Balance of Payments?: Exporting Terrorism
A no-longer-secret memo, prepared by the so-called "CIA Red Cell," an entity "charged by the Director of Intelligence with taking a pronounced 'out-of-the-box' approach that will provoke thought and offer an alternative viewpoint on the full range of analytic issues," suggests that "Al-Qa’ida" (after 9 years, you'd think at least we could settle on a spelling) may be increasingly looking for American citizens to operate overseas, undoubtedly recognizing that Americans can be great assets in terrorist operations in other countries because "they carry US passports, don’t fit the typical Arab-Muslim profile, and can easily communicate with radical leaders through their unfettered access to the internet and other modes of communication" (although on that latter point, who can't?). The Red Cell seems genuinely worried that our reputation could be damaged if the U.S. were "to be seen increasingly as an incubator and 'exporter of terrorism.'" Sounds soft-headed, soft-hearted and positively un-American. Can it be there are actual Reds in the CIA Red Cell? -- CIA Red Cell special memorandum on ”What If Foreigners See the United States as an ’Exporter of Terrorism’” (Wikileaks pdf 2010-08-25).
quote unquote: William Dean Howells on American virtue
"What a thing it is
to have a country
that can't be wrong,
but if it is,
is right, anyway!"
-- William Dean Howells.
Saturday Catchup 2010-08-28
Capitalism, Threat or Menace: "Now, anyone can look at China's rapid economic growth and react with wonderment and awe. They have surpassed Japan, and are outranked only by the U.S. -- for now. Plus, they are the largest owner of American debt at the better part of a trillion dollars. China shows what you can do with a little industrial planning, policy and guidance from the government. But then again, many things are possible when you don't have those annoyances, those minor nuisances like environmental regulations, workplace safety, worker's rights, and democratic government. Chinese-style capitalism seems to be a purer form than its U.S. counterpart, and therefore a Republican nirvana, minus the part about government planning. And for now, we wait for a nascent labor movement to kick into gear and transform a country that responds to massive public unrest with military crackdowns. While Chinese workers jump out of windows, Americans are dying as well. In the U.S., workers die on exploding oil rigs and in deathtrap coalmines because their regulation-hating employers want to maximize profits. And besides, they say, regulations are dumb. Consumers die from unsafe food because food companies want to cut corners. Just like the Great Depression days when people lacked a safety net, the unemployed, foreclosed and student debtor-prisoners of today are turning to suicide at an alarming rate, with an increase of calls to suicide prevention hotlines." -- Capitalism Is Killing Us by David A. Love (Huffington Post 2010-08-25).
Hey, Glenn Beck: Here's how Martin Luther King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal.... Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingly radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all." -- Martin Luther King, Democratic Socialist by Paul Street (The Black Commentator 2006-02-02).
And btw, Beck, it's not like we haven't seen your likes before:
The Tea Party is no joke: "There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution." -- Tea Party Rocks Primaries by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-26).
The legendary Budd Schulberg told the Glenn Beck Story more than half a century ago:
In the end, though, you reap what you sow.
A step back for the security state: The New York state law mandating the removal from NYPD computerized databases of personal information of many thousands of entirely innocent citizens stopped and frisked wholly without reasonable suspicion, is a clear refutation not only of the policies of mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, but also of the Bush-Cheney-Obama insistence that national security and public safety trump individual constitutional liberties. If any civics classes still remain in public schools, NY governor David Paterson's signing statement is especially worth hearing and discussing in the context of a 22-page July 29 ACLU report card: "Obama Administration in Danger of Establishing 'New Normal' With Worst Bush-Era Policies." In office, Barack Obama has not only continued but expanded the disabling of the Bill of Rights begun by George W. Bush. "In a democracy," Governor Paterson said, "there are times when safety and liberty find themselves in conflict. From the Alien and Sedition Acts [opposition to which gave Thomas Jefferson the presidency] to the Patriot Act, we have experienced moments where liberty took a back seat." As president, Barack Obama has not done anything to rein in the excesses of the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- got to admire the Right's knack for clever marketing of bad ideas) . Indeed, when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tried, once Obama was in the Oval Office, to enact a few reforms, the president helped the Republicans block most of them. -- What Obama Could Learn From Paterson: Lame-duck governor's inspiring words in defense of liberty by Nat Hentoff (Village Voice 2010-08-25).
Some very mean bugs are looking for you: The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight. -- Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? by Sarah Boseley (Guardian UK 2010-08-12).
All your PowerPoint are belong to us: "I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well. We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce. Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel. For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death." -- PowerPoints 'R' Us by Col. Lawrence Sellin, U.S. Army Reserves (Breitbart/UPI "Outside View" 2010-08-24). See, also: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant by Spencer Ackerman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Our adventure in Afghanistan, as seen by the other side in Kunar Province:
Aw, how can we leave now?: Gitmo, the next Galapagos? It's a mighty ill wind that blows absolutely no good. Guantánamo Bay may be best known for its U.S. military base on Cuban soil and its unconstitutional prison, but to scientists at New York Botanical Garden's Caribbean Biodiversity Program it's a prime spot for ecological research. -- Guantánamo Bay, Site of Important Ecological Research by Julie Schwietert Collazo (Discover 2010-08-06).
Bon voyage: Perhaps you've had a good laugh over seasteading, the scheme hatched by rich libertarians to escape the clutches of democracy by living on giant metal platforms in the middle of the ocean. But as it turns out, seasteading is something of a wet dry run for some libertarians’ ultimate escape plan of uploading their brains into robot bodies and blasting off into space. This is also known as “transhumanism,” which is (very) loosely defined as a movement of people/future androids who are promoting the adoption of technologies that will eventually help “humans transcend biology,” in the words of Objectivist futurist Ray Kurzweil. -- The Ultimate Escape: The Bizarre Libertarian Plan of Uploading Brains into Robots to Escape Society by Brad Reed (AlterNet 2010-08-27).
Hey, they're cartoons anyway: A roundup of GOP candidates in the midterm elections as animated by NMA World Edition in Taiwan:
Can't help it. Love these guys. 美國反伊斯蘭情緒太超過?
Norman Rockwell's America was real: During World War II, the women in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska touched the lives of thousands of young soldiers on their way to war. It's not a bad model to keep before us now, as so many Americans deal with economic anxiety by demonizing their fellow citizens. -- Simple Gestures, Lifelong Memories by Abigail R. Esman (Forbes 2010-08-09).
Milestones: "Elizabeth Sargent, a poet, answered an advertisement to 'live and work in Carnegie Hall' 46 years ago and moved in with a recommendation from the literary critic Malcolm Cowley. Half a lifetime later, on Thursday, she was the last resident to move out of the 116-year-old studio apartments in Carnegie Hall Towers, which once percolated with creativity and personality Mark Twain used to smoke his pipe in the author’s club across the hall from Ms. Sargent’s studio; Marlon Brando entertained guests in the apartment directly below; and Leonard Bernstein read scores on the same floor. Norman Mailer penned works in her apartment, and Isadora Duncan danced down the hallway. 'This was a magical place,' Ms. Sargent said. 'Artists really had a freedom here; they developed here.'” -- In Apartments Above Carnegie Hall, a Coda for Longtime Residents by Liz Robbins (New York Times 2010-08-27).
George David Weiss, composer of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens and "What a Wonderful World," Louis Armstrong's greatest hit, has died.
Hey, Glenn Beck: Here's how Martin Luther King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal.... Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingly radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all." -- Martin Luther King, Democratic Socialist by Paul Street (The Black Commentator 2006-02-02).
And btw, Beck, it's not like we haven't seen your likes before:
The Tea Party is no joke: "There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution." -- Tea Party Rocks Primaries by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-26).
The legendary Budd Schulberg told the Glenn Beck Story more than half a century ago:
In the end, though, you reap what you sow.
A step back for the security state: The New York state law mandating the removal from NYPD computerized databases of personal information of many thousands of entirely innocent citizens stopped and frisked wholly without reasonable suspicion, is a clear refutation not only of the policies of mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, but also of the Bush-Cheney-Obama insistence that national security and public safety trump individual constitutional liberties. If any civics classes still remain in public schools, NY governor David Paterson's signing statement is especially worth hearing and discussing in the context of a 22-page July 29 ACLU report card: "Obama Administration in Danger of Establishing 'New Normal' With Worst Bush-Era Policies." In office, Barack Obama has not only continued but expanded the disabling of the Bill of Rights begun by George W. Bush. "In a democracy," Governor Paterson said, "there are times when safety and liberty find themselves in conflict. From the Alien and Sedition Acts [opposition to which gave Thomas Jefferson the presidency] to the Patriot Act, we have experienced moments where liberty took a back seat." As president, Barack Obama has not done anything to rein in the excesses of the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- got to admire the Right's knack for clever marketing of bad ideas) . Indeed, when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tried, once Obama was in the Oval Office, to enact a few reforms, the president helped the Republicans block most of them. -- What Obama Could Learn From Paterson: Lame-duck governor's inspiring words in defense of liberty by Nat Hentoff (Village Voice 2010-08-25).
Some very mean bugs are looking for you: The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight. -- Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? by Sarah Boseley (Guardian UK 2010-08-12).
All your PowerPoint are belong to us: "I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well. We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce. Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel. For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death." -- PowerPoints 'R' Us by Col. Lawrence Sellin, U.S. Army Reserves (Breitbart/UPI "Outside View" 2010-08-24). See, also: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant by Spencer Ackerman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Our adventure in Afghanistan, as seen by the other side in Kunar Province:
Aw, how can we leave now?: Gitmo, the next Galapagos? It's a mighty ill wind that blows absolutely no good. Guantánamo Bay may be best known for its U.S. military base on Cuban soil and its unconstitutional prison, but to scientists at New York Botanical Garden's Caribbean Biodiversity Program it's a prime spot for ecological research. -- Guantánamo Bay, Site of Important Ecological Research by Julie Schwietert Collazo (Discover 2010-08-06).
Bon voyage: Perhaps you've had a good laugh over seasteading, the scheme hatched by rich libertarians to escape the clutches of democracy by living on giant metal platforms in the middle of the ocean. But as it turns out, seasteading is something of a wet dry run for some libertarians’ ultimate escape plan of uploading their brains into robot bodies and blasting off into space. This is also known as “transhumanism,” which is (very) loosely defined as a movement of people/future androids who are promoting the adoption of technologies that will eventually help “humans transcend biology,” in the words of Objectivist futurist Ray Kurzweil. -- The Ultimate Escape: The Bizarre Libertarian Plan of Uploading Brains into Robots to Escape Society by Brad Reed (AlterNet 2010-08-27).
Hey, they're cartoons anyway: A roundup of GOP candidates in the midterm elections as animated by NMA World Edition in Taiwan:
Can't help it. Love these guys. 美國反伊斯蘭情緒太超過?
Norman Rockwell's America was real: During World War II, the women in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska touched the lives of thousands of young soldiers on their way to war. It's not a bad model to keep before us now, as so many Americans deal with economic anxiety by demonizing their fellow citizens. -- Simple Gestures, Lifelong Memories by Abigail R. Esman (Forbes 2010-08-09).
Milestones: "Elizabeth Sargent, a poet, answered an advertisement to 'live and work in Carnegie Hall' 46 years ago and moved in with a recommendation from the literary critic Malcolm Cowley. Half a lifetime later, on Thursday, she was the last resident to move out of the 116-year-old studio apartments in Carnegie Hall Towers, which once percolated with creativity and personality Mark Twain used to smoke his pipe in the author’s club across the hall from Ms. Sargent’s studio; Marlon Brando entertained guests in the apartment directly below; and Leonard Bernstein read scores on the same floor. Norman Mailer penned works in her apartment, and Isadora Duncan danced down the hallway. 'This was a magical place,' Ms. Sargent said. 'Artists really had a freedom here; they developed here.'” -- In Apartments Above Carnegie Hall, a Coda for Longtime Residents by Liz Robbins (New York Times 2010-08-27).
George David Weiss, composer of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens and "What a Wonderful World," Louis Armstrong's greatest hit, has died.
War on Terror: Really, for what we pay them, our propagandists should be coming up with better stuff
Andy Worthington asks the reasonable question, Would Al-Qaeda Terrorists Really Be Reading Harry Potter at Guantánamo? (CagePrisoners 2010-08-27).
The Financial Mess: Self-regulation is a joke
Damage from the bursting of the housing bubble was vastly compounded by an industry-wide conspiracy of Wall Street bankers to create a market for worthless financial products, in particular collections of mortgage bonds known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.
According to the non-profit investigative news organization ProPublica, when faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks -- primarily Merrill Lynch, but also Citigroup, UBS and others -- "hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: They created fake demand," buying and trading their own products to crank up an assembly line that in a prudently regulated economy would have been flagged to a stop.
The rest of the story: Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis by Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger (ProPublica 2010-08-27).
See, also: Wall Street's Big Win by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-04); Misnamed Financial Services “Reform” Bill Passes, Systemic Risk is Alive and Well by Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism 2010-07-26).
According to the non-profit investigative news organization ProPublica, when faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks -- primarily Merrill Lynch, but also Citigroup, UBS and others -- "hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: They created fake demand," buying and trading their own products to crank up an assembly line that in a prudently regulated economy would have been flagged to a stop.
As the housing boom began to slow in mid-2006, investors became skittish about the riskier parts of those investments. So the banks created -- and ultimately provided most of the money for -- new CDOs. Those new CDOs bought the hard-to-sell pieces of the original CDOs. The result was a daisy chain that solved one problem but created another: Each new CDO had its own risky pieces. Banks created yet other CDOs to buy those.In the last years of the boom, CDOs had become the dominant purchaser of CDOs and CDO slices, in deals organized by the banks themselves that largely replaced legitimate investors like pension funds. For example, "[i]n the last two years of the boom, nearly half of all CDOs sponsored by market leader Merrill Lynch bought significant portions of other Merrill CDOs."
Individual instances of these questionable trades have been reported before, but ProPublica's investigation, done in partnership with NPR's Planet Money, shows that by late 2006 they had become common industry practice.
ProPublica also found 85 instances during 2006 and 2007 in which two CDOs bought pieces of each other's unsold inventory. These trades, which involved $107 billion worth of CDOs, underscore the extent to which the market lacked real buyers. Often the CDOs that swapped purchases closed within days of each other, the analysis shows.There were supposed to be protections against this sort of double dealing, of course. The CDOs were overseen by managers who, though selected by the banks, were legally bound to protect the interests of the CDOs. Paid by the CDOs, not the banks, the "independent" managers were supposed to serve as a bulwark against self-dealing by the financial institutions, the only ones with even an inkling of how the complex and virtually unregulated mortgage bonds worked.
It rarely worked out that way. The managers were beholden to the banks that sent them the business. On a billion-dollar deal, managers could earn a million dollars in fees, with little risk. Some small firms did several billion dollars of CDOs in a matter of months.Unfortunately for us, nothing in the Wall Street-dominated federal financial reforms will prevent it from happening again. What a laugh.
The rest of the story: Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis by Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger (ProPublica 2010-08-27).
See, also: Wall Street's Big Win by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-04); Misnamed Financial Services “Reform” Bill Passes, Systemic Risk is Alive and Well by Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism 2010-07-26).
Action: Senate Candidates Worth Fighting For
The Blue America Senate endorsement page on Act Blue is 
trying to help six progressive challengers in winnable contests against reactionary Republican obstructionists. These contests will go a very long way in determining whether the U.S. Senate will be more progressive or more conservative next year.
Spread the word. And more to the point, donate.
See, also: Roxanne Conlin (IA); Jack Conway (KY); Paul Hodes (NH); Elaine Marshall (NC); Scott McAdams (AK); Joe Sestak (PA).
Among Blue America PAC pages you will find actions dedicated to other specific endeavors, such as defeating Blue Dogs, rewarding members of Congress who have been fighting for meaningful health care or for ending the disastrous occupation of Afghanistan. There is even a page dedicated specifically to giving props to progressive hero Alan Grayson and one to send a message to the inside-the-beltway establishment by supporting the people's Democrats, i.e., the non-corporate kind.
trying to help six progressive challengers in winnable contests against reactionary Republican obstructionists. These contests will go a very long way in determining whether the U.S. Senate will be more progressive or more conservative next year. Spread the word. And more to the point, donate.
See, also: Roxanne Conlin (IA); Jack Conway (KY); Paul Hodes (NH); Elaine Marshall (NC); Scott McAdams (AK); Joe Sestak (PA).
Among Blue America PAC pages you will find actions dedicated to other specific endeavors, such as defeating Blue Dogs, rewarding members of Congress who have been fighting for meaningful health care or for ending the disastrous occupation of Afghanistan. There is even a page dedicated specifically to giving props to progressive hero Alan Grayson and one to send a message to the inside-the-beltway establishment by supporting the people's Democrats, i.e., the non-corporate kind.
War Toys On the Homefront
It's hard not to think the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has money to burn in light of its purchase of a "ray-gun" for its jail.
Wait a minute. 10,000 test-blasts on human subjects! It's nice that the Pentagon wants to develop non-lethal weapons, but this can't be the only way to figure out whether or not a particular contraption is lethal. Not that anyone wants to get PETA fired up, but these are people we're talking about.
The rest of the story: ACLU Blasts Jailhouse Pain Ray, Condemns ‘Star Wars Tech’ by Noah Shachtman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
To the shock of absolutely no one, the ACLU hates the idea of blasting Los Angeles prisoners with an invisible heat ray. The civil liberties organization has sent a letter to L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca, begging him to not use the pain weapon, less than a week after its installation at the Pitchess Detention Center.Wired happily notes that, so far, "the Active Denial System hasn’t actually killed anyone, after more than 10,000 test-blasts on human subjects."
But both sides of this energy weapon fight seem a little, um, confused. The ACLU claims that the so-called “Assault Intervention Device” is a killer — and “robot-like,” to boot. (Not that the system has killed anyone, or can operate on its own.) The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is claiming the ray gun can’t cause lasting harm. (Well, if you ignore those test subjects with second degree burns.)
Wait a minute. 10,000 test-blasts on human subjects! It's nice that the Pentagon wants to develop non-lethal weapons, but this can't be the only way to figure out whether or not a particular contraption is lethal. Not that anyone wants to get PETA fired up, but these are people we're talking about.
The rest of the story: ACLU Blasts Jailhouse Pain Ray, Condemns ‘Star Wars Tech’ by Noah Shachtman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Empire: Next stop - Yemen
Oil, you say?
Off we go on another excellent imperial adventure. The Pentagon says it notified Congress that it plans to spend $155 million on 4 Huey helicopters, upgrades to 10 Russian-made Mi-17 medium transport helicopters, and 50 Hummers (suitably armored? doesn't say),
as well as night vision goggles and transport aircraft for the Yemen Army to fight al-Qaeda. If there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda militants in anarchic, kleptocratic Afghanistan, one wonders how many can conceal themselves in relatively orderly, republican Yemen (unlike Afghanistan, for example, Yemen actually has an army to equip).
A tip of the hat, btw, to Defense Industry Daily for keeping us up to date on the activities of our busy soldiers, whether they're hither or yon.
Off we go on another excellent imperial adventure. The Pentagon says it notified Congress that it plans to spend $155 million on 4 Huey helicopters, upgrades to 10 Russian-made Mi-17 medium transport helicopters, and 50 Hummers (suitably armored? doesn't say),
as well as night vision goggles and transport aircraft for the Yemen Army to fight al-Qaeda. If there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda militants in anarchic, kleptocratic Afghanistan, one wonders how many can conceal themselves in relatively orderly, republican Yemen (unlike Afghanistan, for example, Yemen actually has an army to equip).A tip of the hat, btw, to Defense Industry Daily for keeping us up to date on the activities of our busy soldiers, whether they're hither or yon.
Our dysfunctional political dialog is no accident
A lot of billionaire dough underwrites the stupider parts of American discourse. The writer who blogs at Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire has compiled a list of what the right-wing propagandists at Americans for Prosperity did with their time and money this summer. Just one of many neo-conservative funnels, Americans for Prosperity spent their boodle to make our discourse more stupid, regressive, and protective of corporate power and profits. This year they’ve raised $26 million to influence public opinion. Wait’ll you hear how they plan on spending it.
The rest of the story: How Americans for Prosperity spent its summer (and Koch’s Millions).
See, also: Two Right-Wing Billionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit; How billionaires' money took over Washington -- and created the mobs who rant against reform by Jim Hightower (AlterNet 2010-03-19).
The rest of the story: How Americans for Prosperity spent its summer (and Koch’s Millions).
See, also: Two Right-Wing Billionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit; How billionaires' money took over Washington -- and created the mobs who rant against reform by Jim Hightower (AlterNet 2010-03-19).
Can Bloomberg Run as an Independent in 2012?
This is a long shot, but "[l]ooking to 2012, with no real standout on the right, while Pres. Obama continues to struggle and the economy dipping again, there is a growing vacuum in the political dialogue for an Independent candidate to rise up. Of course, we’re talking about Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a potentially dangerous opponent for both big two parties, because not only will Bloomberg have many business and Wall Street allies on his side, but he’ll take his share of the Jewish vote as well. Howard Wolfson made an appearance on 'Morning Joe' Friday, acquitting himself very well as deputy mayor and someone who would be an able asset to Bloomberg if he does jump in. After his leadership on the Cordoba House, New York’s mayor also likely made some Muslim friends in Michigan."
The rest of the story: 2012: Room for growing as an Independent by Taylor Marsh (Taylor Marsh from Washington D.C. 2010-08-22).
The rest of the story: 2012: Room for growing as an Independent by Taylor Marsh (Taylor Marsh from Washington D.C. 2010-08-22).
Saturday Catchup 2010-08-21
"It's about the economy, stupid": "Pundits and politicians are working themselves into hysteria over a mosque near Ground Zero. But this election won't be about mosques in Manhattan. It won't even be about the deficit, really. It will be about manufacturing on Main Street, and which party can talk effectively about the progressive solutions Americans desire. Not surprisingly, polls from Gallup to the Wall Street Journal show Americans are worried most about the economy and jobs. And a just-released poll -- from progressive outfits Campaign for America's Future and Democracy Corps with sponsorship from MoveOn.org Political Action and two labor unions -- gives a more detailed look at what voters are looking for. Respondents, in particular the 'rising American electorate' -- youth, single women and minorities that constitute a majority of voters and are President Obama's most supportive base -- support bold steps for renewing the economy." -- It's about Main Street, not the mosque by Katrina vanden Heuvel (Washington Post 2010-08-13).
Another overnight success: "The story in American history I most like to tell is the one about how women got the right to vote 90 years ago this month. It has everything. Adventure! Suspense! Treachery! Drunken legislators! But, first, there was a 70-year slog. Which is really the important part." -- My Favorite August by Gail Collins (New York Times 2010-08-13).
CSI Wall Street: "The government's $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG's collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand-moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public." -- The AIG Bailout Scandal by William Greider (The Nation 2010-08-06).
Game Day: "On Sunday in DC, I attended the 17th ballpark protest of the Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2011 baseball season. Like the other actions - in cities from Houston to San Francisco to Milwaukee - people chanted a loud and clear message to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig: move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona and make the state pay a price for enacting legislation that sacrifices immigrant families at the altar of election year politics. But this demonstration was also deeply different from the 16 others. It was a day of rain, risk-takers, racists, and rancor. And it couldn't have been more terrific." -- 'Today We Did Some Good': The Diamondbacks Demonstration in DC by Dave Zirin (TheNation/TheNotion 2010-08-16).
Go away: "Frank and Jamie McCourt are embodiments of the boom-and-bust ethos of the past decade, a miraculous period when a pair of relative unknowns could borrow and bluster their way into a lifestyle that includes mansions, private planes, and one of the premier trophy properties in the history of sports. Now, as it all threatens to unravel along with their 40-year relationship, the McCourts have embarked on one last luxury binge, hiring some of the priciest lawyers in the business, including, on Jamie's team, David Boies, who just successfully fought to have California's same-sex marriage ban overturned, and Bert Fields, who has represented the Beatles and Tom Cruise, among others. In Frank's corner is Stephen Susman, a Houston-based litigator described by the American Bar Association Journal as "a voracious animal" who "scares people on his own side." As allegations have flown back and forth like spitballs, efforts to settle the case have been unsuccessful, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon has raised the possibility that if the couple can't reach an agreement, the Dodgers might have to be sold for no other reason than to pay their legal bills." -- Extreme Moneyball by Richard Siklos (Business Week 2010-08-12).
Although this is obviously meant to avenge Hayek, it's not a bad representation of both sides of the argument. Just so there's no misunderstanding, though, here's Paul Krugman's explanation of why Hayek and his ilk are utterly full of crap.
Wipeout: When people's homes are being destroyed and other people's children are taken away from them for years at a time, a few pieces of foam-core that float in the water hardly seem like the most pressing cause to fight for. But that's exactly where Surfing for Peace, a rag-tag group of Israeli beach boys, international activists and a founding father of surfing, has decided to draw a line in the sand. -- The Siege vs. the Surfboards by David Sheen (Haaretz 2010-08-12).
The movies in your mind: "'North of the Border' is at once an engaging, provocative, revealing and amusing documentary and a searing indictment of North American anti-war and social justice activists, journalists and film-makers for their failure to break with President Obama. Written and directed by the first-time documentary film-maker Gilbert Hurricane, the film uses Oliver Stone’s recent documentary 'South of the Border' as its inspiration and tactical departure point, beginning with a brief recap of the advances made by socialist leaders in South America and asking 'What about North of the border?'" -- A review of the Gilbert Hurricane documentary “North of the Border” by Gary Gordon (Fire Dog Lake 2010-07-29).
Speaking of movies: "'Eat, Pray, Love,' the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir, received mediocre reviews when it was released last week. But the film’s premise, the journey of self-discovery for one modern, working white woman, it’s sure to inspire droves of other women to book similar trips to faraway destinations — if they can afford it. And it’s all in the name of self-discovery. Sandip Roy writes at New America Media that for white women, the more exotic the backdrop, the better the degree of introspection. 'It’s not Gilbert’s fault, but as someone who comes from India, I have an instinctive reflex reaction to books about white people discovering themselves in brown places. I want to gag, shoot and leave.'" -- Eat, Pray, Love and Leave? by Naima Ramos-Chapman (ColorLines 2010-08-16).
Always room for Dion:
The Return of Deja Vu: "Out of all the famous quotations, few better describe this eerily familiar time than those attributed to George Santayana and Yogi Berra. The former, a philosopher, warned that 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' The latter, a baseball player, stumbled into prophecy by declaring, 'It's deja vu all over again.' Vietnam showed us the perils of occupation, then the Iraq war showed us the same thing — and yet now, we are somehow doing it all over again in Afghanistan. The Great Depression underscored the downsides of laissez-faire economics, the Great Recession highlighted the same danger — and yet the new financial 'reform' bill leaves that laissez-faire attitude largely intact. Ronald Reagan proved the failure of trickle-down tax cuts to spread prosperity before George W. Bush proved the same thing — and yet now, in a recession, Congress is considering more tax cuts all over again. In a Yogi Berra country, the jarring lessons of history are remembered as mere flickers of deja vu — if they are remembered at all. Most often, we forget completely, seeing in George Santayana's refrain not a dark warning, but a cheery celebration. Why have we become so dismissive of history's lessons and therefore so willing to repeat history's mistakes?" -- Insanity all over again by David Sirota (Creators Syndicate 2010-08-21).
Must-See TV: There once was a time when nobility, courage and unbending optimism were the norm not the exception: "Ask most people today what the Freedom Rides were, and they can't tell you. Or they misunderstand its significance, painting the Freedom Riders as lightweight pacifists who just lay down and allowed themselves to be beaten. That couldn't be further from the truth. Those who, like me, were alive during that time have since seen pictures of John Lewis being beaten up, but I'd forgotten that white Southerners had actually set a bus on fire. It was a remarkable moment. They were literally holding the door closed. The bus was a crematorium on wheels. Thankfully, the Freedom Riders managed to escape." -- Civil Rights' Most Misunderstood Moment: The Freedom Rides by Stanley Crouch (The Root 2010-08-17). To arrange a showing of Freedom Riders, contact Firelight Media (http://firelightmedia.org/.
A Day In The Life: "At the hour of dawn, in the same southwest-corner, second-floor bedroom of the White House where Abraham Lincoln once slept, the president awakens. On this spring morning, a Wednesday, Barack Obama is alone; his wife, Michelle, is on her way to Mexico City on her first solo foreign trip. He heads upstairs for 45 minutes of weights and cardio in his personal gym, then puts on a dark suit and navy-blue pin-striped tie. Obama may be surrounded by servants morning till night, but not for him the daily drill of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was dressed by a valet, John Moaney, from inside out—underwear, socks, pants, shirt, tie, shoes, jacket—every morning. After breakfast and a quick read of the papers, the president sees his daughters, Sasha and Malia, off to school. Then he enters the private, wood-paneled family elevator—installed in the same shaft used by Theodore Roosevelt’s son Quentin to bring his pet pony upstairs—perhaps taking a moment to straighten his tie in the mirrored back wall of the cab. He descends two stories, alights on the ground floor, just outside the White House kitchen, passes down a short, vaulted corridor and through a greenhouse-like antechamber known as the Palm Room, and walks along the colonnade that borders the Rose Garden and leads to the Oval Office. His 450th day in office has begun." -- Washington, We Have a Problem by Todd Purdum (Vanity Fair 2010-08).
Hey, kids, rock 'n' roll wasn't always as bland as porridge. Back in the day...
Tourism: "Everywhere you go in Pyongyang, the skyline is dominated by a huge 105-story concrete pyramid, the Ryugyong Hotel, which looms over the city like the pyramid-shaped Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984. It was intended to be the world's tallest hotel, but it turned out to be structurally unsound, so it was never completed. It's been standing there, abandoned, since 1992. It doesn't appear on any official maps, and nobody ever talks about it, because it's such a horrendous embarrassment. The most memorable thing about Pyongyang, though, is the total darkness that descends at night. Because electricity is in short supply, there are hardly any lights at all -- a couple of bulbs here and there, and the headlights of passing buses. People are out and about, but all you can see are the dark shapes right beside you. Back at the hotel, you look out the window and there's just nothing. It's like the whole city was just swallowed up." -- What's It Like to Be a Tourist in North Korea? (Foreign policy 2010-08-16).
Get Into Reading is an initiative started nine years ago by Jane Davis, an English lecturer at Liverpool University with the purpose of introducing great literature to people who would never otherwise encounter it. That is still one of the principles of Get Into Reading, and the charity to which it gave birth, The Reader Organisation. Yet along the way, the goalposts shifted. Davis has effectively turned William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Emily Brontë, Alfred Tennyson and WB Yeats, into therapists. -- Well read: Literature is being used as part of revolutionary therapy to transform people's lives by Brian Viner (The Independent 2010-08-14).
Antoine Dodson's furious outburst on a news channel after a sex attack on his sister turned into a viral YouTube video and inspired a hit song. Now he is making the most of his fame. -- Antoine Dodson: from local news item to internet sensation by Paul Gallagher (The Observer 2010-08-15).
See also ‘Bed Intruder’ Rant Earns Family a New Home (New York Times 2010-08-19).
Ideas want to be free: Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might. -- No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion? by Frank Thadeusz (Spiegel Online 2010-08-18). See also: The Costs of Ownership: Why Copyright Protection Will Hurt the Fashion Industry by Johanna Blakley (The Design Observer Group 2010-08-19).
Pray for Peas: Did Alcoholics Anonymous “dumb down” the Serenity Prayer? Much of the prayer’s worldwide popularity is due to AA. In the mid-twentieth century, AA adopted the prayer as a part of its culture of recovery, and it remains a mainstay today. AA’s version runs as follows: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things that I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr’s family, however, prefers a different text: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” -- You can quote them by Fred R. Shapiro (Yale Alumni 2010-7/8).
Antiquities: Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra in Jordan through the expertise of British conservation specialists from the Courtauld Institute in London. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti. The British experts removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art. -- Discovery of ancient cave paintings in Petra stuns art scholars by Dalya Alberge (The Observer 2010-08-22}.
Not The Onion: Those Whacky Republicans, Democrat division:
Another overnight success: "The story in American history I most like to tell is the one about how women got the right to vote 90 years ago this month. It has everything. Adventure! Suspense! Treachery! Drunken legislators! But, first, there was a 70-year slog. Which is really the important part." -- My Favorite August by Gail Collins (New York Times 2010-08-13).
CSI Wall Street: "The government's $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG's collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand-moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public." -- The AIG Bailout Scandal by William Greider (The Nation 2010-08-06).
Game Day: "On Sunday in DC, I attended the 17th ballpark protest of the Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2011 baseball season. Like the other actions - in cities from Houston to San Francisco to Milwaukee - people chanted a loud and clear message to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig: move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona and make the state pay a price for enacting legislation that sacrifices immigrant families at the altar of election year politics. But this demonstration was also deeply different from the 16 others. It was a day of rain, risk-takers, racists, and rancor. And it couldn't have been more terrific." -- 'Today We Did Some Good': The Diamondbacks Demonstration in DC by Dave Zirin (TheNation/TheNotion 2010-08-16).
Go away: "Frank and Jamie McCourt are embodiments of the boom-and-bust ethos of the past decade, a miraculous period when a pair of relative unknowns could borrow and bluster their way into a lifestyle that includes mansions, private planes, and one of the premier trophy properties in the history of sports. Now, as it all threatens to unravel along with their 40-year relationship, the McCourts have embarked on one last luxury binge, hiring some of the priciest lawyers in the business, including, on Jamie's team, David Boies, who just successfully fought to have California's same-sex marriage ban overturned, and Bert Fields, who has represented the Beatles and Tom Cruise, among others. In Frank's corner is Stephen Susman, a Houston-based litigator described by the American Bar Association Journal as "a voracious animal" who "scares people on his own side." As allegations have flown back and forth like spitballs, efforts to settle the case have been unsuccessful, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon has raised the possibility that if the couple can't reach an agreement, the Dodgers might have to be sold for no other reason than to pay their legal bills." -- Extreme Moneyball by Richard Siklos (Business Week 2010-08-12).
Although this is obviously meant to avenge Hayek, it's not a bad representation of both sides of the argument. Just so there's no misunderstanding, though, here's Paul Krugman's explanation of why Hayek and his ilk are utterly full of crap.
Wipeout: When people's homes are being destroyed and other people's children are taken away from them for years at a time, a few pieces of foam-core that float in the water hardly seem like the most pressing cause to fight for. But that's exactly where Surfing for Peace, a rag-tag group of Israeli beach boys, international activists and a founding father of surfing, has decided to draw a line in the sand. -- The Siege vs. the Surfboards by David Sheen (Haaretz 2010-08-12).
The movies in your mind: "'North of the Border' is at once an engaging, provocative, revealing and amusing documentary and a searing indictment of North American anti-war and social justice activists, journalists and film-makers for their failure to break with President Obama. Written and directed by the first-time documentary film-maker Gilbert Hurricane, the film uses Oliver Stone’s recent documentary 'South of the Border' as its inspiration and tactical departure point, beginning with a brief recap of the advances made by socialist leaders in South America and asking 'What about North of the border?'" -- A review of the Gilbert Hurricane documentary “North of the Border” by Gary Gordon (Fire Dog Lake 2010-07-29).
Speaking of movies: "'Eat, Pray, Love,' the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir, received mediocre reviews when it was released last week. But the film’s premise, the journey of self-discovery for one modern, working white woman, it’s sure to inspire droves of other women to book similar trips to faraway destinations — if they can afford it. And it’s all in the name of self-discovery. Sandip Roy writes at New America Media that for white women, the more exotic the backdrop, the better the degree of introspection. 'It’s not Gilbert’s fault, but as someone who comes from India, I have an instinctive reflex reaction to books about white people discovering themselves in brown places. I want to gag, shoot and leave.'" -- Eat, Pray, Love and Leave? by Naima Ramos-Chapman (ColorLines 2010-08-16).
Always room for Dion:
The Return of Deja Vu: "Out of all the famous quotations, few better describe this eerily familiar time than those attributed to George Santayana and Yogi Berra. The former, a philosopher, warned that 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' The latter, a baseball player, stumbled into prophecy by declaring, 'It's deja vu all over again.' Vietnam showed us the perils of occupation, then the Iraq war showed us the same thing — and yet now, we are somehow doing it all over again in Afghanistan. The Great Depression underscored the downsides of laissez-faire economics, the Great Recession highlighted the same danger — and yet the new financial 'reform' bill leaves that laissez-faire attitude largely intact. Ronald Reagan proved the failure of trickle-down tax cuts to spread prosperity before George W. Bush proved the same thing — and yet now, in a recession, Congress is considering more tax cuts all over again. In a Yogi Berra country, the jarring lessons of history are remembered as mere flickers of deja vu — if they are remembered at all. Most often, we forget completely, seeing in George Santayana's refrain not a dark warning, but a cheery celebration. Why have we become so dismissive of history's lessons and therefore so willing to repeat history's mistakes?" -- Insanity all over again by David Sirota (Creators Syndicate 2010-08-21).
Must-See TV: There once was a time when nobility, courage and unbending optimism were the norm not the exception: "Ask most people today what the Freedom Rides were, and they can't tell you. Or they misunderstand its significance, painting the Freedom Riders as lightweight pacifists who just lay down and allowed themselves to be beaten. That couldn't be further from the truth. Those who, like me, were alive during that time have since seen pictures of John Lewis being beaten up, but I'd forgotten that white Southerners had actually set a bus on fire. It was a remarkable moment. They were literally holding the door closed. The bus was a crematorium on wheels. Thankfully, the Freedom Riders managed to escape." -- Civil Rights' Most Misunderstood Moment: The Freedom Rides by Stanley Crouch (The Root 2010-08-17). To arrange a showing of Freedom Riders, contact Firelight Media (http://firelightmedia.org/.
A Day In The Life: "At the hour of dawn, in the same southwest-corner, second-floor bedroom of the White House where Abraham Lincoln once slept, the president awakens. On this spring morning, a Wednesday, Barack Obama is alone; his wife, Michelle, is on her way to Mexico City on her first solo foreign trip. He heads upstairs for 45 minutes of weights and cardio in his personal gym, then puts on a dark suit and navy-blue pin-striped tie. Obama may be surrounded by servants morning till night, but not for him the daily drill of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was dressed by a valet, John Moaney, from inside out—underwear, socks, pants, shirt, tie, shoes, jacket—every morning. After breakfast and a quick read of the papers, the president sees his daughters, Sasha and Malia, off to school. Then he enters the private, wood-paneled family elevator—installed in the same shaft used by Theodore Roosevelt’s son Quentin to bring his pet pony upstairs—perhaps taking a moment to straighten his tie in the mirrored back wall of the cab. He descends two stories, alights on the ground floor, just outside the White House kitchen, passes down a short, vaulted corridor and through a greenhouse-like antechamber known as the Palm Room, and walks along the colonnade that borders the Rose Garden and leads to the Oval Office. His 450th day in office has begun." -- Washington, We Have a Problem by Todd Purdum (Vanity Fair 2010-08).
Hey, kids, rock 'n' roll wasn't always as bland as porridge. Back in the day...
Tourism: "Everywhere you go in Pyongyang, the skyline is dominated by a huge 105-story concrete pyramid, the Ryugyong Hotel, which looms over the city like the pyramid-shaped Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984. It was intended to be the world's tallest hotel, but it turned out to be structurally unsound, so it was never completed. It's been standing there, abandoned, since 1992. It doesn't appear on any official maps, and nobody ever talks about it, because it's such a horrendous embarrassment. The most memorable thing about Pyongyang, though, is the total darkness that descends at night. Because electricity is in short supply, there are hardly any lights at all -- a couple of bulbs here and there, and the headlights of passing buses. People are out and about, but all you can see are the dark shapes right beside you. Back at the hotel, you look out the window and there's just nothing. It's like the whole city was just swallowed up." -- What's It Like to Be a Tourist in North Korea? (Foreign policy 2010-08-16).
Get Into Reading is an initiative started nine years ago by Jane Davis, an English lecturer at Liverpool University with the purpose of introducing great literature to people who would never otherwise encounter it. That is still one of the principles of Get Into Reading, and the charity to which it gave birth, The Reader Organisation. Yet along the way, the goalposts shifted. Davis has effectively turned William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Emily Brontë, Alfred Tennyson and WB Yeats, into therapists. -- Well read: Literature is being used as part of revolutionary therapy to transform people's lives by Brian Viner (The Independent 2010-08-14).
Antoine Dodson's furious outburst on a news channel after a sex attack on his sister turned into a viral YouTube video and inspired a hit song. Now he is making the most of his fame. -- Antoine Dodson: from local news item to internet sensation by Paul Gallagher (The Observer 2010-08-15).
See also ‘Bed Intruder’ Rant Earns Family a New Home (New York Times 2010-08-19).
Ideas want to be free: Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might. -- No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion? by Frank Thadeusz (Spiegel Online 2010-08-18). See also: The Costs of Ownership: Why Copyright Protection Will Hurt the Fashion Industry by Johanna Blakley (The Design Observer Group 2010-08-19).
Pray for Peas: Did Alcoholics Anonymous “dumb down” the Serenity Prayer? Much of the prayer’s worldwide popularity is due to AA. In the mid-twentieth century, AA adopted the prayer as a part of its culture of recovery, and it remains a mainstay today. AA’s version runs as follows: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things that I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr’s family, however, prefers a different text: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” -- You can quote them by Fred R. Shapiro (Yale Alumni 2010-7/8).
Antiquities: Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra in Jordan through the expertise of British conservation specialists from the Courtauld Institute in London. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti. The British experts removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art. -- Discovery of ancient cave paintings in Petra stuns art scholars by Dalya Alberge (The Observer 2010-08-22}.
Not The Onion: Those Whacky Republicans, Democrat division:
Politics: Summer's nearly over. Things are about to get serious.
As the fall ballot approaches, neither party is in much of a position to address the economic realities faced by most Americans: poverty-level wages; anxiety about getting a job or losing the job you have, about ever buying a house or losing the house you have; lack of access to affordable health care despite the passage of "revolutionary" health care reform; the longest work day and the longest commute in the industrialized world; the loss of public services as fundamental to the prospects of the middle and working classes as libraries, schools, even roads. Much less does either party have anything believable to say about extricating us from the quagmire in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Democrats have the bigger problem, though, and, even with all the help they're getting from self-annihilating Republican candidates like Rand Paul and Ken Buck, it's going to hurt come November: they're in power.
The Democrats have the bigger problem, though, and, even with all the help they're getting from self-annihilating Republican candidates like Rand Paul and Ken Buck, it's going to hurt come November: they're in power.
Change Watch: Elizabeth Warren will make everything all right again
With so much at stake, doesn't it seem odd that for many on the left the camel's back of continued support for Barack Obama has come down to the straw of the appointment of a single administrative officer?
The admirable Elizabeth Warren, the plain-speaking, tough-on-Wall-Street Harvard professor who pilots the congressional oversight panel monitoring the TARP bank bailout, has made the short list to run the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection created by the recent Wall Street reform legislation, despite opposition from Wall Street and its minions in the administration. (There is a precedent of sorts for choosing Warren: the White House, in a dizzying spin of the revolving door between the government and an industry it purports to regulate, recently chose Liz Fowler as deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In her new job, Fowler, the insurance lobbyist who wrote the health care bill while temporarily on Max Baucus' Senate staff, will oversee implementation of the massive and complicated new health care operation: if the argument is that Fowler has essential knowledge needed to manage the program she crafted, doesn't it follow that Warren, as the one who dreamed it up and pushed for its creation, should run the Consumer Bureau?)
Warren is unquestionably the best candidate for the job of running the new consumer protection agency. Still, why is so much riding on her appointment? As David Corn writes in Politics Daily,
The rest of the story: Elizabeth Warren or Bust! by David Corn (Politics Daily 2010-08-17).
Actions:
Health Care Reform:
-> Join ongoing nationwide Healthcare NOT Warfare Vigils.
-> Urge the California Assembly to pass Single Payer SB 810 now. Click here to contact your assembly person.
-> Chicago Single Payer Action Network meets every two weeks.
-> Healthare-NOW! will hold its Yearly National Strategy Conference on November 13th and 14th in Philadelphia. Join hundreds of single-payer supporters from all over the country to formulate strategy for 2011.
To survive, the invaluable Antiwar.com needs your help to raise $22,000 by Monday.
Support United for Peace & Justice's "Fall 2010 Call to Action" against U.S. militarism, August 28th in Washington DC and Detroit, and its "One Nation Working Together" on Oct. 2nd in the nation's capitol.
The admirable Elizabeth Warren, the plain-speaking, tough-on-Wall-Street Harvard professor who pilots the congressional oversight panel monitoring the TARP bank bailout, has made the short list to run the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection created by the recent Wall Street reform legislation, despite opposition from Wall Street and its minions in the administration. (There is a precedent of sorts for choosing Warren: the White House, in a dizzying spin of the revolving door between the government and an industry it purports to regulate, recently chose Liz Fowler as deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In her new job, Fowler, the insurance lobbyist who wrote the health care bill while temporarily on Max Baucus' Senate staff, will oversee implementation of the massive and complicated new health care operation: if the argument is that Fowler has essential knowledge needed to manage the program she crafted, doesn't it follow that Warren, as the one who dreamed it up and pushed for its creation, should run the Consumer Bureau?)
Warren is unquestionably the best candidate for the job of running the new consumer protection agency. Still, why is so much riding on her appointment? As David Corn writes in Politics Daily,
Obama's supporters on the left are yearning for a clear deliverable. Obama, as the White House repeatedly points out, has achieved several impressive progressive victories. But size and significance aside, they have been hazy and, for lefties, occasionally bittersweet wins. The stimulus package was not as big as many economists said was necessary, and Obama muffed the message war. (Admittedly, it is difficult to take credit for not losing another 2 million jobs.) The health care reform measure did not include a public option and ended up a complicated hodgepodge, with many of its benefits not scheduled to hit for several years. The Wall Street reform legislation was another complicated melange of new rules not easily fathomed by the average voter -- or yours truly. Moreover, these big accomplishments occurred alongside unpalatable bailouts for financial firms and auto companies and an escalation of the unpopular Afghanistan war. Obama's big wins have not been as easy to process as President George W. Bush's: passing supersized tax cuts and winning congressional approval for his invasion of Iraq.The larding of so much importance on the installation of one executive officer looks like further evidence of the weakness of progressive politics. From the beginning, progressive support for Obama without the requirement of anything in return had about it a whiff of desperation. And the rant last week by White House pr flack Robert Gates pretty much sums up how seriously the Obama team takes its "base." Instead of organizing to produce action on jobs, infrastructure, economic justice and peace, most of us appear ready to take solace in the merest hint of evidence of the administration's "good faith." With the economy still in shambles, the lives of so many Americans broken by poverty and joblessness, and the country's resources being squandered in imperial adventures in faraway places like Afghanistan and Yemen, it is pathetic that progressive aspirations have been shaved down to the possible appointment of a single bureaucratic.
But there's nothing unclear about Warren. She doesn't mince words. She's a populist academic who is comfortable going on Jon Stewart's show to decry credit card companies and other financial pirates for ripping off America's families. As a non-corporatist with no love lost for Wall Street, Warren would stand out as a member of Obama's economic team. She would provide a counterbalance to the pro-bail-out gang running Obama's economic policies.
If Obama chooses Warren for this post, that would trigger a battle with Republicans and Wall Street -- which could be a fight worth having. It would juice up the Democratic base before a congressional election, and such a clash would establish a strong precedent, indicating that Obama is drop-dead serious about unleashing this new agency on financial predators. Regulators have much latitude in deciding how vigorous to be -- especially in the face of industry opposition and manipulation. With a Warren nomination, Obama would be saying that he and his administration are ready -- eager! -- to confront the scammers of Big Finance.
The rest of the story: Elizabeth Warren or Bust! by David Corn (Politics Daily 2010-08-17).
Actions:
Health Care Reform:
-> Join ongoing nationwide Healthcare NOT Warfare Vigils.
-> Urge the California Assembly to pass Single Payer SB 810 now. Click here to contact your assembly person.
-> Chicago Single Payer Action Network meets every two weeks.
-> Healthare-NOW! will hold its Yearly National Strategy Conference on November 13th and 14th in Philadelphia. Join hundreds of single-payer supporters from all over the country to formulate strategy for 2011.
To survive, the invaluable Antiwar.com needs your help to raise $22,000 by Monday.
Support United for Peace & Justice's "Fall 2010 Call to Action" against U.S. militarism, August 28th in Washington DC and Detroit, and its "One Nation Working Together" on Oct. 2nd in the nation's capitol.
Tipping Point: Are we headed toward theocratic fascism?
by Steven Jonas for BuzzFlash
"In 1987 the Yale historian Paul Kennedy published a prescient book entitled The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. From the back cover copy: 'Although the United States is at present still in a class of its own economically and perhaps even militarily, it cannot avoid confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of every major power that occupies the 'number one' position in world affairs: whether, in the military/strategical realm, it can preserve a balance between the nation's perceived defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain those commitments; and whether, as an intimately related point, it can preserve the technological and economic bases of its power from relative erosion in the face of ever-shifting patterns of global production. . . . [T]he United States now runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of previous Great Powers, of what might roughly be called 'imperial overstretch:' that is to say, decision makers in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is nowadays far larger than the country's power to defend them all simultaneously.'" The U.S. is entering the phase of Kennedy's 'imperial overstretch....The U.S. military is running out of troops. It has too many overseas obligations. It is also running out of money. The mis-named 'entitlements' will be cut back but they can be cut back only so far. The taxes on the rich who now run the country so well in their own interests will be raised a bit, but only so far. With the export of so much U.S. capital and the conversion of its economy from a basis on manufacturing capitalism to finance capitalism, the current army of the unemployed is going to become permanent....The only way for the corporate/finance class to suppress and control that rising discontent among those who will no longer be taken in by the race-based policies of divide-and-conquer will be all-out physical repression. I see nothing but the advent of religio-fascism ahead, very likely lead by Hitler-in-heels-with-a-Smiley-Face."
The rest of the story.
"In 1987 the Yale historian Paul Kennedy published a prescient book entitled The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. From the back cover copy: 'Although the United States is at present still in a class of its own economically and perhaps even militarily, it cannot avoid confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of every major power that occupies the 'number one' position in world affairs: whether, in the military/strategical realm, it can preserve a balance between the nation's perceived defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain those commitments; and whether, as an intimately related point, it can preserve the technological and economic bases of its power from relative erosion in the face of ever-shifting patterns of global production. . . . [T]he United States now runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of previous Great Powers, of what might roughly be called 'imperial overstretch:' that is to say, decision makers in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is nowadays far larger than the country's power to defend them all simultaneously.'" The U.S. is entering the phase of Kennedy's 'imperial overstretch....The U.S. military is running out of troops. It has too many overseas obligations. It is also running out of money. The mis-named 'entitlements' will be cut back but they can be cut back only so far. The taxes on the rich who now run the country so well in their own interests will be raised a bit, but only so far. With the export of so much U.S. capital and the conversion of its economy from a basis on manufacturing capitalism to finance capitalism, the current army of the unemployed is going to become permanent....The only way for the corporate/finance class to suppress and control that rising discontent among those who will no longer be taken in by the race-based policies of divide-and-conquer will be all-out physical repression. I see nothing but the advent of religio-fascism ahead, very likely lead by Hitler-in-heels-with-a-Smiley-Face."
The rest of the story.
Nature: The epic life cycle of an undangered species -- the plastic bag
Action: Support Heal the Bay's campaign in support of a bill to ban the use of plastic bags from California retailers, the primary vector for the bags' journey to the sea.
Resource: Defending Medicare
HandsOffOurMedicare.org is intended as the hub for a Campaign to Preserve and Protect Medicare. In an action similar to his designation of six conservative senators to craft a health care bill, President Obama has created a Deficit Commission to decide how to reduce the Federal deficit that is packed with conservatives: not surprisingly, the commission has put Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on the chopping block, while ignoring the elephant in the room, military spending. On the site, you can email or call your congressmembers and tell them not to cut social programs. There is also a breakdown of Deficit Commission members and their support for cutting and/or privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Costco Adopts Sustainable Seafood Policy
50% of the seafood consumed by Americans comes from supermarkets and other vendors, accounting for 16 billion in annual sales of fish and other seafood products (shellfish, dried seaweed, fish sauces, etc.). Michael Ricciardi reports on Planetsave that, according to the August edition of the Good Funds Wealth Management newsletter, Costco will now cease the sale of seven species of fish currently at risk of collapsing from over-fishing: Atlantic cod, Atlantic halibut, Chilean sea bass, orange roughy, shark, swordfish, and bluefin tuna. Additionally, Costco has begun working with suppliers of farmed salmon to insure compliance with the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue and will partner with the World Wildlife Fund to monitor Thailand’s compliance with the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue (for more info on these aquaculture dialogues, visit here).
The rest of the story.
The rest of the story.
Saturday Catchup 2010-08-14
One of the greats is gone:
Change Watch: "A friend whom I'll call David raised a ton of money for Democrats in 2008 and now tells me they can go to hell. He's furious about the no-strings bailout of Wall Street, the absence of a public option in health reform, financial reform that doesn't cap the size of banks or reinstate the Glass-Steagall wall between investment and commercial banking, and a stimulus that was too small to do much good but big enough to give Republicans a campaign issue. He's also upset about tens of thousands of additional troops being sent to Afghanistan, a watered-down cap-and-trade bill that's going nowhere, and no Employee Free Choice Act. David won't raise a penny this fall and doubts he'll even vote. 'I busted my chops getting them elected, and they caved,' he fumes. 'They're all lily-livered wimps, and Obama has the backbone of a worm.' Tea Partiers are getting all the press. But the anger on the left, including much of the Democratic base, is almost as intense. And it spells trouble for Democrats a few months from now." -- Fire on the Left: Tea Partiers are getting all the press, but it's the anger on the left that spells trouble for Dems in the midterms by Robert B. Reich (The American Prospect 2010-08-02).
Populism Schmopulism: "Since the 1960s, populism has succeeded on the right and has produced few if any left-wing counterparts. The tradition has moved from the segregationist George Wallace, who derided the federal government and pointy-headed intellectuals, to Richard Nixon's celebration of 'the silent majority' and Spiro Agnew's attack against journalists and elites. It has fed on an easy hatred of government and taxes, from the 'I'm Mad as Hell' chants of the California tax protesters in 1978 -- the spirit that helped get Ronald Reagan elected president -- to the Tea Party of today. There's no way to steer this boat back to left-wing shores....'The people' are no more virtuous or incorruptible than elites, and pandering to them won't advance liberal political goals." -- Forget Populism by Kevin Mattson (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
Here's a ditty that will never go out of style:
But it's what a declining empire looks like: "The world leadership qualities of the United States, once so prevalent, are fading faster than the polar ice caps. We once set the standard for industrial might, for the advanced state of our physical infrastructure, and for the quality of our citizens’ lives. All are experiencing significant decline. The latest dismal news on the leadership front comes from the College Board, which tells us that the U.S., once the world’s leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations. At a time when a college education is needed more than ever to establish and maintain a middle-class standard of living, America’s young people are moving in exactly the wrong direction. A well-educated population also is crucially important if the U.S. is to succeed in an increasingly competitive global environment. But instead of exercising the appropriate mental muscles, we’re allowing ourselves to become a nation of nitwits, obsessed with the comings and goings of Lindsay Lohan and increasingly oblivious to crucially important societal issues that are all but screaming for attention. What should we be doing about the legions of jobless Americans, the deteriorating public schools, the debilitating wars, the scandalous economic inequality, the corporate hold on governmental affairs, the commercialization of the arts, the deficits? Why is there not serious and widespread public engagement with these issues — and many others that could easily come to mind? That kind of engagement would lead to creative new ideas and would serve to enrich the lives of individual Americans and the nation as a whole. But it would require a heavy social and intellectual lift." -- Putting Our Brains on Hold by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2009-08-06).
What's in a name? that which we call socialism/By any other name would smell as sweet: "Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, just won the Democratic nomination for governor of his state, making a state-owned Bank of Michigan a real possibility. Bernero is one of at least a dozen candidates promoting that solution to the states' economic woes. It is an innovative idea, with little precedent in the United States. North Dakota, currently the only state owning its own bank, also happens to be the only state sporting a budget surplus, and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country; but skeptics can write these achievements off to coincidence. More data is needed and, fortunately, other precedents are available from other countries." -- What a Government Can Do With Its Own Bank: The Remarkable Model of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia by Ellen Brown (Truthout 2010-08-05).
In the last half century, I've been lucky at being in the right place at the right time, but on few occasions as dramatic as when Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in the summer of 1965:
Who pays the piper, calls the tune: The GOP wants tax cuts for the rich, and only the rich. "...For the last few years, we haven't spent much time debating taxes. And to use a word conservatives like so much when it comes to this subject, it was a relief. However, since the Bush tax cuts will be expiring at the end of the year, we're in for another round of ridiculous arguments, disingenuous talking points, and maddening stupidity. We have already seen the return of the Tax Fairy, the absurd belief, depressingly widespread in Republican circles, that cutting taxes increases revenue. Even Greg Mankiw, chair of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, called those who believe this fiction 'charlatans and cranks.' But it has become almost doctrine within the GOP." -- The Return of the Tax Fairy: Conservatives gear up to defend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts by Paul Waldman (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
A conservative stalwart looks at Republican fiscal "policy": "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes. This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one." -- Four Deformations of the Apocalypse by David Stockman (New York Times 2010-08-01).
I Want Roosevelt Again*: "A video that made the rounds last summer summed up the problem nicely. Mike Stark of The Huffington Post hoisted a camera on his shoulder, hung out on the streets near the House office buildings in Washington, and asked passing Republican House members: Do you believe that Barack Obama is a rightful citizen of the United States? I don't know how many he asked (there were snippets of several ducking into cars or pretending to take calls), but he quoted 11 in the video he posted. Of the 11, only one, Trent Franks of Arizona, acknowledged straightforwardly that yes, his staff had intensively researched the question and was forced to conclude that a birth announcement in a 1961 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser likely couldn't have been forged. The other 10, mostly not well known, either ducked the question, marching forward in that West Wing, I've-got-important-business way, or gave too-clever-by-half responses, or just came out and said they weren't sure. 'I think there are questions, so we'll have to see,' quipped Charles Boustany of Louisiana -- spoken a touch ironically because he, unlike Obama, is in fact of Arab (Lebanese) lineage, an ethnicity frequently and incorrectly assigned to the president." -- The Right Way to Please the Base: What the left can learn from right-wing extremists by Michael Tomasky (The American Prospect 2010-08-02). *1944 campaign button
In a world of anarchy, the only currency that matters is power: "There are many sources of fear in world politics -- terrorist attacks, natural disasters, climate change, financial panic, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflict, and so forth. Surveying the cultural zeitgeist, however, it is striking how an unnatural problem has become one of the fastest-growing concerns in international relations. I speak, of course, of zombies." -- Night of the Living Wonks: Toward an international relations theory of zombies by Daniel W. Drezner (Foreign Policy 2010-07/08).
"The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club":
Plus ca change...: "Southasian fiction has provided many insights into the persona and conflicts of the exploited-empowered dancing girl. It is not a coincidence that the earliest novels of the Subcontinent dealt with the intense and memorable characters of ‘nautch girls’. Essentially a colonial construct, a nautch girl referred to the popular entertainer, a belle beau who would sing, dance and, when required, also provide the services of a sex worker. The accounts on the marginalised women from the ‘dishonourable’ profession are nuanced, concurrently representing the duality of exploitation and empowerment." My candle burns at both ends by Raza Rumi (Himal 2010-08).
Oh, jeeze. Amid all the chatter about Lindsay's incarceration, Chelsea's nuptials, and the plot to install the Bin Laden Memorial Mosque at Ground Zero, almost forgot there's a war on. Think that's the plan. What about you?
"I'm going to be killing people. I'm actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life": Just because we haven't finished the war we have doesn't mean we can't have another one. "War springs eternal. Compare the words of the 18-year-old boy quoted above by Philadelphia radio station WRTI, as he was wielding a pretend machinegun at a video-game parlor/Army recruiting center at a Philly shopping mall, with those of two neocons, Charles Robb and Charles Wald (retired senator and general, respectively), writing last month in the Washington Post: 'We cannot afford to wait indefinitely to determine the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions. . . . Instead, the administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran's nuclear and supporting military facilities.' We're running out of time to act, they add, turning the fear crank, ratcheting up the pressure like good used car salesmen. Iran could have a nuclear bomb by the end of the year, they warn, citing no evidence for this assertion. Evidence? They all but cried: 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'" -- The Next War by Common Dreams (Common Dreams 2010-08-05).
Does singing about being president make Wyclef Jean the Mike Huckabee of Haiti?
'Nuff said.
Change Watch: "A friend whom I'll call David raised a ton of money for Democrats in 2008 and now tells me they can go to hell. He's furious about the no-strings bailout of Wall Street, the absence of a public option in health reform, financial reform that doesn't cap the size of banks or reinstate the Glass-Steagall wall between investment and commercial banking, and a stimulus that was too small to do much good but big enough to give Republicans a campaign issue. He's also upset about tens of thousands of additional troops being sent to Afghanistan, a watered-down cap-and-trade bill that's going nowhere, and no Employee Free Choice Act. David won't raise a penny this fall and doubts he'll even vote. 'I busted my chops getting them elected, and they caved,' he fumes. 'They're all lily-livered wimps, and Obama has the backbone of a worm.' Tea Partiers are getting all the press. But the anger on the left, including much of the Democratic base, is almost as intense. And it spells trouble for Democrats a few months from now." -- Fire on the Left: Tea Partiers are getting all the press, but it's the anger on the left that spells trouble for Dems in the midterms by Robert B. Reich (The American Prospect 2010-08-02).
Populism Schmopulism: "Since the 1960s, populism has succeeded on the right and has produced few if any left-wing counterparts. The tradition has moved from the segregationist George Wallace, who derided the federal government and pointy-headed intellectuals, to Richard Nixon's celebration of 'the silent majority' and Spiro Agnew's attack against journalists and elites. It has fed on an easy hatred of government and taxes, from the 'I'm Mad as Hell' chants of the California tax protesters in 1978 -- the spirit that helped get Ronald Reagan elected president -- to the Tea Party of today. There's no way to steer this boat back to left-wing shores....'The people' are no more virtuous or incorruptible than elites, and pandering to them won't advance liberal political goals." -- Forget Populism by Kevin Mattson (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
Here's a ditty that will never go out of style:
But it's what a declining empire looks like: "The world leadership qualities of the United States, once so prevalent, are fading faster than the polar ice caps. We once set the standard for industrial might, for the advanced state of our physical infrastructure, and for the quality of our citizens’ lives. All are experiencing significant decline. The latest dismal news on the leadership front comes from the College Board, which tells us that the U.S., once the world’s leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations. At a time when a college education is needed more than ever to establish and maintain a middle-class standard of living, America’s young people are moving in exactly the wrong direction. A well-educated population also is crucially important if the U.S. is to succeed in an increasingly competitive global environment. But instead of exercising the appropriate mental muscles, we’re allowing ourselves to become a nation of nitwits, obsessed with the comings and goings of Lindsay Lohan and increasingly oblivious to crucially important societal issues that are all but screaming for attention. What should we be doing about the legions of jobless Americans, the deteriorating public schools, the debilitating wars, the scandalous economic inequality, the corporate hold on governmental affairs, the commercialization of the arts, the deficits? Why is there not serious and widespread public engagement with these issues — and many others that could easily come to mind? That kind of engagement would lead to creative new ideas and would serve to enrich the lives of individual Americans and the nation as a whole. But it would require a heavy social and intellectual lift." -- Putting Our Brains on Hold by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2009-08-06).
What's in a name? that which we call socialism/By any other name would smell as sweet: "Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, just won the Democratic nomination for governor of his state, making a state-owned Bank of Michigan a real possibility. Bernero is one of at least a dozen candidates promoting that solution to the states' economic woes. It is an innovative idea, with little precedent in the United States. North Dakota, currently the only state owning its own bank, also happens to be the only state sporting a budget surplus, and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country; but skeptics can write these achievements off to coincidence. More data is needed and, fortunately, other precedents are available from other countries." -- What a Government Can Do With Its Own Bank: The Remarkable Model of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia by Ellen Brown (Truthout 2010-08-05).
In the last half century, I've been lucky at being in the right place at the right time, but on few occasions as dramatic as when Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in the summer of 1965:
Who pays the piper, calls the tune: The GOP wants tax cuts for the rich, and only the rich. "...For the last few years, we haven't spent much time debating taxes. And to use a word conservatives like so much when it comes to this subject, it was a relief. However, since the Bush tax cuts will be expiring at the end of the year, we're in for another round of ridiculous arguments, disingenuous talking points, and maddening stupidity. We have already seen the return of the Tax Fairy, the absurd belief, depressingly widespread in Republican circles, that cutting taxes increases revenue. Even Greg Mankiw, chair of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, called those who believe this fiction 'charlatans and cranks.' But it has become almost doctrine within the GOP." -- The Return of the Tax Fairy: Conservatives gear up to defend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts by Paul Waldman (The American Prospect 2010-08-03).
A conservative stalwart looks at Republican fiscal "policy": "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes. This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one." -- Four Deformations of the Apocalypse by David Stockman (New York Times 2010-08-01).
I Want Roosevelt Again*: "A video that made the rounds last summer summed up the problem nicely. Mike Stark of The Huffington Post hoisted a camera on his shoulder, hung out on the streets near the House office buildings in Washington, and asked passing Republican House members: Do you believe that Barack Obama is a rightful citizen of the United States? I don't know how many he asked (there were snippets of several ducking into cars or pretending to take calls), but he quoted 11 in the video he posted. Of the 11, only one, Trent Franks of Arizona, acknowledged straightforwardly that yes, his staff had intensively researched the question and was forced to conclude that a birth announcement in a 1961 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser likely couldn't have been forged. The other 10, mostly not well known, either ducked the question, marching forward in that West Wing, I've-got-important-business way, or gave too-clever-by-half responses, or just came out and said they weren't sure. 'I think there are questions, so we'll have to see,' quipped Charles Boustany of Louisiana -- spoken a touch ironically because he, unlike Obama, is in fact of Arab (Lebanese) lineage, an ethnicity frequently and incorrectly assigned to the president." -- The Right Way to Please the Base: What the left can learn from right-wing extremists by Michael Tomasky (The American Prospect 2010-08-02). *1944 campaign button
In a world of anarchy, the only currency that matters is power: "There are many sources of fear in world politics -- terrorist attacks, natural disasters, climate change, financial panic, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflict, and so forth. Surveying the cultural zeitgeist, however, it is striking how an unnatural problem has become one of the fastest-growing concerns in international relations. I speak, of course, of zombies." -- Night of the Living Wonks: Toward an international relations theory of zombies by Daniel W. Drezner (Foreign Policy 2010-07/08).
"The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club":
Plus ca change...: "Southasian fiction has provided many insights into the persona and conflicts of the exploited-empowered dancing girl. It is not a coincidence that the earliest novels of the Subcontinent dealt with the intense and memorable characters of ‘nautch girls’. Essentially a colonial construct, a nautch girl referred to the popular entertainer, a belle beau who would sing, dance and, when required, also provide the services of a sex worker. The accounts on the marginalised women from the ‘dishonourable’ profession are nuanced, concurrently representing the duality of exploitation and empowerment." My candle burns at both ends by Raza Rumi (Himal 2010-08).
Oh, jeeze. Amid all the chatter about Lindsay's incarceration, Chelsea's nuptials, and the plot to install the Bin Laden Memorial Mosque at Ground Zero, almost forgot there's a war on. Think that's the plan. What about you?
"I'm going to be killing people. I'm actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life": Just because we haven't finished the war we have doesn't mean we can't have another one. "War springs eternal. Compare the words of the 18-year-old boy quoted above by Philadelphia radio station WRTI, as he was wielding a pretend machinegun at a video-game parlor/Army recruiting center at a Philly shopping mall, with those of two neocons, Charles Robb and Charles Wald (retired senator and general, respectively), writing last month in the Washington Post: 'We cannot afford to wait indefinitely to determine the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions. . . . Instead, the administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran's nuclear and supporting military facilities.' We're running out of time to act, they add, turning the fear crank, ratcheting up the pressure like good used car salesmen. Iran could have a nuclear bomb by the end of the year, they warn, citing no evidence for this assertion. Evidence? They all but cried: 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'" -- The Next War by Common Dreams (Common Dreams 2010-08-05).
Does singing about being president make Wyclef Jean the Mike Huckabee of Haiti?
'Nuff said.
Not The Onion: Objectivist Tool Goes on World’s Dumbest Roadtrip
by Kevin Keith (Lean Left)
This Rand-cult bonehead drove over 12,000 miles back and forth across the US, clicking his GPS logger on and off at selected points to create a series of waypoints that would spell out his message to the world when displayed in Google Earth, if anyone bothers to look. (Yeah, I’m spreading the message for him with this post, but the humor potential, I think, outweighs the likelihood that anyone is going to take his advice.) What does he so desperately want you to hear?:
Sadly, he ran out of gas before completing the whole message. I’ve helped him out with the rest:
-- Objectivist Tool Goes on World’s Dumbest Roadtrip by Kevin Keith (Lean Left 2010-08-14).
This Rand-cult bonehead drove over 12,000 miles back and forth across the US, clicking his GPS logger on and off at selected points to create a series of waypoints that would spell out his message to the world when displayed in Google Earth, if anyone bothers to look. (Yeah, I’m spreading the message for him with this post, but the humor potential, I think, outweighs the likelihood that anyone is going to take his advice.) What does he so desperately want you to hear?:
Stupid cultists with GPS - not a good combination.
-- Objectivist Tool Goes on World’s Dumbest Roadtrip by Kevin Keith (Lean Left 2010-08-14).
Equality: Delink marriage, equal rights
The state should not be involved in regulating religious choice. And religious ooga-booga cannot be permitted to harm civil society.
Equal protection under the law, however, is.
How about requiring all citizens who wish to establish domestic partnerships that address such issues as property rights, inheritance, spousal benefits, responsibility for children, taxation, etc. -- "married" or not -- to be licensed by or registered with civil authorities, with equal rights granted and obligations required under the law? The quasi-religious question of "marriage" could then be left to churches, mosques, synagogues, witches covens, Vegas chapels and any other outfits that take an interest in the management of human souls. That way religious organizations would be free to do their worst to their own adherents, by imposing on "marriage" whatever limitations they believe to be required by the particular gospel they -- you should pardon the expression -- espouse, without causing undue harm to the rest of society.
Freedom of religion, freedom from religion: as the 1st Amendment to the Constitution has it, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Meddling with "marriage" does both. Let religion have the word; the state can and should uphold and protect the underlying values.
For a summary of the history and legal reasoning underlying Judge Walker's decision invalidating Prop 8: The Prop 8 Decision: The Findings of Fact (Everything We Should Learn From This Trial) by Zack Ford (ZackFord Blogs 2010-08-04).
Those in power will call it tolerance, they will call it pluralism, but in truth same-sex marriage is a government takeover of an institution the government did not make, cannot in justice redefine, and ought to respect and protect as essential to the common good. -- Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage on the ruling overturning Prop 8.The singular stupidity of this quote beggars comment, but Gallagher is right about one thing: marriage is not an ideal arena for government action.
Equal protection under the law, however, is.
How about requiring all citizens who wish to establish domestic partnerships that address such issues as property rights, inheritance, spousal benefits, responsibility for children, taxation, etc. -- "married" or not -- to be licensed by or registered with civil authorities, with equal rights granted and obligations required under the law? The quasi-religious question of "marriage" could then be left to churches, mosques, synagogues, witches covens, Vegas chapels and any other outfits that take an interest in the management of human souls. That way religious organizations would be free to do their worst to their own adherents, by imposing on "marriage" whatever limitations they believe to be required by the particular gospel they -- you should pardon the expression -- espouse, without causing undue harm to the rest of society.
Freedom of religion, freedom from religion: as the 1st Amendment to the Constitution has it, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Meddling with "marriage" does both. Let religion have the word; the state can and should uphold and protect the underlying values.
For a summary of the history and legal reasoning underlying Judge Walker's decision invalidating Prop 8: The Prop 8 Decision: The Findings of Fact (Everything We Should Learn From This Trial) by Zack Ford (ZackFord Blogs 2010-08-04).
Looking On The Bright Side: The End Is Nigh
When I was growing up and suffering parochial school, the nuns talked a lot about the end of the world just around the corner. My grammar school mind couldn't quite grasp the many reasons it was imminent -- predictions buried in the Bible; the restoration of the State of Israel; letters the Virgin Mary left at Fatima that predicted the wholesale destruction of Canada (what can I say: they were Canadian nuns); but I was thrilled nonetheless. I might have missed every other event in history, but at least I'd see The End.
Then nothing happened.
Well, not nothing. But for decades I was mildly depressed, disappointed that there were no continent-wide inundations, no lakes of fire, no devastating plagues, no Four Horsemen, no epic battles between Good and Evil. Sure there were plenty of troubles and lots of false prophets, but no wars that came close even to the dimensions of the Great War or the Civil War, no diseases to match the Black Death, no massacres on the scale the Holocaust or Hiroshima, no devils even of the caliber of Hitler or Stalin. There was plenty of bad stuff, but nothing that would throw into question the survival of humankind. It was pretty disheartening.
Lately, though, I've been feeling a lot more hopeful. It's looking like I may get to see The End after all.
Discounting low-probability catastrophes like a meteoroid collision, an errant black hole or a visit from Klingons, there are plenty of developments that might precipitate The End. Runaway global warming. A methane burp. The disappearance of polar ice caps. Megatsunamis from collapsing ice sheets. Vanishing supplies of fresh water from evaporation of the glaciers or the polluting of ground water. Super-sized hurricanes, typhoons, tornado clusters and dust storms. The shutdown of the Gulf Stream. Drought and desertification. Deforestation. The degradation of agricultural land. Metasticizing population growth. The fouling of the environment. The collapse of the food chain. Famine. Declining human fertility. Murderous cultural and religious tribalism. Mutating viruses. The great species die-off. The frogs. The bees. Oh, the humanity!
Is this a great time to be alive or what?
Then nothing happened.
Well, not nothing. But for decades I was mildly depressed, disappointed that there were no continent-wide inundations, no lakes of fire, no devastating plagues, no Four Horsemen, no epic battles between Good and Evil. Sure there were plenty of troubles and lots of false prophets, but no wars that came close even to the dimensions of the Great War or the Civil War, no diseases to match the Black Death, no massacres on the scale the Holocaust or Hiroshima, no devils even of the caliber of Hitler or Stalin. There was plenty of bad stuff, but nothing that would throw into question the survival of humankind. It was pretty disheartening.
Lately, though, I've been feeling a lot more hopeful. It's looking like I may get to see The End after all.
Discounting low-probability catastrophes like a meteoroid collision, an errant black hole or a visit from Klingons, there are plenty of developments that might precipitate The End. Runaway global warming. A methane burp. The disappearance of polar ice caps. Megatsunamis from collapsing ice sheets. Vanishing supplies of fresh water from evaporation of the glaciers or the polluting of ground water. Super-sized hurricanes, typhoons, tornado clusters and dust storms. The shutdown of the Gulf Stream. Drought and desertification. Deforestation. The degradation of agricultural land. Metasticizing population growth. The fouling of the environment. The collapse of the food chain. Famine. Declining human fertility. Murderous cultural and religious tribalism. Mutating viruses. The great species die-off. The frogs. The bees. Oh, the humanity!
Is this a great time to be alive or what?
Visual aid: The economy flatlined under Bush
Going into the general election, the Democrats had better remind voters that by any rational measure the economic performance of the administration of George W. Bush was the worst of any president at least since Herbert Hoover, maybe ever,
and that those'll be the good old days compared to what Speaker Boehner and President Gingrich (or whoever) have in store for us. (Source: Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers by Neil Irwin; Washington Post 2010-01-02).
and that those'll be the good old days compared to what Speaker Boehner and President Gingrich (or whoever) have in store for us. (Source: Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers by Neil Irwin; Washington Post 2010-01-02).
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