missile threats such as from North Korea." Rogue missile threats. Does that mean a missile accidentally off target, or a deliberately targeted weapon from a 'rogue' nation (meaning, Iran or North Korea)? Either way, we face a program for a grossly improbable threat that now has racked up hundreds of billions of expenses over the past 25 years. (Improbably because, as has been pointed out time and again for over twenty years, any 'rogue' nation is very unlikely to attack by an easily traced means which would bring absolutely certain, devastating reprisals.)

Star Wars will also see continued life in what, by any reasonable measure, is a deliberately provocative placement of the "European Missile Defense System" in countries bordering Russia. (This continues a clear American strategy of encircling states deemed insufficiently friendly — Russsia, Iran, North Korea.)

More money will be spent on weapons like the Predator drone, used to allow Americans to attack with genuine impugnity in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. $2 billion will buy another 25 drones — $80 million per aircraft.

Meanwhile, Wall Street will continue to see billions, if not trillions, in bailout cash. But Obama seems unlikely to offer any substantive change in health care (since he has already ruled out single payer). Millions more will join the 5 million-plus who have lost their jobs in the past 2 years. And hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, still face losing their homes to foreclosure.

So, defense costs will be modestly reduced. Bailout bonuses to Wall Street will continue to increase. And average Americans' suffering will continue to worsen.

It requires a good stretch of the imagination to see how Obama yet represents any marked change from the Bush years. Lots of window dressing. Playing well with Europeans (G20 summit). Saying the right things to Muslims (speeches in Turkey). And little that is likely to make the Earth safer or Americans (beyond the select ranks of the oligarchs) better off.

New York Times Reports on Larry Summers Ties to Wall Street

Turns out that Larry Summers, President Obama's top economic adviser and former disgraced President of Harvard, has a vested interest in preserving the status quo on a corrupt, venal Wall Street.

Lawrence H. Summers, the top economic adviser to President Obama, earned more than $5 million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money, the White House disclosed Friday in releasing financial information about top officials.

Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.

Last year, he reported making 40 paid appearances, including a $135,000 speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, in addition to his earnings from the hedge fund, a sector the administration is trying to regulate.

[...]

[Financial] disclosure forms also shed further light on the compensation received by a top Obama aide who previously worked for Citigroup, one of the largest recipients of taxpayer bailout money. The aide, Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, received more than $7.4 million from the company from January 2008 to when he joined the White House this year.

That money included a year-end bonus of $2.25 million for work in 2008, which Citigroup paid him in January. Such bonuses have prompted political controversy in recent months, including sharp criticism from Mr. Obama, who in January branded them as “shameful.”

[...]

Millionaires work in a variety of positions across the administration, and they include Desirée Rogers, the White House social secretary. Ms. Rogers, a close Chicago friend of the Obama family, reported income of $2.3 million last year. She earned a salary of $1.8 million from People’s Gas & North Shore Gas, along with three other sources of income from serving on insurance company boards.

Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser, reported earning $3.9 million as a partner at the Washington law firm O’Melveny & Myers. His disclosure form says major clients included Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Apollo Management, a private equity firm in New York that specializes in distressed assets and corporate restructuring....

Queen Elizabeth Chews Out Berlusconi

Queen Elizabeth comments on Italy's obnoxious Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

G19 + Amer'ka Tell World, "We're Coming! Uh, No, Wait Wait..."

The incompetent bunglers who have mangled their domestic economies are gathered in London to mangle the whole world. I feel better already.

The Auto Industry Really Is Shovel Ready

Less than one year ago — June 2008.

President Obama has shown GM CEO Rick Wagoner the door. Surprising. He has the right credentials — a Harvard Business degree and a massively failed company under his belt. At this point, were he in the financial industry, he would be considering an offer to join the Obama administration, the "Team of Rivals" aka "The League of Harvard Super Best Friends".

Evidently, as Times editorialist William Holstein put it, Obama "did not believe G.M. had moved fast enough in facing up to global competition". That's it, right there. The executives at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and AIG may be lying, cheating, thieving con artists, but, damn, it's all in the spirit of competition, and boy did they move fast. They were figuring how much bailout money would go to bonuses before the ink of Obama's signature was dry. No exec can make funny money like a Wall Street exec . . . at the expense of, well, whomever (meaning, Us).

By contrast, GM and the other auto manufacturers have a huge huge drawback — unionized workers, at good 'ol fashioned American manufacturing jobs, the kind that form the bedrock of a nation's economy. Totally unsuited for Our Brave New Economy where we all sell each other life insurance, grossly over-priced homes and obscure, substanceless financial instruments in a never ending war of all against all to make more money this week than last. (Remember, there is no such thing as making too much money. Dow 36,000 and all that. Wot wot.)

Conservatives will love love love this. Force GM to declare bankruptcy. Bust those damn unions. Get rid of those damn contracts! Save money. Get workers's wages down to something reasonable, like . . . I don't know . . . $15 per day, like in Mexico.

(But Larry Summers told us a contract is inviolate . . . . Well, only if it's ten or twenty million for one person. The kind of person this nation, or at least its oligarchs, pay attention to.)

Ice Retreat in Time Lapse

Two video clips from an upcoming PBS/Nova special:

US Adviser Chuckles Romer 'Incredibly Confident" of Recovery

Christina Romer, head of the White House's economic advice council, told Fox TV "we will be seeing signs the economy is turning around". She is "incredibly confident" the US economy will recover within 12 months. Says "private forecasters" expect we will "bottom out this year". She failed to say whether the "private forecasters" work for AIG. Here, the BBC account:

A key adviser within US President Barack Obama's administration says she is "incredibly confident" the US economy will recover within 12 months.

Christina Romer, head of the White House's economic advice council, told Fox TV "we will be seeing signs the economy is turning around".

She also told CNN that the US recession would "bottom out" in 2009, predicting economic growth later this in the year.

[...]

Speaking on CNN, Ms Romer said she had "every expectation, as do private forecasters [emphasis mine], that we will bottom out this year and actually be growing again by the end of the year".

[....]

"Incredible" is the word here. But let's give her a shot. (No, not the kind you want to give AIG, Shitigroup and Goldman Sucks.) The clock is running. Let's see if on April 1, 2010 -- April Fool's Day -- unemployment is decreasing, foreclosures are decreasing, housing precises have stabilized, etc.

What? You don't think that's what Chuckles has in mind? (Yes, 'Chuckles'. Watch the video -- see if she isn't always smiling -- the mark of a liar.)

You think Chuckles means the stock market will be recovering? That billionaires will be back to billions? Yeah, that's what I think too.

Why the Bonuses Do Matter

The public is in a fervor over the millions bailout recipients, especially AIG, continue to dole out to precisely those individuals and firms who manufactured the financial disaster and then conspired, with the aid of Timothy Geithner, Hank Paulson, and Ben Bernanke, to conceil the truth from the very people — the taxpayers — now funding the bailout. The newest detail is that the total given out by AIG is more, $50 million more, than the $165 million now widely reported, according to Connecticut's attorney general.

A real question here is whether AIG — 'too big to fail' — is leveraging that position to con the government out of more money to funnel on to Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others. Frank Rich, one of several New York Times columnists who sounds a good deal more liberal than a year or two ago, put it this way: AIG "has, in essence, been laundering its $170 billion in taxpayers’ money by paying off its reckless partners in gambling and greed, from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on Wall Street to Société Générale and Deutsche Bank abroad." [1]

Still another question, raised by many pundits of many stripes, is whether the bonus issue is bogus, whether it is a diversion from the more serious issue of the billions AIG is passing along.

The bonuses should be taken seriously, if for no other reason than that the con artists at AIG, Goldman, Citigroup do so. The executives at AIG, Goldman and all the others are motivated by one thing only — money. Any blather they offered about serving stockholders has been conclusively proven false. (It had already been proven false years ago in the US business culture driven by management and the demands of management as opposed to those of owners, namely stockholders.)

Nor are the executives driven by the intricacies of economic problem-solving, or they would not now be working so hard to find ways to keep those bonuses while conceiling the fact from the public and the government (or most of the government, since we now know that Timothy Geithner, Sen. Christopher Dodd and others did know about the bonus boondoggle [2]).

Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner and their ilk are largely of a piece with this ethos. Paulson was smack dab in the middle of it as an exec at Goldman Sachs. Geithner comes out of an environment populated by willing slaves — lionizing, idolizing the Paulsons, Rubins, etc., much like Alan Greenspan or any of that fundamentally conservative wealth-is-virtue school.

This country has for some thirty years effectively been governed with0ut question by the demands of wealth. The US has always held wealth to be the finest repository of power. European nations and others had monarchs, sometimes not the most wealthy, who commanded the greatest power. Ages ago, religious institutions held the power. But the US broke with all that, exalting money as the greatest good. Indeed, George Washington may well have been the wealthiest person in the colonies at the time of the American Revolution. He was certainly one of the wealthiest.

(It would be interesting to poll people at random simply asking them to name a great American from the turn of the last century, or from 50 years ago. From the time of the revolution, they would almost certainly mention Washington. From the Civil War, Lincoln. That was the time of power in government. But then the US began to assume to role of world's leading industrial and economic power. So from 1900, who?)

Deregulation is the most obvious instantiation of the driving priniciple of Wealth as the Greatest Virtue. Trickle down 'theory'. The pattern of compensation in our private and public institutions. Our culture, with its unalloyed reverence for wealth and fame, further supports this conclusion. The titans of Wall Street may not be the flashiest. Athletes and actors enjoy that privilege, but the oligarchs are the economic decision makers, and their motive is money money money.

The meaning of their lives has one measure. To deny them the vast sums they clearly think they have a right to, regardless of the quality of their labor, is the greatest possible punishment short of actual imprisonment. It is wholly appropriate that We the People force this much from an Obama administration that is again proving itself too spineless or too corrupt to hold to account this nation's greatest criminals.

---

NOTES

1. Rich's Times piece, by the way, is a beautiful example of the power of internet journalism. It is thick with cross-links to supporting stories. For example, Republican blowhards like Mitch McConnell now call for curbs on greedy executives. Not long ago, he and others were dead set against them. These are the same Republicans who opposed tooth and nail any Obama stimulus measure, then went home and took credit for the very thing they had opposed.

2. From CNN (emphasis mine): "Dodd told CNN . . . that he was responsible for language added to the stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored. A Treasury Department official told CNN earlier that the Obama administration pushed for the language.

"Dodd initially denied he had anything to do with adding the provision.

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner [told CNN] that his department asked Dodd to make the changes."

Quantitative Easing — Print the Money and Run

On Wednesday, March 17, the Federal Reserve (home of the should-be disgraced Ben Bernanke) "stunned investors by announcing plans to buy $300bn of US government debt, triggering a plunge in bond yields and the dollar," as the Financial Times put it.

This is the Big One — in modern newspeak "quantitative easing".

The term quantitative easing refers to the creation of a pre-determined quantity of new money 'out of thin air through open market operations by a central bank as the start of a process to increase the money supply. It can, more simply, be understood as an indirect method of printing money. This new money is injected into the private banking system when the accounts of the vendors of the securities purchased by the central bank through the open market operations are credited.

— Wikipedia

As many have noted, the comedy here is that, until recently, US government officials and others were complaining that We the People were not saving enough. Now, they're desperate to get everybody spend spend spending, witness President Obama's and Larry Summers's recent shilling for Wall Street.

Mike Whitney, writing on Counterpunch, wrote of this a full year ago:

If the Fed can't bring Libor down with interest rate cuts, then it will have to develop a back-up plan. The next step would be “quantitative easing”; a monetary policy that was implemented by the Bank of Japan in 2001 “to revive that country's economy that was stagnant for a decade. Quantitative easing entails flooding the banking system with excess reserves, resulting in pushing the benchmark overnight bank lending to zero.” (Reuters) There are indications that Bernanke is already preparing for this radical option, but there's little chance that it will succeed. Whether the banks are able to lend or not is irrelevant. Public attitudes towards indebtedness have changed dramatically in the past few months. Overextended consumers are looking for ways to pay off their debts. This will make it more difficult for Bernanke to reflate the equity bubble through credit expansion. When people are frightened or pessimistic about the future, they naturally curtail their spending.

As the Financial Times reported, "Goldman Sachs said the Fed was throwing the 'kitchen sink' at the problem. The plan to buy Treasuries caught investors off guard. 'It appears that they wanted to give the market a jolt,' said Peter Hooper, an economist at Deutsche Bank."

The last time the central bank attempted to bring down yields on long-term securities through direct intervention came during the ill-fated Operation Twist in the 1960s. Recent comments by Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, and William Dudley, New York Fed president, did not suggest that Treasury purchases were imminent.

But the deterioration in the US outlook, problems rolling out the US financial rescue plan and the Bank of England’s success in buying UK government gilts seem to have persuaded the Fed to act.

Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS, said it was a “flip-flop” that “could be cast as a sign of desperation” but “confirmed that Bernanke will do whatever it takes to get some hold of the problem”.

[...]

Wednesday’s Fed announcement will increase the size of its balance sheet by another $1,150bn to about $3,000bn even before the roll-out of a $1,000bn scheme to finance credit markets. Once this scheme is fully implemented, its balance sheet could approach $4,000bn – nearly a third the size of the US economy.

A swollen Fed balance sheet runs the risk that the US central bank may find it difficult to manage down the money supply when the economy turns, raising the possibility of inflation.

So, the Fed is just plain printing money. The FT has an 'interactive feature' to explain (woo hoo!). (Actually, the only thing that's interactive is that you hit 'play'.)

As the world suffers its worst recession since the second world war, policy makers are searching for the best tools to limit the downturn. Central banks have rapidly lowered interest rates in order to reduce the cost of borrowing. The hope is to stimulate spending in the economy now.

So far, it has been to no avail. Confidence disappeared from banks, companies and households in the autumn of 2008 and unemployment is rising fast in 2009. Without an obvious source of fresh demand, central banks are moving to open the way to more unorthodox approaches to address the crisis. . . . One of those is quantitative easing.

The rich are getting the asses out of Dodge, putting their money in gold or in currencies that look like they might remain stable. As for the rest of us, we're boned.

Prosecuting Bush War Criminals

Democracy Now interviewed Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Backlash for Bloomberg?

March 16th’s New York Times has a story on populist opposition to the bailout (penned by Adam Nagourney who is evidently re-emerging after is miserable excuse for journalism during the election campaign):

The Obama administration is increasingly concerned about a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street, worried that anger at financial institutions could also end up being directed at Congress and the White House and could complicate President Obama’s agenda.

As my seven-year-old daughter would say, “Duuuh!” (said with that perfect bi-syllabic inflection that gives the edge that added sharpness).

So the “Team of Rivals”, better termed the “Team of Super Harvard Friends” or the “Bailout League” (both names following the form of superhero TV cartoons), is beginning to connect the dots:

• Initially obscure candidate, Obama, soars to presidency by galvanizing public sentiment following eight years of criminal ‘leadership’ and sixteen years of gross disregard for the benefits of careful regulation;

• Obama, having gained presidency, immediately proceeds to put in place a ‘team of rivals’ that amounts to no more than a rivalry between Bush economics and Clinton economics, or Harvard on Wall Street economics and Chicago in the classroom.

• That team then continues an already unpopular Bush-Bernanke-Geithner-Paulson (BPGP) scheme, perserving massive bailouts with no punishment of any kind whatsoever for exactly those people who manufactured the crisis.

• Worse, that team offers little more than a verbal slap on the wrist when the very same architects of collapse further reward themselves with bonuses, vacations, etc.

• Last, the shock and awe that The People might find something objectionable in this, that The People are not the dimwitted sheep that privileged Harvard and Chicago grads are encouraged to think they are.

Let’s be blunt. This is a president who, now in office, has abandoned very nearly every measure that gave him any appeal in the first place. He has toadied up to the very Republicons who gave us this calamitous, criminal war. He has persevered in bailing out kickbacks to those who lead the funding drive for him (most notably Goldman Sachs).

He has offered one and only one real carrot to The People, namely a promise of universal healthcare. But even on that count, he has already strictly ruled out the one solution that a large majority of Americans know is the way to go — single payer. He has done this because it would deny wealthy insurers the means to strangle to death, both figuratively and literally (by denial of care), the people insured in name only.

Similarly, despite the fact that over 70% of Americans want to see Bush administration war criminals investigated, Obama offers nothing but evasions and lame excuses for why it might not be prudent to do so. And thus, not only the rest of the world, but many Americans too come to see American justice for what it really is — a two-tiered system of punishments for the common citizens and rewards no matter what for the elite.

As unemployment skyrockets (especially if we consider real unemployment, as opposed to the figure popularized by the government and obediently parroted by the media), Obama proposes “shovel-ready” projects. As already noted by this ranter, anyone who has seen a cattle farm knows what is shovel-ready in heaps.

Worse, Obama and his Team Captain Lawrence Summers are echoing Bush: “Buy! Buy! Buy!” as if a soaring stock market would do anything at all to get people into paying jobs.

In New York City, we should be seeing some evidence of concern among Bloomberg boosters. But no. No concern for Bloomberg — despite his cozy relationship with Wall Street and his long record of advocating deregulation — because he is more than rich enough to squash any opponent. And even were he not so, his backroom bargains with the likes of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, while not the violently corrupt machine politics of an older New York, are more than sufficient to undermine any real democracy in New York City.

Just as President Obama is ignoring a core principle of democracy nationwide, so too is Michael Bloomberg in New York: Public Officials Serve the People. Obama and Bloomberg are public servants, despite what they may think. In a true democracy, the fear of electoral loss might mitigate against the anti-democratic sentiments of its leaders. But nationwide the Democrats and Republicans have a well-established system of one hand washing the other. And citywide, Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t even make a token effort to conceal his contempt for the commoner. He’s too wealthy to care.

More Solid Gold Art!

Some may remember the Greatest Statue of the Century from some months ago — a SOLID GOLD statue of a contorted model Kate Moss. Whew! That's one heapin' big pile of art.

Now we have MORE SOLID GOLD ART! And remember, if it's gold, it must be art!

The esteemed Gagosian Gallery has announced it will show the new work by artist Chris Burden — at the Gagosian's Beverly Hills gallery, not New York. Somehow it seems for appropriate in LA.

One Ton, One Kilo, a new masterpiece from daring Chris Burden. It's a genuine Chris Burden Original. Burden, some may remember, has done some pretty edgy stuff. In 1974 he had himself crucified on a Volkswagen Beetle. Now that was art.

What is Christ Burden going to do now? Is he going to melt down masses of gold and have himself gilded while still living (at least by all accounts)? Is he going to swallow molten gold as some were forced to do in the grand old days of the Middle Ages (whose torture techniques were popular in the Bush years and haven't been fully forsworn by Obama)?

Who knows? The piece has been held up (ha ha ha) by the great trend of our time . . . the Ponzi Scheme. Not in this case the Greatest Ponzi Scheme of all, the financial collapse and the bailout. Not the model American Bernard Madoff. This time it's R. Allen Stanford. Stanford Coins and Bullion sold Gagosian the gold. Now it's frozen by court order.

Oh, the burden of artists. Saints preserve us.

In all fairness, I haven't even seen this shite yet. So who the hell am I to talk. I ain't nobody, that's who I am. I just have a problem with millionaire artistes making millions out of millions and even more with pole up the ass galleries. But it was ever thus.

As with Labor, So with Healthcare

As President-elect Obama announced members of his economic team, progressives and a handful of others noted the absence of any labor advocates from the "Team of Rivals". Last week, President Obama hosted a 'summit' on healthcare reform. Absent were any advocates for single-payer — the system at use in very nearly every other industrialized country around the world.

Why, if Obama and his team of god=like thinkers are so 'open to all the options' is one of the most obvious and publicly popular options being excluded? Could it be that Obama has been told by The American Oligarchs that single-payer isn't allowed? That change is great, but only so much?

Luke Mitchell of Harper's Magazine, speaking on Democracy Now, noted that Sen. Max Baucus, said first that "everything is on the table" but then "went out of his way to say that we can't have single payer."

We have a clue to the reason in the Obama administrations hand-waving over bank bailouts and particularly nationalization:

Private Property is Sacrosanct.

Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, among others, have made a point of saying that the Obama administration has no intention of challenging the model of "private banking". Nor do it likely have any intention of challenging private insurance.

If in the midst of the US economic collapse, we cannot consider real change in either the US banking system or the US insurance system, then what hope have we of the Great Change that Obama held out promise for?

Indeed, we now have at least three clear instances of the Idols of Institutional Inertia which President Obama dares not challenge:

• Private banking, despite prove provided in recent months of institutionalized corruption, greed, lying and outright theft on one of the largest scales in word history;

• Private insurance, a case still in the making, but already well-supported by that of "too-big-to-fail AIG" and soon to be supported by what I predict will be a house of cards attempt address healthcare; and

• Israel, a case where US National Intelligence Council nominee Chas Freeman has been forced to step down after ruthless campaign by the Israel lobby including US Senators Charles Schumer and the vile Joseph Lieberman.

We have also seen Obama effectively continue Bush policy on extraordinary rendition and slightly diluted belligerence with substantial but far from total troop reductions in Iraq and marked increases in Afghanistan.

Global Warming Predictions Continue to Worsen

The BBC (and no doubt many other news organizations) has a story on a new round of predictions regarding sea-level rise. Once again, the new predictions cast old ones as too rosy. What gives?

This report fits into a pattern over the past ten years in which succeeding reports prove earlier ones to have been too optimistic. That is, for ten or more years, new studies of the likely outcomes of global warming have repeatedly revealed even the most pessimistic of old studies to be too optimistic. That suggests that climate scientists are consistently stating things optimistically. Nevertheless, politicians — particularly in the know-nothing moderate and conservative circles of the US — consistently dismiss scientific warnings that are taken to be 'too pessimistic'.

We know that through the eight years of the Bush Disaster, scientists were intimidated and coerced into revising their studies to be less dire. Most notoriously, Bush administration thought police sought to censor the statements of NASA scientist James Hansen.

Now, with Barrack Obama in the White House and a more Democratic Congress, energy industry lobbyists and others are greatly increasing lobbying efforts to head off any legislation to protect the environment.

Below is the BBC story:

Sea rise 'to exceed projections'

By David Shukman
Environment correspondent, BBC News, Copenhagen

The global sea level looks set to rise far higher than forecast because of changes in the polar ice-sheets, a team of researchers has suggested.

Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen said earlier UN estimates were too low and that sea levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100.

The projections did not include the potential impact of polar melting and ice breaking off, they added.

The implications for millions of people would be "severe", they warned.

Ten per cent of the world's population - about 600 million people - live in low-lying areas.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, had said that the maximum rise in sea level would be in the region of 59cm.

Professor Konrad Steffen from the University of Colorado, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, highlighted new studies into ice loss in Greenland, showing it has accelerated over the last decade.

Professor Steffen, who has studied the Arctic ice for the past 35 years, told me: "I would predict sea level rise by 2100 in the order of one metre; it could be 1.2m or 0.9m.

"But it is one metre or more seeing the current change, which is up to three times more than the average predicted by the IPCC."

"It is a major change and it actually calls for action."

Dr John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research added: "The most recent research showed that sea level is rising by 3mm a year since 1993, a rate well above the 20th century average."

Ice flow

Professor Eric Rignot, a senior research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that results gathered since the IPCC showed that melting and ice loss could not be overlooked.

"As a result of the acceleration of outlet glaciers over large regions, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are already contributing more and faster to sea level rise than anticipated," he observed.

Professor Stefan Ramstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said: "Based on past experience, I expect that sea level rise will accelerate as the planet gets hotter."

The forecasts by the team of scientists are critically important for coastal communities.

At Lowestoft, on the UK's east coast, the Environment Agency official in charge of coastal protection, David Kemp, said that even small rises in sea level could be overwhelming.

"Put bluntly, if it's 10cm below the height of the defence, then there's no problem," he told me.

"But if it's 10cm above the defence, then we could be looking at devastation.

"It looks very benign today but the North Sea can turn into a very ferocious beast."

Forget About Things Improving This Year

The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers a graph of current job losses versus those in other recent recessions:

From the Onion

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

Our American Lifeboat Problem

In moral philosophy the lifeboat problem is a clean way of presenting the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. What do you do if you find yourself one of a handful of people in a lifeboat, say eight? There is food enough only to keep six alive until an island is reached. Two must be sacrificed for the majority to survive. What do you do? Is it ethical to take the lives of a few to save the many?

This is no idle philosophical thought experiment. It has been faced in the past: by the members of the Donner Party as they crossed the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846-47; the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 after their crash in the Andes in October, 1972; and by many military men in combat throughout history.

This is arguably the form of the problem the United States now faces. The solution currently being ineptly implemented by Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke involves the very opposite of the standard lifeboat solution. The well-geing of hundreds of millions of Americans are being sacrificed to serve the well-being the limited number of Wall Street executives and shareholders who are the immediate beneficiaries of US taxpayer generosity.

The Standard Claim is that the financial system must be saved if the economic system of the nation as a whole is to avoid a Hobbesian war of all against all. Whether this is indeed true and what it says about the nature and grave injustice of American Capitalism is the subject of another essay.

For the purposes of this inquiry, the truth of the Standard Claim is irrelevant. Let us take it that the financial system of the United States must indeed be bailed out in some sense, that it must be re-capitalized from some source.

The Obama Administration has taken it as an article of faith that the American people collectively must be the source of any funds for a bailout. A growing spectrum of critics from Alan Greenspan on the right to Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz on the liberal end argue for nationalization.

Which of these two approaches is appropriate is also largely irrelevant to the subject of this essay.

There is an alternative source of funds, whether or not the Obama or the Nationalization approach is the way to go. The proper source of funds is the that population which has most benefited from the greed and crimes of the past 30 years.

Before the current market declines the wealthiest 15 (fifteen) Americans alone had a combined worth of over $300 billion. The combined worth of the wealthiest 400 Americans is in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion. The combined wealth of the most fortunate 1000 or 2000 exceeds that by still more.

Why not demand of those who have benefitted most — arguably at our expense — the greatest financial sacrifice? A graduated scheme could be managed, leaving all of these fabulously wealthy people a great deal wealthier than the vast majority of us.

Bush's Police State

From Counterpunch, an essay by Marjorie Cohn on the Bush Justice Department memos authored by, among others, the war criminal John Yoo:

Blueprints for a Police State
The Yoo-Bybee Memoranda
By MARJORIE COHN

Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide “legal” rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.

Who wrote these memos? All but one were crafted in whole or in part by the infamous John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the so-called “torture memos” that redefined torture much more narrowly than the U.S. definition of torture, and counseled the President how to torture and get away with it. In one memo, Yoo said the Justice Department would not enforce U.S. laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.

What does the federal maiming statute prohibit? It makes it a crime for someone "with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb or any member of another person." It further prohibits individuals from "throwing or pouring upon another person any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance" with like intent.

The two torture memos were later withdrawn after they became public because their legal reasoning was clearly defective. But they remained in effect long enough to authorize the torture and abuse of many prisoners in U.S. custody.

The seven memos just made public were also eventually disavowed, several years after they were written. Steven Bradbury, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in Bush’s Department of Justice, issued two disclaimer memos – on October 6, 2008 and January 15, 2009 – that said the assertions in those seven memos did “not reflect the current views of this Office.” Why Bradbury waited until Bush was almost out of office to issue the disclaimers remains a mystery. Some speculate that Bradbury, knowing the new administration would likely release the memos, was trying to cover his backside.

Indeed, Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury are the three former Justice Department lawyers that the Office of Professional Responsibility singled out for criticism in its still unreleased report. The OPR could refer these lawyers for state bar discipline or even recommend criminal charges against them.

In his memos, Yoo justified giving unchecked authority to the President because the United States was in a “state of armed conflict.” Yoo wrote, “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” Yoo made the preposterous argument that since deadly force could legitimately be used in self-defense in criminal cases, the President could suspend the Fourth Amendment because privacy rights are less serious than protection from the use of deadly force.

Bybee wrote in one of the memos that nothing can stop the President from sending al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured overseas to third countries, as long as he doesn’t intend for them to be tortured. But the Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a party, says that no country can expel, return or extradite a person to another country “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Bybee claimed the Torture Convention didn’t apply extraterritorially, a proposition roundly debunked by reputable scholars. The Bush administration reportedly engaged in this practice of extraordinary rendition 100 to 150 times as of March 2005.

The same day that Attorney General Eric Holder released the memos, the government revealed that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of harsh interrogations of Abu Zubaida and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, both of whom were subjected to waterboarding. The memo that authorized the CIA to waterboard, written the same day as one of Yoo/Bybee’s torture memos, has not yet been released.

Bush insisted that Zubaida was a dangerous terrorist, in spite of the contention of one of the FBI’s leading al Qaeda experts that Zubaida was schizophrenic, a bit player in the organization. Under torture, Zubaida admitted to everything under the sun – his information was virtually worthless.

There are more memos yet to be released. They will invariably implicate Bush officials and lawyers in the commission of torture, illegal surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and other violations of the law.

Meanwhile, John Yoo remains on the faculty of Berkeley Law School and Jay Bybee is a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. These men, who advised Bush on how to create a police state, should be investigated, prosecuted, and disbarred. Yoo should be fired and Bybee impeached.

Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of Cowboy Republic.

Unemployment Up, Dow Up

More evidence today that the stock market is indifferent to employment figures. February saw the loss of 697,000 jobs. Meanwhile, Dow Jones Industrial Average lofted up just under 150 points.

From the Financial Times:

US job losses reach 697,000 in February
By Alan Rappeport in New York and Alan Beattie in Washington
Published: March 4 2009 13:59 | Last updated: March 4 2009 19:07

The US private sector shed 697,000 jobs in February, according to a closely watched survey of business employment published on Wednesday.

Separately, the services sector shrank less than expected last month but more sharply than in January. The Institute of Supply Management’s non-manufacturing index fell to 41.6 from 42.9 the month before. Readings below 50 signal contraction.

The grim data were compounded by the release of a pessimistic assessment of the US economy by the Federal Reserve, which showed a weakening labour market, consumer demand, manufacturing output and commercial real estate almost across the board.

The so-called ”Beige Book”, which collates reports from the Fed’s twelve districts, said that national economic conditions deteriorated during late January and early February and were not expected to pick up until the end of the year or into 2010. Ten of the twelve regional reports indicated weaker conditions or declines in economic activity, while Philadelphia and Chicago said that their economies ”remained weak”, the study said.

The report suggested that rising unemployment was beginning to feed through into slowing or falling wages, which have remained relatively strong so far in the recession. ”With rising layoffs and hiring freezes, unemployment has risen in all areas, reducing or eliminating upward wage pressures,” the Beige Book said.

The monthly ADP Employer Services survey, which tracks private non-farm payroll employment, showed further deterioration in the labour market. The result was worse than economists expected and followed ADP’s dire January report estimating a revised 614,000 jobs lost.

ADP changed the methodology of its survey in December after it significantly undershot the US government’s labour report. Last month’s result also undershot the official figures, which showed that 598,000 jobs were lost in January compared with ADP’s original estimate of 522,000.

“The nightmare continues,” said Ian Sheperdson, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics. “Every indicator we know tells us that employment is tanking right across the economy.”

The services sector was hit the hardest last month, shedding 359,000 workers. Meanwhile the goods-producing sector lost 338,000 jobs, the 25th consecutive monthly drop, and manufacturing lost 219,000 jobs, marking three years of consecutive monthly declines. The construction sector lost 114,000 jobs in February and has shed more than 1m workers since January 2007.

Construction work has contracted severely during the last two years, as the housing market has collapsed. On Monday government figures showed that construction spending fell by 3.3 per cent in January, more than double what analysts had predicted. After downward revisions, the quarterly decline was the worst on record.

Mid-sized and small businesses suffered the most job cuts last month, shedding 314,000 and 262,000 workers respectively. Large companies – those with more than 500 employees – cut 121,000 jobs.

“Sharply falling employment at medium and small-size businesses clearly indicates that the recession is spreading aggressively beyond manufacturing and housing-related activities,” according to the ADP report.

In a separate report on Wednesday, Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a consultancy, found that companies announced 186,350 job cuts in February, down 23 per cent fom January’s seven-year high. However, the February total was 158 per cent higher than in the same month the prior year.

Economists expect the official non-farm payrolls report due on Friday to show that 650,000 jobs were lost in February, bringing the unemployment rate to 7.9 per cent. Pessimistic forecasters project that as many as 850,000 jobs may have been lost last month.

According to ISM employment activity contracted in February for the 13th time in the last 14 months, with 14 out of 18 industries showing declining employment. The contraction was less severe than in January and jobs grew in the real estate, rental and leasing industry and in the utilities sector, while retail, construction and education services shed jobs.

The ISM’s measure of business activity showed contraction accelerating in February. The only industries showing improved performance were agriculture, the arts and healthcare. Wholesale trade, management and real estate performed worse last month.

Inventory levels slimmed in February, as companies cleared their stocks. But inventory sentiment rose, a sign that businesses feel that their backlogs remain too high.

The overall reading of 41.6 was slightly better than the 41 economists were expecting and from November’s record low of 37.4.

“The rate of deterioration in economic conditions has moderated a little from the virtual free-fall that existed late last year,” said Josh Shapiro, chief US economist at MFR. “While a step in the right direction, this hardly is indication of impending recovery.”

Obama Shills for Wall Street

Today, March 2nd, President Obama waded into the waters of Wall Street traders saying that price to earnings ratios indicate it's a good time to buy if investing for the long term.

What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal, if you've got a long-term perspective on it.

Wall Street didn't buy it. And the American people are a helluva lot smarter than any money-grubbing asshole on Wall Street. The catch is that the "long-term perspective" now needed is one that exceeds the life-expectancy of any living American. You're buying for your grandchildren folks (if you're under 20, that is).

But why shouldn't Obama turn penny stock pusher? The Wall Street 'experts' have proven to be anything but, so why not get the nation's top lawyer in on the game? The catch is, of course, that another fact proven in recent years is that performance of the stock markets has surprisingly little to do with the performance of the economy. Averages like the Dow have been adjusted, fiddled, finagled to immunize them against economic bad news, most particularly by removing firms from the average that do not perform suitably. Now, the entire market is doing so badly (it's not entirely immune) that there is no way but down.

But for Obama to jump in sounds more like a Hail Mary. "Puhleeze puhleeze buy stocks. Give us some good news."

This may be sadly reflective of the advice Obama is getting from Summers, Geithner and Bernanke — the Team Of Rivals. The Team of Rivals is not really in the tradition of Lincoln, but the Republicrat tradition of the past 30 years. It is the Team of Bush & Clinton. Torture, extraordinary rendition, responsibility on civil rights — Bush. Stupid economy — Clinton.

Or perhaps it is only a Team of Softball Rivals, the kind that organized between business buddies — Goldman Sachs versus A.I.G. — to play in Central Park during the warm weather.

One way or another, Obama is getting bupkis from his 'team'. It's quite amazing that his proposed budget is as daring as it is. Perhaps that is an attempt to mollify voters even the blindest of whom can see that the 'bailout' is the largest kickback to slovenly, shit-for-brains, billionaire leeches in history.

Brave New World

George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Gattaca . . . take your pick. The future is Now! LA Fertility Institutes is "offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring," according to a BBC report. Presumably, the parents can only select from the traits that are embodied in their combined genetic pools. This is the predictable development of programs that already screen for genetically borne diseases or abnormalities.

A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring.

The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.

His clinic also offers sex selection.

UK fertility experts are angered that the service will distract attention from how the same technology can protect against inherited disease.

The science is based on a lab technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD.

• “ I would not say this is a dangerous road. It's an uncharted road ”
  Dr Steinberg

This involves testing a cell taken from a very early embryo before it is put into the mother's womb.

Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes - or in this case an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes - to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.

Dr Steinberg said couples might seek to use the clinic's services for both medical and cosmetic reasons.

For example, a couple might want to have a baby with a darker complexion to help guard against a skin cancer if they already had a child who had developed a melanoma. But others might just want a boy with blonde hair.

His clinic is offering this cosmetic selection to patients already having genetic screening for abnormal chromosome conditions in their embryos.

• “ This is the inevitable slippery slope of a fertility process which results in many more embryos being created than can be implanted"
  Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics

"Not all patients will qualify for these tests and we make NO guarantees as to 'perfect prediction' of things such as eye colour or hair colour," says the clinic's website.

Dr Steinberg said: "I would not say this is a dangerous road. It's an uncharted road."

He said the capability to offer such services had been around for years, but had been ignored by the medical community.

"It's time for everyone to pull their heads out of the sand."

Slippery slope

But Dr Gillian Lockwood, a UK fertility expert and member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' ethics committee, questioned whether is was morally right to be using the science in this way.

"If it gets to the point where we can decide which gene or combination of genes are responsible for blue eyes or blonde hair, what are you going to do with all those other embryos that turn out like me to be ginger with green eyes?"

She warned against "turning babies into commodities that you buy off the shelf."

Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: "This is the inevitable slippery slope of a fertility process which results in many more embryos being created than can be implanted. Choices will always have to be made. Do you choose octuplets or the ones with the prettiest noses?"

In the UK, sex selection is banned and choices are currently permitted only in relationship to the baby's health.

Italian fertility law does not permit the creation of surplus embryos or selective testing. Ms Quintavalle said that was "one sure way to avoid the slippery slope".

Meanwhile, new legislation in the UK, due to come in on 6 April, will allow IVF mothers to name anyone as "father" on the birth certificate - even another woman.

The only restriction on naming a second parent will be if they are close blood relatives or if the second person does not agree.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7918296.stm

Published: 2009/03/02 10:17:50 GMT

Excellent Essay from Glenn Greenwald

The corruption of the cocoon

Many politicians, journalists and pundits simply ignore all criticisms and avoid critics -- because there is no real price to pay from doing so.

Glenn Greenwald

Feb. 27, 2009 |

(updated below - Update II)

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder writes (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

Get Out Of Your D$*#( Shells

Here's a simple way to increase intellectual cross-pollination on the web: honest bloggers of the left and the right should try to interview at least one author/historian/politician from the other side of the aisle at least one a month. So -- Media Matters shouldn't just criticize Bernard Goldberg; they should interview him. Glenn Greenwald should, I don't know, see if Jack Goldsmith from Harvard would chat with him online. Bill Kristol should interview Jane Mayer. Pajamas Media needs to interview Democrats and Democratic experts, and not just each other, or Joe the Plumber, or Sen. Jim DeMint. Righties interviewing righties has gotten so boring and repetitive; lefties fawning over lefties is lazy. Who's going to be brave enough to reach out to an ideological or intellectual opponent, promote their new book, or interview them?

I agree with this almost entirely, but there's an assumption here that isn't quite accurate: the lack of such interviews and debates isn't evidence that there are no such attempts being made. To the contrary: not only politicians, but a huge portion of pundits and journalists, simply refuse to acknowledge any criticisms, let alone engage critics.

Our political discourse is so stratified that politicians and pundits can get all the exposure they want while confining themselves to hospitable venues and only speaking to sympathetic journalists. That, as but one example, is what fuels "access journalism" -- the willingness of politicians to speak only to deferential reporters, who stay deferential in order to ensure that those politicians continue to speak with them, a process that perpetuates itself ad infnitum. That has created a virtually complete -- and quite destructive -- accountability-free zone where politicians and pundits alike can simply avoid any form of adversarial questioning or challenges to their claims [in fact, ironically enough, one of my criticisms of Ambinder during the recent State Secrets controversy was that, when defending the Obama administration's position as conveyed by anonymous DOJ officials (whose anonymity prevented them from being questioned or otherwise engaged), he failed to speak with or even cite anyone who had an opposing view].

Last week, Rachel Maddow interviewed GOP Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty rather aggressively about what she perceived to be the contradiction between his opposition to the stimulus bill and his willingness to accept the monies appropriated by that bill on behalf of his state. Unlike Keith Olbermann, Maddow clearly has a desire to conduct adversarial interviews with those with whom she disagrees (as many Democratic politicians who do her show, likely expecting a friendly venue but receiving the opposite, can attest). But this is what she said at the end of the Pawlenty interview:

Governor Pawlenty represents Minnesota and I will just say -- we ask a lot of Republicans to be on the show and they almost always say no. So, I am particularly grateful whenever anybody says yes. And to any Republicans out there who we ask -- see -- I'm not so bad.

With very few exceptions, Republicans simply won't talk to her. Identically, in 2007, when Bill Moyers produced the first major television report about the media's failures and deceit in the run-up to the Iraq War, he attempted to interview most of the key figures whose actions he intended to highlight and critique -- such as Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, Tom Friedman and Roger Ailes. But here's what happened when he tried:

MOYERS: We wanted to talk to some others in the media about their role in the run up to the war. . . . . Judith Miller, who left the Times after becoming embroiled in a White House leak scandal, declined our request on legal grounds.

The Times liberal hawk Thomas Friedman also said no. So did Bill Safire, who had predicted Iraq would now be leading the Arab World to democracy. . . .

The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer also turned us down. So did Roger Ailes, the man in charge of Fox News. He declined, an assistant told us, because he's writing ab ook on how Fox has changed the face of American broadcasting and doesn't want to scoop himself.

William Kristol led the march to Baghdad behind a battery of Washington microphones. He has not responded to any of our requests for an interview, but he still shows up on TV as an expert, most often on Fox News.

The only targets of Moyers' critique willing to speak with him and address criticisms of their pre-war behavior were (to their credit) Tim Russert and Peter Beinart, who sat and rather uncomfortably addressed Moyers' probing, adversarial examination. But most of the super tough-guy civilization-warriors refused to answer for what they said, instead cowardly hiding behind their challenge-free monologue-columns and/or friendly colleagues at Fox News.

The original impetus for the creation of my Salon Radio show last July was that I wanted to have a forum to question and hear from any political figures, journalists and pundits who were the target of criticisms here. As I wrote when announcing the debut of that show:

Although the podcast show will function as a stand-alone entity, my intent is that it will supplement much of what I write about by enabling me to interview, debate or otherwise engage with people on issues that relate to what I write about. I intend to make it a regular practice to invite onto the show anyone who is criticized here -- journalists, political figures or anyone else -- in order to discuss and debate those critiques.

What I quickly found, however, is that such offers were almost always rebuffed or ignored, to the point where I mostly stopped trying, assuming that it would be futile. Having accountability-free discourse means that many political figures and journalists perceive no benefit -- and certainly no obligation -- to acknowledge critics or confront criticisms.

* * * * *

People who want to opine politically or otherwise have an influence on the political process have -- in my view -- an obligation to engage criticisms. That's the reason I do things such as spend 45 minutes on the Hugh Hewitt Show defending my views on Israel-Gaza and foreign policy generally, going on Fox News to explain objections to John Brennan, debating someone like Cass Sunstein on his excreable opposition to investigations of Bush officials or someone like David Rivkin on his defense of warrantless eavesdropping, or engaging in online discussions with people (such as Megan McArdle, Ben Smith and Ana Marie Cox) with whom I've had sharp disagreements. That's why I virtually always post complaints and responses from those whom I criticize. Speakers at Cato Institute events, as a matter of policy, almost always have someone included in the event to criticize the speaker's views [as I did when I presented Tragic Legacy there, after which former Reagan DOJ official Lee Casey rather harshly critiqued my book, and will have again at an upcoming (soon-to-be-announced) Cato presentation I'm making in early April].

Sometimes these sorts of clashes are unpleasant. Sometimes, due to the people involved or other factors, they are not constructive. But often they are (as but one example, I unexpectedly found my discussion with Hewitt to be quite substantive and weirdly respectful). And, in all events, doing these things is something which, if one wants to spout political opinions in public, one should feel compelled to do [and, to be meaningful, the obligation extends beyond pseudo-debates between such mutually admiring friends (and like-minded comrades) that the bubbly lovefest precludes any serious clashes].

More importantly, it's precisely the ability of politicians, journalists and pundits to avoid meaningful challenges to their views that, more than any other factor, degrades our political discourse. The reason the Wall St. Journal Editors (and others like them) disseminate blatant falsehoods and then never bother to correct or even acknowledge those errors -- and the reason people like Karl Rove can spout the most intellecutally dishonest columns imaginable -- is precisely because they know they can just avoid any venues where they will be questioned or challenged about what they say. Those who insulate themselves from critics and just ignore all criticisms, and who speak only to hospitable audiences, know that they can say anything without consequence or accountability (just compare the cowardly Bill Kristol's humiliating history of deceit and error-plagued punditry to his endless promotions within our media establishment).

In fact, it is this exact dynamic that makes the absence of adversarial journalism -- and the dominance of access journalism -- so destructive. Bush officials were able to spend eight years spewing the most blatant falsehoods because they knew that most journalists wouldn't challenge them or even point out the falsity of their claims. Bush spent eight years almost exclusively speaking to adoring, pre-screened audiences where he heard no challenges to what he asserted. And, in general, it's hard to overstate how severely the cocooning process can distort reality (see here and here for a couple recent, typical examples).

Adversarial challenges to one's statements are a vital check on errors and deceit. Clashes of ideas are an irreplaceable instrument for truth-finding. Shielding oneself from such challenges (or just ignoring them) is not only irresponsible and cowardly, but ensures that one can opine without accountability. That's why bloggers who have an active, smart and critical comment section with which they interact have a major advantage over journalists who hide from critical scrutiny. In all of this, it's reasonable to exercise some discretion -- not all criticisms and/or critics merit attention -- but those who avoid any real challenges to their statements (whether politicians, journalists, or pundits) ought to be stigmatized for doing so, and it ought to be viewed as a powerful indictment against their credibility (Ambinder's post will prompt me to resume efforts to invite onto Salon Radio those who are criticized here and to make note of those who refuse).

* * * * *

What Ambinder describes as this self-imposed cocooning process is now so pervasive that it has actually become the norm, at least in many precincts. During those few occasions when I have been able to interview those whose views I've criticized, my comment section and inbox were filled with warnings that aggressively adversarial interviews should be avoided because it will lead most potential interviewees to refuse future requests. Criticisms of TV journalists who conduct painfully sycophantic, unchallenging interviews with powerful political figures will inevitably prompt defenses that the journalist can't be more adversarial because to do so will ensure that nobody will submit to future interviews. Just as people have been trained to believe that there is something inherently illegitimate about primary challenges to incumbent politicians (it's an undemocratic purge! a circular firing-squad!), so, too, have many people been trained to believe that the ability of politicians and other opinion-makers to shield themselves from any real critical examination is both understandable and even necessary. And thus, there is no real price to pay for those who hide from it.

Until those who suffer a serious loss of credibility from speaking only in hospitable venues and to access-eager journalists -- and until there is a real price to pay for simply ignoring criticisms and even documentation of factual errors -- these practices will almost certainly continue. Ambinder raised an important point here. It's a good suggestion. But it's likely to fall on deaf ears without there being some real incentive for people to change this cocooning behavior.

UPDATE: A few illustrative examples underscore the point here. During her tenure at Time, Ana Marie Cox, to her credit, normalized the idea that Time's reporters and columnists should not only blog, but also regularly engage blogger criticism and interact extensively with their commenters. It's hard to dispute that their subjecting themselves to that sort of two-way interaction has expanded their perspectives and altered their journalistic behavior for the better (see this post from Joe Klein today as just one of many examples; this admission of error from Jay Carney was also a classic example).

By stark contrast, some of the absolute worst "journalists" plaguing the country -- Fred Hiatt, Tom Friedman, David Ignatius, Maureen Dowd, Nedra Pickler -- are also some of the most extensively criticized. Despite their undoubtedly being well aware of that criticism (after all, it prominently appears right on the first and second pages of a Google search of their names), they simply ignore it, never deign even to acknowledge it, and thus just continue unmolested with their dishonest and pernicious behavior, too insular even to respond to widespread critiques of what they do.

UPDATE II: Slate's Dahlia Lithwick wrote a column in 2007 relating to many of these themes that -- without my endorsing all of it -- is worth reading.

On an unrelated note, I spoke to the annual conference of the ACLU of Massachusetts last month regarding impediments to the restoration of civil liberties under the Obama administration. That 30-minute speech, for those interested, can be heard on MP3 here. It's also available on ITunes here (the video of the speech may or may not be posted at some point in the future).

-- Glenn Greenwald

Doomsday Vault for Seeds

It's nice to have a safe repository for millions of seeds, but it won't amount to much if no humans are around to retrieve them, and at the rate Homo fatalis or Homo funestus (the species formerly known as Homo sapiens) is going, there won't be much left but seeds, and insects.

This from the BBC:

Almost 90,000 food crop seed samples have arrived at the "doomsday vault" in the Arctic Circle, as part of its first anniversary celebrations.

The four-tonne shipment takes the number of seeds stored in the frozen repository to more than 20 million.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built 130m (426ft) inside a mountain, aims to protect the world's food crop species against natural and human disasters.

The £5m ($7m) facility took 12 months to build and opened in February 2008.

"The vault was opened last year to ensure that, one day, all of humanity's existing food crop varieties would be safely protected," explained Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT).

"It's amazing how far we have come towards accomplishing that goal."

The arrival of the latest consignment of seed samples means that the vault, deep inside a mountain on Norway's Svalbard archipelago, is now storing a third of the planet's most important food crop varieties.

Among the anniversary arrivals are 32 varieties of potatoes from Ireland's national gene banks.

It was a lack of diversity among Ireland's potato crops that was believed to have caused the deaths of more than one million people when blight wiped out the nation's potato harvests in the mid-1800s.

The vault, operated by a partnership between the GCDT and the Norwegian government, stores duplicates of seeds held in national collections.

It acts as a fail-safe backup if the original collections are lost or damaged.

"We are especially proud to see such a large number of countries working quickly to provide samples from their collections for safekeeping in the vault," said Norway's Agriculture Minister Lars Peder Brekk.

"It shows that there are situations in the world today capable of transcending politics and inspiring a strong unity of purpose among a diverse community of nations."

As well as the consignment of seeds, experts on climate change and food production have gathered in Longyearbyen for a three-day anniversary conference.

They will examine how climate change threatens global food production, and how crop diversity will improve food security for people in regions that are going to be worst affected.

Frank Loy, an environment adviser to President Obama, said: "When we see research indicating that global warming could diminish maize production by 30% in southern Africa in only 20 years' time, it shows that crop diversity is needed to adapt agriculture to climate change right now.

Advice to Space Aliens: Run Away, Run Away!

CNN reports "Galaxy may be full of 'Earths,' alien life" and every one potentially just as dumb and pathologically suicidal as Homo fatalis or Homo funestus (that's us, folks). Perhaps in the grand scheme of things (HA!), some kind of natural selection operates on a galactic scale, and from these hundreds or thousands of intelligent species, one that is actually capable of sustained rationality and harmonious survival will emerge. At this point, we can be reasonably sure it won't be us.

"As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.

An artist's impression shows a planet passing in front of its parent star. Such events are called transits.

Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.

There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets."

He made the prediction based on the number of "super-Earths" -- planets several times the mass of the Earth, but smaller than gas giants like Jupiter -- discovered so far circling stars outside the solar system.

Boss said that if any of the billions of Earth-like worlds he believes exist in the Milky Way have liquid water, they are likely to be home to some type of life.

"Now that's not saying that they're all going to be crawling with intelligent human beings or even dinosaurs," he said.

"But I would suspect that the great majority of them at least will have some sort of primitive life, like bacteria or some of the multicellular creatures that populated our Earth for the first 3 billion years of its existence."

Putting a number on alien worlds

Other scientists are taking another approach: an analysis that suggests there could be hundreds, even thousands, of intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland constructed a computer model to create a synthetic galaxy with billions of stars and planets. They then studied how life evolved under various conditions in this virtual world, using a supercomputer to crunch the results.

In a paper published recently in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the researchers concluded that based on what they saw, at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed.

Duncan Forgan, a doctoral candidate at the university who led the study, said he was surprised by the hardiness of life on these other worlds.

"The computer model takes into account what we refer to as resetting or extinction events. The classic example is the asteroid impact that may have wiped out the dinosaurs," Forgan said.

"I half-expected these events to disallow the rise of intelligence, and yet civilizations seemed to flourish."

Forgan readily admits the results are an educated guess at best, since there are still many unanswered questions about how life formed on Earth and only limited information about the 330 "exoplanets" -- those circling sun-like stars outside the solar system -- discovered so far.

The first was confirmed in 1995 and the latest just this month when Europe's COROT space telescope spotted the smallest terrestrial exoplanet ever found. With a diameter less than twice the size of Earth, the planet orbits very close to its star and has temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius (more than 2,700° Fahrenheit), according to the European Space Agency. It may be rocky and covered in lava.

Hunt for habitable planets

NASA is hoping to find much more habitable worlds with the help of the upcoming Kepler mission. The spacecraft, set to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida next week, will search for Earth-size planets in our part of the galaxy.

Kepler contains a special telescope that will study 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years. It will look for small dips in a star's brightness, which can mean an orbiting planet is passing in front it -- an event called a transit.

"It's akin to measuring a flea as it creeps across the headlight of an automobile at night," said Kepler project manager James Fanson during a during a NASA news conference.

The focus of the mission is finding planets in a star's habitable zone, an orbit that would ensure temperatures in which life could exist. Video Watch a NASA scientist explain the search for habitable planets »

Boss, who serves on the Kepler Science Council, said scientists should know by 2013 -- the end of Kepler's mission -- whether life in the universe could be widespread.

Finding intelligent life is a very different matter. For all the speculation about the possibility of other civilizations in the universe, the question remains: If the rise of life on Earth isn't unique and aliens are common, why haven't they shown up or contacted us? The contradiction was famously summed up by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 in what became known as the Fermi paradox: "Where is everybody?"

The answer may be the vastness of time and space, scientists explained.

"Civilizations come and go," Boss said. "Chances are, if you do happen to find a planet which is going to have intelligent life, it's not going to be in [the same] phase of us. It may have formed a billion years ago, or maybe it's not going to form for another billion years."

Even if intelligent civilizations did exist at the same time, they probably would be be separated by tens of thousands of light years, Forgan said. If aliens have just switched on their transmitter to communicate, it could take us hundreds of centuries to receive their message, he added.

As for interstellar travel, the huge distances virtually rule out any extraterrestrial visitors.

To illustrate, Boss said the fastest rockets available to us right now are those being used in NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. Even going at that rate of speed, it would take 100,000 years to get from Earth to the closest star outside the solar system, he added.

"So when you think about that, maybe we shouldn't be worried about having interstellar air raids any time soon," Boss said.

Nationalization!

"Are you aware it is private property?"

— Sir Howard Kingsley Wood responding to Leo Avery (Member of Parliament)
in late 1939 after Avery suggested bombing
arms dumps in Germany's Black Forest

Bernanke Helps Stocks Snap Back
Bank stocks soared, leading the broader market higher Tuesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made the stongest comments yet against nationalizing major Wall Street firms.

— Wall Street Journal, Feb. 24, after markets closed

Bernanke calms nationalisation fears
Stress tests of big US banks that start this week are unlikely to lead to any of them being seized by regulators and nationalised outright, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Tuesday.
His comments provided the clearest signal yet that US authorities hope to support major banks as going concerns in the private markets, taking equity stakes as necessary to shore up their capital in what would amount to partial nationalisations.

— The Financial Times, Feb. 24, after markets closed

Just whom do Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and most importantly Barack Obama think they serve? The answer should be, "The People". While Obama & Co. pay lipservice to this, and while they may actually believe they are first and foremost concerned with the commoners, I get very little sense that this is their real concern.



With Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Addington, Rice, and the gang of war criminals, there was little doubt. They stopped just shy of expressly rejecting democratic principles. The rejection of democracy seems today to be the defining characteristic of the Republican party. The election, if it can be called that, of 2000. The rerun in 2004 (with Ohio the focal point of malfeasance). Rudolf Giuliani's abortive attempt to suspend elections following 9/11. Michael Bloomberg's end-run around the unambiguous will of New Yorkers.

Democracy be damned. That is the mantra of the Republican party.

But Democrats? Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and it is far from clear that their intentions are even all that good.

What if the solution is nationalization? On what grounds then, is nationalization pre-emptively excluded by Obama? It is at least plausible that the explanation is that the real power in the US rejects nationalization — the rich, the oligarchs, who would actually lose, for a change — in the event banks were seized.

What work does the rigid opposition to nationalization do? Whom does it serve? The owners, of course. Nationalization would eliminate any question of We the People being hosed by the John Thains, Ken Lewises, and so on (and on and on) — the legion of billionaires who have spent decades lining their pockets at our expense.

Similarly, nationalization of the health care system would benefit We the People at the expense of the managers and stockholders of multi-billion dollar insurance companies. And so single payer healthcare or national health, adopted around the world, remains forbidden territory in the US.

Whatever the best solution to these problems and others, we can be certain of one thing: If economics is a science, then what we are seeing is not economics, but dogma.

Science cannot proceed by ruling out in advance solutions the researchers (or the funders) don't like. "Solve the problem of what orbits what, but you cannot consider any answer where the Earth is not at the center of the universe." Sound scientific?

That is the approach the Obama administration and all of the US government is now taking. It as close as we might see to a textbook example of dogma driving decisions. Dogma and the veiled threats of Wall Street and corporate executives.

Since the question is no longer, "What will be best for the US economy?" (It has been replaced by, "What will be best for the wealthiest of the wealthy?") The big question now is, "Can the threshold level of contentment be maintained?" As John Kenneth Galbraith wrote years ago in The Culture of Contentment, the great innovation of the New Deal years was to establish for Americans a level of well-being that kept people content. Can this contentment be preserved, or has the US proceeded so far along the road to true Oligarchy that the commonwealth can be ignored in the service of privilege and wealth?

Mayor of Lansing Michigan Hammers Fox News Flunky

That Was Then, This Is Now. This Is Now.

Before his death, John Kenneth Galbraith noted a key difference between reconstruction in Iraq and reconstruction in Japan after the Second World War. There were many comparisons between the US role in Iraq now versus the role in Japan then. Why was reconstruction in Iraq going so badly — so much money going to waste, or just disappearing; projects begun, never completed; projects proposed, never begun; total destruction of cultural treasures; utterly inadequate attention to schools, hospitals, roads; and failure to foster a healthy new governing structure.

The key difference, Galbraith said, was in the intentions of the planners, the problem solvers. In Japan, Galbraith and others saw a genuine problem to be solved honestly. Today, the key problem entertained by Bremer, Petraeus and their masters in the US has been how to make the most money with the least effort, and even that has been tainted by sheer bigotry and gross ignorance.

Now, another nation stands in need of reconstruction — the United States.

Its economy is failing. Its environment, along with that of the rest of the world, is in decline. Schools are declining. Roads and bridges decaying. Healthcare becoming unaffordable for all but the rich. Retirement becoming unreachable.

But the overwhelming sense conveyed by first the Bush planners and now the Obama planners is that their key concern is how to make a buck, or to save the bucks for the billionaires they seem most intent on representing.

In his inaugural address, Obama suggested the words of John F. Kennedy — that we the people have an obligation to our nation, that is, to all Americans. This is the rhetoric of responsibility, a popular theme for at least 40 years, one usually turned on the least fortunate to condemn them for their misfortune.

The poorest and increasingly the substantially impoverished middle classes are enjoined to consider their own responsibility and thus not turn to the government for a handout.

Never in the course of American history has so hypocritical demand been made. It is an ancient notion that the most fortunate bear a special responsibility to those who are less so. But in this absurd nation, the most fortunate demand and demand and demand ever more aid from those least able to provide. President Obama offers only the most tepid criticism of this threat-backed begging. He offers little or nothing of substance to remind the most fortunate of the obligation they bear by virtue of their fortune.

There are in history precedents for this hypocritical demand on the many to aid the privileged few. They are not happy ones. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Vietnam, the Middle East.

We are at a crossroads. In a sense, every moment in history is just as weighty as every other. But intuitively we grasp that some moments are of greater weight in the course of human development. This is such a moment.

The developing oligarchy of the United States has failed. We can challenge that orthodoxy, or we remain immobile, dumbstruck, complacent, while the oligarchs, now represented by President Obama, sweep us along over the edge into the abyss.

Trillions and Trillions (O, Carl Sagan, Where Are You Now...)

The New York Times has a nice little summation of the extraordinary sums being handed to Wall Street and others to keep billionaires fat out of the fire, and (if you buy the bull) our fat, too — except that, once all is said and done, the billionaires will have taken all the fat and several pounds of our flesh. So We the People are snared in a Catch 22 and the elite are guaranteed to win.

So far We the People are in the hole for 9 trillion dollars — $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States of America. When do you think the retirement age will be lofted up to 75?


(The Times graphic is interactive and a great deal more informative.)