"I believe that socialism in the right form can be great for society."

You're convincing no one, Obummer

Patrick Martin (World Socialist Web Site):

In his Madison speech, and in a lengthy interview with Rolling Stone magazine, posted on the Internet the same day, Obama blamed his former supporters, not his own policies, for the poor political standing of his party and administration. Those who fail to turn out November 2 to support Democratic congressional candidates will be “irresponsible” and their actions “inexcusable,” he charged.

[...]

Modestly presenting himself as a political superman, he declared, “I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars. In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don’t even notice.”

Here the class blindness exceeds even the egomania. While Obama chastises “people” for not noticing his brilliant successes, the president failed to note that the American people are suffering through the greatest increase in human misery since the Great Depression, with destitution, homelessness and hunger spreading while the White House rejects the slightest measure to alleviate the impoverishment of tens of millions.

Since the US Census figures released earlier this month showed a record increase in poverty during Obama’s first year in office, the president has been asked about the issue frequently. He has evinced complete indifference, while reiterating that his sole anti-poverty program is to restore “economic growth,” i.e., to boost the profitability of American corporations and the stock portfolios of American multi-millionaires.

[...]

There is enormous anger over the bailout of Wall Street, the disparity between the trillions lavished on saving the banks and the super-rich, while workers’ jobs are wiped out, homeowners are foreclosed and evicted, small businesses starved of business and cash and forced into bankruptcy. But in the framework of the two-party system, there is no outlet for such sentiments.

Now a new narrative is emerging: the impending Democratic Party defeats are presented as the result of the defection of Obama’s “base”—the millions of workers and youth who turned out at the polls in 2008 to sweep out Bush and the Republicans—because they had unrealistic expectations. In other words, Obama & Co. are seeking to blame the working class for the political debacle which their own right-wing policies have prepared.

"Obama & Co. are seeking to blame the working class for the political debacle which their own right-wing policies have prepared."

Obama has a checklist!

But it's top secret.

BeyondChron:

I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished.

It would have been great if the Rolling Stone reporters had asked Obama to take the checklist out of his pocket and show it to them, because I have a hard time seeing how we got 70% of his campaign promises done. And I imagine most readers would too.

Employee Free Choice Act? Not yet. Comprehensive immigration reform? Forget it. Climate change reform? Not even the BP oil spill made it possible. Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? We all know what happened last week. Repeal DOMA? Ha!! Stop the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy? Unlikely. Obama couldn’t even get a job for Elizabeth Warren without making it a recess appointment, so even the appointments are sketchy.

Show us the checklist! Or write it on your palm so the press can try to photograph it!

There is something he can be proud of:

"He will protect the right of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, transport, own, and use guns."

CHECK!

Beat up on lefties? CHECK!

Screw gays on DADT? CHECK!

Kill, kill, kill? CHECK!

Sabotage Social Security? CHECK!

Side with the fat cats? CHECK!

"Democratic politicians, as a rule, despise you."

Ian Welsh:

Now that virtually everyone of any importance, up to and including the President has told you that they hate you, that you are a bunch of unrealistic ingrates who need to be drug tested, I trust no one still thinks the White House doesn’t hate the left’s guts, and that it comes from the very top, from the President?

I’m going to write on this at greater length, but the point folks need to get through their heads and burrowed down into their hearts and spleens is that Democratic politicians as a rule, despise you. This isn’t just about the White House, Democrats in the Senate and in the House have done everything short of spit in your face, over and over again, as when Nancy Pelosi snuck an up or down vote on the catfood comission’s findings into the lame duck sessions.

[...]

It is, for whatever reason, more important to Democrats to “hippie punch” than it is for them to win elections. It is more important for them to serve Wall Street, even if Wall Street gives more money to Republicans, than it is to win elections. Further, they are very happy to do very non-liberal things, like restrict abortion rights, forbid drug reimportation, gut net neutrality or try and cut social security.

It is not clear how many of them somewhere deep in their shriveled hearts feel they are actually liberals, but what is clear is that it doesn’t matter, because they won’t act on it, even when they control the Presidency, the House and the Senate.

Incompetent. Ideologically right wing, only moderately less right wing than the Republicans.

This is your Democratic party. These people are the problem.

"It is not clear how many of them somewhere deep in their shriveled hearts feel they are actually liberals, but what is clear is that it doesn’t matter, because they won’t act on it, even when they control the Presidency, the House and the Senate."
- Ian Welsh

"Our government, the basis of our freedoms, is spewing red ink, and the Republican solution is to spill ever more."

David Cay Johnston:

The number of taxpayers reporting any wages in 2008 was 1.26 million fewer than in 2007, a scary figure when you consider that most people do not expect to be out of work for an entire year and that the population grew by more than a percentage point. In August 42 percent of the unemployed -- 6.2 million people -- had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The average for all jobless workers was 33.6 weeks of unemployment, the equivalent of going from New Year's Day through August 23 without a paycheck.

[...]

Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration. Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt.

[...]

This is economic madness. It is policy divorced from empirical evidence. It is insanity because the policies are illusory and delusional.

The Tea Party: gutted, filleted, and scorched to a cinder by Matt Taibbi

"After lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit."
-Matt Taibbi

I try to ignore the antics of the tea party. What does reacting to them accomplish? Better to focus on the issues. Nevertheless, it was fun to read Matt Taibbi's take on the movement in the October 15th issue of Rolling Stone:

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit.

[...]

The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.

Early in his campaign, Dr. Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as "socialized medicine." But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. "Physicians," he said, "should be allowed to make a comfortable living."

[...]

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They're completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you!

"By any measure, his presidency has been a huge disappointment."

Ken Silverstein:

I had low expectations for Obama as I always viewed him as a fairly conventional insider. But by any measure, his presidency has been a huge disappointment. It’s true that Obama inherited a terrible economy, but his policies were timid — which is no surprise given that his economic team was composed almost entirely of the same bankers and Wall Street insiders who paved the way for and profited from our bubble economy. There are now 43.6 million Americans living in poverty and more than 15 million out of work; that’s a scandal, and when there’s a Democrat in the White House and the party has ample majorities in Congress, it’s not credible to blame everything on obstructionism by the Republicans.

Then there was the health care reform bill, that took more than a year to pass and whose primary beneficiaries were the lobbyists who got paid billions to water it down. The bill does almost nothing to control costs and left the insurance industry in charge of the system. And for that very reason, the industry will be able to contrive loopholes that minimize the impact of the few good measures left in the bill.

Joe Biden and Robert Gibbs have recently been attacking the “left” and saying that it doesn’t appreciate all the great things the administration has done. For my part, I have lived in Washington long enough to have realistic hopes; for example, given political realities, passing a single payer bill was not going to happen. But I also don’t think it’s my job, as a journalist or a citizen, to blindly repeat the mantra of the administration (and its supporters in the blogosphere), that we should “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Fine, but let’s also not treat the administration’s health care plan as a grand achievement. The bill is widely unpopular, and not only because of the hyperbolic attacks on it by Republicans and Fox News. It’s unpopular because it’s a terrible piece of legislation.

"We March for Jobs, Peace, Justice and the Socialist Alternative That Can Win Them"

Part of a great statement by the Socialist Contingent. Check out the whole thing.

Join the Socialist Contingent on October 2

We March for Jobs, Peace, Justice and the Socialist Alternative That Can Win Them

Hundreds of thousands of Americans organized by labor and civil rights organizations will gather in Washington, D.C. on October 2 to demand a change in the direction that our nation is heading. We are proud to join this march to demand jobs, to demand an end to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and for a society that is fairer, more equal and more just. We believe it important to be in the capital on that date to help create a counterweight to Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and Republicans, their reactionary politics, ruthless economics, and their racism.

We do not, however, share the goals of the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and other organizations which hope to achieve jobs and justice by supporting Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in the national elections on November 2. We believe that it has become quite clear now that neither Democrats nor the Republicans are capable of solving the country’s three great crises—the economy, the environment, and the wars—in a way that will be good for the American people. The goals of a full employment economy, real environmental sustainability, and peace cannot be achieved by our capitalist system and the corporations motivated only by profit. We need a new direction toward a new system.

The two major parties have failed us. During the past two years, the Democrats and Republicans have failed to represent us, but they have done a fine job of representing the banks, insurance companies, and corporations. They saved the banks for the bankers—not those whose homes are still threatened with foreclosure or collapsing value. They saved the auto industry for the auto CEOs—not for the workers whose plants have been closed, whose health insurance contributions have been raised, and whose wages have been lowered. They have saved the health insurance companies by forcing millions of Americans to buy their policies, while denying us a single-payer plan and leaving prices remain uncontrolled. They have saved them, but they have not saved us.

We join the movement for this march, excited and enthused to see the labor unions, the African American and Latino populations, the women’s, gay and lesbian and environmental movements taking to the streets. But we know that change can only be brought about as it has been in every period of American history by independent social movements. And such independent movements must find political expression first in independent candidates and then in a party of working people and all in our society who suffer exploitation, discrimination and oppression.

"We believe that it has become quite clear now that neither Democrats nor the Republicans are capable of solving the country’s three great crises—the economy, the environment, and the wars—in a way that will be good for the American people."

"I have located the source of a great many of our biggest problems: fucking Ben Franklin!"

Thoughtstreaming:

I have located the source of a great many of our biggest problems: fucking Ben Franklin! A selection of his quotes show what a demented freak he was: "Time is money" "credit is money" "He that idly loses five shillings' worth of time loses five shillings,..and not only loses that sum, but all the advantages that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable amount of money."

I wouldn't be surprised if he invented the time-clock and punch cards.

Hillary and the War Criminal

Fred Branfman:

As an idealistic college student, Clinton protested Kissinger's mass murder of civilians in Indochina. She knows full well that had the international laws protecting civilians in war been applied to Kissinger's bombing of civilian targets in Indochina he would have been indicted for crimes of war.

But on Sept. 29 she will introduce Kissinger at the State Department Historian's conference, giving him a platform to continue 40 years of Orwellian deception in which he has sought to blame Congress for the fall of Indochina rather than accepting responsibility for his massive miscalculations and indifference to human suffering.

For the record, Jimmy Carter has also chosen to apply the whitewash to Kissinger.

Despite transient ill feelings toward Henry Kissinger when he made disparaging remarks about my policies or actions, I respected his knowledge of international affairs, his experience, and his sound judgment. He gave me very helpful support during some of the most crucial times, and I continue to value his wisdom and advice.

There's hope yet for George W. Bush.

"The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record"

[source]

Raw Story:

The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

A N.Y. Times commenter:

God Bless inequality!!! That's what this country is all about! Why should some lazy person waiting for a govt handout be considered my 'equal'. Guess what? You're not... and from now on I'm going to treat you like it. Hey, if I have to foot the bill for some deadbeat to lay in govt safety hammock....

Obama finds Obama-induced voter apathy inexcusable

Raw Story:

Admonishing his own party, President Barack Obama says it would be "inexcusable" and "irresponsible" for unenthusiastic Democratic voters to sit out the midterm elections, warning that the consequences could be a squandered agenda for years.

"People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up," Obama told Rolling Stone in an interview to be published Friday. The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and "if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."

[...]

"It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election," Obama said.

The president has been telling Democrats to "wake up" and recognize that he and the Democratic-run Congress have delivered on promises, from a new health care law to tougher rules for Wall Street to more aid for college students. Obama wants disenchanted supporters to see that Republican wins in November would undermine the ability of Democrats to get the unfinished business done, from climate change legislation to allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

What emerges in the magazine story is a stern, lecturing tone from Obama.

That should be good for a few votes.

"This is the land, the Land of Do What You're Told
The Land of the Free: if you don't leave the fold
Smile a little wider as you're waiting to be sold
This is the land, the Land of Do What You're Told"
- Chumbawamba

"No more soldiers or sailors, tanks, bombs, planes, guns, submarines, aircraft carriers, drones, generals or admirals."

Jerome Doolittle:

Presidents Johnson and Carter both tried to impose a discipline called zero-based budgeting on the government, with barely visible success. It involved assuming that your department’s budget had just been reduced to zero, and then restoring functions one by one until you reached a prescribed limit.

Let’s try that with the War Department. Overnight it’s all gone, every bit of it. No more soldiers or sailors, tanks, bombs, planes, guns, submarines, aircraft carriers, drones, generals or admirals. Nothing left. The end of our known world. We stand here naked in a hostile world, shivering and defenseless like Costa Rica — which actually does lack an army.

What will become of poor us? Surely we will be crushed by our enemies, all three hundred million of us from sea to shining sea. Our cities burned, our fields sowed with salt, our women raped, our children sent to madrasas, our surviving men reduced to serfdom.

Just like Costa Rica, except that in the real world none of those things ever seems to happen to Costa Rica.

Transcending the Tea Party by obsessing over it

"Some 300 liberal groups ... are sponsoring a march on Saturday in the hope of transforming the national conversation so it focuses less on the Tea Party."

This pretty much sums up the problems with liberal discourse these days. It focuses way too much on what the Tea Party is doing. Tea Party this, Tea Party that. Glenn Beck this, Glenn Beck that. Ann Coulter this, Ann Coulter that. Limbaugh this, Limbaugh that. Karl Rove this, Karl Rove that. Enough!

N.Y. Times:

Predicting a crowd of more than 100,000, some 300 liberal groups — including the N.A.A.C.P., the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the National Council of La Raza and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — are sponsoring a march on Saturday in the hope of transforming the national conversation so it focuses less on the Tea Party. The groups sponsoring the rally, which is called “One Nation Working Together,” say they hope to supplant what they say is the Tea Party’s divisiveness with a message of unity to promote jobs, justice and education.

“The Tea Party has been getting much more media attention than it deserves, and it’s been saying it represents the voice of middle-class America,” said George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U., a New York health care union local, who says his union has chartered 500 buses to carry 25,000 union members to the rally. “A lot of us feel we have to get a different voice out there speaking for working people, one respecting the diversity of this country, which the Tea Party does not.”

"Harvard, Harvard, shame on you, honoring a racist fool!"

Berkeley has John Yoo. Harvard has the bigot Martin Peretz.

"The inequality of consumption of stuff is just overwhelming."

Kumi Naidoo (via Firedoglake):

The uncomfortable reality is that if we are to deliver the quality of life that folks in the US and other developed countries enjoy, and that the elites in other developing countries enjoy, we would need eight planets. Six to eight planets. Just think about that for a minute. Because even we in the progressive movement need to realize that if we are serious about creating a sustainable and just world for our kids and grandkids, we have to realize that we also have to challenge certain assumptions we have about our consumption patterns. And the inequality of consumption of stuff is just overwhelming. What North America and Europe spend on cat food annually will provide three nutritional meals to the entire African continent every single day. And I’ve got nothing against, obviously, pets. But the inequity is completely unsustainable.

"Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US"

[From Building a Better America (p.12)]

A very important study by researchers at Harvard and Duke.

Raw Story:

According to research (PDF) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden's model over that of the US.

What's more, the study's authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model.

"First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups – even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo."
- From "Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time"

"In a sense, we remain in high school all our lives. This is pathetic..."

Morris Berman:

In a sense, we remain in high school all our lives. This is pathetic, but it finally is what politics, and our social lives, are all about. I recall the wife of a famous psychiatrist–a guru, really–telling me that if she had friends over for dinner, the next week all of the women who had been at her house adopted her style of dress and cuisine. If she then changed these, they followed accordingly. It was as though they believed in a contagion theory of chicness: if they copied her, some of the “glow” would rub off on them. Absurd, yes, but this desire for chicness is no small force in human psychology or history. It’s the norm, not the exception.

The truth is that trying to be cool is a behavior that dates from the Paleolithic. When Paleolithic skeletons are dug up from roughly 35,000 years ago, and are found wearing jewelry–beads, pendants, necklaces–what else can this indicate but an attempt to say one is special–in fact, better than others? The same goes for “special” grave sites for the elite. Personal adornment and special graveyards are about status differentiation–Vance Packard in the Stone Age, one might say. All the evidence points to a new type of personality organization around that time, which made possible culture as we know it, and which also included the need to feel superior to others–in particular, wanting to be seen as superior to others. After all, being cool is something that has to be publicly agreed upon; it is essentially other-defined. Which means it is as insubstantial as gossamer; who or what is cool can change in the twinkling of an eye. But human beings pursue it as if their lives depended on it. In fact, very few human beings manage to escape the lure of superiority. When you meet Zen masters who are proud of their humility (an experience I’ve actually had), you know, as André Malraux once observed, that “there really is no such thing as a grown-up person.”

Chasing status may be puerile, said John Adams, but it nevertheless seems to be hard-wired. In his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America (1787), he said that history makes it quite clear that man is driven by vanity, by a desire for social distinction. “We may call this desire for distinction childish and silly,” wrote Adams, “but we cannot alter the nature of man.”

"This notion of superiority and exceptionalism starts early ... Governor Winthrop utters those words which centuries later will be repeated by Ronald Reagan ... 'a city on a hill.' ... Just a few years after Governor Winthrop utters these words ... the people in a city on a hill move out to massacre the Pequot Indians."
- Howard Zinn

I miss Howard Zinn

"So you lose your perspective after a while. If you don't think, if you just listen to t.v. and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached and then come back and look at the world and you are horrified."
- Howard Zinn

"Stoning has become the racial apartheid of this century – intolerable and unacceptable"

Maryam Namazie:

Today, stoning has become the racial apartheid of this century – intolerable and unacceptable. The public are just not going to stand for stoning anymore. And as a result governments have taken heed. We know that many governments supported racial apartheid in South Africa for a very long time and only as a result of public pressure did they eventually deem racial apartheid a crime against humanity. We also know that many of the very governments criticising Iran on Sakineh’s case have had and continue to have wonderfully cosy relations with that regime despite its slaughter of an entire generation.

But that is the nature of public outcries – they change laws, they ban the intolerable, they challenge the powers that be and even bring down governments and regimes.

Sakineh’s case has caused such a storm because we want her to live.

We want to save her.

We won’t let her die.

Not because she is the only one in this situation but because she symbolises that which we will no longer tolerate.

[...]

Enough!

"It's not right to target people who support peace and justice around the world."

Will we hear about Jess Sundin on Colbert or The Daily Show?


N.Y. Times:

Jess Sundin, another member of the Anti-War Committee whose home was searched, said a warrant also was executed at the group’s office. She said she had not done anything to help terror groups.

“I’ve protested the government’s policies and spoken out and tried to educate people in my community,” Ms. Sundin said. “That is the extent of what I’ve done.”

(h/t Rustbelt Radical)

"Just don't forget that it's dumb luck that got you here"

Just don't forget
that it's dumb luck that got you here
don't fool yourself
misfortunes waiting for the best time to appear
to make it clear
that all the courage and the talent that you have
was just in dreams
and when you wake up
you will beg to get it back
to get it back
-Dntel

"They are hoping that everything will return to 'normal'. But this is not the case. This is normality under capitalism from now on."

[source]

Rob Sewell:

The capitalist system is suffering from a deep-seated malaise. It has just suffered a severe heart-attack. And this will not be the last.

[...]

The only reason why it was able to put off this massive crisis in the past period was through speculation and the creation of the biggest credit bubble in history. Perhaps for the very last time, it was able to expand world trade through “globalisation”. But this has now created a globalised crisis – on a scale and scope greater than the 1930s. It was only able to save the banking system by a blood transfusion of an eye-watering $14trillion. When you consider that between 1948 and 1952 over $17bn was given in Marshall Aid to rescue Western Europe, a truly enormous figure equivalent to around $200bn in today’s terms, you can see what a staggering sum was doled out to rescue capitalism over the last two years. And it has still not finished, with pressure for more money to be poured into the economy in the USA and Britain. They may have temporarily avoided a Depression, but they have certainly not resolved the crisis of capitalism. No amount of “liquidity” will accomplish that. Even the “pump-priming” of Roosevelt’s New Deal failed and did not prevent the slump of 1937-39. The crisis was only “resolved” through world war, which is ruled out at the present time.

The capitalist state rushed in to rescue capitalism and now the working class is being asked to pay through massive austerity and savage cuts in living standards. On the road of capitalism there is no way out. The strategists of capital have tried Keynesianism and Monetarism, but both have failed. They are head and tail of the same coin. This impasse has now led to the current catastrophe. Whatever they do will be wrong and shows the blind impasse of the system.

The working class is facing a nightmare of austerity, which, according to the strategists of Capital, will last for more than a generation. No amount of tinkering with capitalism will change this fact. Capitalism can no longer afford lasting reforms. It is the epoch of counter-reforms and attacks. The reformists in the labour movement are blind to this. They are hoping that everything will return to “normal”. But this is not the case. This is normality under capitalism from now on.

Socialism from Below

En Passant:

Karl Marx was the first socialist to break with the idea of socialism from above, and to put forward the alternative of working class self-emancipation.

At the centre of the real Marxist tradition is the argument that the liberation of the working class can only come from the working class itself – from the bottom of society, rather than a minority at the top. In other words, socialism from below.

In his book The German Ideology, Marx talks of the need for a revolution in which the mass of the working class plays the leading role.

This revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.

"The real enemy is the self-satisfied fat cat, for whom the status quo is just fine."

[source]

Barry Crimmins:

To make big dough as a political satirist in this country you must pretend that our nation's problems are equally provoked by the right and left. To be welcomed in the mainstream, you must overlook the fact the entire left was ruined over half a century ago by McCarthyism. I can't do that.

[...]

The real enemy is a combination of greed, despair, conformity, cowardice and ignorance. The real enemy is anything that divides and conquers us so that we don't realize and utilize our collective strength.

The real enemy is the self-satisfied fat cat, for whom the status quo is just fine, who tells us that we're on the fringe if we so much as suggest that this country needs more than just a little fine tuning to bring it into focus.

I'm not saying the left has all the answers. I am saying that we as a nation discover fewer and fewer correct ones without the input of a large and legitimate school of thought. I am also saying there is a very real and legitimate dissatisfaction in this country that is only being serviced by the far right. It's time we provided a more humane alternative.

There is a stream of professional, inhumane discourse that never rises to the level of true concern for our nation's future. You can hear it every day on the Diane Rehm Show and on On Point and other NPR programs. You even can hear it on The Daily Show (the "million moderate march," anyone?) and Colbert. It's middle-of-the-road crap, very professionally done, but still crap.

We need more voices like Barry Crimmins.

"This young century's great problems are a government abetting ruthless misadventure at Wall Street and the Pentagon, not rudeness and rank partisanship. Jon Stewart, you are funny as hell. I laugh with you most weekday nights. But your march is seriously dumb, and I'm laughing at you."
- Daniel Denvir

"The economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy."

Manfred Max-Neef on Democracy Now!:

AMY GOODMAN: And if you’re teaching young economists, the principles you would teach them, what they’d be?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: The principles, you know, of an economics which should be are based in five postulates and one fundamental value principle.

One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy.

Two, development is about people and not about objects.

Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth.

Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services.

Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible. And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that further.

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Nothing can be more important than life. And I say life, not human beings, because, for me, the center is the miracle of life in all its manifestations. But if there is an economic interest, I mean, you forget about life, not only of other living beings, but even of human beings. If you go through that list, one after the other, what we have today is exactly the opposite.

Amy Goodman today:

According to Bloomberg News, the White House is considering naming a "prominent corporate executive" to replace Summers in order to counter Wall Street criticism that the administration is "anti-business."

"Social Security is not safe with either a Democrat or a Republican in the White House or controlling Congress."

In Defense of Marxism:

The bottom line is that Social Security is not safe with either a Democrat or a Republican in the White House or controlling Congress. This is not surprising, given that this issue is so infused in class relations. Social Security is often the only thing that keeps people who have worked hard their entire lives, often for minimal pay, from being thrown out on the street. It’s the difference between many of our loved ones going hungry or having something to eat. Just 75 years ago, it didn’t even exist. Its implementation was a major victory for the working class.

So there really is no wonder why the political parties of capital are attacking it. Just as the ruling class has all but ended traditional pension plans in the private sector, and replaced them with complicated and unstable stock investment plans, they’ve been foaming at the mouth trying to get their hands around the neck of the most successful government program ever created.

This is why the working class needs our own political presence, a mass party of labor, in order to defend our basic social programs, let alone to expand and improve them. The bourgeoisie across the world are using the current crisis of capitalism, which looks to be heading into yet another downturn, as an excuse to roll back hard-fought gains. They are stretched thin and it shows. They simply have little to no room to give.

We must patiently explain that economic planning, done democratically by the people who actually do the work, is the only thing that will protect our standard of living. Moreover, it’s the only thing that can give the millions of people across the United States and around world who needlessly wallow in poverty something that could reasonably be called a life.

Diet Soap: my favorite podcast

[source]

It feels like Diet Soap Podcast has its thumb on the pulse of the future. The shows invariably include interesting guests who think out of the box. The host Douglas Lain puts together interesting collages of music and spoken words between the interview segments. He asks interesting, culturally- and philosophically-informed questions. Diet Soap is putting the alternative back into alternative. Don't miss it.

Douglas Lain is the author of the short story collection "Last Week's Apocalypse," and his novel "Billy Moon:1968" is due out from Tor Books in 2011. He is also working on a non-fiction book about his efforts at urban gleaning called "Pick Your Battle." He recognizes that he is a member of the entertained public — a public that Guy Debord described in his 1978 film In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni as “dying in droves on the freeways, and in each flu epidemic and each heat wave, and with each mistake of those who adulterate their food, and each technical innovation profitable to the numerous entrepreneurs for whose environmental developments they serve as guinea pigs," but he's hoping he can transcend that condition. Last week Lain spent very little money on consumer goods. He is trying to give up shopping all together if possible. Douglas Lain lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and four children.

Here's a snippet from Lain's short story, "Shopping at the End of the World":

"Any kid born today has fools for parents, heartless fools," I said. "The species probably doesn't even have fifty years left. How could we have a kid?"

I'd first met Sadie five years earlier, in 1991, at an antiwar demonstration, around the time that President Bush dubbed Portland "Little Beirut" because of the protesting, the drumming, the screaming dissent that he encountered here. There were about thirty thousand of us at Pioneer Square the day I first spotted Sadie . . . the day war broke out in Iraq.

I was marching right down the middle of the street, following the broken yellow line through the rain, and chanting along with the rest, when I spotted Sadie.

She didn't have an umbrella and so she kept drifting onto the sidewalks to find shelter under awnings. She ended up confronting the pedestrians.

"Did you hear there's a war on?" she asked a passerby who wasn't with the march. "It's not even a war, it's a slaughter," Sadie told the woman in the red dress and trench coat as she hurried away with her shopping bags. Sadie was militant and righteous. Listening to her shout, watching her shake her fist to the beat of the chants, I was embarrassed for her.

"You're making a fool of yourself," I said. "You're like a parody of a protester."

"I make you uncomfortable?" she asked.

I told her that yes, she made me uncomfortable.

"Good. Nobody should feel comfortable at a protest rally. A person shouldn't want to feel comfortable," she said.

Five years later, Sadie had changed her mind; she wanted comfort and security.

"I want to feel connected to the world," Sadie told me. "I can't stand going on like this, without something to ground me, without any real relationships."

"It won't be any better, having a kid with me won't solve anything," I told her. "The world will still be just a gob of pain, no matter what."

But Sadie wanted to be comfortable. She didn't want her whole life to be a protest; she didn't want to stand outside of the world, to act against the world. She wanted a family.

Here's a comment Lain left on a recent podcast:

People are no longer imbued with mystic importance. The labor relationship (ie the commodity) is imbued with mystic importance. While the invention of the teenager can be traced back to the fifties, and while that invention of the teenager is a symptom of the destruction of the nuclear family, to think that the primary social relationship in society is between peers is a mistake. What's been happening for well over 100 years is that human relationships have been replaced by an abstraction.

As to the positive side to our infantilizing institutions, one of the positive effects of the rise of bourgeois culture generally has been the elimination of old class structures and the introduction of more liberty. Going back to Nietzsche, one of the results of our killing God is that we have been freed of God's authority. However, what the last 150 years or so have demonstrated is that while one might expect hierarchical authority to disappear once it's been abstracted to the point of being just a void, this authority instead just gets stronger and less contestable.

This process isn't going to work itself out on its own. This is not something we can surrender to. If we want to get out from under the new God of the commodity we'll have to do something. We'll have to act.

"It turns out the recession ended more than a year ago. Feeling better now?"

A.P.:

WASHINGTON – It turns out the recession ended more than a year ago.

Feeling better now?

The panel that determines the timing of recessions concluded Monday that this one ended — technically, anyway — in June 2009, and lasted 18 months. The duration makes it the longest since World War II.

[...]

"Every single one of the individuals who wrote the report needs a serious reality check," said Bob Johnson of the Queens borough of New York, who is 46, had worked in communications and has been looking for a job for more than three years.

Not that it's the fault of the academics — in this case the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of economists based in Cambridge, Mass. It's their job to declare when recessions officially begin and end.

[...]

The bureau pointed out that a downturn in the economy anytime soon would now mark the start of a new recession. The last time that happened was in 1981 and 1982, most economists believe.

The last recession that lasted longer than this one was, well, something far worse than a recession: The Great Depression. It included a downturn of three and a half years, ending in 1933, and another lasting more than a year, ending in 1938.

"There is no logical pathway from atheism to wickedness unless ... you are steeped in the vile obscenity at the heart of Catholic theology."

Essential viewing.

"These people believe ... that every baby is born in sin. ... Original sin means that from the moment we are born we are wicked, corrupt, damned unless we believe in their god or unless we fall for the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the disgusting theory that leads them to presume that it was godlessness that made Hitler and Stalin the monsters that they were. We are all monsters unless redeemed by Jesus. What a revolting, depraved, inhuman theory to base your life on. Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity. He's an enemy of children whose bodies he's allowed to be raped and whose minds he's encouraged to be infected with guilt."
- Richard Dawkins

"Rallies to demonstrate a rational center is still the dominant ideology."

Thoughtstreamng:

The two ironic celebrities are throwing counter-Glen Beck rallies to demonstrate a rational center is still the dominant ideology. They are less angry, less militant, more liberal and secular. Anyone watching Colbert's recent Celebrating the Returning Troops Specials will understand how totally confused (and subversively subservient) this ideology is. Is it Real or Symbolic? Mc Lennans article checks out Terry Eagletons attempts to fuse left radicalism and spirituality in Reason, Faith and Revolution:Reflections on the God Debate.

As Slajov Zizek reminds us in his New Left Review article Storm Over Eurozone : "We are witnessing an over-load of critiques of capitalisms horrors;..there is however a catch to all this criticism,ruthless as it may appear; what is as a rule not questioned is the liberal-democratic framework within which the excesses should be fought."

Wouldn't radical change be better than a return to the "rational center"? Isn't the "rational center" where Obama resides, with his endless wars and his drones and his Wall Street bailouts and his mockery of progressive values?

19%, 19-29%, 16-25%, 14-20%

L.A. Times:

More than 1 million Californians will see their health insurance premiums rise Oct. 1 now that regulators have wrapped up their review of a plan by Aetna Inc. to raise rates an average of 19% for 65,000 individual policyholders.

Aetna was cleared Friday by the state Department of Insurance to proceed with its new plan. It was the last of four major insurers to be reviewed by the department, which has OKd double-digit rate increases by Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California and Health Net Inc. in the last month.

[...]

Blue Shield premiums will increase an average of 19%, and as much as 29%, for 250,000 customers.

Health Net rates will go up an average of 16%, and as high as 25%, for 38,000 customers.

Anthem rates will rise an average of 14%, and as much as 20%, for about 800,000 individual policyholders — down from an average of 25% and a cap of 39%.

"Life is sacred. No corporation should ever control it."

Percy Schmeiser was featured on Democray Now! today. The 2009 film of his story, David vs. Monsanto, is about his epic battle to protect his crops from Monsanto's rapacious ways. Essential viewing.

Schmeiser's Principles for Food and Agriculture
...
In his speeches, Schmeiser promotes 12 principles for food and agriculture in an age of biotechnology, which may be summarised thus:

1. All humans have a right to food or to produce it.
2. Natural systems must be protected so that they can produce healthy food.
3. Humans have a right to safe and nutritious food.
4. No rules should prevent countries controlling food imports.
5. Everyone has a right to information about how their food is produced.
6. Regions should have the right to regulate for their own agriculture.
7. Local production and consumption should be encouraged.
8. Regional biodiversity must be protected.
9. Seeds are a 'common property' resource.
10. No life form should be patented and terminator seeds should be globally banned.
11. Freedom to exchange seeds should be protected.
12. Farmers should have the right for their land to be free of genetic contamination.

"A farmer should never, ever lose the rights to his seeds or plants, because if we do, we’re going to be back to a serf system, we’re going to be back to a feudal system, that our forefathers, our grandfathers, left countries in Europe many years ago to get away from. Now ... we’ve come full circle, where the control is not by kings or lords or barons, but now it’s corporations."
- Percy Schmeiser

"And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and — (laughter.)"

Not. My. President.

OBAMA: Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get — to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed — oh, well, the public option wasn’t there. If you get the financial reform bill passed — then, well, I don’t know about this particularly derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and — (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.

Brother, can you spare a job?

And they call it a recovery.

Conta Costa Times:

The dismal economy erased more jobs in the Bay Area and California during August, with the statewide jobless rate climbing to 12.4 percent -- close to a post-Depression record, state labor officials reported Friday.

Even worse, this time around, the employment meltdown can't be blamed on the evaporation of Census Bureau jobs. Private sector employers jettisoned 24,300 jobs in California. Government employers trimmed their staffs by 9,200 statewide, the state Employment Development Department report showed.

The Bay Area lost 3,800 jobs in August, including a decline of 2,000 jobs in the East Bay and another 2,700 in the San Mateo-San Francisco-Marin region.

The only bright spots were Sonoma County, which gained 1,700 jobs and the South Bay, which added 100 jobs. California lost 33,500 payroll jobs.

Over the most recent 12 months, the East Bay has lost 23,700 jobs.

The 12.4 percent jobless rate in California for August rose from 12.3 percent in July.

Shocking Statistics

Michael Snyder:

15 Shocking Poverty Statistics That Are Skyrocketing As The American Middle Class Continues To Be Slowly Wiped Out

1. Approximately 45 million Americans were living in poverty in 2009.
2. According to the Associated Press, experts believe that 2009 saw the largest single year increase in the U.S. poverty rate since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.
3. The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
4. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on a year-over-year basis, household participation in the food stamp program has increased 20.28%.
5. The number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 41 million for the first time ever in June.
6. As of June, the number of Americans on food stamps had set a new all-time record for 19 consecutive months.
7. One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.
8. More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid, the U.S. government health care program designed principally to help the poor.
9. One out of every seven mortgages in the United States was either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
10. Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it in 2007.
11. The number of Americans receiving long-term unemployment benefits has risen over 60 percent in just the past year.
12. According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.
13. Nationwide, bankruptcy filings rose 20 percent in the 12 month period ending June 30th.
14. More than 25 percent of all Americans now have a credit score below 599.
15. One out of every five children in the United States is now living in poverty.

"Alice Waters, the famous Berkeley chef claims that anyone can eat good food, anywhere ... I’d like to see her do this while living in Ely, Nevada."

[source]

Capitalism drives many Americans to consume crap and ruin their health.

Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate:

In the 1950s, a typical middle-income family spent about a third of its budget on food. Today, this ratio is less than one-sixth. Much of this reduction is due to the falling price of food, and this in turn can in part be attributed to government subsidies and factory farming, both of which reduce the unit cost of production. Well, you say, what is wrong with that? Nothing, if the food was of high quality and nutritious. But it is not. When we consider that wages have been stagnant for so long, the production of cheap food starts to look suspicious. Karl Marx showed long ago that employers try to force wages to the lowest level possible, an amount equal to whatever a particular society considers to be subsistence. Subsistence requires sufficient food. Therefore, ways must be found to keep prices low enough that a subsistence wage rate will pay for adequate sustenance. If this is not the case, one thing will happen and another might. The workers will starve and not be able to work hard or long enough to ensure profits. They might also revolt; hunger may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Low food prices allow poor people to eat enough to live and work, and they forestall rebellion. The food keeps us just healthy enough to work but too unhealthy to think clearly and act in our own interests.

Let me end this essay with a provocation. There is a dirty little secret of life in the United States. We hear from politicians and pundits in the media that there is a “real America” out there, of small towns in the “heartland” of the country full of hardworking and God-fearing men and women with the same heroic qualities as the founding fathers. But when you go to these places, you find something different: dead and ugly downtowns, empty streets, shabby houses, limited job opportunities, poor services and social amenities, pathetic newspapers, and second-rate schools. Such towns stifle creativity and broadmindedness. For many people, life in the heartland is harsh and boring. They compensate with alcohol, drugs, and food. The food available to them, in both grocery stores and restaurants, is of generally poor quality. Alice Waters, the famous Berkeley chef and fresh-food guru, claims that anyone can eat good food, anywhere in the country. I’d like to see her do this while living in Ely, Nevada, with a crappy job and not enough money. There is one grocery store, and what is available in it won’t tickle Alice’s palate. We did see organic red peppers in the produce section; they were $6.99 apiece. What would you do if you were a mother with three kids and a husband—feed the family red peppers or the forty-four servings of Kraft macaroni and cheese she could buy for the price of a single pepper? There is a good chance that, given the poor education she likely endured, she might not know how to shop efficiently by comparing unit prices. She might not know which ingredients in what she buys are good for her and which are not. She and her family have been subjected to such massive amounts of advertising for fast food (and this is what is probably served in the school cafeterias) that it is not surprising that they eat many meals at McDonalds and Taco Bell. When she is at home or at her low-wage, stressful job while the children area in school, would it be surprising if she eats too much? That she and her husband drink too much? Or take prescription painkillers or antidepressants, both of which will slow their metabolisms and make them more likely to gain weight? Will stress, strain, and boredom make them rush to the gym to exercise, or take a long hike?

U.S. capitalism is vicious and inhumane. It is the model of a dog-eat-dog world, nasty and brutish. It produces physically and mentally unhealthy human beings. No wonder we are fat. As the country enters a prolonged period of economic and political stagnation, look for matters to get worse.

"U.S. capitalism is vicious and inhumane. It is the model of a dog-eat-dog world, nasty and brutish. It produces physically and mentally unhealthy human beings."

President Poverty

Raw Story:

The number of people living in poverty has climbed to 14.3 percent of Americans, with the ranks of working-age poor reaching the highest level since at least 1965.

The Census Bureau says that about 43.6 million people, or 1 in 7, were in poverty last year. That's up from 39.8 million, or 13.2 percent, in 2008.

The number of people lacking health insurance rose from 46.3 million to 50.7 million, due mostly to the loss of employer-provided health insurance during the recession. Congress passed a health overhaul earlier this year to extend coverage to more people.

The statistics released Thursday cover President Barack Obama's first year in office, when unemployment climbed to 10 percent in the months after the financial meltdown.

More tax breaks for the wealthy! That'll fix the problem.

Measured by the growth of inequality in America, Obama's presidency is an epic failure.

And God said: "Credibility."

God speaks to her.

"During the primary, I heard the audible voice of God. He said, 'Credibility.' It wasn't a thought in my head."
- Christine O'Donnell

She's also a big Tolkien fan.

"There's the gentful and hopeful Arwen, in whose presence everything becomes peaceful and calm. There's the tumultous and restless Eowyn, whose free spirit leads her to triumph over her greatest foe. There's the regal matriarch Galadriel, whose strength provides a timeless haven for her people. And finally there's the overlooked Belladonna Baggins and it is from her blood line that Bilbo Baggins inherits his adventurous spirit."

Will enough Delaware voters participate in the O'Donnell fantasy to elect her to the U.S. Senate? Seemingly anything goes in American politics.

"The computer makes you stupider."

[source]

"I like to read real books, and not on the computer. The computer makes you stupider, and I spend way too much time on it already. It’s like crack."
- Brendan Cooney

"Technology has shattered attention spans, leaving young minds in pieces, which is evident in their emerging language. Books? Narratives? Page upon page of black specs on white backgrounds? If it can't be YouTubed, it's not worth the effort. ... I better understand earlier generations of elders bemoaning the end of creativity and intelligence, for in a sense they were right. Each new technological advance further sapped creative initiative, distracting minds from self to machine."

- Dennis Perrin

"The last nearly twenty years has made solitude, real solitude, a much harder commodity to come by. We have these gadgets which are designed to address that same anxiety of being alone but, in my opinion, don't actually assuage it, they just distract you from it. There's some part of me, that if I spend all day online, is even lonelier than when I started. Now I've got this kind of gnawing hunger, I want to hit the button again, I want to hit the button again, I want somebody to send me an email, I want somebody to send me another email, and that kind of lever pressing is much more akin to a drug, to some sort of compulsive behavior, than it is to the experience I have when reading Tolstoy. ... Writers, because they need solitude, are preserving some rather endangered concept in the very technological world we live in."
- Jonathan Franzen

Žižek talks capitalism

A nice 50-minute program in which Žižek responds to video clips about the capitalist system.

Thou Shalt Not Masturbate

[source]

Listen to Christine O'Donnell! She belongs to a long line of sexual purists whose wisdom cannot be denied!

This is from a 19th-century tome, The Coming Woman [no pun intended, apparently]: or, The Royal Road to Physical Perfection by Eliza Barton Lyman.

Marriage in most cases is simply a license to unbridled indulgence, which brings physical and mental bankruptcy. If men could be convinced of the important physiological fact, that an excessive loss of semen is just as destructive to physical, mental, and spiritual upbuilding, as a daily drainage from the arteries would be, a world of suffering would be prevented. The seminal fluid is composed of the best arterial blood and a large supply of nerve force which would go to the reinforcement of brain and muscle.

There you have it, wankers. Preserve, protect, and defend! Your health and well-being depend upon it.

There is truly nothing new under the sun.

"If men could be convinced ... that an excessive loss of semen is just as destructive to physical, mental, and spiritual upbuilding, as a daily drainage from the arteries would be, a world of suffering would be prevented. "
- Eliza Barton Lyman

"What must you see in the hinterlands of America?"

“If a saloon and bookstore can’t make it on the Upper West Side, what better evidence do you need than that of the decline of artistic and free thought? If this is happening here, what must you see in the hinterlands of America?"
- Charles Mysak

Beautiful Bageant

Raise your consciousness with this Joe Bageant interview on the Diet Soap podcast. Seriously good stuff.

"We call it individualism when it's really just individual greed."

"A potato is more valuable than an iPod."

- Joe Bageant

If the Bible is the Word of God, why so much disobedience?

Robert Paul Wolff:

We in the West look on in horror, and properly so, at the stoning to death of women in Iran. But they are here merely following the law laid down in Leviticus 24, a book which all good Muslims accept as prophetic. If, as scores of millions of Americans claim to believe, that Book is the Word of Almighty God, then it is for us to obey it, not to interpret it until it conforms to our modern sensibilities.

[...]

The simple fact is that the religious beliefs of serious Jews, Christians, and Muslims are vile, absurd, and totally incompatible with even the least evolved secular moral sensibility. To excoriate the Reverend Terry Jones for his proposal to burn a collection of Qu'rans, and then insist indignantly that President Obama is a Christian, as though that were a quite acceptable thing for a modern man or women to be, is rank hypocrisy.

"God commanded execution by stoning for several reasons. First, stones were and are plentiful in Israel, so it was a ready means of execution."
[source]

"Religion's voice is that of a spoiled child having a temper tantrum."
- PZ Myers

"The bankers and the great Wall Street capitalists have rights; the rest of us have to fend for ourselves."

"The ethic of the government’s recovery program is one in which the working class is seen partly as a victim and partly to blame for its own sorry state. Enough help will be given to keep people from exploding but not so much that ordinary folks might begin to think that they have rights. The bankers and the great Wall Street capitalists have rights; the rest of us have to fend for ourselves."
- Michael Yates

Wage war on poverty by waging war on wealth

[original]

Inequality and poverty continue to grow at an alarming rate under Obama's elite-friendly administration. Obama's response to this crisis is inadequate. He says: "The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there" and: "If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle."

Swept up? Virtuous cycle? Does that sound like a President who is on top of the problem? Like someone who cares? It sound to me like an aloof, pro-business president thinking about more tax cuts for capitalists.

It's time to wage war on 15% poverty by waging war on the wealthiest 10%.

Raw Story:

The number of people in the US who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat's presidency — are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings.

It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase — from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent — would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

Visit the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality for some facts and figures.

"In the United States, 21.9 percent of all children are in poverty, a poverty rate second only to that of Mexico’s (among rich nations)." [source]

"The ownership of wealth among households in the U.S. became somewhat more concentrated in the 1980s and 1990s. The top 10% of households controlled 68.3 percent of the total wealth in 1983 and 71.5% of the total wealth in 2001." [source]

UCSC's William Domhoff writes:

In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 38.3% of all privately held stock, 60.6% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.

"Just 10% of the people own the United States of America."
- William Domhoff

Discover Diet Soap Podcast

Just discovered this via Dennis Perrin's blog. Check it out!

"Diet Soap is a podcast dedicated to applying imagination and intellect to the multi-dimensional crisis that surrounds us."

Google Instant: instant discrimination

Queerty:

Yesterday Google unveiled Google Instant, a new feature that quickly suggests links as you enter your search query. For example, type in "bi" and it will suggest pages on bipolar disorder. Type in "bisexual" though and you'll get a blank page. Google Instant Product manager Jonathan Effrat says, "Finding the right information should feel easy," but Google apparently has an Apple-like criteria in deciding what information is "right." Among the terms their new feature just won't serve: lesbian, orgasm, and Michael Lucas (sorry Mike).

We know that most people who type in "lesbians" or "bisexual" want porn because porn sites continue to dominate Google's search results. But Google Instant provides a content filter to "exclude certain terms related to pornography, violence and hate speech." So, they exclude "lesbian" and "bisexual" along with most below-the-belt terms such as fetish, vaginal health, and orgasm. However it does continue serve up results for Santorum and the old Google still offers a direct link to the Wikipedia entry on felching; and therein lies the problem.

One nation, under bullshit

"We are one nation under God. We may call that God different names, but we are one nation."
- Barack Obama

Yeah? Well, some may not call on your God at all. Thanks for leaving me and a whole lot of other people out of your theocracy, Obummer.

"The workers were only able to raise their wages ... by organizing into labor unions"

Marxism, nicely condensed by Robert Paul Wolff:

Briefly, Marx argues, what happened in England [and elsewhere] was that the peasant farmers were displaced from the land on which they had gotten their living, and forced to migrate to the cities, where, without any access to or ownership of the means of production [land, forests, mines, rivers, tools, etc], they had no choice but to sell their labor as factory workers.

[...]

Over time, the owners or controllers of capital grew richer and richer, while the workers were forced to keep struggling to stay alive. The workers were only able to raise their wages and live better when there was, for a time, a shortage of labor, or by organizing into labor unions and forcing the employers to raise wages and shorten the working hours.

This ... is the real story of capitalism.

The story of capitalism is the story of labor and labor's internalization of capitalism's Horatio Alger message.

"If you want nothin' before you are dead,
Shake hands with your boss and look wise."
- Joe Hill

"The class which has the means of material production ... has control ... over the means of mental production."

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas."

Karl Marx, German Ideology (1845)

(h/t Rustbelt Radical)

"If he's listening?"

[source]

TPM:

President Obama urged fringe pastor Terry Jones not to burn Korans this Saturday, saying it would be "completely contrary to our values as Americans." Further, he said, it could lead to a "recruitment bonanza" for al-Qaeda.

"If he's listening, I just hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values of Americans. That this country has been built on the notions of religious freedom and religious tolerance," Obama said on Good Morning America. "And as a very practical matter, as commander of chief of the Armed Forces of the United States I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan. We're already seeing protests against Americans just by the mere threat he's making."

If he's listening? Where's LBJ when you need him? If I were the President, I'd certainly do more than talk to hater Terry Jones through the idiot box. I'd call the man on the telephone! Bring the weight of the presidency down on this man, Obama!

Don't hope,
intimidate the jerk!

"President Obama has seen fit to shower still more money upon them, while pretty much ignoring the basic needs of the people."

AP:

President Barack Obama will call on Congress to pass new tax breaks that would allow businesses to write off 100 percent of their new capital investments through 2011....

Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate:

The greedy, swinish lords of finance have enough money to meet their needs and then some. Yet President Obama has seen fit to shower still more money upon them, while pretty much ignoring the basic needs of the people. Now his popularity is swooning, while the rich are turning against him because he wants to put in place extremely mild constraints on their “right” to steal our money. I wonder if he ever thinks that he would have been in a lot stronger position now if he had worried less about those at the top of the heap amd more about the needs of those who produce the nation’s goods and services.

"How can we discuss inequality without first understanding the way in which social wealth and power is created and distributed?"

Another great Brendan Cooney video.

"The problem with the left is not that there are not enough people who care about these things, it's that not enough people have the theoretical tools, or the desire, to talk about these things in terms of the basic structure of our society."
- Brendan Cooney