"Cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines..."

Happy birthday, Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745).

Gulliver's Travels:

He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?" I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more.

Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.

[...]

And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, "that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators."

I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said, "whoever understood the nature of YAHOOS, might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before.

"I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

Happy Birthday, Mark Twain (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910).

Mark Twain :

I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

We have also pledged the power of this country to maintain and protect the abominable system established in the Philippines by the Friars.

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

Tough man on Afghanistan, tender chicken when it comes to battling corporate control

He can stand up for "democracy" in Afghanistan (in reality, he's standing up for a bunch of corrupt warlords), he's willing to go to war for it, but he can't stand up for democracy at home or stand up to conservatives in either party to reform Wall Street (he prefers to "shame" Wall Street) and the health care system.

Killing people at home and abroad, because it's easier than way.

Jeff Cohen:

As he glides from retreats on civil liberties to health reform that appeases corporate interests to his Bush-like pledge this week to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, an Obama reliance on Congressional Republicans to fund his troop escalation could be the final straw in disorienting and demobilizing the progressive activists who elected him a year ago.

Throughout the centuries, no foreign power has been able to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, but President Obama thinks he's a tough enough commander in chief to do it. Too bad he hasn't demonstrated such toughness in the face of obstructionist Republicans and corporate lobbyists. For them, it's been more like "compromiser in chief."

When you start in the center (on, say, health care or Afghanistan) and readily move rightward several steps to appease right-wing politicians or lobbyists or generals, by definition you are governing as a conservative.

Zinn on the Myth of the Good War

Zinn the octogenarian has yet to give up the fight. This is a talk he gave in September on Cape Cod.


And Michael Moore's plea:

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

"He that hunts Or harms ... is guilty of a wrong, Disturbs the economy of nature's realm."

Animal rights, 18th-century style.

I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome, into scenes
Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die:
A necessary act incurs no blame.
Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field:
There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of nature's realm,
Who, when she formed, designed them an abode.
The sum is this: If man's convenience, health,
Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all--the meanest things that are--
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too.
- William Cowper, Care for the Lowest

Epidemic

Total: 23.6 million children and adults in the United States-- 7.8% of the population -- have diabetes.

Over 40 million Americans have prediabetes.

Bloomberg:

The number of Americans with diabetes may almost double in 25 years, and the annual cost of treating them may triple to $336 billion, according to a study published today in the journal Diabetes Care.

"There are known knowns ... things we know that we know."

[source]

And one of them is that Donald Rumsfeld fucked up. BIG TIME.

Raw Story:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Osama bin Laden was "within the grasp" of US forces in late 2001 but escaped because then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements, a hard-hitting US Senate report says.

The report, set for release Monday, is intended to help learn the lessons of the past as President Barack Obama prepares to announce a major escalation of the conflict, now in its ninth year, with up to 35,000 more US troops.

[...]

"The decision not to deploy American forces to go after Bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks," the report says.

"On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, Bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today."

"Till at the destined zenith of its vaporous exaltation, All unawares, fluttering its pennons vain, Plump down it drops."

[Bruegel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus]

Within the last sixty years or perhaps a somewhat larger period, (for I do not pretend to any nicety of dates, and the documents are of easy access) there have occurred at intervals of about twelve or thirteen years each, certain periodical revolutions of credit. Yet revolution is not the precise word. To state the thing as it is, I ought to have said, certain gradual expansions of credit ending in sudden contractions, or, with equal propriety, ascensions to a certain utmost possible height, which has been different in each successive instance ; but in every instance the attainment of this its ne plus ultra has been instantly announced by a rapid series of explosions (in mercantile language, a crash) and a consequent precipitation of the general system. For a short time this Icarian credit, or rather this illegitimate offspring of confidence, to which it stands in the same relation as Phaeton to his parent god in the old fable, seems to lie stunned by the fall ; but soon recovering, again it strives upward, and having once more regained its mid region, thence many a league,

As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides Audacious ; till at the destined zenith of its vaporous exaltation, All unawares, fluttering its pennons vain, Plump down it drops.

Or that I may descend myself to the cool element of prose, alarm and suspicion gradually diminish into a judicious circumspectness ; but by little and little, circumspection gives way to the desire and emulous ambition of doing business : till impatience and incaution on the one side, tempting and encouraging headlong adventure, want of principle, and confederacies of false credit on the other, the movements of trade become yearly gayer and giddier, and end at length in a vortex of hopes and hazards, of blinding passions and blind practices, which should have been left where alone they ought ever to have been found, among the wicked lunacies of the gaming table.

- S.T. Coleridge, Statesman's Manual

"Until there is a radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to lose its drawing power."

[source]

Michael Yates (author of The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know):

President Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Volcker, under the guise of fighting inflation, immediately began to snuff the life out of working class communities by forcing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent. Today, Volcker is treated like a hero by Democrats and above reproach (though ignored by President Obama’s more right-wing economic advisors), which shows just how far to the right economic discourse has moved. What Carter began, Reagan completed, firing the Air Traffic Controllers and putting the nail in labor’s coffin. Behind the scenes in all of this and growing in strength for the next twenty years (funded by wealthy business leaders) or so were the right-wing think tanks you mention. Just as retired generals go to work for military contractors and defeated politicians become lobbyists, government economic advisors get jobs at Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute. The staffs of these ideological centers churn out endless position papers and studies, which find their way into our newspapers and the offices of our congresspersons. A gigantic network of professors, journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and, today, a television network (Fox) bombard us with right-wing propaganda. That all of this has been successful is seen by the fact that the shibboleths of neoliberalism—such as the needs for privatization of public entities, the free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the evils of raising the minimum wage—are all commonplaces today.

While the public now knows that something is rotten, I am not sure that neoliberal ideas are so under attack that they will lose their sway. I think that the tenacity of these ideas owes something to the lack of an ideological alternative, which, in turn, is due to the abject failure of organized labor to provide one. For example, we need universal health care. Labor, however, has not consistently argued in favor of this or supported it at all. Now Congress is poised to enact healthcare legislation that might well be worse than the profit-driven system we have all come to hate. Labor should refuse to support this legislation, but I doubt it will. Then, when the new healthcare plans fail to deliver the goods, the right-wing will be lying in wait, ready to pounce and say, “See, we told you so. The government always makes things worse.” In other words, until there is a radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to lose its drawing power.

“The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know is as lucid and compelling summary of the financial crisis as any I have read."
- Mike Whitney

An interview with Michael Yates can be found here.

The preface and first 2 chapters of ABCs can be read here.

Nobel Peace Prize Torturer

He has simply picked up where Bush left off, too cowardly to change course.

Daily Kos:

The stories from former prisoners, including teenagers, independently describe conditions that include solitary confinement and isolation, sleep deprivations, beatings, sexual humiliation, demands for confession, lack of access to the International Red Cross, sensory deprivation (via hooding and earmuffs), and exposure to intense cold.

[...]

The President began with a big series of presidential orders that supposedly ended the Bush administration's policy of torturing prisoners, and shut down the CIA's black site prisons.

But as we know now, not all the black site prisons were shut down. Nor was the torture ended. Whether its beatings and forced-feedings at Guantanamo, or the kinds of torture described at Bagram, it's obvious that torture has not been rooted out of U.S. military-intelligence operations. In fact, by way of the Obama administration's recent approval of the Bush-era Army Field Manual on interrogations, with its infamous Appendix M, which allows for much of the kind of torture practiced at Bagram, the White House has institutionalized a level of torture that was introduced by the previous administration, but which has been studied and devised over the last fifty or sixty years.

"The founders are dead. And, unfortunately, so is their spirit of resistance."

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams

Thomas Paine's Corner:

Does anyone think Thomas Jefferson, if he were alive today, would quietly allow himself to be strip-searched, and allow his belongings to be rummaged through, by some brain-dead TSA thug? Read the Fourth Amendment. They had a revolution over that sort of thing. Does anyone think that Patrick Henry would take kindly to being robbed blind to pay for whatever war-mongering the politicians wanted to engage in this week? Read what the Founders said about standing armies. They had a revolution over that sort of thing. Think James Madison would go along with being disarmed, by the various state and federal control freaks? Read the Second Amendment. They had a revolution over that sort of thing. Think George Washington would be happy to have both his earnings and savings constantly looted by a parasite class, to pay for all manner of wealth redistribution, political handouts and other socialist garbage? Think Thomas Paine would gladly be extorted to give all his money to some giant, failed corporation or some huge international bank? Think the founders would have quietly gone along with what this country has become today? Think they would have done nothing more than vote, or whine?

Well, the founders are dead. And, unfortunately, so is their spirit of resistance. In short, just about all of the flag-waving and celebrating that happens every July 4th is nothing but empty hypocrisy. How many Americans today can say, loudly and proudly, like they mean it, “Give me liberty or give me death!”? Or, at least, in the modern vernacular, “You’re not the boss of me!”? Anyone? In this nation that imagines itself to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, where are those who dare to resist, or even dare to talk about it? And I don’t mean voting, or whining to your congressman, or begging your masters to not whip you so hard. I’m talking about resisting, refusing to obey.

America, where is your Independence Day pride now? Exactly what are you proud of? I have a message for you, from a guy named Sam. Samuel Adams, that is. Yeah, the beer guy. But he did a little more for this country than make beer. Here is his message:

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

When’s the last time you heard a modern so-called “statesman” say something like that?

Cindy Sheehan Interviews...

Don't miss her recent shows.

She has interviewed Noam Chomsky, Malalai Joya, and Ralph Nader (who discusses shopping as "the great distraction").

Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks

Watch a documentary about "the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization."

Get to know the Institute for Anarchist Studies!

If you dare.... These people are working towards "an egalitarian, directly democratic society."


"Anarchism is ... where it's at in terms of left politics these days."
(the best speaker is the last, beginning at 43:30)

If enough people in the United States stop calling themselves Democrats or independents and start calling themselves Marxists or socialists or anarchists, things will change for the better.

Things very likely won't change for the better if people stick to the old labels.

"Let's face it, we need examples that speak to people because the last thing that poor or struggling people need is another fucking barricade to die on. They need something that works better."

Hapy Cannibal Day

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Here's the meat-eaters' post-turkey day

Stella's veggie holiday:

vegetarian turkey slices

Sure beats a carcass to me!  No. 44, what about you?

NOTE:  I have a few a few things to say to Congress and the Senate about this quasi-outlaw abortion health legislation.  Afghanistan (sigh)... that's another story about which I do not have time to address properly.

---

"Military Madness"
by Graham Nash



In an upstairs room in Blackpool
By the side of a northern sea
The army had my father
And my mother was having me
Military Madness was killing my country
Solitary Sadness comes over me

After the school was over and I moved
To the other side
I found a different country but I never
Lost my pride
Military Madness was killing the country
Solitary sadness creeps over me

And after the wars are over
And the body count is finally filed
I hope that The Man discovers
What's driving the people wild
Military madness is killing your country
So much sadness, between you and me
War, War, War, War, War, War

Get to Know a Socialist

[source]

Ulli Diemer runs Connexions Online, which "features resources and organizations fostering democratization, economic justice, environmental responsibility, civil liberties, and community."

Q: But why continue calling yourself a socialist when to most people 'socialism' signifies the horrors of Stalinism?

UD: That's certainly a very valid question. Many people who share a point of view similar to mine have given up on the term, and call themselves something else, or just avoid attaching any label to what they believe. I can sympathize with that. I don't normally begin a political conversation by proclaiming myself a socialist either. When you call yourself a socialist now, there is undoubtedly a tendency for people to shut off their brains and say to themselves: 'Well, I know what you're about, I don't need to bother listening to you'.

But the reason I still call myself a Marxist and a socialist is because I am. I believe that those ideas are valid. To me, Marx's work remains the most profound and most fruitful source of ideas for understanding how society works and how it could be transformed. Not in every detail, of course. Marx was wrong about things, and the world has changed greatly since he lived.

But I remain convinced that any effort to transform our world into one that is fundamentally freer and more just and more ecologically whole has to be rooted in the Marxist critique and the Marxist method, whether it knows it is or not. And if you believe that, you might as well call yourself a socialist and a Marxist, because if you want people to take a look at what Marx, and the best of the Marxists, like Luxemburg, had to say, then sooner or later you have to shovel off the dirt and the distortions that have been heaped on them.

Q: Where does the term 'libertarian socialism' fit in, then?

UD: The reason for tacking the label 'libertarian' onto 'socialism' is to make the point that socialism has to be about freedom and about democracy before and above anything else. Part of the point is also to be provocative, to open up discussion, to have people say 'isn't that a contradiction in terms?', which gives you an opening for saying 'well no, I don't think so' and then go on to talk about it.

Q: Even if socialism is good as an ideal, isn't it unrealistic? Isn't the world moving in the opposite direction, if anything? Has the social change movement actually accomplished anything?

UD: Well, it's certainly an uphill battle, that's for sure. The odds are probably in favour of the world getting worse rather than better. But then who knows? Five years ago, what would we have thought the odds were of what happened in Eastern Europe?

I don't think there is any doubt, though, that movements for social change have had a tremendous impact. The women's movement, the environmental movement, unions, have played a major role in changing the ground rules of society. The system may have been able to partially stop or co-opt those movements, but even in doing so it has had to yield ground.

There have also been many essentially defensive accomplishments - stopping things from getting worse, preventing harmful things from happening. It can be something local, like stopping a nuclear plant, or something like the anti-Vietnam-War movement, which if it didn't stop the war probably helped to prevent the U.S. government from unleashing even more destruction on the Vietnamese.

Of course when you're working for fundamental change, it's not terribly satisfying to know that all you've done is to keep things from getting quite as bad as they might otherwise have done. But even our small victories have made important differences to the lives of many people, including our own. We can feel some satisfaction with that even as we try to achieve bigger victories.

"Our slavery has been exchanged for an apprenticeship to liberty, which has aggravated the painful feeling of our social degradation, by adding to it the sickening of still deferred hope."
- Chartism: The People's Petition, 1838

"That poor bird...."

PZ:

That poor bird that most of you will have on your dining room table is a perfect metaphor. It went through its life dumb and mostly content, getting its feed shoveled in front of its face every day, and then last week the machineries of profit began to move, and it found itself trussed on an assembly line. Then a gang of people who were mostly concerned with trudging through another day and making a living wage decapitated it, gouged out its guts, stripped off its feathers, and wrapped it in plastic so you could thoughtlessly stuff fragments of its carcass into your hungry maw. The universe did not rotate about that bird, and neither does it spin about you.

If you're eating tofurkey, you aren't off the hook, either. Think of the soybeans!

So don't sit at your table and think you're being good by warmly thanking an indifferent universe for whatever. It doesn't care. Don't beam happy thoughts at the farmers who stocked your larder — they can't hear you, and they did it for their own personal profit anyway. Above all, don't be hypocritical and radiate gratitude at the corpse of the turkey, since it's dead and during its brief life would rather you hadn't fueled the market forces that led to its execution.

Gary Steiner:

Many people soothe their consciences by purchasing only free-range fowl and eggs, blissfully ignorant that “free range” has very little if any practical significance. Chickens may be labeled free-range even if they’ve never been outside or seen a speck of daylight in their entire lives. And that Thanksgiving turkey? Even if it is raised “free range,” it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher’s knife.

How can intelligent people who purport to be deeply concerned with animal welfare and respectful of life turn a blind eye to such practices? And how can people continue to eat meat when they become aware that nearly 53 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for human consumption? The simple answer is that most people just don’t care about the lives or fortunes of animals. If they did care, they would learn as much as possible about the ways in which our society systematically abuses animals, and they would make what is at once a very simple and a very difficult choice: to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds.

Jill Richardson:

Because the Broad Breasted White is bred only for the trait of large breasts and fast, efficient growth, several other traits have been sacrificed along the way. The birds have such large breasts that they are physically unable to mate, and in fact, they are barely able to live. Turkeys are notoriously sickly and few, if given the chance, would live long enough to see two Thanksgivings. In the eyes of industry, the Broad Breasted White is a machine that efficiently converts cheap corn into breast meat as quickly as possible. Period.

Traditionally, poultry – and turkeys – served a very different role on an American farm. They eat kitchen scraps and other food waste, grass, and even insects. Meanwhile, their droppings serve as valuable fertilizer. Turkeys could survive outdoors on pasture for many years and they could also naturally reproduce. A number of heritage turkey breeds still exist today, even though they make up only a very small percent of the market. In fact, the turkey industry is so consolidated among factory farm operations that in 2007, four companies (Butterball, Hormel Foods, Cargill, and Sara Lee) controlled 55% of the entire turkey market. Whereas turkeys raised on pasture in the traditional manner serve a valuable environmental role, turkeys raised in factory farms do not. Instead of including food waste, grass, and bugs among their diets, they eat grain, which requires oil to grow, harvest, process, and transport. The turkeys’ waste accumulates in quantities in which it can be more of a pollutant than a valuable fertilizer. And lord only knows what human rights violations occur in the slaughterhouses where the turkeys are processed. Yet, this is all a pretty accurate picture of America and its food system today.

"Palliatives ... are useless."

[source]

"The palliatives with which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless: because they are but unorganized partial revolts against a vast wide-spreading grasping organization which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the condition of the people with an attack on a fresh side; new machines, new markets, wholesale emigration, the revival of grovelling superstition, preachments of thrift to lack-alls, of temperance to the wretched; such things as these will baffle at every turn all partial revolts against the monster we of the middle class have created for our own undoing."
- William Morris

"He was in the habit of saying that what he was waiting for was the fall of the world; then, probably, a quiet moment would be granted..."

Happy Anti-Thanksgiving. Last year we had Palin's turkey slaughter, this year we have Going Rogue. Isn't it wonderful? She won't go away.

Nice to have a break from work (if not from Sarah Palin).

Franz Kafka:

Poseidon sat at his desk, doing figures. The administration of all the waters gave him endless work. He could have had assistants, as many as he wanted — and he did have very many — but since he took his job very seriously, he would in the end go over all the figures and calculations himself, and thus his assistants were of little help to him. It cannot be said that he enjoyed his work; he did it only because it had been assigned to him; in fact, he had already filed many petitions for — as he put it — more cheerful work, but every time the offer of something different was made to him it would turn out that nothing suited him quite as well as his present position. And anyhow it was quite difficult to find something different for him. After all, it was impossible to assign him to a particular sea; aside from the fact that even then the work with figures would not become less but only pettier, the great Poseidon could in any case occupy only an executive position. And when a job away from the water was offered to him he would get sick at the very prospect, his divine breathing would become troubled and his brazen chest began to tremble. Besides, his complaints were not really taken seriously; when one of the mighty is vexatious the appearance of an effort must be made to placate him, even when the case is most hopeless. In actuality a shift of posts was unthinkable for Poseidon — he had been appointed God of the Sea in the beginning, and that he had to remain.

What irritated him most — and it was this that was chiefly responsible for his dissatisfaction with his job — was to hear of the conceptions formed about him: how he was always riding about through the tides with his trident. When all the while he sat here in the depths of the world-ocean, doing figures uninterruptedly, with now and then a trip to Jupiter as the only break in the monotony — a trip, moreover, from which he usually returned in a rage. Thus he had hardly seen the sea — had seen it but fleetingly in the course of hurried ascents to Olympus, and he had never actually traveled around it. He was in the habit of saying that what he was waiting for was the fall of the world; then, probably, a quiet moment would be granted in which, just before the end and having checked the last row of figures, he would be able to make a quick little tour.

Poseidon became bored with the sea. He let fall his trident. Silently he sat on the rocky coast and a gull, dazed by his presence, described wavering circles around his head.

The Center Cannot Hold Against Populism

Obama is a centrist in a country that has no center. Everyone is heading for the margins. Our country is becoming empty in the center. Our country is becoming like a donut, populists on the left and populists on the right fighting it out to win the populist popularity contest.

Just don't go for the glazed variety.



Here's a very nice rundown on today's populism from at home she feels like a tourist (a most excellent blog!):

...there is a clear distinction between left-wing populism and right-wing populism. While some of the sloganeering from both ends may sound similar, the underlying belief systems are quite divergent. At the risk of gross over-simplification, I would argue that right-wing populists tend to focus their ire on excessively big, interventionist government, while left-wing populists tend to focus their ire on overgrown, unaccountable corporate power and accumulations of private wealth. In the case of the recent bailouts, these two things came together - the government directly intervened in the economy in order to save "too big to fail" banks and financial institutions. Thus both left-wing and right-wing populists were outraged. But the reason for the outrage is not the same. For the right, the bailouts were a disgraceful betrayal of laissez-faire market principles, and for the left, they were a disgraceful capitulation to Wall Street. Of course, this is an overly schematic distinction - there are people on the right who plainly worry about the power of mega-corporations, and there are people on the left who plainly worry about the growth of a Leviathan-state, with its tentacles reaching into every sphere of society, regulating and managing every aspect of social life. But as a window in to the core, foundational principles of left-wing and right-wing populism, I think the distinction is basically sound.

What this means, finally, is that left-wing populism offers an explicit economic critique (at its best) which right-wing populism fails to offer. For me, this has always been the defining distinction between left and right. For the left, the structure of the economy is itself an issue of social justice. It always drives me crazy when people refer to themselves as "economic conservatives and social liberals" - because the very distinction implies that one can separate economic and social issues, which is fundamentally a right-wing position. The economy is a social issue, if you're on the left. Right-wing populism offers no meaningful critique of capitalism itself, except perhaps indirectly, when it manifests as ethnocentrism and anti-immigrant hysteria, which is really an indirect and disavowed critique of global capitalism, which drives goods, services, and labor indiscriminately across national borders. But the hidden underside of anti-immigrant fervor is exactly the problem with right-wing populism: it fails to see that its fears and anxieties derive from a specific economic system, so it tries to treat symptoms rather than causes.

Of course, left-wing populism can sometimes be completely boneheaded and obtuse. And left-wing populists don't always make the crucial systemic connections either. They waste time railing against "greedy bankers" instead of an underlying financial system which inevitably produces greedy bankers. There are indeed greedy bankers in the world, and they deserve scorn and contempt, but the critique has to move beyond this kind of personalized rage to a systemic level. Only left-wing populism offers the possibility of that systemic critique. By foreclosing a critique of neoliberalism itself, right-wing populism can't get beyond the kind of free-floating, inchoate rage and frustration we see at the tea parties.

The Return of the Friedman Unit*

[source]

McClatchy:

The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.

"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.

How exactly is continuing the flow of troops an "off-ramp"?

*"One Friedman Unit, also known as 'one Friedman' or 'one F.U.,' equals six months in the future." - dKosopedia

The Era of Impotent Populism

Robert Reich:

The Era of Angry Populism has only just begun. Let's hope Obama wins, and is able to mobilize the anger into fierce pressure on Congress to get his agenda enacted, as well as reform Wall Street and Washington.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

The Birth of a New Student Movement

Education in California does not have to be left in the hands of fat-cat administrators who want to turn education into a business.

Obama's war of Dick Cheney's necessity

No, no, he doesn't want to be doing this. He has to. A cruel world made him do it. His obligations as president (also known as the voice of Dick Cheney) are so terrible that he had absolutely no choice.

"If George Bush was/is a war criminal; then Obama is a war criminal. If Obama is not, then Bush is not. We the people cannot have it both ways."
- Cindy Sheehan

The Peace Prize may have made the President pause and deliberate for a few weeks but Dick Cheney was stronger.

Liberal Temperatures Rising

Blanche Lincoln, Democrat, betrays democratic values.

Why is that Hamsher woman being so mean to Blanche Lincoln?

Robert Sheer says Obama betraying those who elected him.

I am appalled. This is not a minor criticism. I think the guy is betraying—betraying—his own presidency....

Ian Welsh calls it Versailles thinking.

Matt Steinglass on screwing the poor.

The poor will pay higher taxes and receive less medical care and worse education. The government will eliminate infrastructure investment. That’s how America works. It’s a two-class society, where class divides are reinforced and exacerbated by the control of the wealthy over the political system.

Greenwald on Obama's abysmal civil liberties record.

Note how abandoning one's campaign promises and adopting Bush/Cheney detention and secrecy policies is now deemed "moderate"....

Obama to send 34K to Afghanistan (to please the Dick Cheney's of the country).

Obama using Xe in Pakistan.

California students revolt!

"I'm not saying that has to be me."

[source]

Some others I've seen, might never be mean
Might never be cross, or try to be boss, but they wouldn't do
For nobody else, gave me a thrill - with all your faults, I love you still
It had to be you, wonderful you, it had to be you

Via TPM:

O'REILLY: Let me be very bold and fresh again. Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?

PALIN: I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the the kind of spineless... a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fat resume that's based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that has to be me.

It has to be you, Sarah.
Go for it!
(we elites don't want the entertainment to stop)

"Make this legislation stronger and more effective for working families and taxpayers."

"The parties set out to mobilize the citizen-as-voter, to define political obligation as fulfilled by the casting of a vote. Afterwards, post-election politics of lobbying, repaying donors, and promoting corporate interests - the real players - takes over. The effect is to demobilize the citizenry, to teach them not to be involved or to ponder matters that are either settled or beyond their efficacy....The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts points to the crucial fact that, for the poor, minorities, the working-class, anticorporatists, pro-environmentalists, and anti-imperialists, there is no opposition party working actively on their behalf."
- Sheldon Wolin

Unless members of Congress pass a health care bill, not an health insurance bill but a bill that works for Americans not Big Insurance, the needless suffering will continue.

To please the insurance companies is to please the deniers of care, not the providers of care. It is pleasing the grim reaper.

Why has Congress reached the point of passing a bill that offers a watered-down public option that will serve only 3 to 4 million Americans? Because few member of Congress have not been corrupted by money. Why is Bernie Sanders the rare exception?

Bernie Sanders:

"I voted to proceed on health care reform because our current health care system is disintegrating and must be reformed. Forty-six million Americans are uninsured, and 45,000 die every year because they don't have access to a doctor. We have almost one million Americans going bankrupt because of medically-related diseases, health care costs are soaring and we end up spending almost twice as much per person on health care as any other nation. It is clear that we need real health care reform.

"While I voted to proceed to the health care legislation tonight, I have made it clear to the administration and Democratic leadership that my vote for the final bill is by no means guaranteed. In the weeks to come I intend to do everything I can to make this legislation stronger and more effective for working families and taxpayers in Vermont and America and something all Americans can be proud of."

"This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany."

[source]

"So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything—a crazy answer, but it's an answer."
- Noam Chomsky

A new and interesting Chomsky interview is available on ZNet.

When I go home tonight I'll have 15 letters today from mostly young kids who don't like what's going on and want to do something about it, and [they ask me] if I can give them some advice as to what they should do, or can I tell them what to read or something. It doesn't work like that. I mean, everything depends very much on who you are, what your values are, what your commitments are, what circumstances you live in and what options you're willing to undertake, and that determines what you ought to be doing. There are some very general ideas that people can keep in mind; they're kind of truisms. It's only worth mentioning them because they're always denied.

First of all, don't believe anything you hear from power systems. So if Obama or the boss or the newspapers or anyone else tells you they're doing this, that, or the other thing, dismiss it or assume the opposite is true, which it often is. You have to rely on yourself and your associates—gifts don't come from above; you're going to win them, or you won't have them, and you win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot. So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.

Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren't getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].

I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, "Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now." That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything—a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, "Take over your factories."

Castrate the Fed

End the boom, bust,
and bailout bullshit.

The House Financial Services Committee voted, 43-26, to approve a measure sponsored by Texas Republican Ron Paul, vociferously opposed by the Fed, that would direct the congressional Government Accountability Office to expand its audits of the Fed to include decisions about interest rates and lending to individual banks. The Fed says the provision threatens its ability to make monetary policy without political interference.

[...]

"Everybody would like to beat up on the Fed and make them the bad guy," said Rep. Melvin Watt (D., N.C.), who opposed Mr. Paul's measure. He said audits would "substantially castrate the Fed so it cannot do what it was set up to do." [source]

"Real change isn’t going to happen under Obama or under this Democratic Congress."

[source]

Ian Welsh:

None of this is rocket science. Those of us who predicted both the crisis and what the bungling of the crisis would cause, however, are precisely the people who are not listened to by those in power. Obama is having his jobs summit, and forget nobodies like me, he isn’t even inviting somebodies like Stiglitz and Krugman.

If you’ve been right down the line, then you are precisely the sort of person who isn’t “serious” and shouldn’t be listened to when it comes to what it takes to fix the problem.

Why? Because everyone knows that fixing the problem will end the gravy train for a lot of very rich people. A lot of very rich people who give a great deal of money to Democrats in general, and gave a lot of money to Obama in particular. If the cost of keeping that gravy train and the donations it enables going is tens of millions of unemployed people, well, so be it. Because serious people know that real change isn’t going to happen under Obama or under this Democratic Congress, so there’s no point in even talking to people who might suggest it.

Barry Crimmins is Back!

Barry Crimmins:

Needless wars rage at a huge cost to, among others, 47 million without health care in the USA. Nevertheless, many people will choose to piss away another day considering the merits (or lack thereof) of fucking FOX News. Even though letting your enemy describe the boundaries of a debate is to lose the debate before it begins, they just can't help themselves.

Vegetarians Don't Do This

Witness some of the suffering you caused for your bacon.


Mercy For Animals:

As consumers we can choose compassion over cruelty at every meal. Adopting a compassionate vegan diet is the most powerful action we can take to put an end to needless animal suffering and the conditions documented during this investigation.

"Class war? Is it really a war if only one side fights?"

A country without strong unions is a country where the majority is guaranteed to be screwed over by the rich.

Rustbelt Radical:

Banks fail through their own fault and billions from the public purse gets thrown into their laps. Apparently it worked pretty well for them since Wall Street is going on to record profits this year according to a new study. That’s right, in the midst of the recession the banks are set to make more than they did at the height of the bubble. While you are going to bed with a growling stomach Goldman Sachs is putting money into piles too big to count. The top six banks have set aside 112 billion for salaries and bonuses this year. Class war? Is it really a war if only one side fights? Yeah, we’re getting the shit kicked out of us big time and we better start kicking back or we’re going to be knocked unconscious.

A look at the state of the unions bodes poorly for such a fight back. A recent study by the Center for Economic Policy Research on the state of trade unions in the country should be required reading for leftists and trade unionists. In 1983 over 20% of all workers were in unions. Now that number is 12.4%. Unions in the private sector have fallen even more dramatically. The most disheartening number from the perspective of future struggle is that the lowest rates of unionization is among workers aged 16-24. There only 5.7% are in unions. With numbers like that we will continue to see hunger among millions along side the fat bellies of a handful of billionaires.

It should, by now, go without saying that the Obama administration is not interested in the plight of those peckish millions. No, their interest lies with the bloated bankers. It took no time at all for Obama to find the will to funnel billions to the fat cats and yet there is not even a hint of that same urgency to fight the food crisis. Of course not. And yet folks still seem to think that Obama is some sort of closet New Dealer who only needs to be pushed a little to unveil himself. He is not; nor is he a blank slate. This administration has proven, and some of us would like to say “we told you so”, that it is a firmly neo-liberal one. And neo-liberal in the face of the of the failure of neo-liberalism!

Higher Education in California Becomes Unaffordable

I am outraged by the fee increases being imposed on UC students.

[source]

L.A. Times Blog:

Amid loud student protests that roiled the UCLA campus, the UC Board of Regents this afternoon approved a 32% increase in student fees.

The fee hike of $2,500, or 32%, will come in two steps by next fall. That would bring the basic UC education fees to about $10,300, plus about another $1,000 for campus-based charges, for a total that would be about triple the UC cost a decade ago. Room, board and books can add another $16,000.

Russian Questions on Afghanistan

It costs $1,000,000 to send one pair of U.S. boots per year "over there". $26,000,000,000 could be saved by withdrawal. But if President General McChrystal's recommendation is followed, we will be "investing" $734,000,000,000 in Chaosistan.

Did she say that's more than the military budget of the Bush administration? That can't be!

Also Matt Hoh's description of Valley-istan is confirmed. But we can't mention falling morale, can we?

"The picture of the world in the mind of the average newspaper reader is ... that which suits the interests of capitalists."

Do you mostly read the news organs of the capitalist class? What effect does that reading have on your outlook? Do you take advantage of the alternatives to mainstream media available on the Internet? How alternative are your alternatives?

Enjoy a classic statement on the press and the capitalist class from Bertrand Russell's Proposed Roads to Freedom:

Since the running of a big newspaper requires a large capital, the proprietors of important organs necessarily belong to the capitalist class, and it will be a rare and exceptional event if they do not sympathize with their own class in opinion and outlook. They are able to decide what news the great mass of newspaper readers shall be allowed to have. They can actually falsify the news, or, without going so far as that, they can carefully select it, giving such items as will stimulate the passions which they desire to stimulate, and suppressing such items as would provide the antidote. In this way the picture of the world in the mind of the average newspaper reader is made to be not a true picture, but in the main that which suits the interests of capitalists. This is true in many directions, but above all in what concerns the relations between nations. The mass of the population of a country can be led to love or hate any other country at the will of the newspaper proprietors, which is often, directly or indirectly, influenced by the will of the great financiers. So long as enmity between England and Russia was desired, our newspapers were full of the cruel treatment meted out to Russian political prisoners, the oppression of Finland and Russian Poland, and other such topics. As soon as our foreign policy changed, these items disappeared from the more important newspapers, and we heard instead of the misdeeds of Germany. Most men are not sufficiently critical to be on their guard against such influences, and until they are, the power of the Press will remain.

Besides these two influences of capitalism in promoting war, there is another, much less emphasized by the critics of capitalism, but by no means less important: I mean the pugnacity which tends to be developed in men who have the habit of command. So long as capitalist society persists, an undue measure of power will be in the hands of those who have acquired wealth and influence through a great position in industry or finance. Such men are in the habit, in private life, of finding their will seldom questioned; they are surrounded by obsequious satellites and are not infrequently engaged in conflicts with Trade Unions. Among their friends and acquaintances are included those who hold high positions in government or administration, and these men equally are liable to become autocratic through the habit of giving orders. It used to be customary to speak of the "governing classes,'' but nominal democracy has caused this phrase to go out of fashion. Nevertheless, it still retains much truth; there are still in any capitalist community those who command and those who as a rule obey. The outlook of these two classes is very different, though in a modern society there is a continuous gradation from the extreme of the one to the extreme of the other. The man who is accustomed to find submission to his will becomes indignant on the occasions when he finds opposition. Instinctively he is convinced that opposition is wicked and must be crushed. He is therefore much more willing than the average citizen to resort to war against his rivals. Accordingly we find, though, of course, with very notable exceptions, that in the main those who have most power are most warlike, and those who have least power are least disposed to hatred of foreign nations. This is one of the evils inseparable from the concentration of power. It will only be cured by the abolition of capitalism if the new system is one which allows very much less power to single individuals. It will not be cured by a system which substitutes the power of Ministers or officials for the power of capitalists This is one reason, additional to those mentioned in the preceding chapter, for desiring to see a diminution in the authority of the State.

Inequality Continues Unabated Under Obama

"Where I come from, the description of a nation that leaves its children behind in hunger while showering its upper classes with lavish amounts of more luxury than they know what to do with evokes pictures of present-day Somalia or latter-day Rome and the let-them-eat-cake France of Marie Antoinette. Not of a socially and politically highly developed society of the 21st century."
- Automatic Earth

No sign yet that Obama will act to end the poverty and inequality that plagues our country.

CNN:

The number of Americans that have trouble putting food on the table shot up last year in an unprecedented spike to a record 17 million households, the government reported on Monday.

The Department of Agriculture report, which has been released annually since 1995, said the number of Americans that were hungry rose to 14.6%. In 2007, 13 million households or 11.1% of Americans had trouble getting enough food.

When your priority is propping up insurance companies and banks, the least among us are going to suffer.

As he faces the worst recession in U.S. history, Obama's looking more like Herbert Hoover than F.D.R.

Hoover gave us the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which loaned money to railroads, banks, financial institutions, and insurance companies.

Roosevelt gave us regulation of the stock market, refinancing of home mortgages, the Banking Act of 1933, and relief programs. Roosevelt was despised by the wealthy elites for doing these things.

We all know Obama hates to be despised.

Kevin Baker:

Hoover’s every decision in fighting the Great Depression mirrored the sentiments of 1920s “business progressivism,” even as he understood intellectually that something more was required. Farsighted as he was compared with almost everyone else in public life, believing as much as he did in activist government, he still could not convince himself to take the next step and accept that the basic economic tenets he had believed in all his life were discredited; that something wholly new was required.

[...]

Much like Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama is a man attempting to realize a stirring new vision of his society without cutting himself free from the dogmas of the past—without accepting the inevitable conflict. Like Hoover, he is bound to fail.

Automatic Earth:

...back in 2008 49.1 million US citizens had trouble finding enough food to eat. That probably means 15-20 million children. And don't forget that if they could have fed themselves, much of the food would have been of an inferior quality, since in most poor areas of the country, there's a hell of a lot more cheap burgers available than vegetables. Perhaps luckily for them, they couldn't even afford no high-fructosed whoppers.

But that was last year. In 2009, how many more hungry children did we add to the tally? Whatever their number, Obama and his administration chose and choose to ignore them. For Washington, saving Wall Street institutions is much more important. First you save the banks, and if there's anything left afterwards, you may -or may not, depending on what the polls say- look at the 30-some million unemployed and the 20-odd million undernourished children.

Zombie Capitalism

[source]

From a review of Chris Harman's Zombie Capitalism from the Socialist Review:

Lenin once wrote of politics, "There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." For people around the world, rich and poor, young and old, this statement could rarely have rung more true than late in 2008 when the economic orthodoxy came down to earth with an almighty bump.

From Margaret Thatcher's insistence that "there is no alternative" to neoliberal capitalism to George Bush Senior's talk of a "new world order" our rulers had insisted that the untrammelled free market represented the best, indeed the only, way of creating a prosperous society for a generation.

These illusions were decisively shattered in 2008. Nationalisations, bailouts and enormous collapses heralded the biggest economic crisis in 80 years. Commentators from left and right were paralysed by confusion. Talk of the end of capitalism as we know it was rife. If this was the death of capitalism, however, its supporters were not prepared to let it go without a fight.

In the wake of these massive upheavals, Chris Harman's new book Zombie Capitalism is both timely and hugely valuable. Following Harman's 1984 book, Explaining the Crisis, as well as the numerous articles he has written for the International Socialism journal, it is a book that succeeds in analysing the incredibly dynamic, shifting forms that capitalism and its relationship to the state takes.

[...]

Like the wild-eyed Dr Frankenstein channelling electricity through his creation to give it life, our rulers have ploughed untold billions of dollars into the global economy to keep it afloat, leaving us with lumbering, unstable and dangerous "zombie capitalism", threatening not only crises and war but the environmental destruction of the planet.

Sounds like something I should read!

P.S. Harman died on November 7th of cardiac arrest.

From an obituary:

He was untempted by academe or celebrity. It was always a regret and an irritation to me why newspaper and TV debates about wars or the state of global capitalism did not call on him. That was a loss – and to hear that it is a permanent loss is deeply sad. Yet he leaves behind a terrific body of work that challenges received opinion.

Here is Harman speaking in July, 2009:

Communist Manifestoon

Americans are irrationally terrified of communism. Maybe a cartoon version of the Communist Manifesto can help change that!



(h/t Louis Proyect)

How to induce brain rot

Do not go gentle into that good night,
"Go rogue," have faith in God Six-Pack's might;
Milk, milk the morons on the right.

The N.Y. Times has reviewed Sarah Six-Pack's newest effort to bring attention to her stupidity:

Ms. Palin suggests that she and her husband, Todd, are ideally qualified to represent the Joe Six-Packs of the world because they are Joe Six-Packs themselves. “We know what it’s like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care, let alone college tuition,” she writes in “Going Rogue.” “We know what it’s like to work union jobs, to be blue-collar, white-collar, to have our kids in public schools. We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”

[...]

Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”

When legislators screw us over, they can't even bother to do so in their own words.

[source]

N.Y. Times:

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.

The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

Are the members of Congress for whom you voted the mechanical mouthpieces of giant corporations? Or do they represent you?

"The next stop after a free range is not freedom."

Do you ever feel like a free-range chicken when confronted with state capitalist power?

"His presidency hangs in the balance."

Robert Paul Wolff:

On Wednesday, I watched the Fort Hood ceremonies, including Obama's speech. It was moving, beautifully crafted, a splendid performance. But as I listened, a thought I saw something that sent a cold chill up my spine -- a gifted, dedicated man who had run as a candidate committed to domestic change and progress, but who was becoming transformed into a war-time president by the pressure of events. I was very fearful that the terrible burden of being responsible for sending men and women into combat had changed him. I do not for a moment think he wants to be a wartime president, as George W. Bush clearly did, but he may think that he has no alternative.

Then, today, I read reports that Obama has rejected all four alternatives for Afghanistan as presented by his advisers, and demands to know what the "off ramps' are for our involvement there -- this coming on the day that Ambassador Eikenberry's extremely negative report was leaked to the press.

There is really nothing at this point for us to do but wait and see how it comes out. I continue to believe that his presidency hangs in the balance.

Lives also hang in the balance. Lots of them.

There is Power in a Teabagger Union!

Mike Elk:

We as progressives can win only when we get all the teabaggers into our movement through getting them into unions. As Lincoln said, "United We Stand, Divided We Fall." Only organized labor can achieve that type of unity. Failure to bring working people into the Employee Free Choice Act could easily lead to the election of a Sarah Palin.

Sure, liberals laugh off the idea of Sarah Palin being elected president. However, elitist, out-of-touch liberals laughed off Nixon, Reagan and Bush as unelectable. Well, guess what, they all won.

If we don't stop laughing at white, working class people, we are going to lose too.

If you have to hide it, you shouldn't be doing it

And if you did it, there's no point in pretending it didn't happen.

Raw Story:

Pursuant to new powers delegated to him by Congress, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has executed an order blocking the release of photos depicting the torture of detainees. In doing so, it becomes highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will further consider making the photos public, as a lower court had ordered.

America the Beautiful.

We Complain, They Remain

"Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master."
- Mary Elizabeth Lease, circa 1890

With Wall Street markets on the rise, the recession is declared over, yet unemployment continues unabated.

Wall Street controls government.

Wall Street thrives, we suffer.

We expect government to help yet we stand slack-jawed as rich, powerful people on Wall Street strong-arm those in government, become advisers to the people in government, and eventually become the government.

Our impotence is exposed.

And yet Wall Street's power is a power we relinquished.

We have a power than can bring government to our side. That can shut down a business, an industry, a corrupt politician. We have only to use it. This economic crisis is the result of a society that has rejected the power that comes of unionizing, the result of a people not using their voices in their workplaces, of a people afraid to act in concert to transform the way things are done in Washington, D.C.

Anyone can complain. Anyone can write a blog. Much, much more is needed. Much, much more is required of us if meaningful, transformative, lasting change is to occur.


Marcy Kaptur on Bill Moyers

Anarchist (libertarian Socialist) analysis of the credit crunch

What could be better? [It's actually a pretty typical explanation of what happened, except for the last few minutes.]

"Is it really that surprising that our economy begins to resemble that of our trading partners?"

Of falling wages, income inequality, free trade, asset bubbles, and debt. Can't quite pull out paragraphs that tell the whole story.

Economic Populist:

Let's face it, the $40,000 you have in your 401k is suckers money. The top 20% own 93% of all the financial wealth of this country, such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. And most of that 20% is concentrated in just the top 1%.

The richest 400 Americans own more than the bottom 150 million Americans. The top taxpayers pay the same percentage of their incomes in taxes as those making $50,000 to $75,000. The wages of the average working American haven't gone up since the early 1970's, but the levels of debt have more than tripled.

In 2007, the ratio of CEO pay to the average paycheck was 344 to one. Corporations, increasingly financial corporations, have created a wealth gap in this nation.

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Most of our free trade agreements over the last 15 years have been with 3rd world nations, with dramatic income stratification, that don't allow labor unions and/or strikes.

Is it really that surprising that our economy begins to resemble that of our trading partners?

David Ricardo, legendary economist and free-trade proponent, explained how this dynamic worked nearly two centuries ago.

"If instead of growing our own corn... we discover a new market from which we can supply ourselves... at a cheaper price, wages will fall and profits rise. The fall in the price of agricultural produce reduces the wages, not only of the laborer employed in cultivating the soil, but also of all those employed in commerce or manufacture." - David Ricardo, Des principes de l'economie politique et de l'impot, 1835

So you see, your wages are supposed to fall with free trade globalization.

Free trade means the freedom of movement for capital. However, the laws against the free movement of labor remain. Thus, when it comes to free trade, those who control capital will always have the advantage.

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In essence, the economic crisis that we are suffering from, and will continue to suffer from, was caused by too much concentration of wealth in the upper class. The country will continue to suffer from these bubble and bust cycles until either the nation addresses the income disparity, or the rest of the world stops offering to buy our debt.