Apocalypse Road

Scrooge MittRomney vs. The Gingrinch!

2012-01-13T02:49:00.006-05:00

Newt Gingrich is going back to his roots with a cannibalistic attack on the Great and Powerful Capitalism! Not clear to me who did this thirty minute video, but the production values are substantial — a very professional job. But what astonishes me is the lusty assault on the Profit-über-alles article of faith. Time and again I've been impressed by the recent willingness of diehard conservatives to lay into their precious darlings of money-making.

If you watch the video, note the repeated of clip of Romney asserting that corporations are people and his sardonic assertion that the profits go to "people." Once again, average Americans reveal far greater insight and awareness of the truth than the oligarchs — someone in the audience hurls back Romney's insult: "In your pocket . . . your pocket!"

The Romney willingness to be combative with people is very reminiscent of Michael Bloomberg's style. It is the style of someone who is unaccustomed to being challenged — a business boss surround by sycophantic yes-men hopeful that sufficient groveling will win them promotion. It is the style of wealthy oligarchs who do not believe in democratic practice. Yet it is these extraordinarily wealthy oligarchs whom Republicans and Democrats alike repeatedly champion for high political office on the grounds that public organizations "should be run like businesses."

Romney champions his role as a "job-creator" at Bain. And how did Romney run things? How did Bain create those jobs (if indeed it did)? What business style did Bain exemplify? What did it produce? It produced not-particularly innovative or inventive financial techniques for squeezing dollars out of firms until there was nothing left, juggling around dollars to enable extraordinary profiteering for managers at the expense of everyone else.

This is the knowledge economy that so many have been bleating about for twenty-some years now. The knowledge found in education, the knowledge found, for example, in American universities (increasingly funded) is indeed a product the US exports, with many thousands of students coming from around the world to attend US schools. But this is not the knowledge economy trumpeted by conservatives. The knowledge they have in mind is financial, the knowledge of a very elaborate shell game or ponzi scheme, the kind that blew apart in 2008 and was promptly restored by our elected officials entirely at our expense — the greatest transfer of wealth from labor to capital. Ever. That is the knowledge economy of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, except for rhetorical purposes when the game of power is afoot.

The game is power. Power comes first. If the dogmas of capitalism conflict with the lust for power, then the dogmas must go. The attacks on Romney are superficial. Ultimately, there is no real conflict. It is a game of which oligarchs will be best represented after November, 2012.

Transitioning Out of Democracy

2011-08-12T18:41:00.002-04:00

I'm trying to remember what Simon Johnson saw as the time to the next financial crisis in a discussion with Bill Moyers two or three years ago (in what might have been one of the last editions of the Bill Moyers Journal before Moyers retired). Certainly, Johnson predicted no more than ten years to the next crisis, but my recollection is that he said something like three to seven years. That's just my recollection, but we can be sure of one thing — Barack Obama, Democrats and Republicans, despite weak public protestations to the contrary, have sent very clear substantive signals. Wall Street and megabank risk-taking, misconduct, and even criminality will be thoroughly underwritten by the United States government and, by extension, a willfully ignorant American populace.

This all fits into what a growing number (including Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini . . . I don't know about Messrs. Johnson and Kwak) have described as a large, perhaps the largest, transfer of wealth from labor to capital ever.

My own few is that the phenomenon is even broader than that, encompassing economic and legal, even constitutional, features. A transfer of wealth and economic and political power from the general population to an increasingly rapacious class of American oligarchs is underway. My view unifies developments across the economic and political spectrum:

the Supreme Court's creeping grant of the status of personhood to corporations,
the gross disparities in wealth and income (and all concomitant benefits, like health, education, longevity, etc.),
Bush and Obama attacks on civil liberties (including Habeus Corpus, Posse Comitatus, whistleblower protections, protections for journalists — the few who actually investigate US government misconduct),
the Democratic-Republican assault economic protections for elderly Americans.
the effective criminalization of poverty,
the cultural glorification of the New American Virtues — wealth, fame, good looks, longevity, fashion, etc.

I do not like the "tipping point" terminology, but the trends that accelerated in the Reagan years (having arguably begun in the Carter years) and that have continued through every president since may now have crossed some threshold, an increasingly formal grant of power to a tiny percentage of elite Americans. Any new bailouts will only be part of larger developments.

This Is What Obama, Republicans, and the Oligarchs WANT

2011-08-12T13:54:00.002-04:00

Yves Smith directs us to, among others things, a discussion by Kate Pickett. Pickett's presentation notes that the US has more "bads" than most other wealthy, 'modern' countries — across the board. Greater inequalities in longevity, crime, mobility, happiness, education, and on and on.

It is time to stop pretending that this is an accident of other phenomena in the US. Rather, this is what the American elite want.

Americans equate wealth, longevity, "good looks" (in the form of housing, fashion, personal appearance) with virtue. Americans embrace the notion that the wealthier, longer-lived elite are better, innately better, morally better, intellectually better.

Americans embrace an innateness of status that was rejected by Europeans through the French Revolution and numerous other social upheavals.

Worst, Obama, most Democrats, all Republicans, and most important, the Oligarchs (the top 1% or so), want the rest of us to be worse off — in every sense.

This is an explanation that has all the merits attributed under the scientific method. It is simple. It explains what we observe. It has predictive power. Above all, it explains why Obama and others would pursue the policies they do despite overwhelming factual evidence.

Income/Wealth Inequality and Social Stability

2011-08-12T13:08:00.003-04:00

The Princeton political scientist Carles Boix argued at at length that one of the things that makes democracy possible is that the better off perceive their privilege to be protected (in some measure) against egalitarian impulses of the less-well-off. In modern industrial democracies like the US, the wealthy enjoy constitutional protections and can also move their wealth elsewhere.

Fine. But two obvious questions arise.

1. Is there a point where inequality provokes a backlash among the less-well-off? The answer in the US for decades has been no. Americans are remarkably, stunningly indifferent to the gross inequalities of the US, hands down the most unequal of all the industrial democracies. The US has one of the lowest social mobility rates in the world, even compared to non-democracies and less-developed nations. It has fares most poorly among its peers on health, longevity, education, happiness — very nearly every index of comparison. (The only country that does roughly as badly is Britain. What a surprise — the nation that has done most to parrot the American example.)

Despite this, as John Kenneth Galbraith long noted (among many others), Americans didn't seem to care.... American exceptionalism. Speaking on The Charlie Rose Show, economist Kenneth Rogoff's comment echoes something I've heard elsewhere: Americans "expect to win the lottery." Americans are generally happy to see others enjoy billions because a remarkable percentage of Americans are deluded into thinking they too will win any day now — this despite the US having a dismal degree of social mobility.

Will this change? Can it change? Can Americans develop a measure of anger? Can they rally the way the French or Greeks have? The way anybody but Americans do?

This brings us to the second question:

2. How are the US government and oligarchs suppressing American egalitarian impulses or protecting themselves against the same? I suggest that the national security apparatus/state that has been developing for years and has accelerated under Obama will be used to contain any American social upheaval — should any develop, which seems unlikely given the level of Americans' apathy and ignorance. Under Obama, domestic spying has grown. Obama has viciously sought to suppress whistleblowers, as Glenn Greenwald has described repeatedly. Moreover, we have an educational system which borders on systematic indoctrination. From grade school through university (especially university) we have a host of institutions that endlessly trumpet the unalloyed glories of both unlimited greed and the infallibility of the American way of doing things. I am frequently astonished by the extent to which extraordinarily well-educated, intelligent people show absolutely no inclination or ability to challenge American orthodoxy.

The writings of H. L. Mencken, John Kenneth Galbraith, Noam Chomsky, Mark Twain, and many others go into this over the length of American history. Today, we have many new voices — Naomi Klein, Glenn Greenwald among them. Yet Americans remain impervious to even the most obvious truths.

The wealthiest and their willing slaves like Obama and Congress (those members who are not among the 1% already, that is) have obvious incentives for pressing the dogma. But why so many Americans prove so indifferent is a mystery.

Obama — Worse than Bush

2011-08-05T21:25:00.002-04:00

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has made clear that he plans to fight any cuts to the Pentagon budget tooth and nail. We have every reason to believe Obama holds similar, even identical, views. As Glenn Greenwald has noted, this sets up a near-guaranteed gutting of American social programs if the so-called "Super Congress" has any teeth. Republicans will oppose any cuts to defense. Obama has pushed for cuts to social programs already. Now he makes clear his commitment to monstrous military extravagance. Panetta has gone so far as to assert that any possible cuts "would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our military's ability to protect the nation."

The Orwellian doublethink in Panetta and the Pentagon's assertions is something to behold. Note that the Pentagon is also angling for more money on the grounds that there are new security threats in the form of climate change, among other things. This hopelessly expansive, all-encompassing, "everything is a national security issue" thinking will will swell to include economic issues. Indeed, it already has, as seen in much of the hysterical rhetoric about China.

Paul Krugman noted, again, the other day that the US is looking more and more like a banana republic. One of the features of those failed states is massive numbers of citizens working for the military. Going into the military in many of these countries was the equivalent of going into business in western Europe or North America.

Have Democrats settled on the military as the only social program Republicans will support? Or is Obama just as spinelessly militant as Joseph Lieberman and war-hungry Republicans?

The US patted itself on the back over the success of its strategy of forcing the Soviet Union to spend itself into oblivion on 'defense.' On the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter, "We have given the Soviets their Vietnam."

The US is now doing the same . . . to itself.

Paul Krugman on America's Lost Decade

2011-08-01T11:32:00.002-04:00

Another Brick in Neo-Feudalism

2011-07-30T03:25:00.002-04:00

The following post from Dean Baker, commenting on the most recent lunacy from The Washington Post's Robert Samuelson:

Robert Samuelson Redefines "Wealthy"

Friday, 29 July 2011 17:27
The Washington Post once ran a front page piece questioning whether people who earned $250,000 a year, President Obama's cutoff for his no tax hike pledge, were really rich. However, it also features Robert Samuelson on its opinion page telling readers that seniors with income of $30,000 a year are wealthy. I'm not kidding.
In a piece titled "Why Are We In This Debt Fix? It's the elderly stupid," Samuelson tells readers:
"some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more."
Let's see, we have retirees who have their Social Security checks, plus a stash of $207,000. If someone at age 62 were to take that $207,000 and buy an annuity this money would get them about $15,000 a year. Add in $14,000 from Social Security and they are living the good life on $29,000 a year. And remember, 75 percent of the elderly have less than this.
To be fair, many of the people with $207,000 in savings will be older than 62 so their money will go further, but it is hard to believe that anyone can think of this as a cutoff for being wealthy, or at least anyone other than Robert Samuelson and his colleagues at the Washington Post.

My thoughts:

There is a unifying 'idea' (if it can be called that) behind the idiocy of Robert Samuelson and like-minded conservatives. Recall Orrin Hatch's assertion that the poor and less-well-off need to bear a greater share of the burden.

What unifies this — and the general Republican willingness to redistribute burdens from the wealthy to the rest of us — is a true Orwellian doublethink — a commitment to the Divine Right of Wealth, the more wealthy, the more divine. This is a view endorsed by most Democrats. It finds a clear expression in a blog post by Gregory Mankiw from August, 2009:http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com...f-all.html. Mankiw was convinced that wealth was an indicator of superior intelligence, which in turn is genetically based; therefore, wealth is an indicator of genetic superiority. (Where have we heard this before?) This is a just a specific instance of the widespread conviction that wealth is an indicator of superiority and virtue — indeed, that wealth is itself a virtue.

On this line, there is no inconsistency in viewing subsistence-level elderly as wealthy. They 'must' be to make them plausible candidates for taxation. "America doesn't tax the poor" just as "America doesn't torture." Conversely, the really really wealthy are over-taxed, and their suffering must be alleviated through transfers from those who are under-taxed.

The logic works, if you live in the frame of mind of a 13th Century European baron.

Israel Uses Facebook . . . and What Else?

2011-07-10T17:10:00.002-04:00

It turns out, not surprisingly, that Israel made use of Facebook to identify and track pro-Palestinian activists recently. This is probably only a tiny fraction of Israel's overall effort to track critics.

First, most (possibly all, given post 9/11 developments) electronic communications are monitored by the anglophone countries, especially the U.S., U.K., Canada, N.Z., and Australia. This has been the case for many years. The Echelon facility, based in Britain, has been monitoring electronic communications for decades. It is located in Britain precisely to avoid US government violations of American law. Mention something like this in the hearing of a Times editor or reporter (like John Burns or Thomas Friedman) and you will instantly be labeled a "conspiracy theorist," despite the fact that such media figures know this to be the case.

Second, the Obama administration has repeatedly made clear than even unambiguous speech-acts are now being taken to constitute "material support" for whatever organization is in the sights of the U.S. government. The U.S. has dug itself into a nice hole on this one (possibly with some malice aforethought). The Supreme Court has ruled (and Obama, Democrats, and Republicans have endorsed the view) that spending money is a speech act. Of course, money can be essential to material support of an enterprise. Thus, the groundwork is laid for extending restrictions on freedom of speech by likening, say, vocal support for Palestinian rights to "yelling fire in a crowded theater." And this indeed is a rhetorical/political/legal move made by diehard Israel-supporters and their willing slaves in the U.S. government and media as they seek to choke off any and all support for Palestinians.

Finally, we know that the U.S. shares "intelligence" with Israel. Likewise, we know from recent reports that Google shares information on users to varying degrees with various countries. The U.S. leads in demands placed on Google, and Google usually complies. Israel likewise enjoys near-total compliance. We also know that the major telecoms have raised no word of objection whatsoever to U.S. demands for secret access. What Israel has demanded and received we can only guess, but given the hysterical support that Israel enjoys in the U.S., I wouldn't be surprised to find that it sees greater compliance than the U.S. government. Furthermore, there is a small army of extremist, pro-Israel fanatics ready to level any and every charge at any and every critic of Israel. Computing technology has made the collection and sorting of all this information very easy for years.

Thus we have three components that reduce Facebook to what is likely a tiny component of a much larger monitoring (and control) apparatus:

Technological means;
Vastly expanding conceptions of what constitute (a) threats and (b) legitimate means; and
A disparate, dispersed but nevertheless organized body of very willing participants.

The advantages for those who support human rights, whether Palestinians' or anybody's (since I think it is safe to say that every last person on Earth _not_ in the top 5% of the most privileged is under attack) are:

Sheer numbers;
Growing ease of communication;
Commitment to a stable, sustainable, humanitarian solution.

I think the strategy for We the People should be

Absolute openness (combat secrecy with openness);
Ever-repeated commitment to non-violence;
An extended, open hand even to those with whom we disagree.

Of Course Social Security is on Obama's Hit List

2011-07-08T08:59:00.002-04:00

Liberal Obama Loyalists (LOLs — call them losers for short) are rushing to endorse Obama assurances that, contrary to press reports, Social Security and other Depression-era social safety net institutions are not in his sights. Do we really need to argue the case against Obama still? Obama is a Clinton Democrat. Social Security was on Clinton's hit list, it's on Obama's. Likewise, it is on the hit lists of Joseph Lieberman, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, Ben Nelson and most Democrats.

When are liberals and progressives going to figure this out? The Democratic strategy for 30 years has been to out-Republican the Republicans. The dividing line, to the extent that there is one, has been on social issues like abortion and gay rights — not on economic issues, not on military issues. Had Clinton not gotten embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, he would have moved aggressively to privatize Social Security, many of his 'liberal' economic advisers (like Robert Rubin) advocated.

Similarly, when Obama was (supposedly) tackling American health insurance issues, he excluded all single-payer advocates and most (perhaps all) organized labor representatives from the discussion. We now know that even when he was publicly supporting the public option during the campaign, we was in fact privately and personally opposed.

If Obama had been on the political stage 40 years ago, people would have marveled agape at a Black Democrat who was (and is) more conservative than Richard Nixon or most Republicans before George W. Bush. Obama is significantly more conservative than Nixon, George H. W. Bush and Reagan on a number of issues.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama hit on a winning strategy of enlisting the support of many disaffected liberals and progressives. Now, his lies are laid bare. He knows he cannot win out support again (except for delusional diehards who forgive or overlook his wrongdoing). Instead, Obama is moving to claim more conservative voters, which is where is natural sympathies lie anyway.

A Prediction

2011-06-28T22:26:00.002-04:00

In many parts of the world, large families are the norm. Development experts try to encourage smaller families with an eye to parents investing more in fewer children – better education, health care, conditions overall. It's a tough sell. Parents see a large family as insurance against infant and child mortality and also insurance in old age in societies where there is little or no social safety net.

In the next few decades, we will see large families become common again in the US. Democrats and Republicans alike advocate privatizing — or eliminating altogether — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. The more extreme want to eliminate public education (Dick and Lynne Cheney were among this number). The most extreme want only two public institutions — the military and domestic enforcement, largely to adjudicate contractual disputes.

A future without the social safety net on which Americans have come to depend. Large families will again serve as insurance against the infirmities of old age.

The Vestigial Human

2011-06-28T22:07:00.002-04:00

James Lovelock is the leading advocate of the "Gaia Hypothesis" — the view that the Earth is an organism (if I understand the notion at all) and behaves as one, with systems regulating the body.

Carry the metaphor further (of course, Lovelock does not just mean it as metaphor, but what the hell). . . . The human body has an appendix, a vestigial organ that does nothing; it's positioned too far along the digestive tract to be of any use. In other animals, it is still very important, but in humans it is useless. Still, it can become a site of infection — appendicitis. Infected and burst . . . peritonitis, infection of the abdominal cavity. Death may result.

Humans have become the vestigial organ of Gaia. And we have become infected, inflamed, risking the entire body.

What do we do with an inflamed appendix?

Bush Dirty Tricks

2011-06-16T04:14:00.009-04:00

James Risen of The New York Times reports today (Wednesday, 15 June 2011) on a former C.I.A. official's charges that the Bush administration sought to torpedo world-renowned Middle East scholar and blogger Juan Cole, professor at the University of Michigan and author of the blog Informed Comment. The story is notable for several reasons, including at least two the Times entirely omits or severely downplays.

According to Risen, Bush people were unhappy with a prominent academic voicing — and getting a wide hearing for — deep criticism of and opposition to the Iraq war. Former C.I.A. intelligence officer Glenn Carle, "a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole."

This could be a serious violation of American law; the C.I.A. is barred from domestic spying (though lets remember we have seen a lot of attacks on protections against domestic spying in recent years, including by Democrat and champion of 'transparency, Barack Obama). Had Carle leveled his charges while Bush while still in office and if Bush himself had played a role, such actions would arguably have risen to the level of impeachable offenses (among many Bush committed).

I find the story interesting for points Risen effectively ignores. In 2006, Yale University's departments of sociology and history both approved Cole for appointment. Cole's hiring was scuttled by the Yale administration. There is ample reason to believe the Israel Lobby went to bat against Cole. Certainly, right-wingers and Israel-idealogues were railing against him. There were reports of leading, wealthy Israel-idolaters and Yale donors were threatening to pull their funding. Any skeptical about the tactics of Israel extremists should recall wealthy Israel-supporter Michael Lucas's March 2011 threats against Manhattan's LGBT Community Center and the center's cancellation of a fundraiser by critics of Israeli policy . Or the Alan Dershowitz tirade against Norman Finkelstein taking a post at DePaul University. Or the campaign against the play I Am Rachel Corrie in New York. This list could go for pages (attacks on academics, cultural programs, journalists, human rights institutions, etc.)

The Yale connection is also interesting. I believe that the role of a very small number of very elite universities in securing American oligarchy is being downplayed (and the issue of American oligarchy is downplayed to begin with). George W. Bush went to Yale. Leading Israel fanatic Joseph Lieberman did, too. For many years, Yale was a key source for C.I.A. recruits. Dubya's daddy, President George H. W. Bush went to Yale and was head of the C.I.A. from 1976 to 1977. It is my contention (certainly not original) that universities like Yale serve as factories of "received opinion." That is, they provide the intellectual foundations (to the extent that the United States embraces intellect at all) for power. You need an excuse for bombing civilians in Iraq? Line someone up from Harvard. The history of leading schools barring or even ousting great minds that offered threatening views is very long. (To provide a little grist without milling, look for stories of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis and Harvard, Chomsky and M.I.T., Gabriel Kolko, William James and Nathaniel Shaler. Several public universities developed great departments in a variety of disciplines because the faculty could and were safely booted from private schools but not could not be from public ones without Bill of Rights protections.)

Some questions remain unanswered (and unasked by the Times). If the Bush administration sought dope on Juan Cole, was it asking for information already in the C.I.A.'s possession, in which case the C.I.A. was already doing domestic work? Or was it directing the C.I.A. to nose about domestically? How does this fit into a larger pattern of expansion of presidential power (an expansion Obama aggressively pursues, arguably more aggressively than Bush)? Will Glenn Carle be treated as Barack Obama has treated other whistleblowers — maliciously and ruthlessly?

All of this will earn me a charge of "conspiracy theorist." Have a made any such claim? No. I am describing the lines of force in American power relations.

_____________________________

SEE ALSO

Cole, Juan (2011). "Ret'd CIA Official Alleges Bush White House Used Agency to 'Get' Cole," Informed Comment, June 16, 2011. http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/retd-cia-official-alleges-bush-white-house-used-agency-to-get-cole.html

Drum, Kevin (2011). "Bush v. Cole," Mother Jones, Wed. June 15, 2011. http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/06/bush-v-cole

Elizabeth Warren, Forging Ahead in Calm Seas

2011-06-14T22:40:00.005-04:00

There is a beautiful piece of music composed by Felix Mendelssohn — Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, first performed in 1828 and inspired by both a Beethoven cantata of 1815 and poetry by Goethe. The contradiction in the title may be lost on most people today. In the age of sail, a calm sea was potentially disastrous. The Horse Latitudes may have been so named because horses were cast overboard when water supplies fell too low on a becalmed ship.

Elizabeth Warren strikes me as a seafarer making headway in a calm sea. There is plenty of bluster in Washington but little if any progress on much of anything. Warren is a real force opposed by Obama and Republicans alike. Yet she perseveres.

I find Elizabeth Warren a particularly interesting phenomenon. In some respects, she reminds me of Brooksley Born — someone with great insight and catching the entrenched powers unprepared. Warren is a very rare breed at Harvard Law School, someone who did not go to the big five Elite God-Blessed Law Schools. When Elena Kagan was named (pathetically predictably) by Obama to the Supreme Court, there was some comment that only Harvard and Yale would now be represented among the justices. Warren went to Rutgers. Obama has been a hardcore Harvard lackey in many, even most, of his appointments.

This is not a trivial observation about "old school ties." The issue is one of concentration of power. A particular school affiliation is only a symptom. As more and more are noting with greater and greater frequency, a tiny percentage of Americans are benefitting at the expense of the vast majority. This is reflected in the coddling of Wall Street at the expense of the entire country.

In the case of Obama specifically, there is a question of psychology. He shares with the president he most resembles, Bill Clinton, the experience of being abandoned by a parent. In Obama's case, from the sound of it, he was completely abandoned by one parent, his father, and substantially abandoned by the other. He demonstrates a pattern of behavior that psychologists likely understand — a desperate need to please power figures. But this is just armchair psychologizing.

More important is a problem evident in the growing pattern of political decision-making that isn't just indifferent to the welfare of the overwhelming majority, but is directly repugnant to it. A huge percentage of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the United States systematically disregard existing law (as Obama has now in Libya or in his treatment of Bradley Manning, among others, or as the Supreme Court did in Citizens United or in Bush v Gore). This huge percentage also disregards the general welfare — and the longterm wellbeing of the United States — to serve a tiny fraction of Americans, arguably numbering no more than 10,000, and perhaps far fewer than that.

The three branches of the US government, under the Constitution providing checks and balances with respect to one another, are instead a collective agency capture by American Oligarchy. The system of checks and balances exists today only in the petty bickering between two very similar pseudo-parties. Otherwise, it is absent. So what are We the People to do when (1) the entire government is failing to serve our interests and (2) that same government has very effectively ensured its longevity and continued capacity to serve those interests it does prize?

This is not idle rhetoric, nor is it a view isolated to the left (as it was in the past). There is a growing, very respectable literature on the decline or failure of American democracy. It includes scholars like Sheldon Wolin, Larry Bartels, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman. And that's just four.

Elizabeth Warren has sailed on through American doldrums. Why, I don't know.

As With Bailout, So With Social Security

2011-03-17T09:48:00.002-04:00

Recall that the first attempt to bailout banks in September 2008 failed in Congress after a deluge of calls from voters in opposition. Then Congress rallied. After all, if 95% of members support policy X, how can you play one off against another?

The same is happening now. The oligarchs have ruled against Social Security. They know they will never need it, but in time there will be no one left to raise taxes on but the rich, so in time, if social programs are to be preserved, the rich will have to pay a share more closely representing the degree to which they disproportionately benefit in out society.

The solution is to kill social programs in their entirety, let the poor and middle classes suffer. Why? Congress and every president since Reagan have demonstrated repeatedly that they place a near-exclusive priority on the interests of the wealthiest (not just to the exclusion of others, but at the expense of others).

The political economist Carles Boix has argued that democracy thrives when the privileged perceive that the masses cannot vote away the wealth of those privileged. So countries with diverse and liquid assets like the U.S. can tolerate democracy. I suggest that the United States is proving Boix's argument incomplete. The rich are saying, again and again, "No!" to democracy.

It may be no more complicated than this: In a society where a huge majority show no interest in current events, politics, economics, justice, truth, government, why should power-brokers deal with democracy when they can just as easily — or more easily, given the population's passivity — deal without?

Question: What Is the Biggest Problem with American Democracy?

2011-01-01T10:13:00.004-05:00

This has been answered very nicely by Paul Krugman, Michael Kinsley, James K. Galbraith and many others on the liberal and progressive end of the spectrum. The US is already a de facto oligarchy. Clinton, Bush and now Obama have worked diligently to formalize American Oligarchy, with the unalloyed support of Wall Street and a huge percentage of corporate boards, Democrats, Republicans and American super-rich.

I emphasize that this issue has been expressly raised by many who are far less left-leaning than I am.

It's a possibly-encouraging feature of American democracy that some who could easily ride the wave among fellow oligarchs are vocally opposed to the decline (among them, George Soros).

By contrast, a deeply discouraging feature is the absolute failure of the vast majority of American journalists to do anything even remotely resembling the work they assert they do. Here is London Times editor Robert Lowe in 1851:

The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation... The Press lives by disclosures... For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences – to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice and oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgment of the world.

Similar thoughts have been voiced by H. L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Studs Terkel, and others. But today, we hear prominent members of the American news establishment explicitly reject this journalistic duty. The torrent of condemnation of and vile misreporting on Julian Assange is a perfect example of this (by, among others, the New York Times, including 'star reporter' John Burns).

Equally discouraging is the deeply delusional state of the American people. Economist Ken Rogoff was recently on Charlie Rose (Rose usually dismally middle-of-the-road to conservative). In response to a question on why Americans support the Republican campaign to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, Rogoff — absolutely on-target — said something to the effect, "Because everyone expects to be rich." I've heard this on the street myself — people with no prospects of any kind asserting with total confidence that they are going to win the lottery. I heard this twenty years ago in Massachusetts when it was reported, during widespread opposition to a modest tax increase proposal, that many lottery ticket buyers spent more on the lottery each year than they paid in their state taxes. (Dollar for dollar, which do you think returned more value to them? Hint: Expected gain on a one dollar lottery ticket is less than a penny.)

The US may very well have the most ill-informed, poorly-educated, deluded population of any country on Earth. (But China seems determined to best us on that count.)

This American Dream

2010-08-27T15:42:00.004-04:00

James Kwak and Simon Johnson have parallel essays commenting on Ariana Huffington's new book, Third World America.

The title alone reminds me of what used to be said of the United Kingdom — that it was the world's wealthiest Third World country. (I remember this from the 1980s, but I don't know when it began or whether people still speak of the UK so.) Paul Krugman, speaking with Eliot Spitzer and Bill Maher on HBO in September, 2009, effectively said the US is going the way of a Third World country:

Sometimes I wake up and think I'm in a Third World country.... The American Dream is not totally dead, but it's dying pretty fast."

In his essay, James Kwak notes a couple of nice quotations Huffington pulls from Tocqueville's Democracy in America, including what struck him as "the general equality of condition among the people."

Of course, Tocqueville was missing one group — the slaves. Hardly a minor oversight. Neither was he particularly concerned with the denial to women of the vote or the right to own property. But these can be "controlled for" in a comparison of American ages.

It would be interesting to gauge at what time in American history wealth was most unequally (and at what time most equally) distributed.

If you just confine yourselves to people who were allowed to own property and allowed to vote (that is, people treated substantially equally in law), then at what time were people most unequal.

The disparities in distribution today, if not the greatest ever, must be pretty close — and getting closer. I think the following position can reasonably (and forcefully) be made:

For thirty years, since the Reagan administration, formal and substantive democracy have been under attack in the United States. Protections for the individual, especially the less advantaged "commoner" (for want of better expression) have been deliberately worn down. The government, especially the executive branch, has steadily and successfully sought more power. Obama has not departed from the pattern from Reagan through to Bush in the slightest. Indeed, government intrusions into the lives of Americans have accelerated under Obama. Far from having a tax and social policy aimed at promoting greater equality, we have seen seen the US government repeatedly act to redistribute wealth from the middle class up to the wealthiest Americans. We have an increasingly wealthy Congress. Those members who do not start among the wealthiest do whatever they can to join — witness Charlie Rangel's crimes.

Above all, the culture of separation is being institutionalized. Wealthy versus The Rest of Us. And government and corporate leaders show almost no concern about this at all. Indeed, they appear, in large measure, to be endorsing the two-state America.

The question may now be: Just how un-democratic will the US become?

Coddling Conservatives

2010-08-27T07:54:00.004-04:00

Dean Baker speculates about the obviously different treatment of op-ed essayists at The New York Times, namely the welcome for the often-wrong David Brooks versus Paul Krugman or Bob Herbert. Baker's points can be generalized to the mainstream media and politics.

The obvious question is: When do 'mistakes' rise to something more serious? On a host of issues, Brooks has been corrected again and again, by people like me and by people with infinitely more public presence. Yet he has frequently gone on to repeat [i]exactly[/i] that on which he was corrected. So is he just lying for propaganda purposes?

Brooks does this on international issues, economics, politics — you name it. Unlike a Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, Brooks is more decorous in his misrepresentations (lies) — as is the New York Times generally.

Dean Baker is quite right, but he poses his case rhetorically, neither raising nor answering another obvious question: Given that liberals would indeed be treated as he describes and given that conservatives get just the opposite treatment, why is this the case? (There's a perfectly good reason for Baker to write so — we all know the answers!)

There is a parallel case with Barack Obama. Obama has coddled conservatives like Alan Simpson. He has packed his team with the likes of Geithner, Bernanke, Summers. He has systematically excluded liberals from discussions on labor, financial reform, education and health care. Currently, he is hunting for an excuse to [i]not[/i] nominate Elizabeth Warren.

The most simple — and plausible — explanation is both cases is that the executives [i]agree[/i] with their conservatives. Times editors agree with Brooks or Douthat (the far dimmer Brooks clone). Obama agrees with Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, Rubin — despite his vague and infrequent gestures in the direction of liberals and progressives.

What concrete evidence we do have confirms this. The Times has pretty clearly joined the Clinton-style 'moderates' against social security. It has been dragged into a tiny handful of stories revealing Israeli crimes, but largely continues to ignore them. It has repeatedly misrepresented issues of housing, banking, etc. Former reporters like Chris Hedges, John Hess, Sydney Schanberg have provided first-hand accounts.

And a handful of inside-reports on Obama — from people who have been in touch recently (e.g., Rashid Khalidi) and in the past (e.g., Penn professor Adolf Reed, Jr.) — confirm the same with the administration of President Zero.

The process of critics of the Times or Obama can be treated as a scientific one. We have a set of observations of consistent behavior. What explains it? What explains the near-total absence of Palestinians from the op-ed pages of the Times or the Post but the regular and frequent appearance of Israelis and their supporters? What explains the total absence of single-payer advocates from Obama discussions on health care reform? What explains the continued employment of Timothy Geithner or Alan Simpson but the quick abandonment of Charles Freeman? One or two isolated cases would allow endless speculation. The uninterrupted pattern of the Obama administration or The New York Times leaves far less room for interpretation.

Democracy's End

2010-08-21T11:54:00.004-04:00

Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss has some comments on a current Ethan Bronner story in The New York Times. Weiss notes Bronner's effective recognition of the death of the Two State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If I read Weiss correctly, he thinks it may portend the end of the Jewish State. I think it may mark an alternative, depending on how wedded Israelis and their American champions are to Democracy. Israelis and Americans are facing, largely independently, a parallel choice between preserving two increasingly incompatible Articles of National Faith. In Israel's case, they are the notions of Democracy and Jewish Statehood (which were arguably incompatible from the start, emphasis on arguably — not necessarily in my view). In the case of the US, the two are Democracy and (unlimited acquisition of) Wealth (termed free enterprise, private property — it has several names).

If the US and Israel are not already at a Moment of Truth (drumroll), they soon will be. The Jewish State may be finished, or — if Americans and Israelis choose to junk some other cherished notion — it may continue in radically altered form.

The obvious alternative to be junked is democracy. My view is that it will be the democracy that is dumped — not explicitly, but in substance and with a widespread, unstated recognition that this is what is happening.

There are calls in the Knesset for a more systematic denial of rights to Palestinians, but this has been true for some time. Likewise, there is a systematic denial of equal rights to non-Jews in Israel. The vast majority of non-Jews are Palestinian, so that systematic denial does the work, not just of latent racism, but of preserving the "Jewish character" of the Jewish state.

A further emphasis on protecting "Jewish character" to resolve the tension between a Two State Solution and Jewish Statehood will also bring denials of democracy to Jews in Israel. This, too, is happening with the grossly disproportionate power of the religious right. Israel is also seeing some evidence of liberal-intellectual flight.

How is the de-democratization of Israel to be managed in The World's Greatest Democracy? A good deal of Orwellian linguistic construction aided by the non-quite-coincidental de-democratization of the United States. Economists, first on the left and now increasingly among liberals, are noting this. And progressives generally have been warning of this since the Reagan years, when the "Danger of Too Much Democracy" was first attacked with malice aforethought.

In an interview with Bill Maher, Paul Krugman said, "The American Dream isn't dead, but it's dying pretty fast." Dean Baker has an essay on the service Congress renders to Wall Street and corporate America — not to us. Essential to Democracy are social mobility and some ideal of socio-economic equality serving as a goal. Both are near-dead in the US. Our politicians are becoming a political class. They become wealthier, use their elected positions to ensure or promote their own wealth and, if they leave office, go to work for precisely the companies they regulated (or didn't) through legislation. Their children take office after they leave. If we haven't already, when will we see a third-generation Kennedy take office — or a Murkowsi, Paul, Cuomo, Bush . . . ?

Elections are becoming near-irrelevant in the US. The great beacon of Change and Hope — Obama — has proved to be anything but, indeed almost the opposite. Who could imagine that Obama would not just fail to address Bush crimes, but actually further some of Bush's worst?

The decline of democracy in the US — coupled crucially with Orwellian language to perpetuate the Myth of Democracy — will make it easier for Israel-idealogues in the US to maintain the pretense that Israel is a democracy.

The irony in Israel's case is that a profound change in Judaism itself may be a consequence. If Judaism is identified with the Jewish State (as it is, above all by conservatives), then as Israel becomes more right-wing, less democratic and more discriminatory, Judaism will, sadly and possibly tragically, be also so identified. Liberal Jews will seek religious solace elsewhere, some abandoning Judaism, others seeking to create a true, liberal Jewish faith. Judaism will evolve in a way exactly counter to, and as a consequence of, what conservatives intend.

What will happen in the US is anybody's guess. Legal institution of oligarchy? Perhaps that is already happening with the formal protections granted Wall Street and corporate profiteering.

Violent Fence-Sitters and Villainsin the Field of American Racism

2010-08-19T22:54:00.007-04:00

Salon has a nice, but not quite complete, essay by Alex Pareene on the Heroes and Villains of the ill-named (but very deliberately named, with malice aforethought) "Ground Zero Mosque" furore.

I have my own take on the villains especially. Pareene rightly names as heroes Jerrold Nadler, Michael Bloomberg, Al Franken, Russ Feingold, Sherrod Brown, Joe Sestak, Ted Olson, Grover Norquist. At least three people there with whom I almost never agree, but on this, they are great. People of Principle.

Barack Obama leads the pack of violent fence-sitters — prominent individuals with neither the decency nor courage to do what justice and morality demand. Also in this pack are Kirsten Gillibrand, David Paterson, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and on and on. They are the silent or near-silent go-along-to-get-along types who in some ways do more damage than the unalloyed bigots like Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Pamela Geller and Abe Foxman. The violent fence-sitters are the ones who enable huge numbers to also sit on the sidelines or, worse, to edge toward a bigoted stance that in some part they know is wrong.

As for Anthony Weiner and Charles Schumer, they are long-standing, pseudo-respectable crypto-racists. Their violent support for Israel has forced their intellectual machinery into a hatred of Arabs and Muslims they would otherwise reject wholeheartedly.

They are examples of the peculiar elasticity of the Web of Belief (as philosopher Willard van Orman Quine called it). That is, if a person is sufficiently devoted to one point, he or she is quite capable of adjusting whatever else needs adjusting to accommodate that point.

Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Pamela Geller, Joseph Lieberman — They are true racists to the core. Gingrich, Palin and Giuliani believe in the innate supremacy of white Christians; Geller and Lieberman believe the same of Jews. Their mental machinery is the same in form as that of the Nazis circa 1937. (And I mean that quite seriously, with all that it implies. They are people who would commit genocide if they thought the world would tolerate it today.)

By contrast, Schumer and Wiener are Adjusted Bigots. Their bigotry is the illogical, irrational consequence of a desperate need to maintain the Sanctity of Israel over all other things. Unlike the Gingriches or Gellers, they do not begin with a racist premise; they arrive at racist conclusion.

The web of belief need not be so elastic. Jerrold Nadler is an ardent supporter of Israel. Unlike Schumer or Wiener, he is also a defender of the Rights of American Muslims. Likewise, Michael Bloomberg, whom I usually loathe. He has been outstanding on this.

All that said, Salon should add to the list of Heroes both Charlie Rangel, who may be trying to recover some moral high ground, and Al Franken, who has repeatedly surprised me as one of the most intelligent people in Congress in recent decades.

My Letter to Ross Douthat

2010-08-18T19:57:00.001-04:00

Sent Wednesday, 18 August, after I suffered through the idiocy of Ross Douthat on PBS's NewsHour, hosted by the even more racist Jim Lehrer:

Mr. Douthat:

You're a master of the New York Times art of sounding reasonable while advocating bigotry.

Where is your condemnation of Pamela Geller, who profits by the most unambiguously racist diatribes? Where is your condemnation of the Israeli desecration of a Muslim cemetery (Mamilla) in Jerusalem, ostensibly for purposes of building a "Museum of Tolerance"?

You need to confront some realities about yourself. You're a racist.

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

Ross Douthat — Just Another New York Times Racist

2010-08-16T08:22:00.004-04:00

Ross Douthat, like Thomas Friedman or David Brooks, is a New York Times artist — a master of dressing viciousness, bigotry and just raw stupidity in 'delicate' language. The test of a Douthat (or Brooks or Friedman) essay is to replace the targeted ethnic group with the name of another. As yourself then how you react to his "reasonable" blanket assertions.

Today, Douthat weighs in — with pathetic predictability — on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. How a person names the proposed development is the first indicator of where he or she falls in the spectrum of American bigotry. Douthat is marginally less awful than the loudest bigots on the Islamic cultural center. He's roughly in the Abe Foxman/ADL camp. Also predictable for Douthat, who spends a good deal of time trying such up to perceived power.

We could call this Harvard-Times Bigotry. It is the kind of bigotry that will lead a Harvard president (Larry Summers) to condemn as anti-Semitic calls for divestment from Israel but remain silent (Drew Gilpin Faust) on a Israeli professor's (Martin Kramer's) explicit call for genocide against the Palestinians. It is what allows the Times to equivocate on an Islamic cultural center while supporting Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Harvard-Times Bigotry takes a specific form. It begins with a token 'recognition' of the weaknesses of the privileged oppressor. So Israeli suffers from an "excessive" (but "understandable") obsession with self-defense. Americans enjoy the "wonderful tradition" of democracy and tolerance mixed with the "social norms" of Anglo-Saxons.

Douthat can't even get his history right — cultural or even simple, basic factual.

"... where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims." Really?! I thought the Constitution expressly stipulates a birth requirement for the American presidency.

That's just one example of the shallow apologies Ross Douthat offers for American racism and bigotry. By doing so, he betrays himself as one of those bigots.

Douthat is the second person I've seen refer to American "nativism". (See also Robert Schlesinger in US News & World Report." We can translate "nativism" to what it really means in 2010 America — racism. Racism. And Ross Douthat is unambiguously (though he tries to mask it) defending — indeed, advocating, racism.

Douthat differs from Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich only by toning down sweeping, unfounded assertions about Islam and Muslims.

We know — conclusively — how the Times would respond of such sweeping claims were made about Jews and Judaism. Such claims are made with regard to Israel's war crimes in Occupied Palestine, something Douthat has never and will never critique or criticize, when some condemn all Jews for the crimes of one state.

Likewise, the Times would condemn – probably bar — blanket condemnation of Christians and Christianity, a condemnation many might find quite reasonable given the past 1000 years of intolerance and war in most Christian nations.

So why is Douthat allowed to commit exactly the vile wrongs that would rightly be damned if committed against any group other than Muslims and Islam?

Young Friedmanstein

2010-08-13T14:00:00.003-04:00

Glenn Greenwald has a piece in Salon and Jonathan Schwarz in A Tiny Revolution on Jeffrey Goldberg's newest entry in the bid for More War — War with Iran.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a young Thomas Friedman, with shades of Judy Miller (shades shared by Friedman 30 years ago, when he was coming up).

Simmering out of sight is plenty of plausibility-evidence to undermine Goldberg's claims (not that any such evidence will make any difference to the mainstream). For one thing, Iran is not suicidal. They know how an attack on Israel would go — massive Israeli (and almost certainly American) retaliation, truly massive, as in Dresden-Hiroshima massive.

Second, if American and Israeli government and mainstream claims are to be believed (a very big "if"), then Iran is doing perfectly well needling Israel via Hamas and Hezbollah. Why go overt when you can stay covert and maintain 'plausible deniability'?

Ultimately, the question regarding Goldbergs (and Netanyahus, Cheneys, etc.) is, Why? Do they really think Iran is a threat? My guess is that they do. They are so bigoted, such thoroughly violent true believers, that they really do believe that even purely verbal criticism constitutes a physical attack on Israel.

That raises the question: After Iran, then what? Do Goldberg and Company believe that, with the Iranians gone, the Palestinians will just disappear? Or that Israel will then be able to annex southern Lebanon with all its water resources? Or take the east bank of the Jordan River? Or retake the Sinai?

Israel and its 'allies' seem to proceed with on the premise that any and every war is just a natural prelude to the next war. (Obama shows no sign of thinking all that differently.)

So after Iraq, ramp up Afghanistan. Then Iran. Then . . . ? Is the monster unstoppable?

American Workers — Screwed.

2010-08-09T14:53:00.002-04:00

I posted the following comments on the website of NPR's Takeaway:

If I remember correctly, Lachman Achuthan now believes that the US is now bound to see a double-dip recession. There's no way around it.

The temp workforce has steadily grown for at least 20 years. Temps enjoy _no_ safety net. When they lose their jobs, they go straight for welfare, food pantries, etc. They do not qualify for unemployment compensation.

I'm not strictly a temp — I'm a freelancer, and I've been one for twenty years. Freelancers are effectively specialized temps. Both temps and freelancers fall under the general category of contractual workerse. Editors in a variety of media, designers, creatives of many kinds, are often temps. Their industries are seasonal; work is project-based and thus highly variable. Moreover, many companies have laid off people and then just brought those very people back as freelancers or temps.

Wages in the freelance industries have been going down for ten years. They peaked in the late 90s and 2000. In New York after 9/11, things just fell apart and have never fully recovered.

Now with the prolonged, severe downturn, I'm seeing pay decline to where it was 20 years ago. I know _extremely_ experienced people — award-winning editors, designers, animators — take jobs at levels they haven't accepted since they were in the 20s. (These are people in the 40s.)

So, consider any measure of the quality and quantity of work in the 'standard' on-staff work environments, and you can be confident things are _worse_ for freelance and temp workers.

Legal protections for temps and freelancers are often non-existent. Discrimination (especially on the basis of age) is rampant.

A growing problem centers on the unpaid or very low paid "internship." Companies seeking to cut costs turn a paid position into an unpaid internship. The federal and a few state governments (including New York's) are beginning to pay attention to this, but again, there is remarkably little protection for contractual workers.

If/when jobs pick up for temps, it will still be in the context of a prolonged decline in conditions for American workers that began in the Reagan years. Americans worker longer and for fewer benefits than any others in the G8 (with the likely exception of Russia — hardly an encouraging benchmark). Social mobility in the US is the lowest of any leading industrial economy — much much lower than in the countries of Western Europe. There is growing talk in the Obama administration and in Congress of raising the retirement age to 70. (It was already raised to 67. By contrast, France recently angered citizens by raising its retirement age . . . from 60 to 62.)

In the 1950s, economists were concerned about a future workforce facing too much time on its hands, once retirement was lowered to 55, or less, and work weeks were shorter. Exactly the opposite has occurred. Americans are more productive, more hardworking, and we are rewarded ever less.

New York Times Reports on Anti-Muslim BigotryWith NO Mention of Bigotry

2010-08-08T07:33:00.007-04:00

Laurie Goodstein reports in today's New York Times (Sunday, 8 August 2010) of opposition to mosques anywhere and everywhere across the US. The story is amazing for the total absence of keywords like "bigotry," "discrimination," "intolerance," "racism," etc.

As the character of Cromwell says in A Man for All Seasons, "This silence speaks." Why does the Times studiously avoid use of certain words with regard to Muslims — words it would absolutely use in any other comparable instance involving any other ethnic group?

My email to Laurie Goodstein this morning:

Dear Ms. Goodstein:

How is it that a story on what certainly seems to be widespread American bigotry and intolerance includes not one use of any of the words that would normally be used: bigotry, intolerance, racism, discrimination, etc.

The closest your story comes is "anti-immigrant". But is transparently obvious that the hostility to mosques _anywhere_ is not about immigrants. The lower Manhattan center is being advocated by Americans, not immigrants.

Do you think a story on hostility or outright (often violent) opposition to a synagogue _could_ be written without raising the issue of anti-Semitism?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

And my letter to Arthur Brisbane, the new Times "Public Editor."

Dear Mr. Brisbane:

I wonder what goes on in the heads of Times editors, especially on hot-button topics where the Times engages in linguistic contortionism to do ... something. The use of the word "torture" to describe American war crimes (note my use of words) is a good example.

Today's Times provides another example — one for textbooks — Laurie Goodstein's report on opposition to mosques across the US.

In New York City, there have been threats of violence, including _bombing_, against mosque projects — not just the project near the World Trade Center, but at ones on Staten Island (killed by opponents) and another in Brooklyn (see NYT, June 10: "Heated Opposition to Proposed Mosque" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/nyregion/11mosque.html )

Remarkably, Laurie Goodstein makes no mention at all of threats of physical violence — ones that would be called terrorism were they al Qaeda threats against Americans (or Arab threats of any kinds against any Westerner).

Equally remarkably, Laurie Goodstein makes no mention whatsoever of bigotry, discrimination, racism, intolerance....

Can you imagine a story on repeated, often threatening opposition to synagogues that would _not_ raise the issue of anti-Semitism?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

College Degrees Evaporate in the US

2010-08-07T08:04:00.002-04:00

Bob Herbert writes to lament the decline of the US on the world stage of higher education. The decline is just a part of a larger anti-intellectualism in the US.

If there is no good example of learning and inquiry in the halls of power and prestige (on Wall Street, in Washington, in the idolized entertainment fields), is it any surprise that the US is in freefall on higher education?

The US has a government and a news-media system that actively opposes open-mindedness, healthy criticism and skepticism, inquiry — all while publicly endorsing all of these, especially while annihilating whole countries "for their own good." Look at the widespread condemnation of Wikileaks, which found a niche precisely because the US news media has not been doing what it claims.

Obama — supposed champion of change — appoints only Harvard and Yale grads, hardly institutions worthy of admiration after twenty years of deplorable economic analysis, criminal graduates fomenting wars, etc. Obama is more conservative than Bush on whistleblowers. He was dragged kicking and screaming into releasing documents that he had previously promised to make public.

Where is the diversity of intellectual analysis, inquiry, challenge? It is utterly utterly absent from the American public arena. Progressives are systematically excluded from the mainstream media with only a tiny and fairly tame representation at MSNBC and a couple of others. PBS killed NOW and has offered no replacement for Bill Moyers, who was absolutely the most incisive of regular analysts of current events and any major media outlet.

A college degree is valuable in the US only for purposes of getting a job. On any other count, Americans — beginning at the *top* — oppose the values higher education is supposed to foster.

What "On" the Media Really Means

2010-08-07T07:21:00.002-04:00

New York's WNYC runs a news analysis program, On the Media, at the obscure hour of 7 in the morning . . . on Saturday — bound to get a lot of listeners then.

This morning, August 7th, On the Media had Shane Harris of The Washingtonian to prate about Wikileaks, whistleblowing and Obama's Bushian hostility to openness, transparency, democracy, rights, etc. — all the things that he endorsed during his 2008 campaign.

Below, my criticism, directly delivered to On the Media.

Pretty sad excuse for analysis on Obama and leaks, On the Media.

You utterly fail to raise key points:

1. Wikileaks says, with evidence, that it DID approach the Obama administration and Obama dismissed them.

2. No mention that there has been a steady attack on FOIA for 20 years and that Obama has joined Bush in attacking FOIA.

3. You failed to mention that by both liberal and libertarian thinking (i.e., excepting only so-called moderates and conservatives), the prevailing view is that information held by OUR government is OUR information. Pure right.

4. You clearly, but tacitly, buy into the mainstream media is right dogma. There would have been no _market_ for Wikileaks if not for the glaring, repeated, and gross failures of the New York Times, NPR, CNN and others. The Times, for example, has repeatedly buried stories until it was too late for them to have any relevant and _preventive_ effect. NPR is _worse_ -- by a long margin. And CNN -- under the 'exalted' Walter Isaacson _allowed_ the Pentagon to place what in effect were propagandists in its newsroom.

Outrageous that On the Media had not the courage or even the decency to dig any further than the shallow pandering Shane Harris.

Pathetic.

Consistent Delusions, Necessary Illusions

2010-07-27T00:49:00.004-04:00

Philip Weiss, of the blog Mondoweiss, comments on the near-total absence of reporting or commentary on the Israeli murder of 19-year-old American-Turk Furkan Dogan on the Gaza flotilla in May. The memory-holing of Furkan Dogan by American mythologists at The New York Times, CNN, NPR and others is another in a long line of deliberately forgotten Israeli attacks on Americans.

The murder of Rachel Corrie received little but dismissal — or even contempt — until the play My Name is Rachel Corrie, first, proved to be excellent and moving, and, second, bigots in New York City and elsewhere tried to get the play effectively banned. Then some of the fence-sitting variety of bigots raised some concerns about censorship.

The treatment of — or indifference to — Furkan Dogan is a predictable consequence of the same ‘thinking’ that ‘justifies’ giving 10 times as much coverage to Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks as to Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks.

Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR ‘ombudsman’ (read, “Defender of the Faith”), exemplified American bigotry when he expressly defended NPR’s grossly skewed coverage on the grounds that Israeli deaths are “more newsworthy”. More astonishingly yet, he stated explicitly that he felt that NPR and American media treated Palestinians more favorably than Israelis. One has to be genuinely delusional to believe that US mainstream coverage is skewed in favor of the Palestinians. There is absolutely no measure on which that could be rationally concluded.

It is for reasons like this that Chomsky and others have noted that the US steadfastly refuses to offer a formal definition of “terrorism”. Any reasonable, plausible definition would undoubtedly sweep up Israeli and American crimes. That leaves glaringly unbalanced accounts like that of Michael Isikoff of Newsweek who offered an account on which American Christians and Jews, strictly as a matter of language, could not be terrorists.

Dogma must be circular. By its very nature it lacks sufficient rational or factual support. Thus it must rely on some internal framework to justify itself. And that framework must justify dismissal of inconvenient facts. From the delusional perspective of editors at CNN or The New York Times or NPR, it really is perfectly reasonable to ignore Furkan Dogan or Rachel Corrie or Emily Henochowicz or any of the other westerners injured or murdered by Israeli terrorists.

The Power of Movies, Even Crappy Ones

2010-07-24T09:03:00.009-04:00

Salon has an essay, or slideshow, summarizing some filmmakers' memorable moments at the movies, in the audience. At first I was stumped.

I'm sad to say that this essay chronicles a really sorry set of movie experiences. The letter writers in this comments section are better and more moving. Dances with Wolves??? Bill and Ted? (Actually, I know I'm wrong on this . . .)

Surely, to be a moving movie experience, the movie itself must have some semblance of quality — of some kind . . . any kind. All with moments, The Moments, that say, "Remember this. . . ."

I saw Lawrence of Arabia on a 75mm screen in Boston -- jaw dropping, and I had already seen the film several times, but never appreciated the monumental cinematography until I saw it on a big screen.

Star Wars — saw it at age 12 and knowing from the first commercial that I saw (with R2D2 zapped and falling forward) that it was going to be great, something the studio was too stupid and money-grubbing to know. We had to travel 20 miles to see it because it was expected to fail at the box office.

Alien. The first film that truly terrified me.

Terms of Endearment. Not a great film, so maybe my opening claim is just wrong. I was with a girl I liked a lot. When the nurse wakes Jeff Daniels to say "She's gone" I was shocked: "What?" — as Tsar Nicholas supposedly on hearing that he and his family were to be executed.

Au Revoir les Enfants, Celebration (Festen), Wild Strawberries, The Searchers, Unforgiven, Crimes and Misdemeanor, Full Metal Jacket, Spartacus — my list is long. Each with the moments, The Moment, that says, "Now. . . . Remember this . . . ."

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

This is the moment.
The power of movies.

Observations

2010-07-14T08:12:00.006-04:00

The Shape of Things to Come — some expressions just have overwhelming force (for me, anyway), and this one from H.G. Wells has moved me since I was a kid. Some writers have a gift for this, not always matched in the body of the work that follows. You see the same thing in music. Compare how Beethoven follows up the Da Da Da Duhhhh at the start of his Fifth Symphony with the music most widely known for its use in Kubrick's movie 2001 — Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra. Beethoven sustains it, Strauss doesn't.

Same thing in politics. Reagan, regardless of our opinions of him (I despise him — the conspiring with the Iranians to undermine Carter was treason) . . . Reagan sustained it. Obama has failed utterly, and not because of the appalling situation he inherited (and he inherited the worst situation of any president since FDR — worse for Obama, with two wars). Obama hasn't even shown an inclination to try to sustain what he generated during the campaign.

And that, in no obvious way at all, brings me (and probably only me) back to what is to come — The Shape of Things to Come. . . . Beats me. I have no idea. But I'm a pessimist, a radical pessimist. Some observations on our current state that leave me feeling bleak about our future:

Republicans are willing to torpedo the economy for mere political gain.
The only thing setting the Democrats apart is that they are incapable of action
Obama failed utterly at Copenhagen to advance any environmental agenda, even the half-hearted one he tentatively advocated.
American politicians are unwilling or unable to do what politicians might be able to do to improve the economy but
These same politicians are both willing and able to advance the cause of the wealthiest Americans (among whose number these politicians increasingly count themselves).
The vast majority of the very wealthy show, not only indifference to the well-being of the far less fortunate majority, but outright hostility to it.
The US has 'progressed' from (a) an ethos that embraced some (a very little some) redistribution of wealth from the richest to the poorer to (b) the Reagan era dogma of criminalizing poverty and allowing the rich to benefit without limit must benefit the poorer to (c) Bush era faith that the poorer just don't matter at all to (d) the current credo of criminalizing lack of wealth and redistributing wealth from the lower classes to the rich.
In other words, the US is rapidly embracing a neo-Aristocratic model — plutarchy.
After years of the US pressing Europe to stop providing a model of social and civic awareness that undermines American dogma, right-wing European governments are capitalizing on fiscal woes to destroy decades-old social programs.
The world as a whole is making little if any progress on environmental issues.
News on environmental issues continues to get worse. To put it another way, projections on many environmental issues, like global warming, have repeatedly proved to be too optimistic.

More soon.

Interns — The New Indentured Servants

2010-07-02T22:56:00.002-04:00

The New York Times has a good essay on the problems facing college students seeking summer internships. Good as it is, the piece only addresses part of the problem.

There is another dimension to the internship problem — non-student workers who are taking internships, often entirely unpaid, because they cannot find any paid work. I have seen jobs listed as \"internships\" that _require_ extensive experience, 40 hours per week (or more), on-site, with not even a stipend for lunch. Unscrupulous, unethical employers are using the term \"intern\" to justify what is effectively indentured servitude. At least a couple of specialty job listing sites I know have stopped accepting listings for internships because of employer abuse.

All this takes places in a terrible labor market after years of growing employer dependence on contractual or temporary workers who receive no benefits or job security.

Without organized intervention (by government or organized labor) at least some of these trends will persist even once the economy improves (if it does).

Survivor Oil Spill!

2010-06-01T22:04:00.002-04:00

Coming Soon . . .

Survivor Oil Spill!
Hot Hip Young Things Oil Up for the Environment and Big Money!
Get Slick!

Meaning and Identity [in progress]

2010-06-01T14:03:00.005-04:00

I'm beginning this without looking at any of the philosophy books I studied poorly when I was a sad excuse for a grad student in philosophy. We understand intuitively that our outlook on things, our "world view" (Weltanschauung — I remember that much, poorly), affects how we receive the world. Philosophers, as far as I know, still struggle with how our perception of things is related to the things themselves (if they even take those things to exist).

We don't need to get that involved. My interest is political disagreement, the bitter kind. I'm prompted now by what I take to be Israeli war crimes in their attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. My guess is that there are several kinds of apologist for or supporter of the Israeli action:

Those largely ignorant of the facts, for any number of reasons and regardless of what philosophers my worry about with the term "fact".
Those who are well-informed, and consciously, aggressively pro-Israel. I include in this number people like Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman — people who I think are racist war criminals. A related but different set that is much like this from a moral standpoint includes those well-informed on the facts but too self-serving or politically craven to stand up for principle.
And those who are reasonably well-informed and genuinely dumbfounded by the worldwide anger over Israel's actions.

From the standpoint of political action and especially prosecution, group 2 is important. With the related set of self-serving creatures I describe, this set accounts for most politicians and corporate executives. These are the people who place self-interest over all concerns of decency or morality. These are the people who also are well-aware of environmental issues, the risks of smoking, the details of bad policy, but who pursue that bad policy because they make money that way or because they get a kick out of it or because they're sociopaths (like Avigdor Lieberman).

Group 2 consists in ol'-fashioned criminals, of varying degrees of culpability. We have a pretty good idea of how to deal with this lot, when (emphasis on when) we (The People) have the power and means to deal with them. So we dealt, largely, with the architects of Nazi war crimes. The Germans lost, making it possible to prosecute (but note the treatment of some of the rocket geniuses to realize how self-interest intervenes).

Group 3 is interesting. Group 3 consists in the people with whom — if we could overcome our respective biases and barriers — we could probably talk very reasonably and fruitfully (note the diplomat-speak). Group 3 might be termed, somewhat glibly or disparagingly, the True Believers. Most people (I hope) are True Believers in something.

[more soon, Tuesday, 1 June 2010]

In Obama We Trust

2010-05-08T11:51:00.004-04:00

Glenn Greenwald comments on the prevailing democratic liberal stance as we near Obama's nomination to replace John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court: "Obama's choice [is] a good one by virtue of the fact that it's Obama choice."

This is a perfect summation of what remains the prevailing attitude regarding Obama. It was also the attitude toward Bill Clinton, welcomed by Party Liberals after Reagan and Bush 1. (I was excoriated by liberal friends for criticizing Clinton in the 90s. Friends were often enraged that I dare charge Clinton with doing some of the very things Bush and Reagan had.)

Glenn Greenwald points out, first, the obvious absurdity in this, second, the double standard of Democrats, and, third, the lack of thought, which is what should concern us the most — the sheer unwillingness to think that characterizes mainstream and conservative ideology in the US today.

That mainstream and right-wing (and plenty of the left) are devoured by a Cult of Personality shouldn't surprise us. The United States is today an Oligarchy with Cults of Personality at the core of a Religion of Obedience. Americans idolize actors, sports stars and select billionaires (currently a little out of favor with the Wall Street debacle). The growth in actors (Franken, Reagan, Schwarzenegger), sports stars (less common, but Bunning comes to mind), and billionaires (Bloomberg, Frist, Whitman, Fiorina) is a symptom of the relation between power, money and fame.

ll of this obliterates the need of voters, the public, to examine, reflect, think — which is precisely what is desired by those in power. We are expected to obey, and more than any other industrial democracy, we Americans do.

This is further reflected in so-called institutions of higher learning, most notably Harvard, where we are expected to accept so and so's diktats for absolutely no other reason than the fact that he or she is at Harvard or Yale or Stanford. Conservatives are not upset so much by the mindless obedience to academic authority as they are to what they perceive (mistakenly) as the liberal leaning of that authority.

Edward Said captured this all beautifully with his essay on the countervailing role of the true intellectual (Chomsky, Baldwin, de Beauvoir, Galbraith, Malcolm X and, I will add, Greenwald) — Representations of the Intellectual.

Why is the problem so severe in the US (and to a lesser extent Britain)? The US is in an essentially defensive posture today. It has seen its peak, its best of times. Those benefiting from the best of times now seek primarily to defend against decline. It's an old story.

Economics by Analogy

2010-05-04T16:06:00.004-04:00

Simon Johnson of MIT and The Baseline Scenario draws attention to recent claptrap from Larry Summers (who seems capable of little more):

“Most Observers” Do Not Agree With Larry Summers On Banking

By Simon Johnson

What is the basis for major policy decisions in the United States? Is it years of careful study, using the concentration of knowledge and expertise for which this country is known and respected around the world? Or is it some unfounded assertions, backed by no data at all?

At least in terms of the White House policy towards megabanks, it is currently “no discussion of data or facts, please”.

Speaking on the Lehrer NewsHour last week, Larry Summers said, with regard to the Brown-Kaufman SAFE banking act – which would restrict the size of our largest banks (putting them back to where they were a decade or so ago):

“Most observers who study this believe that to try to break banks up into a lot of little pieces would hurt our ability to serve large companies, and hurt the competitiveness of the United States.”

“But that’s not the important issue, they believe that it would actually make us less stable. Because the individual banks would be less diversified, and therefore at greater risk of failing because they wouldn’t have profits in one area to turn to when a different area got in trouble.

“And most observers believe that dealing with the simultaneous failure of many small institutions would actually generate more need for bailouts and reliance on taxpayers than the current economic environment.”

I’ve looked into these claims carefully and really cannot find any hard evidence supporting Summers’s position – and therefore US policy. To be sure, there have been assertions made along these lines by a few people.

My thoughts:

“…they believe that it would actually make us less stable. Because the individual banks would be less diversified….”

Summers statements like these make it painfully clear that he is making stuff up as he goes along to serve his pre-determined conclusion. It is trivially false that mere size provides a stabilizing buffer. For example, so and so can have one million shares in one company or one million shares in one million companies. Mere size has nothing to do with it.

I would guess that Summers, like many economists, is fond of analogies, since the mathematics of economics is actually quite weak. (First, real economic systems, as should by now be all too clear, are radically non-linear, which is why major players like Goldman Sachs jealously guard their masters of computational methods. Second, the simplifications economists routinely champion are, in the real world, gross over-simplifications, throwing the baby out with the bath water.)

The analogy Summers tacitly relies upon is that with greater size, there is greater inertia. But then the analogy is a little too apt. Greater size results in less innovation, less agility, less flexibility to respond to change or the unexpected.

(How’s that paragraph for mixing metaphors?!)

The thing is, Summers (and Geithner, Bernanke, Paulson, Congress and Obama) like big banks. Big Is Beautiful! Having big financial institutions in the economic world is like having big guns, big bombs, big ships in the military. We can make others cower. Never mind that, again pursuing an analogy, there are a great many examples from history of the smaller, more agile foe, outdoing the bigger. Of course, Summers & Co. are hoping for an economic blitzkrieg — large and lightning fast.

Oligarchs and the New Feudalism

2010-05-02T08:13:00.002-04:00

With the notion that taking on the big banks is taking on the 'heartland' (does that include the northeast and California ... or Nebraska?), Dodd and Corker have gone from "What's good for General Motors is good for America" to "Wall Street is America." Whether they believe that or not, they and many other members of Congress certainly know that Wall Street campaign dollars are good for them.

This fits with my own view that the US is not just becoming an all-but-constitutionally-enshrined oligarchy, but is in fact moving toward a new Feudalism. How many members of Congress 'inherited' seats from family — the number is growing. They serve Wall Street and a handful of other massive corporate interests (health insurers, big pharma, agrichem — industries that do, comparatively, remain markedly American, as opposed to, say, auto manufacturers).

The only group that has little or no say is that constitutionally given a say — the People.

The Oligarchs are further served by institutions of opinion and thought manipulation — chiefly the 'news' organizations and universities.

We the People lose what little grip we had on a decent standard of living under the constant aegis of a new security state emboldened by laws ostensibly designed for terrorism but largely used for purely domestic purposes.

Far-fetched? Watch and wonder.

Obama and Israel

2010-04-23T23:04:00.003-04:00

In March, Vice President Biden was 'humiliated' by Israel announcements of new colonies. Now George Mitchell has gone to Israel. As he arrived, Netanyahu made a point of asserting that Israel categorically rejecting Obama's call for a curb on colonies in east Jerusalem. No hullabaloo about 'snubs' this time. Obama has been whipped into line. (Of course, the only real objection in March was to the timing, not to the colonies themselves.)

Some thoughts:

1. It’s an election year, and Obama the Opportunist is going to do what he does best (which, in the past year, is not saying much) — court voters. The pro-Israel zealots have vastly more voting clout, and more dollars to donate, in the US than the pro-Palestinian advocates. This remains true despite shifting attitudes in the US and volumes of bad press on Israeli atrocities (which have trickled through to the US public despite major efforts by the US press and the Israel lobby to prevent it).

2. My view on Obama for a while has been that he is the worst kind of politician, one who knows and believes in what is right (in this case, full rights and statehood for Palestinians), but sacrifices that for what is politically expedient. Bush, by contrast, was a delusional idiot, a true believer in stupid religiosity. Above all, Bush was a hard-core racist, which (I believe) Obama is not, though the Big O has surrounded himself with plenty of racists, like Rahm Emanuel and Dennis Ross.

3. Things are changing in Israel and Palestine. I think that for many years, Israel thought it could just win the war by attrition. Steadily force Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. Make life so utterly miserable for Palestinians that birth rates would be suppressed — a move expressly endorsed recently by Harvard luminary Martin Kramer, but one which I think Israel has been implementing for decades. Now, however, it has becoming clear (has been for some time) to the delusional racists in Israel’s government that the Palestinian ‘population problem’ isn’t going away. And, sadly for the likes of Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Dennis Potter, the rest of the world is too alert in this internet age. It is for this reason that the Israelis are so determined that the Palestinians endorse categorically the status of Israel as “The Jewish State”.

4. We shouldn’t kid ourselves (if any on this site might be inclined to do so) that either the Israeli or the US governments are moved by moral considerations. Obama has refused to prosecute, or even investigate, Bush war crimes. He has effectively endorsed Bush I, Clinton and Bush W policies in Iraq that killed well over one million civilians. He has embarked on a similar, albeit smaller, campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similarly and very sadly, most Israelis seem to feel no moral qualms at all about the atrocities in Gaza or, earlier, in Lebanon. (Obama endorsed Israel’s Operation Cast Lead during his campaign.) Israel has demonstrated just as much resistance to honesty about its brutality as any Western war state — Britain, France and above all the United States. If Israel can hit on a strategy for mass ‘ethnic cleansing’ (or worse) that will actually fly under the radar of the world community, it would implement it, and the US would raise nothing but token objections.

Dennis Ross is just an indicator of the patterns of force in the Obama administration. The hope for change comes in the accelerated decline of American power. The catch is that countries like the US (and on a much smaller scale, Israel) are prone to irrational outbursts — desperate lashing out to protect ‘Old Glory.'

One last thing: Can we now dump the "Obama hasn't had enough time yet" defense?

Is Nick Clegg Britain's You-Know-Who?

2010-04-23T18:25:00.007-04:00

Britons are excited about some dude named Nick Clegg. Name gets points all by itself (except for one minor detail, see below). Shit. Britons are Obama-excited about Nick Clegg. Frequent trips to the bathroom excited. My two bits? I like Britons. I'm practically British myself. For the sake of the British and all of the EU, but especially northern Wales, I really really hope that Nick Clegg is not Britain's Barack Obama.
Richard Adams, of Britain's Guardian newspaper (infinitely superior to any US mainstream paper, including The Might New York Times (say amen)), has an essay entitled "Ten reasons why Nick Clegg is Britain's Barack Obama." I feel compelled to dissent:
Ten Reasons Nick Clegg is Not Barack Obama (And Thank the Powers that Made Us!)

10. Obama doesn't believe in the 'special relationship'

9. Obama speaks 1 language only, like all god-fearin' red-blooded Amerhcn patriots, by gum! (Gotta practice saying that, my British friends.)

8. Nobody in UK is gonna have a shitfit over Clegg's birth certificate.

7. Nobody in UK is gonna have a shitfit over Clegg's middle name.

"William Peter" is Nick Clegg's middle name? WTF?! (Isn't that doubley thing royal?)

6. Nobody in UK is gonna have a shitfit over Clegg's religion. (Uh, Clegg isn't Muslim, right?)

5. Clegg actually did community service...as a punishment for torching some prof's cacti. Again, WTF?!

6. Clegg actually understands there are countries outside his own. (Do any Americans get this?)

3. Nick Clegg is younger than me.

2. That red, blue and tan postery treatment...Clegg is totally unrecognizable.

1. UK doesn't have a sickfuckcrazy rightwing bunch of self-serving freaks called Republicans (or Democrats).

I have been challenged on this last point. The Conservatives, I have been informed, are sickfuckcrazy rightwing self-serving freaks. But are they really as sickfuckcrazy self-serving as Republicans? Can anybody match Mitch McConnell, Tom Coburn, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin? Come on! Michele Bachmann. Sarah Palin.... We got the whole world beat by a country mile for sickfuckcrazy rightwing self-serving.

Homo sapiens? Really? Man with Wisdom?

2010-04-18T19:24:00.003-04:00

Bill Moyers interviewed James Kwak and Simon Johnson, both of Baseline Scenario, on the prospects for financial reform. Kwak noted that nothing has changed. He could not have summarized the entire state of American economics and politics more succinctly.

Obama and the current Congress have changed nothing -- in any arena of American activity. He is about to nominate someone for the Supreme Court who will be significantly more conservative than John Paul Stevens. (Only two of the names the prospective nominees list are liberal in the sense of Stevens, and they are both long shots.)

All of the conservative Clinton-Bush foreign and military policies (which are substantively one and the same in the case of the US) continue, with a token nod to the issues of Guantanamo.

Copenhagen was a failure and predictably so given that the US government refuses to make any demands of consumers or corporations.

The Big Picture is utterly bleak. Economy, environment, education, infrastructure, and on and on -- all in dismal shape.

James Kwak commented that the big banks bet against the American dream, reminding me of a comment Paul Krugman made in an interview with Bill Maher: "The American dream isn't dead, but it's dying pretty fast." The sad fact is that Kwak and Krugman are probably speaking too optimistically. The big banks are arguably betting against humanity on the assumption that somehow, in their brave new world, the rich will be entirely immune to consequences visited upon Other 99.9% of humanity.

The US now has the lowest degree of social mobility in the industrialized world, with the possible exception of Britain (which, thanks to Thatcher and Blair, has been even more American than the Americans, taking many Reaganite policies even further than Reagan).

The American Dream is dead. Much more is also. If (big if) we are lucky, Homo sapiens may survive. Interview some biologists. You may be surprised by how widespread this view is.

Time Found in a Bottle

2010-04-08T21:56:00.003-04:00

We are half a century shy of the two-hundredth anniversary of the American Civil War. Most people 30 years old and younger will live to see it and a great many older, too. Yet, a significant percentage of this country's population continue to act, and re-enact, as if we were closer to the war itself than to its anniversary. Confederate flags. Endless battle re-enactments. And of course, racism and hatred. All alive and well in the United States of 2010.

The latest incarnation of the beast? Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who proclaimed "Confederate History Month" with no mention at all of slavery, which most people would say was the essential point of conflict for the entire horror. McDonnell has been forced to step back from his idiocy. But not so the vast majority of his kind. Members of Congress, prominent 'pundits' — loud mouths — nationwide eagerly use racist language as a matter of course. The chief victims of American hatred these days are Arabs. But with China rising on the world stage, the US is gearing for an Official Change of Enemy.

For the time being, however, with Obama as president and with Israel carrying on its rampage across Occupied Palestine, American merchants of hatred have plenty to keep them occupied.

Interestingly, there is no speculation about what might be pathological to the American creed that makes the US such a happy host for such hatred. There is much speculation among moderates and conservatives of the endemic evils of Islam — nothing of the sort with regard to the US. And any suggestion that the US should mind itself is met with condemnations of "anti-Americanism" (strategically being positioned to be on a par with "anti-Semitism").

So time is trapped. We are evidently in an infinite loop. Hatred breeds hatred and Americans are happily procreating.

Mondoweiss Notes Suicide-Terror Expert Robert Pape's Restricted Mandate

2010-04-01T23:05:00.005-04:00

The following from Mondoweiss:

‘NYT’ should get suicide-terror expert Pape to talk about ‘Palestinian resistance’
by Philip Weiss, April 1, 2010

Two days ago, Robert Pape (author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism) was on the Times op-ed page explaining the Chechnya-driven suicide bombings in Russia:

As we have discovered in our research on Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, suicide terrorist campaigns are almost always a last resort against foreign military occupation. Chechnya is a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon at work.

A good thing that Pape and co-authors Lindsey O’Rourke and Jenna McDermit mentioned the West Bank. But given the centrality of the Palestinian suicide bomber in western demonology–Thomas Friedman (and numerous other friends of Israel) justified the Iraq war on that basis–Pape’s point surely deserves elaboration. If you look through Bob Pape’s website at the University of Chicago, you will find numerous articles that describe suicide terrorism by Palestinians as a response to occupation. Here, for instance, is Pape in Turkey’s newspaper, Zaman, saying that the first Palestinian suicide terrorists followed 20 years of occupation.

The Times has had Pape write often in the last few years, including this important piece in ‘03, saying suicide terror is not about Islam, the Tamil Tigers have used it more than anyone. But the Times has never had him directly address the issue of the Israeli occupation and what he routinely terms "Palestinian resistance versus Israel." Why not? Its readers deserve that insight.

My thoughts regarding this:

The Times and others (US government, CNN, NPR … take your pick) don’t want any explanations that will undermine the pre-determined mission. Facts are irrelevant once the Hive Mind of American Oligarchy is made up. Once Bush & Co. and other Arab-haters (Thomas Friedman, Michael Walzer, Michael Ignatieff — it’s a helluva long list) had decided that the US was absolutely going to ‘liberate’ Iraq, no fact or combination of fact was going to sway them.

Likewise, it is an Article of Faith in the United States that Israel is Right, no matter what. So the worst that any fact can do is raise questions about Israel’s tactics, efficiency, thoroughness, attentiveness, etc. — details. Anything that would raise questions of regarding pathological racism among Israelis or regarding the infestation of Israeli government by war criminals must be excluded from the conversation. That is why a conference sponsored by the “Lawfare Project” (or any other of the many recent conferences on the Goldstone Report) must exclude any and all who could raise inconvenient truths. Similar examples are legion and span the US, Europe and Israel.

Israel Attacks Iran — the Sim!

2010-03-28T10:27:00.006-04:00

David Sanger offers a laughably inadequate 'observation' of an even more laughably simplistic 'simulation' at the Brookings Institution's rabidly pro-Israel Saban Center. A raft of pro-Israel 'thinkers' — headed by pro-Iraq success-story Ken Pollack — were rounded up to make an Israeli attack on Iran look like a cake-walk. Of course, the US government (and I'm sure many others) have been simulating (translation: guessing) an attack on Iran for years. I'd be astonished if any of the government's simulations are as rosy as Saban's.

Sanger's blather about the Saban sim is more interesting for what it omits — most notably, no mention at all of Iranian civilian losses, which would likely be very high.

Here is my 'simulation' of the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities.

0. Israel strikes Iranian facilities, ostensibly to shut down potential Iranian nuclear weapons production.

1. Thousands of Iranians killed. Not clear whether Israel even struck all of Iran's facilities (Iran claims not).

2. Iran calls for international condemnation of Israel and US. US claims Israel attacked without advance notice to US, but the world recognizes this as nonsense, especially since the US would have immediate satellite info on Israeli attacks and the US has total air cover of Persian Gulf, Kuwait and Iraq. That is, Israeli air forces absolutely must get clearance from US for fly-overs, even over the Gulf.

3. Iran shows surprising deftness in driving wedges between US, Israel, Europe and Arab and Muslim worlds.

4. World condemns Israeli attacks, especially as Iranian civilian casualties mount and photographs and video are aired globally. US media downplays this, but bloggers provide access, resulting in a cacophany of condemnation of tepid US response to Israel.

5. Russia and China show surprising unity in categorically condemning Israel and lead the world in demanding that the US stop Israel's onslaught, especially as it becomes clear Israel is preparing for a second round of attacks to get what it missed first time round.

6. China sees an opportunity to assert the kind of leadership the US hasn't shown in decades. As it does so, anti-Chinese fear-mongering in the US raises its ugly head. China raises the possibility of sanctions on Israel and the US. Many in Europe and elsewhere agree, shocking the Americans.

7. For the first time ever, the US appears likely to be the target of a serious sanctions regime. Some in US Congress and executive branch suggest this is an act of war. A handful of US military figures cause a media furor when they suggest that the US must break with Israel, not just for US security but for the world's.

8. Iran does not attack neighbors or US forces in Iraq. It does halt oil production. Several other oil states drastically slow production. As oil prices soar, US is forced to ramp up military presence in Gulf and in states bordering Iran, especially Afghanistan.

9. Stock markets in the US and worldwide collapse. US government declares a market holiday, but this only inflames fears. There is growing public condemnation of Israel in the US. Habitually pro-Israeli news organizations like The New York Times and NPR are increasingly unsuccessful at trying to mask their pro-Israel bias. After holding out, the Times runs photos of Iranian children killed in Israeli attacks.

10. Iran deploys news depleted uranium (DU) munitions against Israeli and US aircraft in Iranian airspace. Shockingly, several aircraft are shot down. Crews are captured. The presence of US aircraft in Iranian air brings further charges from around the world that the US has secretly colluded with Israel in the attacks.

11. US and Israel condemn Iranian use of DU munitions, claiming that this proves that Iran did indeed have a nuclear weapons program (though DU munitions are not nuclear weapons). The world is astonished at the American and Israeli hypocrisy, noting that both use the very same munitions.

12. Oil hits $200 per barrel. World markets crisis becomes a general economic crisis. Fuel prices are so high, that transport of basic necessities worldwide suffers. In the northeast US, there are shortages of some food products as fuel prices hurt transport of food.

13. Insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan launch daring attacks on US forces. Though largely ineffective, the attacks make necessary more US forces and prove to be huge PR coups against the US and Israel in media worldwide. There are uprisings in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For the first time in years, there are series of bloody attacks within Israel itself.

14. Russia and China announce they are formally recognizing the State of Palestine in the pre-1967 borders. Numerous other nations follow suit, including several in Europe and then, astonishingly, Canada.

15. US orders Israel to cease all hostilities or it will also recognize Palestine. In the meantime, it terminates all sharing of satellite and other intelligence info with Israel. The president makes vague noises about seizing Israeli financial assets abroad. Joe Lieberman enrages most when he condemns the President as anti-Semitic in a speech before the Senate.

16. All hell breaks loose in the Middle East.

A wild speculation, you say? I can only respond that it is a lot more likely than the Saban garbage.

Features of Democracy's Fall

2010-03-21T22:57:00.002-04:00

In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria writes:

Meanwhile, the central problem persists: Israel rules more than 3 million Palestinians who will never become citizens of Israel and yet do not have their own state. As they multiply, Israel’s status as a democracy becomes more and more complex; the country looks more and more like an island of rich Israelis set in a sea of Palestinian serfs.

Zakaria almost nails it . . . . Israel’s status as a democracy doesn’t “become more and more complex.” It becomes more and more a pure fiction.

People should check what Ariel Atias (Minister of Housing and Construction and behind the “fuck you” to Biden and Obama) has said. He advocates radical apartheid, not just separating Palestinians but also orthodox from non-orthodox Jews. Israel has descended into a state where — even if every Palestinian were expelled from the area west of the Jordan River (in the biggest case of ethnic cleansing since the Second World War) — Israeli Jews would soon be at war with one another.

Whatever moral sense lived in Israel has been crushed by successive waves of right-wing, religious fanaticism. Israel now depends on the Palestinians to play the role of collective enemy of the Jews (much, I am sad to say, as Jews played a comparable, though by no means identical, role in Nazi Germany). The United States, too, is headed this way with the right-wing and moderates depending on a vilified, demonized Islam — a monolithic, terrorist enemy — to galvanize public support for, or at least apathy toward, every growing state power.

Fanatics, having won whatever battle gave their petty existences meaning, must turn on each other, like a pack of half-starved wild dogs.

A Tempest in the Dust Storm

2010-03-16T03:15:00.006-04:00

or Tempest in a Teapot Dome

Moderates, neo-cons and right-wingers all are wringing their hands over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "Fuck You!" to President Obama and Vice Toad Biden. There was Biden making all nice nice at the feet of Bibi and the Big B takes a well-beshat shoe to Biden's forehead. Now everyone's in a tizzy. The right-wing zealots who cum every time IDF forces obliterate Palestinians are the most put-out. Obama and Biden have actually used something resembling harsh language. That's something of a shift from the normally obsequious American grovelling.

Frankly, I don't think there's much in this. Obama will do some saber-rattling, try to save face, but he's proved pretty well that he has no spine. And if, as all past American action suggests, the US has no real objection to Israeli settlement construction (except to call it "not helpful"), then what does it matter that the Israelis announce today or tomorrow? Even if the Israelis were working to heed US 'language', Obama's a master of the mixed message. One minute, he and Biden sound like they're green-lighting Israeli construction, next minute they having a fit. If you think the colonization of the West Bank is okay (I don't), then second-guessing the Americans comes second.

But, for reasons I don't really understand, this tempest has blown up into a storm. Politicians certainly have egos. Obama has a massive one, with a tiny bit of justification. Biden has an even more massive one, with no justification at all. And my guess is that this is also related in the minds of the Israel-idolaters to the Goldstone Report. The Israel Lobby has been attacking the report on all fronts. Now comes another blow to their facade of moral superiority.

John Podhoretz has raised the spectre of a Jewish revolt in Democratic ranks. I think Podhoretz is a little behind the times. Most Americans are ill-informed, maybe most American Jews . . . who knows? (It would be interesting to do a thorough study comparing how people self-identify, how they stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how well-informed they actually are.)

One way or another, fewer than normal can have entirely missed Israel's blitzkrieg in Gaza last year and not wondered what the hell the Israelis were doing and why — and that despite the "Go for it!" from Obama, The New York Times and most American 'leaders'.

Moreover, Americans have a habit of proving themselves wise to the Great Leaders' bullshit. We may be short on the facts, thanks to the 'reporting' of CNN, The New York Times and NPR, but we see the big picture better than our Masters would like. We saw what was really happening with the bailout and now with health care reform. As Marx would have said, we feel the sense of alienation — dissatisfaction, anger, rage — without being fully able to identify the cause. In a nation conditioned for fanatical adoration of Capitalism or Religion, many misidentify the cause.

But when thousands of Israeli troops, aircraft and artillery rain hell upon 1.5 million people, caus and effect are fairly obvious. It's pretty easy to see that it's Israeli fighter-bombers, tanks and heavy artillery leveling Palestinian villages — not the other way round, despite the best propaganda efforts of the Israel government and the US news media and politicians. (New York's Mayor Bloomberg just happened to pick the month of Operation Cast Lead to head over to Israel.)

Nevertheless, Podhoretz might have some kind of point. I'm just not sure what point.

It’s no secret that a wildly disproportionate part of the Democratic donor base is Jewish. While Jews are almost certain to continue to vote lopsidedly for Democrats, that doesn’t mean Jewish donors are going to open their checkbooks as widely as they have in the past three election cycles. A diminution in Jewish enthusiasm for Obama and the Democrats is a problem for them. This is not a good moment to be picking fights on an issue of major emotional concern to a key Democratic constituency, even if you know that many of its members are not disposed to support the building program.

Is Podhoretz saying that a disproportionate number of donors to Democrats is Jewish or a disproportionate percentage of donors is Jewish? Those are two different claims. Or is Podhoretz saying that a disproportionately large percentage of the dollars donated are donated by Jews? That’s still another claim.

The largest donors in lump dollar amounts were institutions like Goldman Sachs, Harvard, etc. But as some point out, a huge percentage of donors and donor dollars to Obama were little folks, like us, here. And Obama has done squat to appease us. No public option, kowtowing to health insurers and big pharma, a huge bailout to billionaires at our expense, huge sums to the military at our expense, a thorough “fuck you” to labor, . . .

So if the Big O is concerned about donors bailing on him, he’d be trying some new tactics to appeal to US. But he ain’t. He’s waving his hands behind the curtain, get the Great and Powerful O to try to convince us he’s comin’ down hard on Big Health, Big Pharma, Big Banks. But we don’t even need little Toto to pull that curtain aside. We are Wise to the Ruse, Oh Mighty O. Worry about us and US.

If hardcore pro-Israel wingnuts want to bail for the Republicans, let ‘em go. The GOP will drive us and Israel into the ground so deep, even the best IDF bulldozer won’t be able to dig us out.

Rational people, however clueless on the nitty gritty details, aren't blind. Israel has overplayed its hand, and to mix metaphors, bitten the hand that feeds it.

Israel's Humiliation of Normally Docile American 'Leaders' Backfires, But Only a Little

2010-03-13T00:36:00.000-05:00

Israel's toying with the morons who pass for 'leaders' in the United States is nothing new. The difference is that Obama is of above average intelligence and, most important, has something resembling a conscience. George W. Bush was profoundly stupid and a true believer, a true racist, a true advocate of a Crusade to defeat Islam.

Obama genuinely believes that Arabs, including Palestinians, have rights. That puts him in a bind never faced by Republicans or most Democrats. Like all but five or six Democrats, Obama's main mission is the balancing act of pleasing the most powerful people as much of the time as possible — Wall Street, health insurers, military contractors, etc. — the American Oligarchs. But because he has something like a conscience, he actually believes in something like democracy — and (rare among Americans) not just for Americans and other members of the Judeo-Christian Western tradition.

What to do then when Israel must be appeased to appease powerful interests in the US but justice actually requires saying no to the Middle East's leading war criminal state? What to do when Israel is doing exactly what it has been doing for over 40 years and has promised to continue doing?

Answer: Orwellify! Send two messages designed to sound like one (or maybe I mean one message designed to sound like two). Have Biden prate about the 'demographic threat' to Israel while uttering the word "Palestine" (a word that the New York Times still can't print, that Israelis still choke on). Have Hillary issue "strong language". Behind closed doors — in Israel, at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, in speeches to AIPAC, etc. — promise that Israel will always enjoy the full backing of the US.

The Orwellian game is complicated these days by the growing delusion in Israel that Israel has a divine right to whatever the hell it demands. There's always been a minority that believed this, but that minority may now be a majority. Bad timing. The nation that enabled Israel's national psychosis is weakened worldwide by almost twenty years of war crimes in Iraq, absurd military expenditures, a steady economic decline and its own national psychoses.
_____
An aside: Israel propagandist Martin Indyk has a piece on the Brookings website about Netanyahu's political calculus behind humiliating the pathetic Biden.

Bloomberg Building Bull

2010-03-09T22:32:00.004-05:00

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg fought the EPA designation of Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site. Bloomberg claimed that he could bring his business genius to bear and get the cleanup done faster for less money. So let's review the Mayor's great successes in development across the city:

2012 Olympics
West side stadium
Atlantic Railyards
Greenpoint 50-year oil spill
Kingsbridge Armory Mall in the Bronx
Numerous worker accidents, including deaths, that Bloomberg brushed off with "accidents happen."

And the very finest example of Mike Bloomberg's masterful shepherding of development in the city:

World Trade Center reconstruction, barely begun nine years after the attacks. By contrast, the Empire State Building was constructed (under Democrats) in less than 1 year and a half.

What the mayor really wants is the freedom to ignore safety, ignore environmental laws and make more of the sweetheart deals for his wealthy friends — the only thing he has really proved adept at in his years as mayor. If Mike Bloomberg had any more crap coming out of his mouth, he'd be a Superfund site.

Real Issues of Security for Average Americans

2010-03-09T07:49:00.001-05:00

Some 15 million Americans are unemployed under the narrow terms popularly used. Under other terms used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real unemployment rate is more like 17 percent, over 25 million people. So it's near certain that at least 40 million households, or over 150 million people, face dire income issues -- little to no regular income, or income that just barely meets living expenses. If there is any cushion against this, it is the fact that most households now have more than one income-earner (but many of those really need two income-earners).

One way or another, it is more than reasonable to conclude that on the order of one half of the US population feels financially insecure. Add to that the fact that most Americans know that they have unstable access to health care, given that most health insurers enthusiastically embrace yanking care away when it is needed. Add also the government fiscal crises, so education, infrastructure and other essentials are threatened. We sustained this instability for years with the credit bubble. (The bubble was 'load-bearing.') Now that has collapsed and will likely stay collapsed, despite Obama efforts to re-inflate the bubble.

What do most Americans have reason to feel safe about? In a country where the general population was less apathetic and less indoctrinated in acceptance of and obedience to authority, government and private elites might well be worrying about social upheaval.

Speed, Time and Depth of Field!

2010-03-04T10:10:00.002-05:00

The Sandpit, by Sam O'Hare.

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

The Wizard of Speed and Time!

2010-02-26T22:16:00.001-05:00

Great! No more need be said.

NPR's Scott Simon Speaks Glowingly of an Amercan Idol

2010-02-13T13:16:00.002-05:00

This morning, Saturday, February 13th, NPR has done one of those things that the media regularly does -- provided us with a case for comparison.

One of the US's better known idolaters of war, former Senator Charlie Wilson, died on February 10th. Scott Simon eulogized him very personally on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. It was a fawning string of inanities from an NPR host who has worked for years to perfect a breathless, simpering delivery.

Absent from Simon's treatment was anything even remotely resembling the slander attack of David Horowitz on Howard Zinn provided via Allison Keyes.

My suspicion (indeed, certainty) is that a thorough review of politically charged obits would reveal this kind of 'fair and balanced' treatment by NPR and most other so-called news organizations in America. Of course, in the eyes of NPR and Scott Simon, Charlie Wilson was _not_ a politically charged figure. He was adored by Democrats and Republicans alike -- which accounts for all of the political spectrum in NPR's field of vision.

Another illuminating comparison (albeit, not of two obits) is that of Yasser Arafat, who was gently villified (to put it as best I can) on his death and Ariel Sharon, who was lionized when he became comatose though he is every bit -- and far far more -- the war criminal Arafat was. Indeed, Simon himself offered another of his utterly hollow accounts on the occasion of Arafat's death. Simon recounted being held by Palestinian captors briefly. His captors pointedly asked whether Simon was Jewish. (It probably goes without saying that Simon has never noted virulent anti-Arab racism in Israel.) The point is that Simon felt no need to offer mealy-mouthed accolades for Arafat. Moreover, he made 'relevant' an irrelevant detail that had nothing to do with Arafat, but did serve Simon's purpose of demonizing, en masse, the entire Palestinian people -- just as the inclusion of Horowitz's slander served NPR's purpose of diminishing Zinn.

There are a great many critics of Zinn, some conservative, some liberal, some left-wing, who could have added some texture to any recollection, though it is plainly clear that the NPR and general US media standard is to offer near-unalloyed praise -- unless there is a 'need' to take the person down a few notches, or flaws so glaring that they must be at least acknowledged. Thus, in the case of Sharon, the briefest mention is made of Sabra and Shatila. Likewise, in the case of Reagan, the treasonable and impeachable crimes of Iran-Contra are mentioned -- but only in passing.

It is for the American Left that the special case arises, where it is necessary to slander the dead, lest their views be too popular.

The American Prospect

2010-02-06T00:35:00.003-05:00

Below is my response to "Time Is Running Out," Bob Herbert's February 6 essay in The New York Times:

For most Americans, the economy Bob Herbert fears may develop has been an established fact for some time. The Reagan years marked the start of a steady decline in prospects. Younger Americans and many in middle age have little if any expectation of living better than their parents. The servile grovelling of Obama and Congress at the feet of Wall Street and the Health Insurers are really only a reminder that the US has institutionalized oligarchy in every sense but the constitutional one.

Worse, the uninterrupted militarism of the past 60 years is actually escalating under Obama, hard as that may be to believe. At least medicare and social security unambiguously help Americans, if (perhaps) somewhat inefficiently (certainly no more inefficiently than private insurers do). The obscene military budgets have been blown on needless wars evidently calculated to inflame hatred of the US around the world.

Frankly, the lives of people in Germany look pretty good. They have health care, five weeks of vacation for all, and need not fear a life of abject poverty after retirement. They still value science, engineering and art. And they are aware that it is necessary to live with the rest of the people of the Earth -- a fact most Americans flatly deny.

Below, the section of Herbert's essay that I respond to:

Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems, the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade. A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

Neither the politicians nor much of the mainstream media are spelling out the severity of these enormous structural problems or the sense of urgency needed to address them. Living standards are sinking in the United States, and there is no coherent vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend over the long term.

The conference was titled, “The Next American Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment.” It was put together by the Brookings Institution and Lazard, the investment banking advisory firm.

When Governor Rendell addressed the conference on Wednesday, he used words like “stunning” and “unbelievable” to describe what has happened to the nation’s infrastructure. His words echoed the warnings we’ve been hearing for years from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which tells us: “The broken water mains, gridlocked streets, crumbling dams and levees, and delayed flights that come from failing infrastructure have a negative impact on the checkbook and on the quality of life of each and every American.”

The conference was sparked by a sense of dismay over what has happened to the U.S. economy over the past several years and a feeling that constructive ideas about solutions were being smothered by an obsessive focus on the short-term in this society, and by the chronic dysfunction and hyperpartisanship in much of the government.

I was struck by the absence of grousing and finger-pointing at the conference and the emphasis on trying to develop new ways to establish an economy that is not based on financial flimflammery, that enhances America’s competitive position in the world, and that relieves us of the terrible burden of reliance on foreign energy sources.

I was also struck by the pervasive sense that if we don’t get our act together then the glory days of the go-go American economic empire will fade like the triumphs of an aging Hollywood star. One of the participants raised the very real possibility of Americans having to get used to living in an economy “that won’t be number one,” an economy that perhaps is more like Germany’s.

The Newest Mandarins [in progress]

2010-02-03T17:51:00.005-05:00

George Packer, Michael O'Hanlon, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Kenneth Pollack,....

These are among the Yes-Men in the realm between actual policy-makers and the public. They rarely if ever offer original thinking. They instead practice the art of balancing, positioning, triangulating to ensure their greatest possible acceptability to the mainstream — the received wisdom.

A Lexicon of Childhood

2010-02-02T19:13:00.000-05:00

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.

Turning wheel (n.) a doorknob

more to come . . .

Supreme Injustice Alito Performs for Millions

2010-01-28T09:49:00.002-05:00

Some are asking whether Supreme Court Injustice Samuel Alito damaged the Court's credibility with his mouthing of "not true" during President Obama's State of the Union Address. But the Court had precious little credibility anyway. The Supreme Court (or, more accurately, the right-wing injustices) threw away the court's credibility with Bush v Gore. Whether it is hopelessly lost remains to be seen.

Individual injustices — namely Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas — have discarded credibility repeatedly with their predictable support of big business over individuals, the rich over the poor and conservative government over the rights of the people.

So the Supreme Injustices are predictable, reliable in some twisted way but certainly not remotely honorable.

As for Alito's performance during the State of the Union, he should count himself lucky Obama didn't dress him down more. The president used the most mild language. He could easily and rightly characterized the ruling of the Fallen Five as one of the worst decisions in American history.

The Supreme Injustices, the conservatives, are accustomed to being able to humiliate those appearing before the court. They are accustomed to asserting their opinions with the servile accolades of a captive audience. So it must have been tough for Injustice Alito to have to sit still while Obama treated his crimes so mildly.

It's Not Just Global Warming

2010-01-27T10:08:00.005-05:00

In the public arena, environmental issues have been reduced to global warming. Big mistake. Here are a handful of headlines from the past month or so (and this is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg):

Common chemical found in everything from sofas, carpets to pots, pans linked to increased risk of thyroid disease. http://bit.ly/76NSH1

A common household chemical found in everything from sofas and carpets to pots and pans has been linked to an increased risk of thyroid disease, in the first major study carried out on its effect upon health.
The substance, used to make nonstick cookware, stain-resistant furnishings and greaseproof wrappers, is believed to get into the body through contaminated food or household dust. Once in the body it accumulates in organs and other tissues.
People with high levels of the chemical in their blood were found to be twice as likely to have thyroid problems as those with the lowest levels, according to a survey of medical records of nearly 4,000 otherwise healthy US adults. The study is published in the journal, Environmental Health Perspectives.
Scientists said they cannot be certain the chemical is directly responsible for the rise in thyroid disease but called for a full investigation to assess its safety.
Studies in animals have found that the chemical, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), and a sister substance called PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate), can cause thyroid problems and a variety of other medical conditions, including hormone imbalances, liver disease and cancer.
"It's been thought that because they're inert they don't cause any health problems, but we're starting to see some evidence that is suggesting that's not true," said Tamara Galloway, professor of ecotoxicology at Exeter University. "Because these chemicals are inert they are persistent and they build up in the environment and also in human and animal tissues."
We all have trace levels of PFOA in our bodies that we pick up from the environment. The substance is so stable that it persists for years. It has been detected in people around the world and in wildlife as diverse as birds, fish and polar bears.

From Bill Moyers Journal:

Chemicals In Our Food

May 23, 2008

There may be a potentially dangerous chemical leaching into our food from the containers that we use every day. BILL MOYERS JOURNAL and EXPOSÉ: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS examine why, even though studies show that the chemical Bisphenol A can cause cancer and other health problems in lab animals, the manufacturers, their lobbyists, and U.S. regulators say it's safe.
In a watchdog series for the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, a trio of reporters focused on Bisphenol A, a chemical contained in many plastics that is also found in 93% of human beings. The problem at issue? Congress ordered the federal government in 1996 to begin testing and regulating certain chemicals suspected of causing cancer and a host of developmental problems. Eleven years later, not a single compound has been put to that test.
You can read the full series "Chemical Fallout" online, plus ongoing coverage of the fate of Bisphenol A. On May 15, 2008, the SENTINEL reported on some new Congressional hearings:

Members of a Senate consumer affairs subcommittee faulted federal agencies for reacting too slowly to concerns that children are exposed to bisphenol A through leaching from common items such as water bottles, baby bottles and the linings of food and baby-formula cans.
More study and more debate is anticipated.

President Zero

2010-01-20T11:09:00.005-05:00

President Obama, from now on President Zero, has demonstrated the success of Democratic political strategy of the past 30 years, a strategy best exemplified to day by the most powerful man in the administration ... Rahm Emanuel.

Martha Coakley exemplified this strategy in Assachusetts: Ignore the common American, kowtow to the rich powerbrokers, insult people needlessly.

Let's review key points of Obama's winning strategy:

Do nothing to hold Bush administration war criminals accountable for their crimes.
Reward Wall Street for its crimes.
Pack your administration with advocates for Goldman Sachs and the Clinton-Reagan-Bush programs of deregulation, like Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Peter Orszag, Austan Goolsbee
Blow off liberal economists and related thinkers like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Brooksley Born, Michael Hudson, Elizabeth Warren, Nouriel Roubini, . . . .
Charge the American people to support Wall Street billionaires's bonuses.
Do little or nothing to aid average workers in the work economic downturn in generations.
Fight disclosure of White House visitor logs until forced to by bad publicity.
Stop disclosure of US war crimes at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib by, among other things, keeping secret photographs of American atrocities.
Repeatedly exclude labor from discussions on the economy.
Repeatedly exclude advocates of single-payer from discussions on health care reform while including lobbyists and executives for big health insurers.
Coddle right-wing extremists, conservative Democrats and self-serving bigots like Joseph Lieberman while excluding or actively badmouthing progressives and liberals.
Fail to end the war in Iraq.
Expand war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Continue extraordinary rendition while paying lip-service to closing Guantanamo and ending torture (but actually allowing it at Bagram, Afghanistan)
Continue Bush violations of the Constitution by denying due process rights to prisoners at Guantanamo.
Continue outrageous prosecutions of people like Syed Fahad Hashmi.

Such is the strategy of Democrats, 'lead' by Obama, President Zero.

Freezelight Magic Forest

2010-01-13T17:47:00.004-05:00

The best animators I've met are intensely driven people . . . often to the edge of sanity (which is what gives the greatest work its wacky wonder). Via Vimeo, here is a Russian short film in which each frame is a long exposure. Roughly 40 seconds. If it was done at 30 frames per second (it probably wasn't), that would be 1200 frames. Assume half that — 600 frames — each one mapped out, storyboarded, tested, shot. If I were told that each frame took one hour, I would not be surprised. It could have been more. (Then again, it might well have been less.)

Freezelight Magic Forest from FREEZELIGHT.RU on Vimeo.

Delusions of the Economic Right-Wing

2010-01-04T06:30:00.007-05:00

Ross Douthat has one of the stupidest, least informed (or most dishonest) essays on the economy that I've seen in The New York Times . . . ever. He does little more than toady for an equally dishonest though better-sounding (emphasis on "sounding") Jim Manzi in National Affairs.

Briefly, they offer a toned-down but otherwise very familiar conservative economic diet so that the US can maintain its economic primacy in the world — something they seem worried about in much the way that men fret over the size of their penises.

Here, my response:

A complete account of the flaws and misrepresentations in Ross Douthat's essay and Jim Manzi's in National Affairs would require more space than Douthat's essay takes in the first place.

Here are a few of the glaring problems:

1. Both Manzi and Douthat, particularly Manzi, treat American economic leadership as some kind of national security issue. They both come off as narrow-minded jingoists, or as men worried about their penises. We can be sure that the American companies relocating production and off-shoring labor to Asia are less concerned about American economic leadership than they are about lining their own pockets — in its sheer extremes, a decidely American ethos that the crimes of Wall Street and the health industry prove amply.

2. Manzi is absurdly sloppy in his use of language. He, and Douthat copying him, talk of "America's global output" compared to Europe, China, India. In dollars or tonnage or what? Is this the Europe including the eastern countries of the former Soviet bloc? Is the vaunted US output including the fantastically wasteful military production? (The US has effectively remained on a constant war footing for 30 years and has effectively been at war continuously for 60.) Does US output include the fools' wealth of the housing bubble and the ponzi schemes of Wall Street? Nothing in Manzi's or Douthat's essay provides any answer.

3. Most glaring: Standard of Living. Douthat and Manzi both make passing reference to the American standard of living and then let it drop — for obvious reason: the US standard of living is a disgrace for a country as productive as Douthat and Manzi claim. All of the major western European nations, with the likely exception of Britain (which of the European nations has most closely tried to copy the American Standard), have a higher standard of living than the US. The Scandinavian countries, with the most 'socialistic' economies have the highest standards and the greatest levels of satisfaction among their populations.

4. Our "politics are polarized"? Hardly. The vast majority of Democrats have bent over double to copy the Republicans. It is the right-wing Republicans, who now constitute the entire Republican party in Congress, that have sought at every turn to torpedo political and economic consensus.

5. Obama Democrats returning to "European-style social democracy"? Does Douthat read the news — at all. There is little if any Obama or Democratic move to reregulate Wall Street or to regulate the health industry beyond a few token measures that will likely be easily evaded. Obama offers environmental measures as "suggestions". The FDA may get some regulatory teeth back, but only after 3 decades of disaster, thanks to Reagan and Clinton. "Micromanaging industry"? How? Where? Can Douthat offer even one example beyond, perhaps, the banning of denial of health insurance coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions? There is simply no basis in fact for Douthat's or Manzi's assertions. They offer nothing more than Friedman/Greenspan style conservative economics.

6. Partnerships "between Big Business and Big Government"? What partnership? We the People bailed out Wall Street after vague threats by overpaid executives? We bailed out the auto manufacturers only after it became clear they really would fail, taking with them tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of jobs. Republicans fought the aid to Detroit tooth and nail. Our health insurance and Wall Street "partners" continue to fight any change that might threaten their grossly over-sized bonuses. Again Douthat shows a childish ignorance of or a willful (very Republican) indifference to fact.

Last, "We're all in this together"?! You've got to be kidding. If the past two years prove anything at all, it is that we are *not* all in this together. The wealthiest 1% to 5% of Americans (or fewer) and their paid representatives in Congress have immunized themselves against the conditions of the vast majority. In this respect, the US is doing quite well at keeping pace with China.

A Comment on Chris Hedges's "One Day We'll All Be Terrorists"

2009-12-29T12:15:00.002-05:00

Chris Hedges has a disturbing essay on TruthDig.com surveying the US crimes against American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi. My response directly below.

The Bush-Obama bailout of Wall Street, costing US (that's you and me), trillions proved that the United States is an Oligarchy. The coddling of health insurers further supports that conclusion.

The Bush-Obama assault on the rights of all people, including especially Citizens of the United States, is proof that the US is fast exiting its time as a democracy.

The question I return to again and again: Is Obama doing this intentionally? Some in the US are simply dogmatic true believers in the divine right of the few over the many. Others are merely craven, self-serving opportunists. My sense is that Obama is one of the latter -- one who knows he is acting against the common good, acting against the Constitution, but is determined to carry on because it serves his own vile self-interest.

Chris Hedges's essay:

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/one_day_well_all_be_terrorists_20091228/

Posted on Dec 28, 2009

By Chris Hedges

Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.

This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.

The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.

Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.

“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.

“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.

“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”

Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.

“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”

Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”

The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.

“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”

Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.

There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.

Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.

Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).

Stanley Fish on Divine Vengeance!

2009-12-29T07:25:00.003-05:00

December 29th's New York Times has Stanley Fish considering the joys of divine vengeance in film — the license we are granted to relish violence in film when the perpetrator is unqualifiedly justified because of some awful wrong done him or her. My response below.

Great topic. Let's not forget the leading advocate of divine justice is the God of Judeo-Christian religion.

Vengeance is arguably one of two Great Motives in film, the other being love. Vengeance and violence are uniformly just in war films, especially if the war involves the US. Can any of us imagine a war film showing the US as fundamentally morally awful? If the US is at war, in fact or fiction, it is taken as axiomatic that the violence is just. Today, we even get POV reality footage of 'surgical strikes' -- surgeons are engaged in violent acts, are they (!)

Much sci fi involves sublime violence — Wars or the Worlds.

In some films, the vengeance is explicitly granted divine status -- take The Crow, with Brandon Lee, who died in a _representation_ of violence.

Look at the entire oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino, who perfectly mashes the fine line between justice and absurdity. Lucy Liu's character in Kill Bill begins as a victim on a divine quest and becomes a violent beast.

I think my personal favorite is Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, which does a pretty good job (the best I can recall) of stripping away the veneer of justice. A woman horribly wronged, and an assortment of entirely unrelated men setting out to balance the scales of justice -- for money. Each of these men with his own vile violent past, including Clint Eastwood's Will Munny (hint hint), who of all the assassin's has the most terrible past.

And then there's Hamlet.

Roger Cohen in Defends the Faith of The New York Times

2009-12-28T08:47:00.003-05:00

Roger Cohen offered a weak essay lauding the wonders of America. He was inundated with criticism. He responded with a tip of the cap and further defenses. Here, my response.

Dear Mr. Cohen:

Perhaps you can answer how the Times decides when to end new comments on op-ed essays. My guess is that the Times reacts against critical trends, and it's understandable why responses to you recent essays are overwhelmingly critical.

To be blunt, you sound like a 5th grade school teacher -- in keeping with a newspaper that doesn't remotely measure up to the standards it claims to set. More like Defender of the Faith than a defender of America.

The US has military bases in how many countries? One hundred fifty? More? The nation has been at war _continuously_ for over sixty years (undeclared and arguably all unconstitutional). No Third World War? Tell that to Vietnamese, Iraqis, Iranians, Cambodians, Laotians, Chileans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Timorese....

Racism towards Arabs (whom you neglect to mention in your quasi-mea culpa) is soaring. Members of Congress brazenly tar all Arabs, all Muslims.

Two successive administrations, including the one hailed as the most liberal in generations, have missed _no_ opportunity to attack civil liberties. Civil liberties "haltingly advanced"? Obama is halting, not advancing.

As your colleague Paul Krugman and many other moderates and liberals have noted, the US is substantively an oligarchy. The "American dream" is dying. Wealth rules, with the eager support of all three branches of government, including, again, the "most liberal" President Obama. The president has acted to advance poverty and inequality, which are growing rapidly.

Though environmental disasters are widely recognized, the government and people show, at best, blithe indifference. Perhaps on no other count can the worst of the US be seen. The Times takes part as it focuses attention on China, though the US towers in its responsibility for ecological catastrophe. The US has repeatedly fought legislation in Europe to regulate GM foods, pesticides and plastics. Some aim.

We are indeed heirs of fortitude and foresight. Obama shows NO sign of heeding this. And you do nothing for future progress by carrying on the grade school teacher's mission of indoctrination.

Ten Year Old Girl Surprised by Her Daddy's Return from Iraq

2009-12-24T00:01:00.002-05:00

Does Obama have the decency or courage to view something like this? His own daughters are 8 and 11 years old.

Bill Moyers Interviews Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner

2009-12-18T21:48:00.004-05:00

Below, my response to Bill Moyers's interview with Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner on Friday, 18 December. I'll post a link to the video when it is available.

Robert Kuttner is wrong in his assessment of Obama.

1. Obama is not so intelligent, at least not in the way that the US needs. (Obama is very smart when it comes to pleasing those in power.) As Tony Judt notes in the current New York Review of Books, the principle (perhaps only) criterion of policy evaluation is economic -- will the policy serve/make money (to put it a little too simply). Obama is squarely inside this school of 'thought'. He does not consider whether a policy is morally right or wrong. He just doesn't.

2. I believe that the largest private donor to Obama's campaign is not Goldman Sachs, but Harvard University. Granted, Harvard probably doesn't donate with the single-mindedness that Goldman does, but this does point to a largely unexamined component in the current disaster -- the role of Harvard Business School (More than Chicago, these days, the center of right-wing economics) and Harvard Law School (where Obama learned his 'obedience to authority').

The role of 'leading' universities in indoctrinating people into patterns of obedience to power cannot be overstated. This is no conspiracy theory but simply an observation of social fact.

3. In May 2008, Penn professor Adolph Reed wrote of Obama (whom he knew personally in Chicago) as a "vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him." This strikes me as right on the mark. Frankly, I think Obama is ripe for Freudian analysis. His father abandoned him when he was very young. He no doubt blamed himself, as children do. Now he is stuck in a pattern of endlessly trying to please those he perceives as superiors. In this regard, he bears a striking similarity to Bill Clinton.

4. From a vaguely scientific standpoint, the question is: What explains Obama's unbroken pattern of saying one thing to the public and doing another in private, of caving to power and wealth (if it really is caving, as opposed to Obama carrying out what was always his intended program).

5. Unlike Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner, I have almost no confidence that a social movement will rise up to force change. The US is a strange combination of the beaten down peasantry of 18th Century Eastern Europe and the violently jingoistic nationalism of Russia, China, Israel and (of course) the US itself. Dissent, especially public assembly, is — de facto — being criminalized in the US. Rights guaranteed us by the Constitution are being taken away by the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, by police forces and local policies across the country, by ever-growing and oppressive surveillance of our daily activity. We have a Supreme Court and a lower court structure that systematically rules in favor of power at the expense of The People.

The US is in very serious trouble. It really cannot be overstated. And this says nothing of equal or greater troubles on the environmental front, where Obama is also failing terribly.

My feeling is that the US is exiting its Age of Democracy. In the future, people will think of the US as a "Constitutional Democracy" in much the way we today speak of Britain being a Constitutional Monarchy. The US will be a democracy in a minimally legal sense, but it will be an oligarchy in practice and fact. Arguably, this is already the case.

Our Place in the Universe

2009-12-17T16:23:00.003-05:00

Great visualization of our place in the universe developed by the Hayden Planetarium and The American Museum of Natural History.

Recent Web Bites

2009-12-14T19:55:00.002-05:00

"If you're so rich, how come you're so dumb." — Paul Samuelson

"The Wall Street shenanigans are much worse" than in the Great Depression. "Fiendish, financial Frankenstein monsters." — Paul Samuelson

A key problem in US politics: Fear & ignorance (commom in dictatorships) are deemed standard political tools, esp by rightwing.

Another Bicyclist Killed in New York: DJ Reverend Soul (Solange Raulston) Killed in Greenpoint, Struck by Truck http://bit.ly/6WmmyT

US talks endlessly re 'responsibility.' -> neocon/neolib newspeak for "poor, middle class & disadvantaged pick up tab for rich & big biz"

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing w/o a demand. It never did & it never will. — Frederick Douglass

The US blathers about Iraq et al 'stepping up to the plate.' Will the US do so on climate or is it just more American hot air? @whitehouse

Brooklyn - School bus runs crosswalk in front of school while kids are crossing. Driver is on cellphone. [8:20 Monday morning, 14 December]

Pentagon asssumes the worst treating climate change as security threat. Conservatives assume worst on war, Why not on climate?

US says it won't sign on at Copenhagen unless there're binding rules for developing nations. Funny, US always wants voluntary for Big Biz.

On 60 Minutes, Obama said he'd know by end of 2010 if his Afghanistan plan is working.... around about Tuesday, Nov. 2nd.

Outraged Brits want Blair Prosecuted 4 War Crimes: http://bit.ly/8RMGLX Bush's poodle admits he'd have supported war knowing Iraq had no WMD

RT @NYTimeskrugman Disaster and Denial: "I actually believed that influential people could be moved by evidence." http://bit.ly/8VGFrC

AlterNet Robert Reich: How a Few Private Health Insurers Are on the Way to Controlling Health Care http://bit.ly/8fDvWU

doctorow Open Colour Standard http://tinyurl.com/y8hnlyb has wide-reaching consequences for what we wear, what we see, what we pay

haaretzonline Jewish town won't let Arab build home on his own land http://bit.ly/6F0Xxs

US response to Amanda Knox verdict = A vicious, xenophobic attack on Italian justice | Marcel Berlins http://bit.ly/7uqXiw via @GuardianUSA

World to be Protected from Knowledge of Tony Blair's War Crimes! http://bit.ly/6cYyuM Bush's Poodle Will Give Evidence in Secret.

Hopenhagen? Ha! The folks in Europe don't have a friggin' clue about Obama. (photo) http://tinyurl.com/ycdaygt

NYTimeskrugman Paul Samuelson, RIP http://bit.ly/6I8Gir

seasonothebitch "To be 'realistic' in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth." — Zinn

@MargaretAtwood Sobering Monsanto exposé, preview of DNA-based capitalism: http://bit.ly/61mBir /better livin thru Frankenseeds

The Haves Arm Themselves

2009-12-02T07:25:00.004-05:00

Barack Obama's good friends at Goldman Sachs are picking up handguns to "defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank." Evidently, Michael Moore and the public whose views Moore's captures have the US-endorsed robber barons spooked.

Seriously, this extraordinary in a city in which the mayor has repeatedly railed against guns, especially handguns.

Here, the essay from Bloomberg News:

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.
I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

Pistol Ready

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.

To the Barricades

He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.

So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

Torn Curtain

There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.

This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.

Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.

Cool Hand Lloyd

No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.

And if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms. If nothing else, that pistol permit might go part way toward explaining why they won’t be standing outside with the rest of the crowd, broke and humiliated, saying, “Damn, I was on the wrong side of a trade with Goldman again.”

(Alice Schroeder, author of “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” and a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Alice Schroeder at aliceschroeder@ymail.com.

A Brave New America {in progress}

2009-11-30T17:33:00.006-05:00

Paul Krugman pulls his punches. He writes in two Times pieces today, one on the op-ed page and the other on his Times blog, of the issues of unemployment, the Obama administration's failure to act and the elite's indifference to the suffering of many now that the Great Recession has officially been declared over.

Looking a year or two forward in his blog, Krugman writes,

[There] will be high unemployment leading into the 2010 elections, and corresponding Democratic losses. These losses will be worse because Obama, by pursuing a uniformly pro-banker policy without even a gesture to popular anger over the bailouts, has ceded populist energy to the right and demoralized the movement that brought him to power.

And from his Times op-ed essay,

You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.

Not long ago, in an interview with Eliot Spitzer on Bill Maher's show, Krugman sounded far more pessimistic. "Sometimes I wake up and think I'm in a third world country." And "The American dream isn't dead, but it's dying pretty fast." And still more: "If the US was a third world country, the IMF and others would be saying, 'You have to get rid of your oligarchs.'"

Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert are the most critical — and incisive — voices on the Times op-ed page, but the Times still tones them down, I suspect.

The Shape of Things to Come

2009-11-30T17:27:00.003-05:00

I've been reading Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood (which for some reason I invariably think of as In the Year of the Flood, perhaps following H. G. Wells's In the Day of the Comet). Atwood's vision of a possible future is sobering — rampant wonder-species spliced by Frankengeneticists, a plastic two-tiered society, packaged everything. Including synthetic meat.

Today, Gizmodo reports on Dutch scientists synthesizing pork — not yet up to lip-smacking goodness, but on the way.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Journey Through Your Blogger's Mind

2009-11-26T17:21:00.002-05:00

A rehash of recent comments from Twitter and Facebook, in no particular order or organizing schema.

The White House Bash Crash of 25 November 2009

Network Cameras Followed White House Crashers http://bit.ly/777b9I Why not crash the Prez bash? It's good TV!

Terrorists really haven't got it figured. They just need to make Terrorism into a Reality TV show and they'll have it made.

On Wall Street, Health Insurers and Money Money Money. Just how much wrong-doing can be 'justified' by profit — a question I have yet to hear any banker or insurer answer. But the impression I get is that, given enough money, ANY moral crime can be justified.

Credit, Consumption, Collapse - Environmental Collapse, Financial Collapse, Economic Collapse. Any guesses what all that adds up to?

Does any Wall Street or Health Insurance or Banking Executive ever say "We can't do that because it is just wrong."

Have Karen Ignani, AHIP, Angela Braly, WellPoint, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs, Nessa Feddis, ABA ever found something too immoral to do?

To the bankers and health insurers: Does a sufficient sum of money trump ANY moral consideration?

More to come....

Lowell Bergman Investigates the Credit House of Cards

2009-11-26T13:47:00.001-05:00

America's Constitutional Oligarchy

2009-11-13T20:48:00.002-05:00

Outstanding scholar of the credit crisis, Elizabeth Warren, is on NOW on PBS this evening, Friday, 13 November 2009.

Here are some comments I made on the program:

The importance of public airing of the dissenting views of Elizabeth Warren and others like her cannot be overstated.

Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, Summers and the majority of the Harvard-Chicago School of Economics have stopped just short of damn lying. They have done the same thing with the economy of the United States that Bush & Co did with the war in Iraq: "IF you knew what we do, you would agree with us, but we can't tell you." Obama's openness and transparency is that of Orwell's 1984.

Representative Marcy Kaptur and a handful of elected officials, a number of prominent economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, and others across the US have said what is increasingly obvious. The US is no longer a democracy, it is an oligarchy. A constitutional oligarchy. We are locked into the "two-party" system that many clearly think is constitutionally mandated. The effect of this is to render our votes irrelevant. Democratic or Republican, the government will serve the oligarchs at our expense. The housing crisis, the financial crisis, health care, endless war abroad -- on all counts, first consideration (often the only consideration) is given to the demands of the oligarchs.

In an interview with Bill Maher, both Paul Krugman and Eliot Spitzer agreed that the "American dream is dying pretty fast." Krugman noted that, if the US were a third world country or one like Russia, the IMF and others -- especially the US -- would be saying "You have to stop the oligarchs."

Paul Krugman on the Demise of "Commie" as a Term of Abuse

2009-11-09T18:25:00.003-05:00

Paul Krugman notes that the right-wing of the US has turned from charging their liberal and progressive opponents with the being "Commies" to being "Nazis".

Of course, opponents of health care reform have regularly been calling single-payer and the public option "socialism". Hasn't had much effect. Maybe too many Americans are just too young to be able to tap into the hysteria that term once provoked. (I myself remember the vile Wyoming senator Alan Simpson leveling the charge of "comsymp" at those who dared suggest that Reagan had committed impeachable offenses in the Iran-Contra scandal.)

By contrast, the image of the Nazis as the greatest evil ever to visit Earth (and even the greatest evil that could visit Earth) is alive and well.

I believe that the charge of "Nazi!" can rightly be leveled in some circumstances — certainly not idly as some on both right and left do. Much of the rhetoric of Reagan, George W. Bush and many on the right extreme is strikingly similar to that of the Nazis. If I remember correctly, for example, former New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani referred to the notorious Saatchi show at the Brooklyn Museum as "degenerate art".

What language would be too strong to characterize the Ann Coulters, Glenn Becks, Bill O'Reillys, Dick Armeys, and others who tar with one brush the world's entire Muslim population as terrorist. Ann Coulter called for the bombing of Muslims — all of them. The right wing of John Yoo, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and others has endorsed the bombing of civilians, the torture of any person on the president's say-so, and the effective conversion of the president to a monarch or dictator. What is the appropriate name for this?

Some would say that the term "Nazi" should be reserved exclusively for the members of the National Socialist Party in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. But what then of the term "neo-Nazi"? What of "fascist"?

As for the American right-wing and its casual abuse of the term: I believe the right-wing is undergoing a fully-fledged psychotic break. They are genuinely, deeply divorced from reality. As their connection to reality has become ever more tenuous, they have adopted rhetoric that is similarly divorced from reality.

They are consumed by rage, ignorant of and indifferent to fact, largely incapable of rational or critical thought, and most importantly, incapable of one of the key requirements of the Christian religion many of them formally endorse — compassion for those different from or less fortunate than themselves.

They oppose health care for 300 million in the interest of preserving billions in income for a handful of insurers.

They go ape over something as innocuous as the move of a few words on a coin (as Sarah Palin did over the move of "In God We Trust").

They oppose 1 trillion for the well-being of the American people while supporting unknown trillions for disastrous wars.

They deny climate change and oppose action on such change despite glaring evidence that action is needed.

They persist to this day in trying to foist "creationism" or "intelligent design" on students.

They rave about freedom while supporting the systematic erosion of Constitutional rights.

These are not the behaviors of rational or compassionate people. Granted, the charge of irrationality should not be made lightly, and the charge has been abused (notably by Stalin), but frankly, it is time to admit that the 20% of the US population that constitutes the right-wing hobbling the United States is simply not rational, simply not in touch with reality. That includes, sadly, some of Paul Krugman's colleagues at The New York Times, like David Brooks.

The systematic denial of fact (regarding health care, or the political health of a nation in the face of monstrous disparities in the distribution of wealth, or any of a number of other things) is best explained as an irrational delusion.

The Balance of EVIL (Pure, Not from Concentrate)!

2009-11-09T15:30:00.005-05:00

New York City's two tabloids, The Daily News and The New York Post, both splash news of the Fort Hood mass murder across their front pages. "Evil!" the watchword. I'm struck by the American Sense of Evil, particularly that of the American Right Wing, the Arrrrwwww!

Personally, I think there is such a thing as evil. The architects of Nazi mass murder were evil. I would say those who attack a population with every reason to believe that civilians, including children, will be the principle victims are evil. (Here I have in mind the likes of Henry Kissinger, Condoleeza Rice, Benjamin Netanyahu, Dick Cheney, among others.)

So I do not object in principle to the characterization of people or their acts as evil. I just find the Right Wing Sense of Evil strange, disturbing. The 'mainstream' of American thinkers and certainly the right would strongly object to my calling Kissinger or Cheney evil, so who knows, they might say the same of me.

Let's review, beginning with Monday, November 9th's, newspapers:

Also evil, according to the right wing:

national healthcare, bringing an end to private health insurance;
moving "In God We Trust" to a less central location on American coins;
higher taxes of any kind (except sales taxes);
any who criticize the United States in any thorough-going way (as opposed to criticizing elements of the US, like liberals or taxes);
environmental conservation;
anyone who votes against the Republican Party line (witness the response to Rep. Cao's vote for the health care reform bill)

More soon.....

Civilization Collapse Disorder

2009-11-08T21:48:00.005-05:00

Saturday, I saw the documentary Collapse, directed by Chris Smith, on the thinking of Michael Ruppert, Peak Oil and the implications for modern civilization of a systematic collapse in the oil economy of the world. Sobering.

______________________________

From the Wilderness, Michael Ruppert's website chronicling his views

Bluemark Films, makers of Collapse

When Reporters Try to Make News

2009-11-05T23:08:00.003-05:00

The torrent of hate speech is flooding forth after the mass-murder at Fort Hood in Texas. Never willing to pass up on a chance to foment hatred, Fox News is doing it's best to bait people, lead those it interviews, cast the events in the worst possible light.

Here is my letter to Shepard Smith after he lead the already-happy-to-lynch Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison:

Dear Mr. Smith:

After the murderous rampage at Fort Hood, you asked Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison -- rhetorically, to judge by the sound of it -- "The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?" Senator Hutchison replied, "It does. It does, Shepard."

Do you think Sen. Hutchison plans to introduce legislation to ban certain names? Or that she might call for the arrest of people with those names?

Perhaps you can clarify for people around the world just what is in a name. What does it tell us, Mr. Smith?

Hugh Sansom

Maureen Dowd's Apology for a Pathetic President

2009-11-01T07:06:00.004-05:00

Maureen Dowd offers one of the weakest apologies I have yet seen for the miserable excuse of a president, Obama. On the occasion of Obama's visit to Dover Air Force Base to salute the fallen returning from Afghanistan, Dowd prates:

It may have been a photo op, another way Obama could show he was not W., the president who started the Iraq war in a haze of fakery and then declined to ever confront the reality of its dead.
Certainly, as Obama tries to figure out how to avoid being a war president when he’s saddled with two wars, he wants as much military cred in the bank as he can get.
But it was also a genuinely poignant moment. It is how we want our presidents to behave, doing the humane thing especially when it’s hard. And Obama, who called it “a sobering reminder” of sacrifices made, signaled to Americans that he will resist blinders as he grapples with the byzantine, seemingly bottomless conflicts he inherited.
...
President Obama bore witness just as he is deciding whether to accede to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for up to 80,000 more troops in Afghanistan.
He should keep in mind Cyrus Vance’s warning before President Carter decided to send a Delta team to rescue the Iranian hostages (an ill-fated decision that provoked Vance’s resignation as secretary of state). “Generals will rarely tell you they can’t do something,” he said. “This is a complex damn operation, and I haven’t forgotten the old saying from my Pentagon days that in the military, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
Barack Obama, the wunderkind who came out of nowhere to win the presidency, was supposed to push America out of the ditch and into a glittering future. But modernity is elusive when you’re in a time machine to the 14th century called Afghanistan. The tableau of Obama at Dover evoked the last line of “The Great Gatsby:” “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
As Obama comforted families at a tragic moment, he also had to contemplate a tragic dimension of his own presidency: It’s nice to talk about change, but you can’t wipe away yesterday.
Obama wants to be the cosmopolitan president of the world, and social engineer at home to improve the lives of Americans.
But what he had in mind for renovating American society hinged on spending a lot of money on energy, education, the environment and health care. Instead, he has been trapped in the money pits of a recession and two wars.
For now, the man who promised revolution will have to settle for managing adversity.

My response:

"Obama wants to be the cosmopolitan president of the world, and social engineer at home to improve the lives of Americans."

Really.

Obama releases photos from Dover and suppresses photos from Abu Ghraib and Gitmo -- photos by Americans of American war crimes. Obama, "social engineer", has carried on most of what Bush had started in bailing out Wall Street and the American Oligarchs, to whom he clearly feels more allegiance than he does to the American People. He has guaranteed the profits of health insurers. He is reneging on commitments to close off vast tracts of wilderness from logging and roads. Obama has advocated Bush-era violations of the civil and Constitutional rights of Americans.

Obama, "cosmopolitan president of the world", threatened Britons' safety in order to suppress facts about American atrocities. He has defended and extended the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the 'brave' use of pilotless drones. He will not go to Copenhagen and his representatives are likely to be a drag on progress towards solving climate problems. This month we will almost certainly not become the first president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Before Israel, after some vague promises, Obama has caved repeatedly, condemning Palestinians to some of the worst conditions confronting any people on Earth.

Obama promised a great deal. He has given every indication that those promises were never anything more than words to win votes. This is the explanation that accounts for his wide-ranging, repeated failures to live up to the promises -- not Maureen Dowd's thin apologia that he has to "manage" diversity.

The Lighter Side of Lite Beer

2009-10-21T21:32:00.003-04:00

Carter-Ruck and the Law of Evil

2009-10-13T23:38:00.005-04:00

Americans may be unfamiliar with the case of Carter-Ruck, Trafigura and press freedom in Britain.

Britons enjoy substantially less press freedom than Americans. The leading British law firm, Carter-Ruck, proved just how much less in the past few days. Trafigura, a Swiss multinational, has been implicated in a number of crimes, most recently illegal waste dumping. It is also tied to the infamous Marc Rich, billionaire criminal several times over and beneficiary of Bill Clinton's notorious last-minute pardon.

Carter-Ruck has been representing Trafigura. As Wikipedia now records, "On October 12, 2009 The Guardian newspaper reported that it had been prevented by legal injunction from covering remarks made in Parliament. " That injunction was secured by Carter-Ruck. Twitter and the internet blew the lid off Carter-Ruck's attempts to do an end-run around democracy and freedom of the press.

It is one thing to defend the accused, a right all have (even criminal corporations, polluters, health insurers, Wall Street thieves). It's another to abet a crime by suppressing the public's right to know.

We the People shouldn't underestimate the actions of Carter-Ruck nor should we let Trafigura or Carter-Ruck get off scot-free. Below is the email I sent to Carter-Ruck:

To Whom It May Concern:

For an essay on practical issues of professional ethics and justice, I would like to enquire on Carter-Ruck's response to the overwhelmingly negative press received following your attempt to suppress the truth in the case of alleged misconduct by Trafigura.

In particular, do Carter-Ruck's senior officers feel any sense of shame or are they simply breathing a sigh of relief that worse publicity was averted? Do they view their attempts to suppress truth and subvert democracy as unethical? Do they view themselves as effectively complicit in the any crimes of Trafigura?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

Outer Space, Man

2009-10-11T03:00:00.006-04:00

Two graphics. First from I'm not sure where, representing the many planetary and other missions going back to Pioneer, Voyager and before. The second, my own render of what the Sun roughly looks like from Voyager 1, now near 10 billion miles, 16 billion kilometers, from Earth and the Sun — a damn long way, but still just 15 light-hours from the Sun. So a photon would take just 15 hours to catch up with Voyager 1, which has been traveling for 32 years.

See the full size space exploration graphic here.

The Hunter's Defense

2009-10-10T11:26:00.003-04:00

The hunter said the guy he shot looked like
a house which looked like a deer . . . running.

Obama — The Audacity of Hype

2009-10-08T19:01:00.002-04:00

Health Insurers' Willing Executioners

2009-09-30T09:56:00.003-04:00

Baucus, Grassley, Hatch, Snowe. These are the murderers. Murderers for hire. They have been bought, or have willing sold themselves, to the Health Insurers — Wellpoint, Aetna, Cigna, United.... We remain ill, we die so they can make money.

In mythology and religious history, these vile creatures have their ancestors. In Dante, the Baucuses, Grassleys, Snowes suffer in the lowest levels of hell.

We the People must give them Hell on Earth, now.

NASA's Messenger Spacecraft Flies by Mercury

2009-09-29T13:04:00.005-04:00

Today, September 29th, the Messenger spacecraft will approach to within 142 miles (about 229 km) of the surface of Mercury. That's damn close — closer than many satellites are to Earth's surface.

Using the freeware Celestia, I created this image of what Mercury and the Sun would look like at a distance of 3000 kilometers, much further away than Messenger will be. The Sun looks a lot bigger there. Mercury is just 58 million km from the Sun, as opposed to Earth's 150 million km.
Further down, check out the comparison of how the Sun looks here on Earth with how it looks on Mercury (courtesy of messenger-education.org or here too). Click on the images to see full-size.

Twittering Again (too lazy to type)

2009-09-28T20:45:00.003-04:00

Be afraid, be very afraid. Taser & all the Brave New Weapons can kill. But the gov't is sure they can be 'safely' used domestically & abroad

Less than Lethal Weapons: US et al (Brits, French, Israelis..) r all hot & bothered re Brave New Weapons LRAD sound cannon, Silent Guardian

Dept of Newspeak, 'Non-Lethal Weapons': LRAD Sound Cannon Used on Pittsburgh G20 Protesters http://gizmodo.com/5369190

Guess this is to make us feel better given we'll never be able to retire: "Workers thriving at 70, 80, and even 100" http://bit.ly/dM52N

RT @wired Fun fact: Colorado River Toads are psychoactive - skin contains hallucinogenic tryptamines which can be harvested by stroking toad

This is a Colorado River Toad. That's doing his best Spock impression. http://bit.ly/bUizU (via @nerdist) (via @wired)

Scary: Bullet Makers Can't Keep Up With Demand http://bit.ly/XjqG7 (via @AlterNet)

RT @bobfertik Historic first! Netroots crowdsourcing produces Bush Torture Indictment 2.0 http://bit.ly/U61Au @davidcnswanson

RT @thenation Arundhati Roy: So, is there life after democracy? Read "What Have We Done to Democracy?" @thenation http://tinyurl.com/ye63nwh

US dollar set to be eclipsed, World Bank president predicts http://bit.ly/11h8HW (via @GuardianUSA)

HuffPost - Obama Adviser Signals White House Giving Up On Climate Change Treaty - http://tinyurl.com/yamhnnw

HuffPost: Senator Schumer Receives $1.65 Million From Wall Street - http://tinyurl.com/ycdm4cx

Micheletti government suspends civil liberties in Honduras http://bit.ly/VuSQu And Obama & US support Micheletti - another Obama triumph

Stunning US successes in Iraq, Afghanistan so GOPs Jon Kyl & Kit Bond are calling for a 3peat in Iran http://bit.ly/p2mf0

Why is Obama pushing harder for Chicago's Olympic bid than he is for real change on the climate policy?

2 Parents, 5 Jobs, STILL not enough Health Care. Republicans, incl Olympia Snowe, think this fine. Obama grovels http://bit.ly/13qdfX

NYC is 49th in the Americas in Quality of Life. http://bit.ly/84WRB @mikebloomberg @Thompson2009

Mercer survey of quality of life finds the top 5 cities in the Americas are all in Canada: http://www.mercer.com/quali...

MAP: India as a growing global power. From Le Monde. http://mondediplo.com/maps/...
about 13 hours ago from web

Paul Krugman: The American Dream Is Dying

2009-09-26T22:58:00.006-04:00

This clip from the Huffington Post:

Krugman: On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country.

On good mornings I think "This is America" and we have always in the past managed to turn ourselves around, and there's an FDR just around the corner.... I was kind of hoping that Obama might be FDR, but maybe not.

If America was officially a third world country, the International Monetary Fund would come in and say, "You have to break the power of your oligarchs. Those banking interests, they have too much power."
...

The truth is that most people don't have parents who [can send them money].

...

The American Dream is not totally dead but it's dying pretty fast. You look at the numbers on social mobility, on the ability of people to move from modest or poor backgrounds up, the United States is way down on the list.... You have a much better chance of getting up the scale in Finland or Sweden or France than in the United States.

On "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday night, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said that while the American dream is not totally dead, it is "dying pretty fast," particularly when it comes to social mobility. Krugman made this statement during a lengthy discussion with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and host Bill Maher about the troubled state of the American economy and where we are in terms of reforming the system.

Both Krugman and Spitzer expressed optimism that America could right itself in the coming years if the correct steps were taken, but they were also highly critical of the degree of inequality that has become a part of American life and the lack of reform that has so far taken place.

"On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country," Krugman said. "But on good mornings I think, well this is America, we have always in the past managed to turn ourselves around, and there is an FDR just around the corner if we could only find him. I was kind of hoping Obama might be FDR, but maybe not. "

The Most Corrupt Members of Congress

2009-09-25T02:03:00.009-04:00

"Trying to find the most corrupt member of Congress is like trying to find the wettest fish in the ocean."
— me

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has published a report on the 15 most corrupt members in Congress. Of those 15

12 are under investigation
several are under pressure to resign
at least one is an adulterer
one is a tax evader

Will War's Idolaters Ever Just Shut the Fuck Up?

2009-09-24T04:52:00.002-04:00

Martin Bright in the Spectator

Incidentally, I now think the invasion was indeed an error: carried out at the wrong time, by the wrong coalition for the wrong reasons. But where I do agree with the “decents” is that those who opposed intervention in 2002/3 were arguing for the murderous Baathist regime to stay in power. This should remain on their conscience just as the murderous consequences of the invasion are on the conscience of those who supported the war.

(via Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber, via comments at Aaronovitch Watch)

Martin Bright's assertion that those who argued against the war were arguing for preservation of the Baathist regime is simply idiotic. False logic, false dichotomy.

First, it is patently obvious that the intent of the two sides was different, and the difference is essential. The pro-war brigade intended that the 'coalition' go to war. (I'm tempted to say they wanted a war. That might be unfair, though not in the case of the Dick Cheneys. It both fair and accurate that a significant portion of them wanted to see Arabs killed. Whether Martin Bright is among those genocidal racists I do not know. Daniel Pipes, Ann Coulter and their ilk certainly are.)

The anti-war activists expressly (1) advocated other techniques for achieving 'regime change (if that really was the goal of war's advocates — it wasn't), or (2) argued against war on the grounds that the consequences of war would be disastrous (which has proven true), or (3) argued that Bush & Co had not only failed to make their case but had likely misrepresented the facts (at best) or lied outright (which has also proven true). This is by no means an exhaustive list of the arguments against the war. The second argument is unambiguously one of accepting the lesser of two evils — by no stretch of the imagination an argument for the continuation of the lesser evil.

Let's take an example from ethics and popular entertainment. A person is threatened with the murder of her child if she does not surrender secret X — the nuclear launch codes that will enable terrorists to kill vast numbers. Any of us can easily imagine the person herself desperately arguing that she cannot surrender the codes. I do not imagine many, if any, saying that she is arguing for the murder of her child even though a consequence of her following the line of her own argument will be the child's death. You might as well suggest that, because she won't surrender the codes, she is killing her child. And of course, the weak-minded right-wing did indeed take this line of un-reasoning from 2001 on — that those not "with us" were "against us," those against the war were for terrorists. Utter nonsense, bordering on actionable libel.

Plausible Stupidity

2009-09-20T21:51:00.003-04:00

Have you noticed the frequency with which conservatives and assorted right-wingers are caught denying they said something revolting when in fact they did say that thing.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, John Boehner, Dan Quayle.

Let's face it: These guys are dumb. They just aren't particularly intelligent. Whatever native intellect they once possessed was long ago obliterated by the blind hatreds and bigotries that infest right-wing thinking in the United States.

We need a new term — Plausible Stupidity. Incidents of right-wing Plausible Stupidity are typically characterized by a flat denial by the wingnut even when confronted with direct evidence.

My Twitting Twitting Twitting

2009-09-14T09:57:00.002-04:00

IF there is a time when it is incumbent upon us to speak freely, it is before the president, who so far is proving deaf as a doornail5 minutes ago from web
2. Decorum be damned. If free speech exists anywhere in US, it exists in Congress (may not be practiced but it does exist) AND6 minutes ago from web
I've caught flak 4 defending Joe Wilson. 2 thoughts: 1: Wilson is a idiot & like rt-wing generally, engaging in no more than mudslinging BUT7 minutes ago from web
If "He's our president" is true, then is "We're his people" true also? (Maybe some will want to say "We're his subjects".)about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck
Still waiting for explanation of why we owe the president unique respect that doesn't take form: "Because he's our President!"about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck
@mikebloomberg We know you sneer at questions, Mike. But: What'll happen to your Brave New York when unemployment stays over 10% for yearsabout 12 hours ago from web
RT @Greg_Palast When Obama opened..talk to Congress sayng he'd saved..economy, I thought all that's missing is..banner: MISSION ACCOMPLISHEDabout 12 hours ago from web
Between 3 and 6 percent of Earth's total surface is rainforest. 50 percent of all animal & plant species live in that 3 to 6 percent.about 12 hours ago from web
Darwin film can't find US distributor because...too many Americans still have a fit over evolution. http://tr.im/yBl6about 17 hours ago from tr.im
#SinglePayer & #PublicOption Debate: we know what moves Libs - Justice. What moves rt-wing? Money? Is that best they can say 4 themselves?about 21 hours ago from web
Question for Republicons & Blue Doggy Dems: Why does private insurance have priority over getting health care to every American?about 21 hours ago from web
Sen. Gregg, NH, "no way the private sector will be able to compete" w/ #PublicOption YET Britain France Canada have both http://tr.im/yAo4about 21 hours ago from tr.im
New York Times admits #PublicOption dead. Obama's big biz bosses, health insurance & big pharma oppose it. End of story http://tr.im/yAo4about 21 hours ago from tr.im
Democrats are afflicted by the need to have everyone like them, Republicans by the need to get their way - 2 siblings forever fightingabout 24 hours ago from Twitterrific
The 'Moderate Center' supported war in Iraq, bailouts for billionaires, denial of rights for detainees. Some moderation! Some center!about 24 hours ago from web
The 'Moderate Center' (which is neither) paints all left & right as fanatics, then claims the 'Right' to ignore them (esp. the left)9:53 AM Sep 13th from web
US political discourse is marked by each band of the spectrum shouting it needn't talk to others. The 'Moderate Center' is worst on this.9:50 AM Sep 13th from web
Is there an 'American attitude' that leads athletes to behave revoltingly, like Serena Williams, and politicians to act like spoiled brats?9:48 AM Sep 13th from web
Nikki White because she was denied health care - she had no insurance. http://tr.im/yzut8:44 AM Sep 13th from tr.im
@BeathThePressDB Do you believe estimates of number of Americans w/out health insurance are understated, as are figures for unemployment?8:31 AM Sep 13th from web
Personal vitriol upending political compromise isn't new: Witness Alexander Hamilton & John Adams, election of 1800; Hamilton & Burr...8:16 AM Sep 13th from web
1790 Hamilton et al agree to US capital on Potamac. New York becomes business capital. 2009 Wall St moves to Washington: http://tr.im/yzoY8:11 AM Sep 13th from tr.im
@KatrinaNation "degradation of..political sphere..hatred" needs understanding, much as y some hate US. It's not new, the ill-formed polity1:35 AM Sep 13th from Twitterrific
Any thoughts on the psychological profile of @mikebloomberg ? I suspect a little man bedeviled by longstanding feelings of inadequacy12:21 AM Sep 13th from Twitterrific
Suggestion @mikebloomberg - You have a multi-million dollar mansion in Bermuda. Move there & appoint yourself Lord Protector or whatever12:13 AM Sep 13th from Twitterrific
Did @mikebloomberg just wake up one morning and think, "New York just can't do without me. I am too important to the city."12:11 AM Sep 13th from Twitterrific
GOP & Blue Doggy Dem states to get hammered most by Climate Change in US! Must be The Wrath of God! http://tr.im/yydD12:02 AM Sep 13th from tr.im
80% of Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch (twice the size of Texas) is just discards by people on shore. http://tr.im/yyco11:52 PM Sep 12th from tr.im
10% of the 260 million TONS of plastic produced worldwide each yr end up in oceans. 26 million tons. 52 billion pounds. http://tr.im/yybq11:45 PM Sep 12th from tr.im
Giant rat discovered ... NOT in New York subways! http://tr.im/yyap11:35 PM Sep 12th from tr.im
And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Earth: "Before you try to re-engineer me to stave off warming, think." http://tr.im/yya711:33 PM Sep 12th from tr.im
They're all Lucky! They're all Stars! Be Faithful and Be Saved!10:59 PM Sep 12th from web
Who is Your Personal Lucky Star? Could it be Timothy Geithner or Larry Summers or Lloyd Blankfein or maybe Barack Obama or Dick Cheney?10:58 PM Sep 12th from web
Do you have a personal relationship with Your Lucky Stars?10:57 PM Sep 12th from web
Join The 1st Church of Your Lucky Stars. Church of Modern Media Saints! Church of The New York Times, Harvard, Goldman Sachs. Say Amen!10:56 PM Sep 12th from web
Have you thanked your lucky stars today?10:52 PM Sep 12th from Twitterrific
Every day I thank my lucky stars we have 'experts' 'journalists' 'scholars' to tell us what's right, what's wrong, what's true, what's false10:51 PM Sep 12th from Twitterrific
Bernanke, Blankfein, Thain, Greenberg, Lewis. The very archetypes of Failure by any reasonable measure. But they = Success in US Meritocracy9:15 PM Sep 12th from web
Go to the Hugh Sansom Business School. Cost: Zero. 3 Easy Lessons: Lie Cheat Steal. Harvard BS teaches same, charges over $100k9:11 PM Sep 12th from web
Meritocracy Case 5: Bernard Kerik, former NYPD Commish, Harvard Kennedy School; now under indictment for conspiracy, wire & mail fraud8:28 PM Sep 12th from web
Meritocracy Case 4: Mike Bloomberg, NYC Boss, Harvard BS; currently proving understanding of democracy by overriding voters, buying 3rd term8:23 PM Sep 12th from web
Meritocracy Case 3: John Thain, ex Merrill Lynch CEO, Goldman Sachs 'alum', MIT, proved superior intellect shitting $35,000 on toilet8:17 PM Sep 12th from web
Meritocracy Case Study 2: Lloyd Blankfein, CEO Goldman Sachs, Harvard U, Harvard Law, proved business skill by stealing 100+ billion from US8:07 PM Sep 12th from web
Meritocracy Case Study 1: Katherine Weymouth, Washington Post publisher, Harvard Oxford Stanford, inherited job, now driving into oblivion7:30 PM Sep 12th from web
Myth of Meritocracy, Pt. 1: How many people have a 'boss' who couldn't organize a riot?7:28 PM Sep 12th from web
Truth about @nytimes reporter Stephen Farrell who got 3 people killed in Afghanistan because he wouldn't heed warning http://tr.im/yxdj5:53 PM Sep 12th from tr.im
Georgia arrests man, seizes 500 turtles...to protect the turtles. Man is acquitted. But Georgia has *killed* 362 of the turtles...protection5:51 PM Sep 12th from web
Newt "PornBoy" Gingrich names Porn Co 'Entrepreneur of The Year' for 'Stimulating' ... uh ... the economy5:37 PM Sep 12th from web
Birthers Truthers now Tenthers. Governors of limited intelligence may challenge Fed HealthCare by appeal to 10th Amendment http://tr.im/yx9p5:32 PM Sep 12th from tr.im
@washingtonpost Heard you guys lost $143 million. Maybe Katherine Weymouth should go to school that actually requires learning something5:13 PM Sep 12th from web
@KBAndersen WaPo lost $143 mill: Katherine Weymouth proves the value of Harvard, Oxford, Stanford degrees - big poles up big asses5:07 PM Sep 12th from Twitterrific
Here's the Greek or Old Testament solution 4 Annie Leibovitz: She can keep 1 mill for each silver gelatin print of her's that she can eat3:47 PM Sep 12th from web
Annie Leibovitz charges $100,000 for 1 portrait (yeah u read it right) & she still can't keep her financial shit together. Just like Wall St3:43 PM Sep 12th from web
Leibovitz: 3 adjoining houses in Greenwich Village (many millions); Estate in Rhinebeck (more millions); Chutzpah - priceless3:41 PM Sep 12th from web
If Annie Leibovitz is such an 'artiste', what's with her money-grubbing lust? Whatever happened to old world Greek or biblical justice...3:40 PM Sep 12th from web
Wall St gets bailout, Annie Leibovitz gets reprieve. http://bit.ly/AMnKB What do us regular folks get? A kick in the teeth.3:38 PM Sep 12th from TimesPeople
Can I get an Annie Leibovitz deal on my credit cards? Maybe I have to owe millions first. http://tr.im/ywN93:36 PM Sep 12th from tr.im
RT @wiredscience: Universal "death stench": Is dead bug juice the best defense against infestations? Yummy, yummy.3:04 PM Sep 12th from web
1 Yr After Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St http://bit.ly/Lt2L1 Surprised? Obama & Co REWARDED Wall St w/ 100s of billions12:39 PM Sep 12th from TimesPeople
http://tinyurl.com/nbraqm - Summers: Unemployment To Remain "Unacceptably High" For YEARS. Good for green shoots?...9:05 AM Sep 12th from API
RT @haaretzonline Amos Harel: Clock is ticking for Iran as Israel appears ready for strike http://bit.ly/3q4aJA8:56 AM Sep 12th from Twitterrific
The hysteria over the mere shout against a president is proof of how completely Americans believe that President is also King8:27 AM Sep 12th from web
Where does this idea that we owe fealty to the president come from? Joe Wilson's a vile idiot for lying, not for daring to challenge Obama8:24 AM Sep 12th from web
Health industry lobbyist sees some sense, particularly on the criminal behavior of health insurers http://tr.im/yu5P12:19 AM Sep 12th from tr.im
Brzezinski: We're moving "to a [Soviet] level of military force" http://tr.im/yu3h In fact, with US mercenaries, we exceed Soviet level12:07 AM Sep 12th from tr.im
1979: Brzezinski on Afghan war "We've given Soviets their Vietnam" 2009: B says "We're giving ourselves Soviets Vietnam" http://tr.im/yu3h12:04 AM Sep 12th from tr.im
RT @FDLnewswire Pelosi Fundraiser at UnitedHealth Lobbyist’s Home, just after Pelosi shitcans the #PublicOption http://bit.ly/RVHhp11:08 PM Sep 11th from Twitterrific
RT @haaretzonline France's interior minister allegedly caught on cam uttering anti-Arab slur http://bit.ly/4CVqGq11:05 PM Sep 11th from Twitterrific
Jeter beats Lou Gehrig's all-time hits record! Here's to Jeter & to The Iron Horse, one of the finest ball players ever http://tr.im/ytP310:29 PM Sep 11th from tr.im
"Bring Richard's...private art collection into your home" So reads ad 4 re Weisman's collection http://tr.im/ytKc Someone took it literally10:01 PM Sep 11th from tr.im
RT @jeremyscahill UnitedHealth Lobbyist Announces Pelosi Fundraiser As She Begins Backing Off #PublicOption http://bit.ly/YtHDY6:58 PM Sep 11th from Twitterrific
Person stands on pier next to life preserver but does nothing as swimmer drowns. Life guard does SAME. Who has committed greater crime?5:47 PM Sep 11th from web
Obama is engaged in a war purportedly to bring to justice the murderers of 3000 Americans. Health insurers kill hundreds of thousands.5:46 PM Sep 11th from web
[The People] can exercise their constitutional right of amending [the government] or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it5:44 PM Sep 11th from web
Lincoln "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it" Not Obama, Not GOP, Not Dems, Not Insurers, Not the Rich5:41 PM Sep 11th from web
@nprnews "Muslims Seen As Facing Discrimination" http://su.pr/1jGpoN No, NOT Muslims SEEN as facing.... Muslims ARE facing discrimination5:31 PM Sep 11th from web in reply to nprnews
If Obama will not prosecute and impose sentence on the health insurance murderers, We the People must do so.5:29 PM Sep 11th from web
Angela Braly, Wellpoint. H Edward Hanway, Cigna. Ronald Williams, Aetna. Murderers all. All should be subject to the penalty any murderer is5:29 PM Sep 11th from web
Sacrificing people's health and lives for money makes a person a murderer for hire. It's a crime. It's murder.5:23 PM Sep 11th from web

What Rough Beast

2009-09-07T00:51:00.001-04:00

What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Now we know, the beast Blankfein, the beast Braly

We the People need to provoke a suit for libel by Angela Braly or Lloyd Blankfein so that, via discovery, we can uncover the hideous beast

Perhaps a new subspecies has evolved, so retrograde devolution from Homo sapiens - Homo moneta, Man of money. That crawling creature, leech

We need a new word, not "lust", to describe the ravenous hunger for money of Lloyd Blankfein/Goldman Sachs or Angela Braly/Wellpoint

RT @nytimes Movie Studios See a Threat in Growth of Redbox http://bit.ly/6znXn (translation: studios see threat in competition)

RT @ThePublicRecord Growing Number of Guantanamo Detainees Cleared For Release Remain Imprisoned. http://bit.ly/4x83wa