Obama blames it all on us.

[source]

Who is this "we" Obama is so fond of evoking?

Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation’s long-term competitiveness is put at risk.

Presidents don't go to war. We do. Congress didn't break the economy by giving corporations all the breaks, we did.

We, we, we, all the way down the tubes.

Thank goodness for revengeful little pleasures

O'Hollern at Bad Attitudes:

Ah, credit cards. They giveth and they taketh away. I used to have an account with the now defunct Washington Mutual. Remember them? They billed themselves as the “friendly bank,” which means, of course, that they were the most rapacious sons of bitches in the entire racket. I transferred my balance from them to a different group of sharks but still sent one last minimum payment to cover my ass. You can never be be too cautious with those eels. The result was that they wound up owing me some paltry amount. I think it was something like $5.75. Being a normal human being and not a banker, I forgot all about it, but every month they sent me a statement showing a negative balance of $5.75.

Then one day, while staring idly at the clouds, I got to wondering about that $5.75 …

They had been charging me 14.99% interest. Now they owed me. Where was my interest? I decided to call them up and see.

Some Indian guy answered, of course. Before I could say a word he went rambling on about all the wonderful things they could offer me because I managed my account so well, and blah blah blah. I kept saying no, but he kept offering and offering and offering, a molten lava flow of oily mendacity with a Hindi accent (pre-written, I know, by his masters back in New York). Tick tock, tick tock. Halfway through it, I thought about making myself a chicken salad sandwich or having a cigarette, anything to help the time pass. Jesus, I thought, you have to walk the serpent’s path just to get a word in with these fuckers.

When we finally got down to business, I asked him about my $5.75. I wanted to know if I could charge them 14.99% interest on the amount they owed me, plus late fees for the missed payments.

He was a little flummoxed at first. Then he said, “Oh no, we can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked. “If I owe you money, you charge me. I want you to keep the $5.75 and pay me interest.” I even offered him credit protection at two extra bucks a month, which I was willing to apply retroactively to the payments they missed. No dice. “We can’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because we can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I persisted, just like they do.

“We can’t do that, sir. It doesn’t work that way,” was the only answer.

But why doesn’t it work that way? Where is it written that only banks can charge interest? Did the freakin’ burning bush dicate that to Moses? Is there an eleventh commandment somewhere I don’t know about? What’s the deal?

The conversation went in circles, as I knew it would. But I had had my fun. I didn’t want to harass the guy too much because I knew he was being just as ruthlessly exploited as the rest of us. I try never to take my anger out on the workers. So I just told him to send me a check and close the bastard down. Then the guy went on for another minute asking me why I wanted to leave Washington Mutual! Lordy be.

Not long after, I had the pleasure of watching Washington Mutual go tits up into oblivion. Now they’re ancient history, dead and forgotten, like the South Sea Bubble.

Can't sleep, the capitalist clowns will eat me

[source]

One reason the economy will not recover soon? Our economy is unstable. Gas prices can rise unexpectedly and astronomically overnight. Health care costs skyrocket. Home prices don't seem rational (why should a house in my neighborhood that cost 100K ten years ago now be on the market for 2.5 times that amount?). Assured pensions can be destroyed in an instant. A lot of people who've weathered the Great Recession in the same job are leery of spending while the government is threatening to "reform" social security and medicare. We hunker down, hold our breath, and wait.

People need predictability. Our economy can't provide a predictable path to retirement because Uncle Sam has chosen to roll back or stop enforcing the regulations that protected us from the capitalist clowns in our midst. We hunker down, hold our breath, and wait, worried about becoming the clowns' next happy meal.

Automatic Earth:

I read today, forget where, that there are as many people employed in US manufacturing as there were in 1940, when the overall population was roughly half of what it is today.

And we've known it for a long time, all the stats on this are clear as daylight: without a recovery in employment, there’s zero chance of a recovery in the housing market. When in the face of the lowest mortgage rates in a very long time existing home sales plummet 27.2%, the good news boys will have a very hard time convincing anyone. In fact, they've already lost the battle.

The party that tries the hardest to make you believe sunrise is just around the corner, sadly, is the US government. But then, they face elections, and what else are they going to do?

[...]

Anything in the government's power to "stabilize" housing is used. The FHA offers 3.5% mortgages, Fannie and Freddie advertise ways to put no money down at all. The risks of these offers fall squarely on the back of the taxpayer.

But still, despite all the perverse incentives, Americans bought 27.2% fewer existing homes this July than they did a year ago. New home sales weren't much better.

It's starting to look like the game is up.

[...]

During the past one or two decades, America’s economy has been, and increasingly so as it went along, dependent on the housing market. Homeowners and buyers got to feel like they were making money every day just living in a home, brokers were raking in cash selling more and faster then they ever would have thought possible, and Wall Street took all that ant-like activity and leveraged it up the hilt in securities and other "innovative instruments".

[...]

America needs open books. It needs to know what a home is "truly" worth, like it needs to know what the government debt is, and the deficit, it needs to know what its children can expect to pay for health care and education in the future, and what they can expect to get from their pension funds. All of this though, the entire picture, is so bleak that nobody you’ll vote for anytime soon will tell you anything anywhere near the truth.

It happens to me every night
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me
They always want to take a bite
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me
And if you think this isn't real
I'll show you wounds that never heal
To them I'm just a happy meal
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me
- Alice Cooper

"One truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital."

Glen Ford:

Finance capital is, at this stage of the system’s decline, incapable of reproducing itself through productive investment, and so must feed on existing producers or on the State. Since Wall Street over the decades has already broken up, consumed and exported much of the U.S. productive economy, that leaves the State and all of its parts. Far from acting as a brake on his vampire friends, Obama leads the charge on corporate hijacking of public education, and signaled in January 2009 that all elements of the safety net, including Social Security, should be “on the table” – which can only mean some form of privatization.

The pace of finance capital deterioration quickens, accelerating the timetable of the Right’s offensive. As the hunger grows, Wall Street’s servants become more aggressive and demanding, and there is nothing in the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, to stop them.

One truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital. If the American Left is capable of bearing that in mind in the critical times ahead, it might just escape the cul-de-sac and make some modest contribution to the world.

"A genuine alternative to capitalism"

"I look back with a powerful nostalgia at a time in America when serious people took it for granted that socialism was a genuine alternative to capitalism, and a desirable one -- at a time when the political sentiments of large numbers of vocal and respected people were radical and socialist, not conservative and apologetic for capitalism."
- Robert Paul Wolff

America, gone to the Becks

The amount of front-page coverage this shit gets is a sad commentary on the state of American journalism, left and right, and on the state of our national discourse. As long as we are talking about the Glenn Becks of this world, or the latest reaction to the Glenn Becks of this world, we aren't talking about what matters.






It's past time for all of us to say: I have more important things to do with my time than bring up the latest coverage-getting shenanigans of today's top attention whore.

P.S. I have officially exceeded my yearly quota (ZERO) for getting annoyed by right-wing demagogues. I apologize. Back on the wagon.

Here's a Beck (and a Heap!) worthy of your attention:

Locked up inside my metal cage

Always tense and filled with rage
Above the concrete fields below
With you I wanna go, wanna go

Music is my sanctuary
Music is my blanket

I see only what I wanna see
I'll be only what I wanna be
yeah-ah
My blanket covers me, yeah

Arise and claim your freedom

Visit jim's big ego if flash doesn't work on your computer.

(h/t Barry Crimmins)

Paul Street has your number, Barack Obummer!

Run, don't walk, over to LBO's August 26th interview with Paul Street. Street's latest book is The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power. The interview starts at about 6:35.

23:21: "It's been fascinating to see Obama come in, serving Wall Street, serving corporate interests, betraying all the progressive constituencies he seduced in the election, very much like Bill Clinton in '92 and '96, and like Democrats through time immemorial, it's what they do, and then to get repeatedly lectured about the need not to be a socialist because, you know, that's what he really wants to be, which is totally false."

28:05: "Under the existing system, electoral politics is, I think largely, except at a local level perhaps, a dead end for left progressives."

29:32: "We are citizens and we are about telling the truth and we need to build the kind of social movements that will push these guys to the left like the industrial workers movement did with FDR in the '30s ... like the civil rights and the anti-war movements pushed LBJ in the '60s, we still have to do that kind of work regardless of what people think about Obama. If they want to have delusions about Obama and we can't strip them away from them, that's fine, but please join us in that social movement for progressive change."

"Lots of us ... have kept faith with our radical politics as our hair has turned grey."

Robert Paul Wolff:

I have always thought that I had a responsibility to my students and other young people to show them that their progressive politics was not merely a life stage, like the Terrible Twos and the Thirty-Somethings. Now, of course, there are lots of us who have kept faith with our radical politics as our hair has turned grey. Noam Chomsky and the late Howard Zinn, Barbara Ehrenreich, even my old student Todd Gitlin, who qualifies as an oldster, though I find it hard to believe. I don't know whether anything I have written will outlive me, but I would like to think that there are young men and women somewhere who will learn from us older radicals that a commitment to social justice and a hatred of the inequities and irrationalities of capitalism can be the unchanging core of an entire life.

The right thing to do… is the left thing to do.

[source]

Ian Welsh:

America would be more prosperous and just as safe if you didn’t waste trillions on wars and a bloated military whose purpose isn’t to protect you but to beat on foreigners (who is going to invade the US? No one. Next.) You would be happier if you did not allow health pollution because you and your loved ones would be healthier and it’s damn hard to be happy when you or your loved ones get cancer, or diabetes, or asthma and so on. Cheap consumer goods do not make up for it and the costs are so high that it’s questionable that the consumer goods ARE cheap—you’re just paying for them in illness and health care bills.

[...]

...the first step to freeing ourselves from our chains is to stop telling ourselves that the moral thing to do isn’t the right thing to do in practical terms. The right thing to do… is the right thing to do. When we refuse to do the right thing, instead we impoverish ourselves and our loved ones, we make ourselves sick and we kill ourselves. When we do horrible things to other people, we make them hate us, and then they try and do horrible things to us.

"The goal is that the War never ends; the only variable is where it happens to increase on any given day."
- Glenn Greenwald

"A climate shock in North America is easy to imagine"

Easy to imagine and impossible to prevent, given the nature of our politics. We know what needs to be done but it's impossible to get there.

Thomas-Homer Dixon:

Climate policy is gridlocked, and there’s virtually no chance of a breakthrough. Many factors have conspired to produce this situation. Human beings are notoriously poor at responding to problems that develop incrementally. And most of us aren’t eager to change our lifestyles by sharply reducing our energy consumption.

But social scientists have identified another major reason: Climate change has become an ideologically polarizing issue. It taps into deep personal identities and causes what Dan Kahan of Yale calls “protective cognition” — we judge things in part on whether we see ourselves as rugged individualists mastering nature or as members of interconnected societies who live in harmony with the environment. Powerful special interests like the coal and oil industries have learned how to halt movement on climate policy by exploiting the fear people feel when their identities are threatened.

[...]

A climate shock in North America is easy to imagine. Say a prolonged drought causes major cities in the American Southeast or Southwest to run out of water; both regions have large urban populations pushing against upper limits of water supply. The news clips of cars streaming out of Atlanta or Phoenix might finally push our leaders to do something serious about climate change.

"The fake 'recovery' was nice while it lasted."

Will a Congress dominated by corporate interests "bring back the laws that prevented huge companies from getting so big and powerful"? Fat chance. Because it won't, we are in for much more misery.

The solutions are obvious, reaching them has become impossible.

Henry Blodget (via Automatic Earth):

The fake "recovery" was nice while it lasted, says famous apocalyptic forecaster Gerald Celente, founder of the Trends Research Institute. But now the fun's over, and we're headed for what Celente describes as the "Greatest Depression." Specifically, the always startling Celente says the country is headed for rising unemployment, poverty, and violent class warfare as the government efforts to keep the economy going begin to fail.

The crux of the problem, Celente argues, is that the middle class has been wiped out. America used to be a land of opportunity for all, where hard-working people could build their own small businesses in their own communities and live prosperous and fulfilling lives.

But now a collusion of state and corporate interests that Celente describes as "fascism" have conspired to help only the biggest companies and the richest Americans. This has put a shocking amount of the country's wealth in the hands of a privileged few and left the rest of the country to subsist on chicken-feed wages and low job satisfaction as Wal-Mart "associates" -- or worse.

The answer, Celente says, is to bring back the laws that prevented huge companies from getting so big and powerful, and put some opportunity back in the hands of ordinary people. But doing that is going to take a while. And in the meantime, we're headed for trouble.

"A population of disciplined and passive people who have internalized the power they want to be liberated from."

On this topic, see also the Jodi Dean post from earlier today. Internalizing capitalism, we come to focus almost exclusively on gratifying our immediate desires and lose the capacity to transform our society.

Jesus Radicals:

Nonviolence may indeed be a more effective tool for maintaining the social hierarchy than violence. Even the Roman Empire recognized that administrative justice was far more effective at maintaining Rome’s dominance than brute force. This has been the abiding legacy of the Romans for centuries. Indeed, Michel Foucault argues that governmentality in the modern age does not so much repress and prohibits actions, but disciplines, rehabilitates and normalizes which results in a population of disciplined and passive people who have internalized the power they want to be liberated from. While many people think that they can be liberated from repression by giving free reign to their desires, in reality, Foucault argues, they are only further ensconced into the system that created those desires in the first place. For the capitalist system is primarily a system that creates desires. It is a nonviolent system that creates consumers, not a violent system that brutalizes its subjects (there is that too, but that is not its primary purpose).

We are living in a Brave New World, where social control is moving not toward the most violent, ugly repression imaginable, but toward sanitized, depoliticized clean methods of control. The system wants what is effective and what is effective is nonviolent methods. That is why the video in the side to this post is just another example of capitalist, techno power: police now have weapons where they can blind people with a laser, hit people with sound waves that cause them extreme nausea. But even these weapons are not the most effective yet. The most effective weapons the technological system has are those that train us up to be tame, passive recipients who accept our place in society willingly, happy to take whatever crumbs fall from the master’s table.

"We are living in a Brave New World, where social control is moving not toward the most violent, ugly repression imaginable, but toward sanitized, depoliticized clean methods of control."

"This is a society that is falling apart at the seams..."

Louis Proyect:

The longer I am witness to late capitalism in its senescence, the more I am reminded to the USSR in the 1980s. This is a society that is falling apart at the seams and that lacks any kind of bourgeois leadership to resolve the most pressing problems of public health, infrastructure, etc. Perhaps a visitation of bedbugs into the Obama household will shake things up, but after seeing this feckless president in action for the past two years, probably not.

Anti-Social Networking

I'm not a big fan of online social networking. Numbers don't impress me. Flocking behavior scares me. I'm much more interested in the things people are not connecting to, in the ideas that fail to go viral and the stories people don't gather around like flies to shit.

I'm fascinated by what is ignored, by the forgotten, by outsiders, by life beyond the fringes.

"Neoliberalism is doing more than rendering the state ineffective.... It's rendering the citizens incapable of self-governance."

More brilliance from Jodi Dean at I Cite:

No money down mortgages gave home buyers an incentive to look to their immediate desires and not to long term repercussions. ... The internet, pay for view, video on demand, DVR, instant messaging--our entire media habitat conditions us to immediate gratification rather than self-discipline, self-control, self-governance. Fast food and convenience--again, we focus on what we want now, not what we might need or use later. The neoliberal attitude is that markets and competition induce certain behaviors (laws of supply and demand) and that this is sufficient for self-governance on its own. It isn't--as Hegel and Adam Smith already knew.

Neoliberal governmentality presumes feedback mechanisms that should induce certain behaviors on the part of the subject. But the culture of immediacy, of communicative capitalism, dissolves these sorts of mechanisms and instead provides instant tidbits (lichettes) that entrap us in circuits of drive. I mentioned a day or two ago that religious conservativism might seem the proper corollary; it might seem to provide the discipline or restriction or guidelines for self-control absent from neoliberalism. In some cases, this might be true. Yet a prominent strand of American Christianity emphasizes rewards--name it and claim it--as well as individual benefit, the cultivation of individual spiritual authenticity and intense emotionality. It's like the opposite of the Protestant ethic described by Weber, something more akin to an evangelical aesthetics or a Christian affect.

[...]

I should add: neoliberalism destroys the conditions of possibility for democracy by undermining the practices and conditions of self-governance. Republicans (fascists) exploit this, inciting the expression of appetites at all costs--hatred of immigrants and racial, religious, and sexual minorities; hatred of intellectuals, science, universities, education; condemnation of any form of collective regulation (of factory farming, corporate agriculture, food, fast food, guns, pollution, gasoline and energy) as counter to the American way of life. In State and Revolution, Lenin describes the real potential of communism as inextricable from the development of workers' skills--communism is possible because administering the state isn't rocket science; anyone can do it. Neoliberalism is doing more than rendering the state ineffective in matters of collective and social welfare. It's rendering the citizens incapable of self-governance. (The recent Republican attempt to block budget provisions for teachers is a striking current example). It will be very difficult to get to communism from neoliberalism--but the very difficulty tells us why it is necessary. Democracy doesn't even seem like an option any longer.

"Our entire media habitat conditions us to immediate gratification rather than self-discipline, self-control, self-governance."
- Jodi Dean

Racism as Dissent

[source]

Some people think racism is okay if it's inflicted in the name of one's constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech.

This Can't Be Happening:

Schlessinger’s half-hearted apology for that radio rant evaporated quickly with a verbal offensive couching her decision to reject renewing the contract for her highly-rated radio show as a heroic act to regain First Amendment rights “to say what is on my mind” particularly for assailing “special interest groups [who decide] this is the time to silence a voice of dissent.”

Nice try.

Beckett's other masterpiece

Murphy. My favorite novel. But then, I don't read a lot of novels. Best experienced in the (cough! now very expensive!) Grove Press 1957 hardcover edition. The stellar unabridged recording by the San Quentin Drama Workshop, available through Audible (and elsewhere), should not be missed. Round out the experience with Demented Particulars: the Annotated Murphy by C. J. Ackerley, an indispensable (and cough! expensive!) guide available from the Florida State University Department of English.

[Google books]

The Great Recession continues and following the advice of Republicans will only make it worse

Robert Reich:

Not since the government began to measure the ups and downs of the busines cycle has such a deep recession been followed by such anemic job growth. Jobs came back at a faster pace even in March 1933 after the economy started to “recover” from the depths of the Great Depression. Of course, that job growth didn’t last long. That recovery wasn’t really a recovery at all. The Great Depression continued. And that’s exactly my point. The Great Recession continues.

[...]

Forget the Neo-Hoover deficit hawks who day we have to cut government spending and trim upcoming deficits. We didn’t get into this mess and aren’t remaining in it because of budget deficits. In fact, the only way to reduce long-term deficits is to restore jobs and growth so government revenues rise and expenses like unemployment insurance drop.

Ignore the government haters who say we have to void or delay upcoming regulations of Wall Street and big business. We got here because Wall Street went bonkers, the housing bubble burst, and the middle class couldn’t continue to spend becuase their health-care bills were soaring and their pay was stagnating. New regulations of Wall Street and big business are necessary to avoid a repeat.

And don’t believe the supply-siders who say we have to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Because the wealthy save rather than spend most of their incomes, extending their tax cut won’t do squat. And restoring their marginal tax rate to what it was under Bill Clinton won’t harm the economy. The Clinton years had the best sustained economy in American history.

"What a remarkable thing!"

"What a remarkable thing ! There appear men who do their level best to get people to make use of this, rather than of that, form of revelation; they cannot rest until others will accept their particular form of revelation; they curse, punish, kill all the dissenters they can reach. Others do the same: they curse, punish, kill all the dissenters they can reach. Others again do the same. And thus they all curse, punish, kill one another, each demanding that all should believe just like them. And it turns out that there are hundreds of faiths, and they all curse, punish, and kill one another."
- From Leo Tolstoy's Church and State

When the Right does it, it's called racism. When the Left does it, it's called compromise.

This is how the thinking goes, if it can be called thinking: THEY attacked US. THEIR religious shrine must be forbidden anywhere near OUR memorial site.

Is that thinking? I don't think so. It's a gut, knee-jerk reaction. The kind of reaction that usually wins the day. It's why we have wars. It's a recipe for murder. Our t.v. dramas and our political spectacles are filled with such easy, thoughtless, instantaneous, violent reactions. The flip-off at a moment's notice: you're a dead man; get rid of 'em; kill 'em all.

We have to get beyond this kind of thinking. If we don't, the Sharron Angle's of this world will take over. We know where that leads.

[source]

Howard Dean:

"I've gotta believe there has to be a compromise here. This isn't about the right of Muslims to have a worship center, or Jews or Christians or anybody else to have a place to worship, or any place around Ground Zero. This is something we ought to be able to work out with people of good faith. And we have to understand that it is a real affront to people who've lost their lives -- including Muslims. That site doesn't belong to any particular religion, it belongs to all Americans and all faiths. So I think a good, reasonable compromise could be worked out, without violating the principle that people ought to be able to worship as they see fit."

"Freedom of religion is a fundamental American value."

Ian Welsh:

Freedom of religion is a fundamental American value.

If you are against a mosque near the World Trade Center you are against freedom of religion. That means you are anti-American. You are a person who does not believe in the freedoms many Americans fought and died for.

In short, you’re anti-American scum. If you don’t believe in freedom of religion, you aren’t an American worthy of the name.

OMG! "I'm reading some Karl Marx."

CHORUS
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
The friend of the proletariat.
I read some Marx, just to try it;
Hope Adam Smith don't mind it!
It felt so wrong,
It felt so right;
Men of the working class, unite!
I read some Marx, and I liked it;
I liked it!

(h/t Louis Proyect)

"Attacks on big government are, in reality, a struggle to exclude access to public power on the part of workers, blacks folks, women and immigrants."

The ever-intelligent Rustbelt Radical is back from summer vacation:

The history of the US means that racism and red-baiting are conjoined twins. In this United States class has a hue. Black folks and immigrants represent those dangerous classes whose interests lie in absolute contradiction to capitalist class power. The aspirations of racial equality tend to quickly raise larger issues of equality, including how wealth is acquired and distributed. The attack on ‘big government’ that always accompanies racist tirades is really an attack on those legal rights hard-won by previous struggles, including whatever limits (largely long gone) social movements have forced on the power of capital. Attacks on ‘big government’ are, in reality, a struggle to exclude access to public power on the part of workers, blacks folks, women and immigrants. It has nothing to do with government per se, but rather with who holds power in society. One never hears about dismantling the most pervasive and odious manifestation of ‘big government’, the Military Industrial Complex, from these folks. The National Security State? That’s just fine. Extension of unemployment benefits? Bureaucratic tyranny!

Five centuries of institutional and social racism do not go quietly into the night. Every time I see a gathering of teabaggers and/or ‘border militias’ or a picture of Jan Brewer or Joe Arpaio I am reminded that our Civil War (fast approaching its sesquicentennial) is unfinished business.

"One never hears about dismantling the most pervasive and odious manifestation of ‘big government’, the Military Industrial Complex, from these folks."

"The peak year for paying out disability claims to World War I veterans didn't occur until 1969."

The costs of our rampant fear and war mongering are enormous. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be draining the federal budget for decades to come.

SFGate:

It is a sobering thought that the peak year for paying out disability claims to World War I veterans didn't occur until 1969 - more than 50 years after the armistice. The peak for paying out World War II benefits was in the 1980s, and we have not yet reached the peak cost for Vietnam veterans. Even the Gulf War of 1991, which lasted just six weeks, costs more than $4 billion a year in disability compensation.

We have already spent close to $1 trillion in Iraq - about $800 billion for direct military combat operations plus extra costs hidden in the budget for things like military medicine, recruiting, veterans' care and contractors' insurance. But there are at least four big costs ahead.

First is the enormous ongoing cost of providing for our veterans. Two million U.S. troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past nine years. Already 450,000 have filed for disability compensation for something that happened to them while they were in combat. The vast majority of these claims will be approved, and the benefit payments will continue for decades.

Many returning veterans have serious medical issues ranging from brain injuries to hearing loss, joint problems, burns and, of course, mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. More than half a million veterans have already been treated by the Veterans Administration, and some will require care for the rest of their lives. In addition, veterans who can no longer work are eligible to receive Social Security compensation. Other programs offer education, housing and other benefits.

The total budgetary costs will easily exceed half a trillion dollars over the next 50 years. Even this huge number doesn't include the economic costs that are borne by veterans and their families - costs that the government doesn't pay but are still very real. These include the cost to parents or spouses who are obliged to give up paid employment in order to become caregivers, and the self-employed National Guard members and reservists who have lost their jobs while serving overseas.

"If you stay with him, you are irresponsible."

[source]

Sticking with Obummer is like sticking with an abuser.

riverdaughter:

I’ve been paying into social security and the babyboomer trust fund since I started my career. My retirement investment decisions were based on a portion of my income coming from social security. It is too late for millions of us who are still decades away from retirement to make a course correction, nor do we want to. We paid into it, we believe in it and we want Barack Obama and the Democrats to stop using it as a political football.

[...]

We are still invisible. But we are not powerless. And we need not be helpless and drifting, waiting for the next wave to propel us towards some predetermined outcome.

[...]

[Obama] isn’t a secret progressive. He is a political opportunist. If your lives aren’t getting better *now* when he has all of the votes he needs and all of the money to influence people and all of the crisis required to exert his power, then your lives are not going to get better. He is saving it all up for the moment when he thinks you will abandon him and then he will scare you into staying. That’s what’s going on here.

If you stay with him, you are irresponsible.

"National security is a cover for job security. This is nuts."

Robert Reich:

The Pentagon's budget -- and its giant undercover jobs program -- keeps expanding. The President has asked Congress to hike total defense spending next year 2.2 percent, to $708 billion. That's 6.1 percent higher than peak defense spending during the Bush administration.

This sum doesn't even include Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, nuclear weapons management, and intelligence. Add these, and next year's national security budget totals about $950 billion.

That's a major chunk of the entire federal budget. But most deficit hawks don't dare cut it. National security is sacrosanct.

Yet what's really sacrosanct is the giant jobs program that's justified by national security. National security is a cover for job security.

This is nuts.

"In sum: Fuck you … and yours."

A blistering letter by Pat Tillman's father in response to General Gary M. Jones' report on the killing of his son:

There is no way a man like you, with your intelligence, education, military experience, responsibilities (primarily for difficult situations), and rank (authority – both apparent and real), believes the conclusions reached in the March 31, 2005 Briefing Book. But your signature is on it. I assume, therefore, that you are part of this shameless bullshit. I embarrassed myself by treating you with respect March 31, 2005. I thought your rank deserved it and anticipated something different from the new and improved investigation. I won’t act so hypocritically if we meet again.

The Rangers stand for something – to this day, in my mind, the best. None of the five (5) soldiers on the ground, nor anyone in a discretionary capacity involved in the “Briefing Book” deserve to be affiliated with the Rangers. If your uniforms are so decorated, you should remove those items.

In sum: Fuck you … and yours.

"Dedicated to teaching every American how to fire a bullet through a man-size target out to 500 yards."

[source]

N.Y. Times:

"The Appleseed Project is dedicated to teaching every American how to fire a bullet through a man-size target out to 500 yards. Marksmanship is seen as a fundamental part of a citizen's ability to defend their liberty, whether against foreigners or the agents of a (hypothetical) tyrannical government."

"The more money you borrowed, the less likely you will have to pay up."

Not for the faint of heart...

N.Y. Times:

Lenders wrote off as uncollectible $11.1 billion in home equity loans and $19.9 billion in home equity lines of credit in 2009, more than they wrote off on primary, government data shows. So far this year, the trend is the same, with combined write-offs of $7.88 billion in the first quarter.

Even when a lender forces a borrower to settle through legal action, it can rarely extract more than 10 cents on the dollar. “People got 90 cents for free,” Mr. Combs said. “It rewards immorality, to some extent.”

[...]

“I am not going to be a slave to the bank,” said Shawn Schlegel, a real estate agent who is in default on a $94,873 home equity loan. His lender obtained a court order garnishing his wages, but that was 18 months ago. Mr. Schlegel, 38, has not heard from the lender since. “The case is sitting stagnant,” he said. “Maybe it will just go away.”


[...]

“People want to have some green pastures in front of them,” said Mr. McCain, who recently negotiated a couple’s $75,000 home equity debt into a $3,500 settlement. “It’s come to the point where morality is no longer an issue.”

Darin Bolton, a software engineer, defaulted on the loans for his house in a Chicago suburb last year because “we felt we were just tossing our money into a hole.” This spring, he moved into a rental a few blocks away.

“I’m kind of banking on there being too many of us for the lenders to pursue,” he said. “There is strength in numbers.”

"All you need to know about the future of the American economy."

Automatic Earth:

Look, mortgage rates are at record lows. And so are pending home sales. Combine those two, and you have all you need to know about the future of the American economy. It really is that simple.

If no-one's borrowing, the overall money supply goes down. That spells deflation, and the Fed is powerless against it. It can't force you to borrow. And if no economic growth materializes, you're not going to increase borrowing. Because you'll be losing your jobs, or famliy, friends, neighbors will, and you’ll be forewarned.

And they know it too, Bernanke and Geithner. The Fed doesn't support you, the American people, it supports the zombie banking system at your cost.

"The Fed doesn't support you, the American people, it supports the zombie banking system at your cost."

From big bank to online bank

A lot of people are switching to credit unions. Also worth considering: switching to an online bank.

Caveat Emptor:

Big banks “routinely treat their customers like shit, offer terrible services, and use inscrutable fee schedules to make billions of dollars per year from worthless fees alone,” according to Ramit Sethi. He’s right, of course. And big banks are gearing up new fees to make it impossible to bank without piling up absurd fees.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. Many online banks offer fair terms, convenient access, and great value. And they are getting popular. Twenty-two percent of bank customers under 30 use an online bank as their primary bank. Of those currently using a big bank, over 35% would not choose it again.

I don’t use an online bank as my primary bank. Yet. But the reasons people prefer them are pretty compelling. Free ATMs anywhere. Deposit checks using a scanner instead of making time to get to a branch. Better online interfaces. Better interest rates. And on and on.

When you subtract the culture of ripping off consumers and the overhead of brick-and-mortar branches, banking can apparently be a pleasant experience.

Oh, consumer, where dost thy money go?

[source]

R.I.P. Tony Judt: "What we need is a return to a belief not in liberty ... but in equality."

Given the rapacious ways of Wall Street and corporate America, equality has become the dominant issue of our time (quotation above can be found here).

Judt died on Friday. Here are some of Judt's thoughts about anxiety and the Left that I posted in March:

For thirty years students have been complaining to me that ‘it was easy for you’: your generation had ideals and ideas, you believed in something, you were able to change things. ‘We’ (the children of the ’80s, the ’90s, the ‘aughts’) have nothing. In many respects my students are right. It was easy for us — just as it was easy, at least in this sense, for the generations who came before us. The last time a cohort of young people expressed comparable frustration at the emptiness of their lives and the dispiriting purposelessness of their world was in the 1920s: it is not by chance that historians speak of a ‘lost generation’.

If young people today are at a loss, it is not for want of targets. Any conversation with students or schoolchildren will produce a startling checklist of anxieties. Indeed, the rising generation is acutely worried about the world it is to inherit. But accompanying these fears there is a general sentiment of frustration: ‘we’ know something is wrong and there are many things we don’t like. But what can we believe in? What should we do?

[...]

If it is to be taken seriously again, the Left must find its voice. There is much to be angry about: growing inequalities of wealth and opportunity; injustices of class and caste; economic exploitation at home and abroad; corruption and money and privilege occluding the arteries of democracy. But it will no longer suffice to identify the shortcomings of ‘the system’ and then retreat, Pilate-like: indifferent to consequences. The irresponsible rhetorical grandstanding of decades past did not serve the Left well.

We have entered an age of insecurity — economic insecurity, physical insecurity, political insecurity. The fact that we are largely unaware of this is small comfort: few in 1914 predicted the utter collapse of their world and the economic and political catastrophes that followed. Insecurity breeds fear. And fear — fear of change, fear of decline, fear of strangers and an unfamiliar world — is corroding the trust and interdependence on which civil societies rest.

All change is disruptive. We have seen that the specter of terrorism is enough to cast stable democracies into turmoil. Climate change will have even more dramatic consequences. Men and women will be thrown back upon the resources of the state. They will look to their political leaders and representatives to protect them: open societies will once again be urged to close in upon themselves, sacrificing freedom for ‘security’. The choice will no longer be between the state and the market, but between two sorts of state. It is thus incumbent upon us to reconceive the role of government. If we do not, others will.

"Corruption and money and privilege [are] occluding the arteries of democracy. But it will no longer suffice to identify the shortcomings of ‘the system’ and then retreat, Pilate-like: indifferent to consequences."
- Tony Judt

"I call myself a Marxist..."

[source]

We are very lucky to have an Internet and blogs - occasionally smart people use them to communicate. Take advantage of this! Here's the ever-insightful Robert Paul Wolff on Marx.

Although Marx was, au fond, committed to the rationalist of the human experience, he came to believe that capitalism was deeply mystified, with the result that the surface appearance of rationality in the market concealed very deep irrationalities, both institutional and individual. He argued with great power and insight that capitalism itself is internally irrational, and hence cannot be the economic foundation for a truly human society. Against the superficial individualism of Liberalism, the mysticism of Conservatism, and the feckless unfounded optimism of Utopian Socialism Marx set his call for the supercession of capitalism by a fundamentally different economic and social order, Socialism. But this project, he was convinced, could only be accomplished when capitalism had developed sufficiently to make such a supercession technically possible and when the working class had organized itself sufficiently to seize control of the means of production.

[...]

I call myself a Marxist because I remain persuaded, despite the inadequacies of some of Marx's arguments and the failure of some of his forecasts, that his understanding of economy and society is deeper than that of anyone else I know, and because I share his commitment to collective action by the disadvantaged classes of society.

Blowing a bunch of cash in Marbella

L.A. Times:

The president has urged frugality in lean economic times. He once cautioned that families saving money for college shouldn't "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas."

Michelle Obama is staying at the Hotel Villa Padierna, a Ritz-Carlton resort in the mountains outside Marbella. The resort boasts two golf courses, a posh spa with Turkish baths, views of the Mediterranean Sea and a high-end restaurant specializing in avant-garde fare. Room rates start at $400 and rise to $6,500 for a two-bedroom villa with a private pool and 24-hour butler service.

Whoops, my peasant resentment is showing.

Hurry up and forget the oil spill

[source]

Because we Americans don't like to reflect on our mistakes or hang around for the post-mortem analysis. It's time to move on to the next big disaster.

Boy, are we ready! Someone somewhere at this very moment is cutting corners, ignoring and undermining regulations, greasing palms, or conning officials and colleagues to make it happen.

One thing is certain: we will greet the next BIG ONE with the same inattention, indifference, incompetence, and shocked surprise.

BRING IT ON!

Ann Rice: "I can't find a basis in Scripture for a lot of the positions that churches and denominations take today."

Like Tolstoy before her and millions of others, Ann Rice has become fed up with organized religion. In her case, the Catholic Church. Better twelve years late than never.

L.A. Times:

The author Anne Rice, best known for her vampire novels, made waves last week when she declared on her Facebook page that she had "quit being a Christian." Twelve years after her return to Catholicism, Rice said she still believed in God, but that, "In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life."

Rice spoke to The Times by phone this week from her home in Rancho Mirage.

Q) You were raised Catholic, became an atheist, then returned to Catholicism in 1998. Why are you quitting now? It's not as if the church has suddenly changed.

A) Well, I've been living with this now for 12 years, and I've come to the conclusion from my experience with organized religion that I have to leave, that I have to, in the name of Christ, step away from this. It's a matter of rejecting what I've discovered about the persecution of gays, the persecution and oppression of women and the actions of the churches on many different levels. I've also found that I can't find a basis in Scripture for a lot of the positions that churches and denominations take today, and I can't find any basis at all for an anointed, hierarchical priesthood. So all of this finally created a pressure in me, a kind of confusion, a toxic anger at times, and I felt I had to step aside. And that's what I've done.

[...]

Q) Was there any single moment that led you to say, "I'm done?"

A) There was. There was a last straw. But it's very important to emphasize that it was the sum total of a lot of things. There were some last straws that had to do with papal pronouncements, the pope going to Africa and declaring that condoms were not a good idea and would not help in the AIDS epidemic; the pope standing up in Portugal and saying that one of the most insidious evils faced by the world today is same-sex marriage. You know, we live in a world where genocide and human slavery are realities, and the pope chose to focus on same-sex marriage. That was a moment of, "What in the world am I doing connected to this religion?" But the real last straw, the very last straw, was the bishop of Phoenix, Ariz., Thomas Olmsted, coming out and publicly condemning a nun named Sister Margaret McBride for authorizing a life-saving abortion for a dying mother in a Phoenix hospital. What he said in essence was that she had excommunicated herself by authorizing the abortion, and I could write a book on why I think that was a ruthless and immoral decision.

"Who is the funniest Supreme Court justice?"

The Roberts Supreme Court is a farce. The entertainment is directed at fellow assholes who think nothing of destroying our democratic freedoms and even human lives in the name of ideology.

Paul Duffy:

The ruling on campaign contributions was a fine example of high judicial humor, the kind of well-planned prank that brings that creepy smile to John Roberts’s lips. But this stunt, however amusing, was as nothing compared to the ruling of the Rehnquist Court that gave the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. Now that was funny. And it was funny in a way that goes on being funny. It is still funny to the young soldiers who were blinded or lost their legs in Dubya’s Arabian adventure, itself quite a good joke. Of course we’ll never know if the thousands of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq saw the fun in it, but we can say that they would never have had the ultimate comic opportunity without the help of the Supreme Court.

Who is the funniest Supreme Court justice? John Roberts? Sam Alito? Clarence Thomas? Thomas held the title for years, but competition arrived with the appointment of Roberts and then Alito, both of whom are knee-slapping, gut-wrenching, tears-starting hilarious. Most court-watchers believe that Thomas has been eclipsed by the two newer justices not only because they are funnier but because he has run his one joke into the ground. After twenty-some years, nobody thinks a judge acting like a moron is amusing.

On the other hand, Roberts and Alito, the Abbott and Costello of the court, are not only the funniest of the justices, they are the smartest. Roberts, it is said, is so smart he will have nothing to do with any of the other justices except Alito and Scalia. Alito and Scalia are so smart they know how they are going to rule in a case without reading briefs, researching the law or listening to arguments. Roberts follows much the same judicial method.

"They want to steal money from old people."

Ian Welsh:

The US has a number of problems which are at or near crisis, such as employment, inequality and healthcare costs, to name just a few. Social Security is not one of them. It isn’t even close, and politicians and billionaires like Pete Peterson who are trying to gin up a crisis should be ashamed of themselves.

[...]

Instead of dealing with real problems, instead of tackling the medical industry or the military-industrial complex, instead of fixing the job situation, they want to steal money from old people.

"The president does oppose same-sex marriage..."

“The president does oppose same-sex marriage but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples,” Axelrod said on MSNBC. [source]

Yes, once again Obummer would rather play politics than do the right thing.

The Law Transcends Hate!

CONCLUSION
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. [source]

"Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment permanently enjoining its enforcement; prohibiting the official defendants from applying or enforcing Proposition 8 and directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision shall not apply or enforce Proposition 8."
- Remedies

"I don't like middle class people very much, I just don't like 'em..."

"Are you your brother's keeper? Then see to it that they get a damn education. ... The spirit of liberalism is caring and equality and you're not doing any of it, you're investing money."
- Joe Bageant

"The Kingdom of Survival is an interdisciplanary documentary combining speculative travelogue and investigative journalism...." Film info here.

Only politicians...

I'm in a "fuck politics" mood, sick of those whom Burroughs would call "person impersonators."

"Only politicians lay down what they think and that is it. Take a man like Hitler, he never changed his mind."
- William S. Burroughs

Mindful investing

Thoughstreaming:

On the back page of the latest Shambala Sun magazine is an ad for "mindful investing" through the Abacus Fund. Sorry. "Progressive Buddhists" want their cake but they don't want to be attached to eating it. This wholesale confusion is why all religions are in such turmoil, they can't separate the product from the Peace. The One from the mONEy. Transubstantiation and the Eucharist from profit and value.