The Heraclitan Fire

“Inter arma enim silent leges.”

2011-12-22T18:30:00.000-08:00

“In Time of War the Law is Made Silent.” – Cicero

The infamous, illegal, immoral and shameful American war of choice in Iraq has ended, as it should, in ignominy. The few remaining American troops took the flag and slunk over the border to Kuwait, home of another American war that, at least, had the virtues of being morally right and being legal (insofar as any war can ever be called ‘legal’).

Almost 5,000 American lives were lost in vain, more than a million Iraqis died also, it looks like, in vain. Just a few days in and the Iraqi republic is falling apart like a sand castle in the waves.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

We shattered our army, paupered our economy, destroyed our reputation and drowned our morality in Fallujah, at Abu Graib and with the imperial satrapy of Mr. Bremer in the Green Zone…. and all of it in the Name of Oil.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

At home we threw Habeus Corpus out the window along with Posse Comitatus. We created the Department of Homeland Security: the largest and most comprehensive secret police service since the Stasi. We allowed torture and secret prisons, ‘rendering’ and ‘extreme interrogation’ we regularly submit to x-ray machines and full body searches for internal and external traffic, we’ve created another branch of surveillance and control, the TSA, with almost unlimited powers of control and no accountability. We no longer even require the rubber stamp of security courts post hoc for eavesdropping and now countenance ever more surveillance by any agency for any reason they care to offer, or not.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

Our local police departments have been transformed over the last ten years into militarized heavily armed crowd control shock troops, rent-a-cop security forces casually pepper spray seated protesters – prophylactically. The riffraff are herded into ‘free-speech zones’ where they can howl their fury against the chain-link fences that conjure images of every dictatorship we’ve ever encountered… they may even be able to glimpse the motorcade as it glides serenely by, several blocks away.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

For 500 years the Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean world and for 500 years before that, the Roman Republic fascinated and terrified an ever expanding sphere of influence. What made the Romans so powerful? What made their power so long lasting? What made them fail at the end and fade into history?

Volumes, entire libraries have been written about the Roman Empire. Extensive studies, archeological evidence, contemporary testaments abound and certain themes emerge.

Development of the Roman Model

Development of a permanent, professional standing army – the legions’ training and tactics were far ahead of adversaries (with some notable exceptions).
Development of a network of hard infrastructure – the famous Roman roads and aqueducts
Development of the Rule of Law – Roman jurisprudence was evenly and widely applied

Distribution of Power

Distribution of Power - A militant Republic develops elite classes

o The orders of Roman Knights

o The concentration of money and power

o The ascendance of familial/tribal networks

· Distribution of Power – The Republic becomes The Imperium

o The path to power is through the military

o The means to secure power is through the granary (Egypt)

o The means to preserve power is through Bread and Circuses

Dissolution of Empire

As the power concentrates, the Rule of Law begins to break down
As the money concentrates, the social contract dissipates
The Center Cannot Hold, the Empire melts away

Inter arma enim silent leges.

Even in the drastically abbreviated ‘Rise and Fall’ above it is easy to see parallels to our contemporary situation, or to any empire for that matter. The difference is that, now, we know that we know (‘known knowns’ in Rumsfeldian). We need not follow Santayana’s dictum to destruction.

But we’re in a permanent state of war now: War on Afghanistan, War on Pakistan, War on Terror, War on Drugs…

The total cost, so far, for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is at least $3.2-3.4 trillion. (1)

The river of blood flows on, the river of treasure bleeds on, the river of the spirit continues to hemorrhage.

Never has Yeats been more apropos:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

–William Butler Yeats

The dead cry out for meaning, the living cleve to rotting gods, the worst dance on the grave of our morality.

Stop our several wars, stop our home-grown Monsters of the Id, restore the Rule of Law before it really is, too late. All war is a crime and the first casualties are truth and the Rule of Law.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

Reboot: America 2.0

2011-09-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

It doesn’t help to be right if you can’t make things change. Cassandra was terminally frustrated – I know how she felt. It also doesn’t help to sit in the warm bath of your own self-regard and point fingers at all the bad guys – they’re merrily running off with the silverware and they aren’t looking back.

If the political situation is FUBAR – and it is… and if the economic situation is FUBAR – and it is… then we’re left holding a hand-lettered sign:

Ideologues and fanatics from right and left (mostly right) will gibber and howl, trot out their buzzword propaganda and try to stifle any kind of discussion, much less real debate, about making any change – because they know exactly what that change must be and they’ve convinced themselves that if they can prevent anyone speaking the truth about our situation, they can somehow prevent any change from taking place. In all honesty, they’ve been pretty successful; anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see this train wreck coming decades ago, many did, and said so, and were buried under an avalanche of scorn and derision. See Peter Schiff being laughed at when he accurately predicted the crash here , see the saga of Brooksley Born, read Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini, Black, Galbraith the Younger, remember how Elizabeth Warren went down in flames… this isn’t a recent revelation: read Galbraith the Elder or John Maynard Keynes; this goes way back.

And it’s not that we don’t have latter-day prophets: Chris Hedges sums up the current situation nicely: here or you could read anything recent by Chomsky, or Howard Zinn for that matter. The information is out there and has been out there for quite some time – so why don’t we ‘get’ it?

I think it comes down to three dysfunctional syndromes we exhibit as a nation:

The Not My Problem Syndrome

This is familiar to everyone: you have a job, your wife has a job, little Johnny is on the baseball team, little Susie is taking ballet lessons. The mortgage is under control, the college fund is looking good, you’re two years into the car financing and you’re planning that vacation to Cabo… not you? Me neither, but there are enough elements in that scenario that people can relate to and they don’t really want to know about the neighbors down the street who had to move out last month. Or the guys who seem to be on every street corner with handwritten cardboard signs: “Will work for…” After all, you never hear about this stuff on the news, so it can’t be that bad, can it? Besides, what can I do? I voted for the hopenchange guy, I don’t want people to suffer… but I’ve got my own problems to take care of…

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this guy, he’s just been protected from the reality of his environment and trained to apathy about acting to make things better… and it’s certainly a lot easier to watch ‘Jersey Shore’ or “American Idol’ than to write a letter to your Congressperson or walk a picket line in the ‘free speech zone’.

Until, you get sick and lose the job, or get riffed so the CEO can make his quarterly numbers and collect that fat bonus check, or – any one of a thousand things that throws you on the scrap heap where your neighbors avert their eyes and say to themselves: not my problem.

Those annoying activists, y’know, the ones who keep pestering you to get up and do something? They’re actually on your side – the flacks you hear on the radio and on the TV, telling you that ‘it’s all good’, things are gonna turn around, just be patient. These folks are your enemy, they are lying to you to keep you quiet because there is only one thing they fear: millions of people in the streets, telling them to get out.

The Strongman/Savior Syndrome

No foul on anyone with this one, it goes back about 3 million years: the strongest ape leads tribe because: who’s gonna say ‘No’ to him? We see it all over the place today: starlets who think they’re immune to the police, athletes who have hissy fits when they’re not worshipped, newspaper magnates who think it’s fine to delete the voice mail of child kidnap victims on the chance they can steal the kidnappers’ ransom demands (nothing personal, just business). It’s the basis for all our hierarchies, from priests and kings, warlords and dictators, corporate CEOs and imperial presidents. The nature of the beast, one might say. We run to it when things are bad: got severe problems? Look for the White Knight to solve ‘em. In a terminal jam? Hope for the 7^th cavalry to charge in for the rescue. We constantly look for saviors and gurus to extricate us from our messes. It pretty much hard-wired.

In the political world that means, dictatorships, tyrannies, warlords or, at best, feudalism with all its inefficient chaos and destruction. Democracy doesn’t really come into it. Depressingly, if you look at democratic rebellions throughout history, almost all of them end up with some strongman or other taking charge and trying to build an empire. This isn’t surprising given that rebellions need leaders and leaders are strongmen and strongmen see no reason to relinquish power once the ancien regime has been swept away.

The Boiling Frog Syndrome

The way to cook frogs (or lobsters for that matter) is top put them in a pot of cold water and increase the heat gradually. By the time the water gets hot enough, they’re already cooked. We’re pretty much cooked – it’s taken about 30 years by my count, you may choose an earlier of later start point, but the deed is done: democracy is on its way out in this country.

For a long time I was an advocate for a third (or fourth or fifth) party. I don’t see that any longer as a viable option – the corruption is too far gone, any new party that spontaneously forms will be overwhelmed by money from the outset. Good luck to the Tea Party btw, I don’t agree with their agenda but at this point any effective, disruptive entity is welcome, anything that could help to derail the corporate juggernaut has my support. I just hope they don’t get co-opted by Wall Street too soon – and it’s not looking good.

It’s time to start thinking about what comes after: after the current depression/corporatist coup d’etat now underway, after it becomes clear to everyone that we no longer live in a democracy (or a republic), after we finally wake up and discover that all the money now rests in the hands of the thieves – and no, they’re not giving any of it back.

There will be a time, just before the police start firing on the protestors (in the free speech zones) and the ensuing ‘torches and pitchforks’ riots begin, when it may be possible to institute some structural change. I don’t think this is likely but the protestors in Egypt are trying and I never thought they’d get this far (in all likelihood they will get ground up by the iron fist of the army and it’ll all go to hell under the Muslim Brotherhood).

But if we get the chance, this will be the time to build America: 2.0.

OK, that’s pretty depressing, you say, but what have you got to replace version 1 with? Those were some pretty smart guys and the founding documents they wrote have stood up pretty well for 225 years.

Well, I think we have to start by acknowledging that the America train has gone off the track and needs some drastic reworking to get it back on track.

Unh… OK, so what would that look like?

A Constitutional Convention

To address the systemic problems mentioned above and to make the structural changes that are necessary if we are to move forward as a nation, we’ll need a constitutional convention. This will be hard to do but it is possible if enough people are convinced that it is required.

There are two ways to initiate an Article V convention:
A two thirds majority vote by both houses of Congress
An application for a convention by two thirds of the state legislatures

While convincing two thirds of Congress to vote to create such a convention would doubtless be the faster, more efficient way to do this, it is unlikely that either of these dreadfully corrupt bodies would be able to summon the courage to do so. That leaves the longer, more difficult route of going through state legislatures. One thing is for sure, this is an idea fraught with danger: will corporatists thugs try to take it over? Of course they will. Will avalanches of money be thrown at participants to buy them off? Of course that will happen. But there’s also the intriguing possibility that right wing interested parties will support this idea for their own purposes and that corporate interests will think they can secure their control over us by some well placed bribes to whomever participates in the convention…. In fact they will be certain of this. But if we are forewarned of these dangers we can be prepared to counter them, if we can counter them through preparedness, organization and focus, we may be able to enact…sanity.

If it’s not yet clear if we’ll be able to make a convention happen or how we’ll ensure that we get the changes we need, nut in the meantime there’s still the job of deciding what those changes will be…

The US Constitution was adopted in 1787, just 12 years after James Watt developed the first commercially useful steam engine and just 50 years before Samuel Morse demonstrated his telegraph. There is no doubt that the framers were extraordinary men who deliberately tried to create a blueprint for freedom that would last for the ages. They included the amendment process to keep it updated and they did their best to address the crucial problems of their time: preventing the takeover of a religious theocracy, keeping power out of the hands of a would-be dictator, protecting the individual from the state and the states from the federal government. But… there were some problems they could not resolve, see ‘slavery’ for example and there were other problems they had no way of knowing about: the rise of corporate power, for example. Nor could they have possibly have known anything about the explosion of technology that was just around the corner.

These are now our problems and now may be our opportunity to resolve them. You must have ideas about this, I have some ideas myself – we can start by talking about them… time for a change.

To the Libertarian/Randites - an open letter

2011-09-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written in a long time, I’ve spent the last year or so in reflective mode, trying to see a path that doesn’t just go over old ground: yes, we know Obama is an idiot, we knew it first… so what? The coming campaign for 2012 is, sadly, predictable – unless HRC reconsiders… but even then, we get the benefit of competence, intelligence, leadership… in the context of political corruption even the Gilded Age couldn’t comprehend. The solutions I can see would require an emergence of will and determination in this country that I don’t know if we even possess anymore… I will continue to put out ideas and plans for those who are interested but it’s more in the vein of “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I don’t often get riled anymore, chalk it up to cynicism or burnt out faith in my fellow man. I more or less expect the daily freak show of stupidity and venality that parades across our ‘informational’ display devices these days. Like Captain Renault in ‘Casablanca’ I am faux “Shocked!, Shocked! To find out that there is gambling going on here!”.

But every once in a while, there occurs an act so vile, so venomous, so…evil, that I have to take notice or forfeit my ‘moral superiority’ card.

Such an event took place the other day during the so-called Tea Party debate:

From the Sam Stein article on the debate: here

A bit of a startling moment happened near the end of Monday night’s CNN debate when a hypothetical question was posed to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?” Wolf Blitzer asked.

“Yeah!” several members of the crowd yelled out.

Paul interjected to offer an explanation for how this was, more-or-less, the root choice of a free society. He added that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing.

This is depraved, there is no other word for it.

I feel like the prophet Isaiah - damning the Jews for their acts of injustice and cruelty.

The problem is that the logic of Libertarianism leads, ineluctably, to this position: I am answerable only to myself, I can do anything I choose, regardless of the consequences to others, there is no injustice or cruelty except insofar as it might impact me or anything I choose to do. I have no responsibility whatsoever to any other person on earth and I don't give a damn whether they live or die.
This is why Libertarianism is evil and why anyone who practices it needs to take a long look in the mirror to determine whether they're human any longer.

...but I'm not sure I can say that these days, it’s way too popular to be a monster...

I like Ron Paul, in a ‘motley fool’ kind of way, I like his quips, his iconoclastic stance, his impertinent windmill jousting at the establishment, he’s a lot of fun to watch…

But Ron Paul is a fraud, always has been, because he is forsworn, because he took an oath before he became a Libertarian – the Hippocratic oath, the one that says “First, do no harm.” The one that mandates service to others - that countermands his Libertarian “Me First and Fuck You” creed on the most basic level. He tries to get by that oath, even in his response above, he tries to avoid responsibility by saying “that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing” – so Ron Paul’s logic is: I don’t have to care about anyone because someone else will always clean up the mess. This, then, is the essential tenet of Libertarianism (and its even more evil stepchild: Ayn Randism): I don’t give a shit about you or anyone else and I don’t have to because there’s always some other ‘dumb fuck’ (Mark – Facebook - Zuckerberg’s definition of his customers) who will clean up the mess I create/ignore/leave behind.

Libertarianism and Randisim (they’re just different facets of the same depraved psuedo-philosophy, very similar to the Nazi perversion of Nietzsche) are not about the glorious brightness of the rugged individual making his Galt-like way against the tides of mindless bureaucracy and the envy of the masses of mediocrity.

No.

The truth is that Libertarianism and Randism both are about denial and exclusion, about selfishness and venality, about abandoning responsibility not claiming it, about the vast disconnect with the human race, reducing all others to ciphers (read Camus to see what I mean). In fact, they are the modern banners of the elemental fear of ‘the other’ that limits us, constrains us, separates and devalues us. And a further truth is that they make us weak, not strong, each of us an island, a castle, inviolate and sufficient unto itself – and, oh, such easy prey for the Hitlers, the Maos… ‘monsters from the Id’, indeed.

For the real world impact of Ron Paul’s (and Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, Grover Norquist – the list goes on, but notice they’re all very, very rich) plans for you and me, read this, yes, I know it’s from the Daily Kos, I’m assuming you’re not so stupid as to think they never have a valid point: here

Remembering her brother, Susan from 29 writes:

I had planned to write another separate diary about his journey through what passes for health care in a nation fixated on the profits that that care brings. In a nation where his death was cheered in front of a panel of politicians, none of whom had the decency to object. It is not yet a capital crime in this nation to be uninsured.

And

His buddies came up with the $2000 a proctologist wanted to do an outpatient surgery. But the hospital wanted $20,000 for use of the room for the brief procedure because he was uninsured. Because the pain didn’t matter half as much as the profit.

Those all I’ll quote because you should read her entire essay. So here’s your out: I’m not going to just drop in quotes from this piece, give you the gist and let you slide without getting hurt, I don’t think it would be right, she’s writing from a place of pain I hope never to know – but this is the real world, not the make believe, fantasy, flag-waving bullshit paraded about by your ‘representative’ on the 6 O’clock news. If you have the fortitude to read about something real, perhaps even connect in a tenuous way to the experience of someone other than yourself, read on.

If you’re a Libertarian or a Randite, of course you won’t, because you don’t really give a damn about someone else’s life or experience: after all, there’s nothing in it for you.

Just between us: go to hell.

Language and the Will to Power - Part 1

2010-11-12T13:53:00.000-08:00

I’m bemused by the trend, in recent years, of obfuscating, conflating and downright deliberate abuse of our language – especially our political language. It has left people confused (perhaps intentionally) about some basic terms and that, in turn, has left them confused about the realities of our current social/political/economic situation. This may seem picayune to some, after all harping on the language used to describe events can’t hold a candle to actually dealing with those events, right? Well, not so much; to the extent that we use and abuse language we define or obscure what we’re talking about. This is done in two ways: first by ignorance, people who are not clear about their subject or the definitions of the words they are using are red meat for the propagandists. The second way is by design. This is the special world of propaganda/advertising where the word and the meme are deliberately twisted to serve a commercial and/or political end. As Orwell pointed out, this is an unparalleled tool for establishing and maintaining control of a market or a society. And tyrannies of the left and the right have used it assiduously even a casual look at history will provide numerous examples.

I‘m very concerned with how this is playing out today. Right here and right now the meanings of words are being twisted for public consumption – see anything written by George Lakoff and Frank Luntz for details on this trend. I want to examine the definitions of some political/economic concepts so we can try to determine how the concepts are twisted by the misuse of words and how that relates to the difference between what we’re told is going on to what actually happening in reality.

First, some definitions (I got these from Wikipedia for simplicity’s sake, if you distrust Wikipedia go look them up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, or any other unbiased authority you respect, they’re functionally the same).

Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources. Additional definitions can be found here.

Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). Additional definitions can be found here.

Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. Additional definitions can be found here.

Corporatism is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals. Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body. Additional definitions can be found here.

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit. Additional definitions can be found here.

Right enough, I have some quibbles about these definitions – from my more leftward perspective and I’ll be mentioning some of them – I’m sure many others have rightward quibbles themselves. I’m less concerned with what these definitions say than with what they leave out or ignore altogether.

We throw these words around without examining their roots. We use them as epithets to cudgel our opponents and in doing so, we strip them of their meaning and substitute the buzzword soundbite – useful only as agitprop which stirs anger (with extra foam) and drowns discourse and understanding.

The roots of these definitions lie in our nature as humans and in our innate understanding of the world around us. It comes down to money and power and how we behave around them.

This can’t be a surprise to anyone who looks at the evidence but we generally don’t take the time to examine the structure of the ‘isms’ and ‘acys’, let’s take a quick look at them right now, maybe we can shed some light…

Parsing definitions

Let’s start with Socialism (guaranteed to drive right wingers crazy).

Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

Well, first of all, I think it’s more than a theory. Socialism has been enacted, more or less successfully, by several nation states and other socio-political entities around the world. In fact, despite the frantic efforts of the corporatists/fascists to deny it, the most successful societies in the world today are socialist. I refer to the Scandinavian nations, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland (more about Iceland later). This is only, of course, if you believe that the purpose of society is to provide the best possible standard of living for all of its citizens.

Our own Anglo-Saxon heritage is socialist to the extent that it is based on the concept of ‘the commons’, a community supported grazing field that would support anyone’s cattle or sheep if there were a famine or a flood. More to the point, we have a sterling example of socialist behavior right here in the middle of River City: a public entity that provides cooperative management of the means of production and allocates resources to that end – the Pentagon… think about it for a minute and see if you don’t agree. Or rather see if you aren’t forced to agree…
These things get tricky once you really start thinking about them…
More on this later on…

Moving on to Democracy, the ne plus ultra of American political worship.

Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy).

Very careful language here, almost as if the writers suspected a trap. That’s not surprising as there has been virtually no credible, viable, direct democracy, ever, anywhere.

Think I’m joking? Let’s look at the record:
First, there is not now, nor has there ever been, an ongoing, functioning direct democracy. It’s called a mobocracy or plebiscite democracy and it plain doesn’t work: too easily coerced by demagogues, too easily corrupted by oceans of money (hmmm… that sounds familiar). Even our cherished Athenian democracy wasn’t pure rule of the demos. Eligible voters were restricted to free men who had done their military service to the state. That is: no women, no slaves, no one who was not a veteran, no one who owed money and no one who had property close to the city walls (this last rule was because a contemporary tactic of invaders was to burn the grounds close to the city walls to prevent the inhabitants from reaping the grain and fodder). They forced out the corrupt kings and substituted a set of aristocrats and oligarchs called the Archons. The Archons of course were subject to the same kind of corruption as the kings and this was one of the main reasons why the Athenian democracy was eventually defeated by the outright militarist/fascist Spartans. Even in Solon’s Athens there were great restrictions on democracy but these are minor cavils when placed beside his staggering, revolutionary idea of people ruling themselves. We’ve still not gotten over it.

At best, these days, we have the Parliamentarian system (exemplified by the UK) and the Constitutional Republic system (exemplified by the US). These are both powerful bars to the progress of corruption and decay, if used properly. But their flaws are transparently obvious to everyone - how do we deal with the real problem: the will to power.

Democracy and Socialism, in the context of their stated aims, are very, very close, in power distribution terms. Each claims to want the best possible result for the greatest number of its citizens. Where they diverge is that Socialism avers that it is necessary to control the means of distribution in order to effect a just and fair dispersal. Democracy, being only a political system, has no comment on this issue – it punts.

This is a signal difference and we’ll return to it later on…

Next, there’s fascism:

Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.

This is the most troubling definition for me, mostly because there is so little agreement on what, exactly, fascism is. The definition, above, from Wikipedia is a little incoherent but none of the other definitions I could easily find were any more clear. The best description I remember is that fascism is political system where, the state, under the guidance of a dictator, directs and controls civil and business entities for the benefit of the state. I’m not sure that’s any better but it puts the focus on the dictator, where it belongs.

Everyone knows the shibboleths about this: Mussolini, Hitler, Franco; their mad world conquest fantasies, their horrible xenophobias and persecutions, their genocidal psychopathy. These monsters are only matched in ferocity and depravity by their communist alter egos: Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Actually, the lines kinda get blurred here: it’s difficult to parse the difference between Hitler murdering 6 million jews (and assorted catholics, homosexuals and gypsys) and Pol Pot murdering 2 million Cambodians (about a fifth of all Cambodians), not to speak of Stalin’s murdering of upwards of 30 million Russians or Mao’s staggering murder toll of over 100 million Chinese. Who cares what political name you call them? This leads directly to my larger point later on…

But the direct point here is: fascism is largely dependent on a cult of personality surrounding the dictator. His personality cult (this is pretty much a male party, unless you count Maggie Thatcher as a fascist dictator… hmmm… no… but it was close) drives the entire enterprise, egged on, of course by various (truly evil) businesses and organizations - See the history of Krupp, AG in the 1930s and read “The Family” by Jeff Sharlet.

…and corporatism: here’s where it starts to get fun:

Corporatism is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals. Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body.

A “system of economic, political, or social organization”, that’s quite grand, isn’t it? And “based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals” seems a bit thick, doesn’t it? – almost like the writer didn’t really want you to understand what he’s talking about. The rest of Wikipedia’s definition reads like a classic case of double speak – Orwell would have been proud. Here’s the skinny on corporatism: where fascism has the state at the top of the heap running the corporations as satraps, corporatism has the corporations on top, using the state as the enforcement arm for corporate policy. …and you thought it was just corrupt Washington politicians going every man for himself. Turns out it’s not a chaotic mess at all, someone’s deliberately managing this, can you say: "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," (H/T to Matt Taibbi). Goldman Sachs doesn’t get all the blame, mainly because there are so many, many others eagerly scrimmaging for a place at the groaning board.

Last, as it should be, is capitalism:

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit.

“Capitalism is an economic system” that says it right there. Not a political system nor a social system nor a political ideology, not even a financial system, it doesn’t know or care about countries or constitutions, sees no difference between Senators and gangsters, lawyers and prostitutes, cops and robbers – it’s just an economic system. Capitalism has no business meddling in politics or social systems: it doesn’t know anything about them and it doesn’t care anything about them. The fact that we’ve let fanatical ideologues who neither know nor care anything about our society and political system, manipulate, pervert and control our country in the name of capitalism (AKA ‘free trade”) is a testament to our stupidity and cowardice not their acuity and/or amorality. They never said they had any moral standards and walked the walk; we said we did, and have utterly failed to follow through.

The middle distance point here is that when people make the accusation that Obama is a socialist, they are wrong - by definition. If, for example, Obama had expanded Medicare to Part E (”E” for everyone), then you could legitimately make the charge that he is a socialist. Obama does not do that, he never has, If you look at his record (thin though it is) you will see that, at every opportunity, Obama always, always, comes down on the side of corporations against citizens, large corporations against small ones, corporations against country. Obama is not a socialist - he is a corporatist… no, I won’t say the ‘f’ word, they’d burn me in effigy but given his all-consuming self-absorption it’s not very hard to see him as a dictator (it certainly isn’t very hard for him to see himself that way – in fact I think he already does).

That finishes Part 1 of this exercise. Part 2 will see a dissection of the real world structure of the ‘isms’ and ‘acys’ we defined above. We’ll take a look at how the real world intersects with our pigeonholes and presumptions and how the language we use defines what we see and changes who we are.

The Trial of Geert Wilders

2010-10-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an article at the WSJ this morning, decrying the assault on free speech manifest in the trial of the bigot Geert Wilders. While I loathe Mr. Wilders, he is being railroaded by laws designed specifically to convict him - all for the convenience and propitiation of islamist fanatics determined to take over the Netherlands, it won't work.

The problem of ‘creeping islamification’ has been a growing problem for decades as Ms. Ali correctly points out. The current list of participants in Greet Wilders trial are evidence of the extent to which this trial holds up a mirror to us all. There are several players in this ongoing train wreck: the fanatic Islamists, the misguided multiculturalists, the deeply tainted ‘christian’ european nation states and the globalist corporate capitalists.

The multiculturalists are the easiest target, their ‘rainbows and unicorns’ approach is treated, frankly, to the contempt it deserves from the other parties. Certainly, the Islamists and capitalists have taken full advantage of their cupidity.

The Islamists situation is murkier: after the poor Muslims were imported into Europe to do the work that the Dutch, or Germans or French or English wouldn’t do for those wages (this’ll sound familiar to Americans), there were instantly segregated and marginalized, treated to the European equivalent of ‘Jim Crow’ laws – the multiculturalists have a point here – it can surprise no one that they were easy prey for the radical fanatics. And we say ‘fanatic, ‘radical’, ‘fundamentalist’ in an attempt to differentiate by definition. Islamic cultural divides are as complex as our own and not dissimilar in many ways. Like us (and by ‘us’ I mean the western cultural norm: European and American, judeo-christian-based cultural underpinnings – there’s a hint right there) they have a vast body of very quiet, respectable folks who are not very interested in what their neighbors do or don’t so long as it doesn’t get in their face. There are a few, however, who just can’t stand the fact that other people don’t follow the rules they do, this always breeds trouble.
The opening was made for the Islamic radicals, we should actually call them what they are: World Caliphate Islamists, and the WCI rushed right in. This is analogous to the Christian Nation fundamentalists here in the US being generally acknowledged as the representative of christianity to the world.

Unfortunately, this feeds into, or springs forth from, the judeo-christian heritage of Euro-American western culture. Not a pretty picture, that heritage, from the Council of Nicea on through the aptly-named “Dark Ages” and the infamous Inquisition (see Malleus Malificarum) and the devastating fratricidal wars of the 15th through 18th centuries… the West has no peg upon which to hang its hat of moral superiority.

Which brings us to the instigators of this latest round of religious world war: the capitalists (hobby horse alert). These clever folks have a habit of using whatever ’tools’ they can find for their purpose (profit) then dropping them instantly when a better scheme comes along. So we saw the great capitalists demand and support importing hundreds of thousands of Muslims into more or less stable western European countries, in order to pay them low wages and force the native workforce to either reduce their wages to the same level or go jobless – in the name of competitiveness and efficiency (read: better profits). Immediately upon realizing that they could do even better by exporting the business itself to the low labor-cost countries, they did so… and dumped the immigrants on the slag heap with the rest of the trash. What naturally follows, followed naturally.
At the last, we come to the question implicit in Ms Ali’s letter: what can we (the West) do about it (the WCI).

Well, for one thing, we can do nothing or rather we can slog along n status quo. That will mean more and more effort energy and costs related to combating the guaranteed-to-grow homegrown WCI terrorist agenda. We can be certain they’re not going to stop or even slow down by themselves.

Or, we could make some new laws directed at containment. Not silly press-op laws like banning hajibs (I think it’s a good idea but more of a morale builder, fruitless as a deterrent to the WCI). We could certainly ban sharia law anywhere in any western country, that would help. We could pass laws making fatwahs illegal, subject to instant arrest and prosecution, etc., etc.
But these are all palliative measures, they do not address the underlying problem: the WCI and their sympathizers are out to take over the world and will kill anyone who stands in their way. Not to recognize this is to make a mistake of Chamberlinian proportions… again. The answer is simple, direct and will be very, very hard to do. It has one advantage: it will work.

Any muslim who wishes to remain in any western country is free to do so, with the following conditions:

They must observe local laws and customs, that is,

There will be no sharia law in western muslim communities.
Local laws concerning freedom of speech, such as lampooning of political and religious figures, are sacrosanct.
No fatwahs may be issued by any religious figure, for any reason, against anyone
Citizens are expected to put their rights, responsibilities, duty and loyalty to their country and fellow citizens ahead of their religious obligations.

Abrogation of any of these conditions results in being stripped of citizenship and deported.

The list of conditions may be incomplete but the intent and result of these conditions will be consternation and bitter complaints by the WCI and their adherents. No doubt they and the multiculturalists will take to the streets, numerous obscenities will be hurled very loudly, a few Molotov cocktails will probably be thrown, some cars will be burned and there will be strikes and riots of various kinds and ferocity. But it would be wide for the West to stick to these principles – they’re the only thing that will work.

[Blink!]… [Blink!] Dispatch #2

2010-06-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

As the Gulf oil catastrophe continues to worsen, I've been checking with some sources on this matter:
From Matt Simmons:

…“In my opinion, what most likely happened when one of the largest surges of oil as gas blew out the BOP and within seconds, began melting down one of the world’s most technically advanced deepwater rigs ever built is that just the BOP and wellhead got tossed far away from the well bore but the riser which was attached to the rig floor was separated from the wellhead/BOP.

“What all the black crap coming out to create these plumes are is the oil from the reservoir and it is staying so deep under the ocean surface that only the recent tests by NOAA research vessels finally saw these giant plumes rapidly spreading across the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico.

“BP is in total denial that this could be real.

“It is time for the government to ask BP to step aside and bring the military into to managing this colossal failure of judgment by BP.

“Spread this news as we all need to better understand what is really happening.

“Very tragic story.

“Matt”

and from Mike Ruppert:

The obvious collusion between the USG and the mainstream media leads me to believe that the USG has known that a nuke would be the only option within a week of the explosion. About two weeks ago we posted on this blog a link to a story from (I think it was) The Telegraph saying that President Obama had dispatched a team of nuclear scientists to study the situation and evaluate the possibility of using a nuke. One was a co-inventor of the H-bomb. It was a credible story that no press outlet followed up on. Why not?

I believe that the leaks are devastating for all life in the Gulf and that large portions of the Gulf will be dead zones from seabed to surface within maybe six months. I believe that an announcement of a pending nuclear detonation will come within a week to ten days. I predict that US Continuity of Government provisions will be activated and that FEMA will, before end of summer, be placed in complete control of the Southeast United States… limited martial law.

My original [Blink!]… [Blink!] post seemed a bit far fetched to me at the time but events proved it out. I have heard about the nuclear solution from the start of this debacle but didn't think it would get this far. Now I think Mike R may be right on target. At this point we have to ask ourselves whether we can stand another 2-3 months of an underwater gusher pumping 200,000+ gallons of oil per day into the Gulf and the Caribbean, it may well destroy both bodies of water completely.

It may be that the lesser evil would be to use the big nuclear hammer and just blast the well closed, that was 'Red' Adair's basic solution and I don't see a better one on the horizon.

The World Boole Made

2010-05-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

George Boole (1815-1864) is, in large part, responsible for our current technological society. His studies and discoveries in mathematics and logic were the necessary precursors for the development of computers. Boolean logic is fundamental to computer science and can reasonably be inferred to represent our capacity, as humans, to think rationally, to make evaluative judgments and to choose logically.

Here follows an extremely simplified description of Boolean logic. If you remember this stuff, more power to you, if you’re rusty, this may help warm up your high school math muscles.
Boolean logic deals with logical operations on two items or values (A and B, for example). There are, basically, six types of operations you can do: AND, OR, NAND, NOR, NOT and XOR. The Venn diagrams help to illustrate the operations.

The AND operation – This set is both A and B
I take cream (A) and sugar (B) in my coffee.

The OR operation – This set is either A or B
I take either cream or sugar in my coffee.

The NAND operation – This set is both not A and not B
I do not take cream and do not take sugar in my coffee.

The NOR operation – This set is neither A and B, nor not A and not B
I take neither cream nor sugar in my coffee. (but I might take sweetener and/or soy)

XOR operation – This set is the exclusive difference of A and B
I’ll have either cream or sugar in my coffee, but not both

NOT is self explanatory, I think, and not really relevant to this discussion. As you can see, it is implied in the XOR set.

If you know this stuff does it mean you’re ‘smart’?

Well I’m not really sure what ‘smart’ is and Boolean logic isn’t really that arcane - you use it every day: all the search engines use Boolean algorithms to build their queries. In fact, if you come to really understand Boolean logic you can make your favorite search engine sit up, bark and roll over.

But that’s not the reason I brought it up. Being a technologist, I tend to look for solutions to my puzzles using the tools I’m familiar with. So I was thinking about why it is that people seem to get caught up with (to me) transparent frauds like Reagan and Bush and Obama. There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it and in the end most people just throw up their hands and say “It’s a mystery”.

Well, maybe not so mysterious after all… Several studies have been done in Europe, on the internal effects of religious types of experiences on the brain. The results show that, for some people in the presence of charismatic figures, certain areas of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex) apparently shut down – not surprisingly, these areas are the ones concerned with differentiation and logical constructs. To see abstracts of their findings, go: here and here.

Another part of my nascent theory involves intelligence. Now there’s a word that’s guaranteed to cause trouble. What is it? What’s it good for? Why do we have it and other animals don’t? Why do some of us have it and others don’t?

Intelligence is far too simple a word for all the uses we put it to. Usually it refers to the kind of intellectual activity that shows up well on so-called ‘intelligence tests’. Those who score well add a little swagger to their walk (if they’re complete idiots) those who don’t may be resentful, but I’ve come to believe that there are many kinds of intelligence, going all the way from the Stephen Hawking variety to my cat who treats me fondly even though I’m just a slow, clumsy giant who can’t smell worth a damn and is virtually blind at night.

In the real world, over the past forty years, we’ve seen a succession of charismatic idiots come onto the political scene, one after the other. Each one tries to outdo his predecessor in how much more he can screw up this country. Yes, I’m talking about Reagan, BushII and Obama. I don’t leave out Bill Clinton because I was a Democrat (he did a number of things I was furious about) but because the actions he took on his own generally worked for the betterment of the country while the actions he took under Republican pressure invariably worked against us. How did these mental and moral midgets get elected?

I think there has been a combination of planning and serendipity working for the enslavers. There is now no doubt that key elements of this ongoing train wreck were well thought through and detailed plans were made to be implemented whenever conditions were right. Others have written and spoken about this at length: Naomi Klein, James Galbraith, Simon Johnson, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader, just to name a few. The elitist movement called ‘globalization’ has been revealed as a horrific scheme to plunder the entire planet and recast the population as indentured servants to their own destruction – unions destroyed, national governments suborned and reduced to penury, impossible ’restructuring’ plans designed to subjugate entire populations to corporatist rule while shifting the blame to the very governments that should be protecting their populace.

In current events, Chris Hedges has a revealing piece on the moral cesspool of the “Ubermensch” mentality that permeates our culture. here. James Galbraith recently made this statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee in reference to the serial pillaging of the American economy by ‘free’ market fanatics over the past thirty years. Yesterday, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, incredibly, said “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” Even as it becomes clear that BP lied about the size of the spill: apparently not 2,000 bbl/day as originally stated or even 5,000 bbl/day as they revised upward. More like 25,000 bbl/day, possibly as much as 50,000 bbl/day… and the beat goes on...

How do we deal with these horrors? How can we protect ourselves against these predators? Is there a kind of intelligence that would enable us to navigate in the dystopian world of corporate political savagery? What kind of intelligence would that be? And: can we test for it?
The answer, thanks to Danish researchers and Boolean logic, is: maybe.

There may be a combination of brain dysfunction and an inherent inability to deal with cognition that beguiles and then enslaves what might otherwise be a perfectly normal human. The proclivity to unskeptical belief doesn’t seem to have much to do with any measures of intelligence. I had a dismaying experience, in 2008, of weekly meetings with a team of lawyers, all very accomplished and experienced, people you would normally expect to have a jaundiced view of the world and a fairly cynical opinion of politicians. Yet several of this hard-bitten crew just couldn’t stop gushing about how wonderful Obama was and when presented with evidence of outright lies and fraudulent political actions, they only grew more vociferous in their praise and more hostile to any criticism. My anecdotal evidence echoes the Danish results.
So, here it is: I think we need to abandon our long cherished belief that everyone should have the right to vote. Not everyone is qualified to make decisions about our republic, not everyone should vote.Voting should be an earned privilege, not a right.

We’ve had all kinds of suggestions over the centuries on whether and how to limit enfranchisement. Some of our intellectual powerhouses of the past had long and vigorous discussions about it. Jefferson didn’t want to make the vote available to just anyone, he thought that only landowners were responsible enough to be entrusted with voting – he also thought they were, in general, smarter than the normal run of folks and more likely to have thoughts and values similar to his own. Voting rights were one of the main subjects of the suffrage movement for women in the 1800’s and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. In fact, it’s become anathema to even speak of limiting voting rights. It’s one of those things we don’t want to talk about these days - there seem to be a lot of those kinds of ‘verboten’ subjects.

I think we need to talk about this one. We’ve gotten to the point where we can see the edge of the cliff for this culture: running out of resources, out of control greed, complete co-option of governance by money, the bottom dropping out of any concept of responsibility to one another. How can we put a stop to this slide?
It’ll take many ways and many actions over a maddeningly long timeframe, of course, but one of the things we can do is to start re-thinking our a prioris.

A lot of times these discussions only go over well-trodden ground. Everyone knows the arguments on both sides and, inevitably, we all just circle round and round until we’re exhausted and just drop the discussion. Every once in a while, however, there’s an opening.

The problem with limiting enfranchisement is twofold: why do you want to do it? And how do you do it in a way that everyone can recognize is fair?

Those of us who are ‘of a certain age’ can all recall (mostly apocryphal) stories about blacks being denied the right to vote on various absurd pretexts. Clearly these limits were put on by the Jim Crow south to prevent them from voting because they were black. All of the variants to limiting enfranchisement were vulnerable to the charge that they were just as absurd and were only mask for the intent to prevent the vote for blacks or women or Catholics or Jews or… pick your target. Even intelligence tests are vulnerable to the charge of ‘racial cultural imbalance’.

So what can we do if we’d really like to weed out the ‘sheeple’? And I would like to weed them out, for several reasons: First, they’re way too easy to fool, propagandists like Karl Rove and David Axelrod are detestable human beings but they are very, very smart and they have developed the use of their tools to a razor sharp edge. Their capability to determine election results with defamation, deception and outright lies, is deadly both in its accuracy and in its results. Second, I’m tired of my life being run by ‘sheeple’ (I’m being polite here, I usually call them something else), I imagine many of us are. It’s time to reset the rules.

Now there can be a lot of discussion about the rights of citizens who are denied the vote: why and who decides, is there recourse or remedy? How does this affect their other rights? What’s the relationship to the original tea partiers (“No taxation without representation”).
This is absolutely a discussion we should have, just not here and now – mostly because it’s huge and needs a bigger venue that one article in a blog.
And there can be a whole ‘nother discussion about other kinds of criteria for getting a voting card. How this would redefine our society: do we then have a two-tiered citizenry? What are the rights and obligations of those who fail to get their voting cards? Should they get a break on taxes? What if they’re in the armed forces? Would this lead to another kind of social stratification and discrimination (in the old classist/racist sense)? This also absolutely merits a thorough discussion but not here and now for the reason cited above.
Here I’m want to focus on how and why we can and should devise and use a test that determines your (or my) ability to think clearly and evaluate choices on the basis of reason, logic, horse sense, common sense… whatever you want to call it: just as long as you don’t use “the Force”.

In Boolean terms, everyone does AND and OR, a fewer number are comfortable with the concepts of NAD and NOR but the ones I want to screen for are the ones who ‘get’ XOR. These are the people I want for voters in this society. Everyone else should ‘live long and prosper’ but the XOR people should be setting the rules.

“Well, CDP”, you may say, “Isn’t this just another way of reserving the vote for smart people? Aren’t you just being an elitist?” My answer is that I think it would be great if we reserved the vote for smart people (the alternative seems counterproductive) but the last election shows us that ‘smart’ doesn’t necessarily mean smart. Look at the legions of dunces with degrees who voted for Obama – high IQ numbers and a bunch of letters after your name doesn’t guarantee you can think your way out of a paper bag.

What’s interesting about the XOR test is that it doesn’t purport to measure your potential or put a stamp on your putative relative value. It also doesn’t care whether you’re a liberal, a conservative, a stock broker or a Scientologist. It only tests whether you have discernment, the ability to evaluate the evidence and make a judgment: take this but not that.

The context of the XOR test is important too. We’re talking about politics so we should expect the test to measure deliberative capability in choices made in the political context: think of it as measuring your bullshit detector. And when you think about it: do you really want to share your right to vote with someone who obviously can’t tell a bald-faced lie when they hear one? (I won’t even bother to provide examples, I’m sure you all have plenty)

There is another way of presenting Boolean logic called the “Truth Table” (seriously, I didn’t make this up). Below is the truth table for XOR.

You can see here that p XOR q is only true when one, and only one, of the values is true. This is the kind of thought we should encourage, for example: listening to a candidate’s words and comparing them with past performance. For example: candidate Obama’s ringing words about the need for health care reform, contrasted with his actual record of derailing health care in Illinois. This might have been a clue that he was in the pocket of the insurance companies (he got a letter of praise from the insurance companies for his work in Illinois). Regarding political ads for what they are: propaganda (and therefore almost certainly untrue).

So, what would an XOR Voter Test look like? Well there are some models for a starting point: Situational Judgment Tests (SJT) have been used by many organizations, including the US Army, for decades. Employers often have their HR departments administer this kind of test to determine where prospective employees will best fit in the organization.

These kinds of tests are usually written for the specific situation and I would expect exactly that kind of thought and attention to be applied to a Voter Test. The Voter Test would come in the mail with your primary registration for every election (you get another chance to pass, or fail, at every election). It need not be long, perhaps a dozen questions, all designed to determine that the prospective voter is engaged in the process and has the capability of making a decision based on reason – whether they actually do make a reasoned judgment is another matter. We can’t control anyone’s actual behavior (nor should we want to) but we can do two things: first, make sure that our fellow voters are competent to make a decision and second, weed out the propaganda, i.e., political ads, political money, etc. Dealing with the second problem is another matter for a different discussion, right now, I’m thinking about the first problem.

Let me try to anticipate some objections.

Isn’t this just a disguised ‘intelligence’ test?

No, this type of test doesn’t measure your IQ or aptitude (like an SAT) or your knowledge competency (like a GRE, MCAT or LSAT). It measures your ability to judge a situation (or a candidate) using objective criteria rather than emotional attraction (or repulsion).

This is discrimination and besides, it’s unconstitutional.

Last charge answered first: it’s not unconstitutional. The Constitution only says “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” can’t prevent you from voting (Amendment 15), nor can gender: “on account of sex” (Amendment 19), or unpaid taxes: “by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax” (Amendment 24), or if you are 18 “on account of age” (Amendment 26).

On to ‘discrimination’. This is another loaded word, when people use it they generally intend it to be a euphemism for ‘racist’, but what the word really means is “to note or distinguish as different”.

[Sidebar here: be careful with dictionaries, Webster’s Third International, for example, defines words by their ‘common usage’. When in doubt, go to the OED for the actual meaning]

So, in fact, we do want people to discriminate, to measure, to compare, to test, to doubt, to evaluate. And we really don’t want anyone who can’t do those things to vote. There are a whole lot of people out there voting who aren’t interested in making their vote meaningful – they’re voting a party ticket, or voting for someone who has seniority or voting for the ‘kewl’ guy. Every one of those drone votes, every one of those thoughtless voters, damages you and damages me. They vitiate our ability to change the status quo, they dilute our power.

I want you to be very careful with your vote because your vote affects me – and mine affects you. This is one of the last things we all do together as a community and the oligarchs are doing everything in their power to make it superfluous. The barrages of political advertising that are nothing but lies. The incessant blaring of media hype of the chosen candidate, the absence of coverage of anyone else (or worse, the vitriolic savaging we saw in the Spring of 2008) and the utter vacuum of attention paid to anything that smells like real discussion or thought about actual issues.

They really don’t want you to vote, your apathy is a surrender to their onslaught. And if they can’t prevent you from voting, they want you to go for the cardboard cutout of the moment: the amiable old idiot, the stumbletongued cretin ‘who’d be great to have a beer with’ or the pretty, vacuous HopenChange clown, they don’t care about color or party, ideology or aspiration; if they can keep the electorate stupid and apathetic there’s plenty of money to spare for ensuring that the ‘vote’ goes their way.

Restricting the electorate to those who prove they can think would go a long way to preventing the continuing abuse we see all around and would also be a step towards repairing the damage already caused.

[Blink!]… [Blink!]

2010-05-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

Remember how that annoying light showed up on the dash? The incomprehensible graphic didn’t tell you anything and you had to look it up in the Owner’s Manual? And then the Owner’s Manual said something like: “The frammistat sensor is out of alignment.” ? You then did one of two things: you ignored it and it eventually stopped blinking or you stopped by your local Dashimotu dealer to get it checked out and the service manager said “Good thing you came in, your transmission was about to fall out of the car.”

This is one of those ‘blinky’ moments. Wayne Madsen – who apparently never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like – has published a warning article that claims the BP oil spill is far, far, worse than we’ve been told. I wouldn’t normally give Madsen’s story too much credence but the way the clowns in Washington sequester and manipulate information these days makes me wonder who’s fooling whom.

With that caveat emptor, take a look at Madsen’s article:
Oil Spill

Bo(zo)’s Bright-Unique-Lovey-Loopey-Shiny-Hopey-Ideal-Twinkle plan for NASA

2010-04-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

BO(zo) did a flyover and crapped on NASA at the KSC today on his way to a $30K/plate fundraiser. He’s now hawking his new plan that I’ve dubbed the B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T plan. Note: the original, bulleted, items are all taken from the White House handout.

Lets’ review the new B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T plan, shall we?

• Advances America's commitment to human spaceflight and exploration of the solar system, with a bold new vision and timetable for reaching new frontiers deeper in space.

Standard campaign B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T we've heard this crap from every sleazy politician since JFK (who was the only one who actually meant what he said)

• Increases NASA's budget by $6 billion over 5 years.

Last year’s NASA budget was $18.69 billion. This year’s Pentagon budget is $708.3 billion. $1.2 billion extra per year is nothing, if he were serious about supporting NASA he would have doubled the budget and it still would be a rounding error on the Pentagon's spreadsheet = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Leads to more than 2,500 additional jobs in Florida's Kennedy Space Center area by 2012, as compared to the prior path.

Since they were going to lose 7,000 jobs by 2012, this really means they’ll only lose 4,500 jobs = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Begins major work on building a new heavy lift rocket sooner, with a commitment to decide in 2015 on the specific heavy-lift rocket that will take us deeper into space.

“with a commitment to decide in 2015” – in the last year of his second term in office, he gets to decide… or not = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T and btw, we already have several heavy lift rockets ready to go: the Atlas V, the Delta 4 Heavy, Direct 3 (otherwise known as: using the Shuttle engines we are already using) = more B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Initiates a vigorous new technology development and test program to increase the capabilities and reduce the cost of future exploration activities.

This statement is semantically null = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Launches a steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions to scout locations and demonstrate technologies to increase the safety and capability of future human missions, while also providing scientific dividends.

No specifics, which means he’s just co-opting missions already in the pipeline = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Restructures Constellation and directs NASA to develop the Orion crew capsule effort in order to provide stand-by emergency escape capabilities for the Space Station – thereby reducing our reliance on foreign providers.

Turns Constellation: an escape velocity (25,000mph) crew life support and re-entry system, into a port-a-potty backup LEO system (17,000mph) in case the Russians stop sending up Soyuz capsules to rescue our ISS crews = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Establishes the technological foundation for future crew spacecraft needed for missions beyond low Earth orbit.

Complete and utter crap – he just killed off our “technological foundation for future crew spacecraft needed for missions beyond low Earth orbit”: it was called Constellation = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T “likely beyond 2020” = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
“1- 2 years sooner”. Than what, using the Shuttle? = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Jumpstarts a new commercial space transportation industry to provide safe and efficient crew and cargo transportation to the Space Station, projected to create over 10,000 jobs nationally over the next five years.

All the supposedly ‘new’ commercial space industry companies are already up and running under existing programs, this is just campaign B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Invests in Florida, adding $3 billion more for the Kennedy Space Center to manage – a 60 percent increase.

More campaign B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• Makes strategic investments to develop critical knowledge, technologies, and capabilities to expand long-duration human exploration into deep space in a more efficient and safe manner, thus getting us to more destinations in deep space sooner.

Utter crap, this is all about trying to shift the responsibility onto someone else = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

• And puts the space program on a more ambitious trajectory that pushes the frontiers of innovation to propel us on a new journey of innovation and discovery deeper into space.

Utterer crap = B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

The 2012 campaign has certainly begun. I wrote this to then Senator Obama in 2007. Nothing has changed. Get ready to see Russian and Chinese space stations in the sky cause BO(zo) has just tossed our space program under the bus.

This is what tyranny looks like…

2010-04-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

I remember the day after George W. Bush opened his illegal, immoral, unprovoked war on Iraq – based on nothing but lies – when an email petition came through advocating that we start impeachment proceedings against him. I knew it was a non-starter, politically speaking, but I thought we should, at the very least, let those evil folks know what we thought of them. So I sent the email on to a few ‘friends’ who were a wee bit more to the right than I… and got back blistering responses of the barking mad variety (the word ‘traitor’ was used). Apparently impeachment was only to be used for blow jobs… one guy I’d known for 20 years threatened to call the cops if I ever emailed him again.

I was surprised then and I have the feeling I’m going to be surprised again…

Something happened today that has so far gone unmentioned in the Directorate of Propaganda (otherwise known as the Mass Media): we have today made a giant step down the road to tyranny.

Today Barack Obama issued a worldwide ‘kill or capture’ order on an American citizen. No indictment has been offered, no court has issued an arrest warrant, no officer of the court or the law was consulted, no military tribunal was invoked, JAG was not asked for an opinion, habeus corpus was not involved. The American citizen who is the subject of the ‘kill or capture’ order was investigated by Barack Obama, indicted by Barack Obama, tried by Barack Obama, convicted by Barack Obama and sentenced to death by Barack Obama… all very neatly and legally (the laws were perverted by BushCo for just this purpose and BO(zo) was happy to use them as such).

Note to the Right Wing Wacko Brigade: this is what happens when you allow abysmally stupid perversions of law in the name of ‘please, please protect us from the terrorists’. This is the real world, wackos, some people out there hate us. It’s time for you to grow some balls and stop trading in our rights for your cowardly macho notions of safety.

Note to the Faux Left Wing Sycophant Brigade: Darth Cheney pushed through this legislation in the GWB Thugocracy, but even Dubya, human stain that he is, couldn’t bring himself to use this particular piece of legal excrement. What does that tell you about “The One”?

Because I suspect that neither set of wackos has the mental acuity to think their collective way out of a paper bag, I’ll spell it out for you;

This is not about fighting terrorism.

This is not about whether Anwar al-Awlaki is a bad man (he is)

This is not even about whether Anwar al-Awlaki is a traitor (probably, but Hint: we need a TRIAL to find out)

This is not about protecting the American way of life (actually it is, just not how you’re thinking)

This is about the most fundamental property of Western Civilization: The Rule of Law (this should be animated and the sound should come from a burning bush and knock your socks off).

The Rule of Law means that no one, repeat NO ONE can KILL you without going through due process. YES, this IS about you. It may seem to be about some nameless fool who just doesn’t understand… no, this one really is about you.

This abomination is not about the people you hate, the gays, the rednecks, the furriners, the rightwingnuts, the haters, the racists… it really, really is about you.

For the brain dead among you, here’s how it works: we start out as apes, savages really, and we dance about beating our chests and howling insults at everyone else around us. This of course leads to real fighting and, in the grand scheme of things, the biggest, baddest, nastiest bastard wins. This goes on for a very long time. Eventually, the rest of the tribe gets a bit sick of it and they start casting about for another, any other, solution. Eventually (and you’ll have to go back to your civics classes for this, if you had any) the apes figure out that they have to have a set of rules that applies to EVERYONE or it doesn’t really mean anything.

This is called “The Rule of Law”, it is the basis of western civilization. It means that no man, or woman, can make a decision, all by themselves, about what is right or wrong – they have to refer to the law to decide that. The law being the set of rules everyone in the society agrees on.

Are you beginning to see what I mean? Does the enormity of the crime start to become apparent to you?

Just in case you are confused about it, I will state it for you:

President Obama has just overturned the most fundamental principle of western civilization and of any free society. He has arrogated to himself the right to accuse, try, convict and kill an American citizen without reference to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights without due process or Habeus Corpus or two centuries of ironclad, settled law of the land. …Just because he says so…

I can’t believe I have to say this, but: YOU could be next. Think about it, take your time and think it through (this is actually an insult but you’d have to have read Protector to get it).

In a, now typical, Obama blow job piece the toilet paper formerly known as the New York Times goes all the way back to Gerald Ford to rationalize this deeply criminal act here .

Glen Greenwald has a scathing article with many more details here about this disgrace, writing as one constitutional scholar to another.

So, knowing all this, do you think we should militate for the impeachment of President Obama? Or shall we wait for the next step on the road to dictatorship?

"All that is required for evil to triumph, is for enough good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke

The Honor Roll

2010-03-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

Here's the list of Democratic Representatives who had the courage to vote against this atrocious Health'care' bill:

Every other Democrat should be voted out of office this November.

Smoke signals...

2010-03-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

"Where there's smoke, there's fire." is a cliche but it's true nonetheless... I'm smelling smoke - haven't seen it yet but it's out there.

Charleston International Longshore Association Local 1422 leader Ken Riley:

"You can say “Don’t buy Wal-Mart” all you want, preach it till the cows come home; Wal-Mart’s gonna be boomin’. I can’t say to my neighbor, “Man, don’t shop at Wal-Mart.” He’ll say, “Well, that’s easy for you, Kenny; how much money do you make an hour? I’m only making $7.25.” So how you gonna tell all these poor people, “Don’t shop at Wal-Mart?” You want to get Wal-Mart’s attention? Stop the goods.

We have to get bold. We’re dying, and when you’re dying you explore radical medication because you’ve got noother choice. Maybe the medication will kill you, but the disease will definitely kill you. You have to get to the point where Martin Luther King was on that final night, when he said, “Like any man I would like to live a long life, but it really don’t matter to me now.” He had a vision. We are going to die anyway, so it really don’t matter; we have got to fight now. "

From "When You're Dying You Explore Radical Medication"

By JoAnn Wypijewski http://www.counterpunch.org/

Sounds like Harry Bridges and the IWW, doesn't it?

...smells like wood burning...

Norman Solomon writes in "Zero Public Option + One Mandate = Disaster"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18

"On a political level, the mandate provision is a massive gift to the Republican Party, all set to keep on giving to the right wing for many years. With a highly intrusive requirement that personal funds and government subsidies be paid to private corporations, the law would further empower right-wing populists who want to pose as foes of government "elites" bent on enriching Wall Street.

With this turn of the "healthcare reform" screw, the Democratic Party will be cast -- with strong evidence -- as a powerful tool of corporate America. But the Democrats on Capitol Hill and the organizations eagerly whipping for passage are determined to celebrate the enactment of something called "healthcare reform."

...throw another log on the fire...

The brilliant Chris Cooper writes in "Everybody Knows The Deal Is Rotten"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18-4

"It is not the job of Dennis Kucinich to prop up this disappointing president or the rotten, useless Democratic party. It is not the job of progressive voters to support lame candidates who lie to them and use them because "the other party is worse." It is not the job of the American public to "make a space for the president", to support "incremental improvements" in our wretched situation or to "force the president" to use his alleged giant brain and forceful oratory in pursuit of real and useful and meaningful governance by sending him letters or contributions or by "supporting him" just because he's not George Bush or John McCain.

This country is falling apart. People are dying. Despair is settled upon the land. These clowns are frigging around for no purpose better than the enrichment of Wall Street bankers and Connecticut insurance tycoons.

There has been no change. There is no hope."

...that's definitely smoke...

I'm still working on Part 4 of "Reflections..." which is starting to look like it wants to be a lot bigger and have a different form. But it's beginning to look like the springtime of our discontent around the web.

We're re-playing "Network" (1976)

Max Schumacher's parting rant:

"It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love."

Damn! I miss Paddy Chayevsky... I'm feeling that way about our political 'system'.

Many things that have been dormant through the winter begin to wake in the spring. It may be a rough time but if the rising tide of anger I'm sensing grows...

Stephen Hawking said "In the vicinity of a Black Hole, anything can happen." I think we're close to a Black Hole in politics right now.

...wait, besides the smoke, is that brimstone?

Once again the US ahows its leadership on human rights...

2010-03-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

...oh, wait

India Wants to Give Women 1 / 3 of Legislative Seats
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 9, 2010

Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET

NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for a historic bill that would reserve one-third of legislative seats for women, despite a boycott by socialist lawmakers.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the 186-1 vote a ''historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood.'' The bill now goes to the lower house, where it is likely to pass.
Members greeted the announcement of the voting result by thumping their desks.
The vote came after socialist lawmakers blocked the parliamentary debate on Monday and forced the upper house to adjourn twice on Tuesday. The protesters later boycotted the voting.
The bill to reserve one-third of legislative seats for women -- in national and state parliaments -- has faced strong opposition since it was first proposed more than a decade ago, with many political leaders worried that their male-dominated parties would lose seats.
But socialist lawmakers' objection is that the bill does not go far enough: They would like to see seats reserved for ethnic minorities and people from low castes.
The Bahujan Samaj Party lawmakers, who mainly represent lower castes, participated in the debate but abstained from voting. They were protesting the government's rejection of their demand to reserve seats for women belonging to their community within the government proposal.
On Monday, angry legislators in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, rushed to the chairman's seat as he presided over the session, tore up copies of the bill and tried to grab his microphone.
The bill is expected to be taken up the powerful lower house of parliament for voting next week. It will have to be approved by 15 of India's 28 states before it becomes law.
It is expected to pass since the main opposition parties, including right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and communist groups, already have announced their support for the legislation proposed by the ruling Congress Party.
Arun Jaitley, a top leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said even 63 years after India's independence from British colonialists, women had only 10 percent representation in the powerful lower house of parliament. They make up nearly 50 percent of India's more than 1 billion people.
The proposal is an attempt to correct some of the historical gender disparities in India, where women receive less education than men and are weighed down by illiteracy, poverty and low social status.
The bill would raise the number of female lawmakers in the 545-seat lower house to 181 from the current 59. It would nearly quadruple the number of women in the 250-seat upper house.

What the hell is going on in this country? Why isn't this long settled law? How f***ing far backwards do we have to go before we wake up?

Whoops! I forgot... we're here:

...nevermind.

Reflections in a Dark Room – Part 3

2010-03-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

Obama is not the problem – we are.

I’ve been re-reading the “Anti-Federalist Papers” trying to get a feel for what the FFs were thinking as they gathered in the spring and summer of 1787 to hammer out a constitution. One pleasant surprise is that James Madison, acting as scribe and reporter of the various players, was possessed of a very trenchant wit. His sly observations on the speakers and their opining liven up what might easily have been a lugubrious exercise.

Three things come across, very clearly:

These were men who had thought long and hard about the issues being raised. Many of them warned against exactly the condition of corruption of the body politic we find ourselves in today.
They were men in and of their time. That is, they were aware of history and were glad to take example or make example of historical solutions to the problems besetting them.
By the same token, they were not able to see themselves clearly, in situ, nor were they aware of what was to come. (Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”)

..and fourth, Jefferson was in Paris. A tragedy in my opinion, we would never have had to make the first ten amendments had he been present, for one thing, and I can’t help but think that the Constitution would be a much better document than it already is.
Two things should be taken into account when thinking about this time, these men and the work they wrought.

First, the context of the time. That context comes in several flavors depending on what we’re looking at.

Politics: the French Revolution hadn’t happened yet. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were still blithely coasting along with le Ancien Regime, unaware of the gathering storm. Marat, Danton and Robespierre were just dots on the political horizon, Napoleon was undreamt of.

Economics: The Industrial Revolution in England was just picking up steam [heh, heh!] and the textile mills were beginning Great Britain’s voracious appetite for raw materials which would lead them to found the greatest empire ever known (southern American cotton fields were part of the mix that fueled the American Civil War in the next century).

Legal: American jurisprudence was still based, in large part, on English Common Law. This ancestry was the story of a seesaw class battle (in Marxist terms) between the peasants (now the proletariat) and the Upper classes (in the person of the King). Nowhere in this mix was any consideration of, or thought given to, the corporation.

All of which leads us to my next point:

It was not possible for the framers, given their milieu, to comprehend, much less anticipate, the mind-numbing reach and power that would be amassed by deathless, faceless, amoral, avaricious, irresponsible corporations.

Neither could they have anticipated the nigh-logarithmic advances in science and technology that have occurred over the last 221 years. James Watt had received a patent on his steam engine only 8 years earlier, Morse’s telegraph (the first global internet) was 50 years in the future.
The point is that we have gone into legal/political/moral territory that constitute another dimension insofar as an 18th century viewpoint is concerned, enlightened as they may have been. We may not be their equals but I think we’re at a point where we have no choice but to try.

We need to take this system apart and glue it back together again, with a few improvements. Until recently I thought that a third party (and a 4th and a 5th party) would be enough to upset the duopoly that now exists but the corruption has spread too far and too deep. With the system as it now stands no individual can remain uncorrupted, no new party can be effective against the power now entrenched. Good luck to the Tea Party, btw, I’d love to be proved wrong on this.

What we need now is a reset - a full stop, down tools, wildcat strike, to hell with the bosses and the union reps too kinda reset. The US has run for 221 years on a pretty good set of rules but times change and so does circumstance. The visionaries who created the US Constitution were, frankly, a lot smarter and wiser than anyone I see around today but even they couldn’t anticipate the kinds of changes that have taken place in the intervening two centuries. We face a lot of the same threats they faced then but we also face some they could not have dreamt of. Corporate structures vaster and more powerful than nation-states: accountable to no one. Weapons that threaten life over the entire planet. Forget the weapons: deliberate actions by individuals and groups that threaten life over the entire planet. Crazed religious fanatics, within and without, who would kill every last person on earth who refuses to accept their creed… hmmm, well I guess they were familiar with that one.

Obama is not the problem – we are.

There is a well-trodden path for the kind of political train wreck we’re experiencing: a nation-state with a claim to some kind of democracy representing all or most citizens begins to experience broad-based stress. This can take the form of attack from without by other nation-states, economic difficulties deriving from any of a number of circumstances, internal strife created by opposing ideologies, deliberate sabotage by interested parties, general or specific corruption of internal control agencies by bribery or blackmail. Usually it is a combination of several or all of these ills that eventually breaks the system down. Inevitably, as frustration levels skyrocket, violence breaks out – which is what the saboteurs have been waiting for: some sort of insurrection begins to form and whoever is in control of the military moves in and declares martial law, massacres their enemies, sets up a tinpot dictatorship and goes merrily along their way. Alternately, there is a civil war and the victor declares martial law, massacres their enemies, sets up a tinpot dictatorship and goes merrily along their way. Or there is a general breakdown of society from, say, a biological attack and the nearest military force declares marital law… well, you get the idea.

Think of it, aside from the American revolution, just about every political revolution in the last 200 years has worked out this way: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution (the second one), several of the so-called ‘communist’ revolutions – they all devolved into savage dictatorships unrecognizable even by their most devoted followers. There’s no compelling reason why we won’t head in that direction as well.

How do we avoid this trap of history?

We need to start seriously thinking about convening a constitutional convention.

Article V of the US Constitution:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” [my emphasis]

I know that ‘constitutional conventions’ (CC) sounds almost funny, like we should dress up in periwigs and frock coats, but it’s a legitimate process that we have the right to use. There are, however, some very serious questions to be asked first:

Why propose this path?

Because it’s the only thing left that will forestall the slide into insurrection/dictatorship.

Can we do it?

Maybe, the first option provided by Article V is closed to us, I don’t see any way that Congress would agree to opening a Constitutional Convention when it’s obvious that we mean to deprive them of their money and their power. On the other hand, once you convene an Article V CC, all bets are off. I notice that there several proposals in Congress purporting to deal with the ‘Dred Roberts’ decision – all of them strictly adhering to that single issue. I think they’re (justly) terrified of what would happen if the ‘people’ ever got their hands on this process.

How would we do it?

Go through the state legislatures, there may still be enough uncorrupted folks at that level to see the value and necessity of a CC. Try to do it as a simultaneous effort in all the states so as to vitiate the tons of money that will be thrown against the idea.

How do we keep out the wingnuts – from both wings?

We can’t, they’ll be there in force and will try to co-opt the process for their own ends. This means ‘we’ must be organized to prevent this kind of takeover, especially from the corporate fascists, this is just the kind of opportunity they think they can take advantage of.

How do we keep out the money?

Ah, there’s the rub: the transnats will see this as an opportunity to twist the laws to their own ends and will release a tsunami of money in order to do so.

What’s the real danger here?

Once you open up a CC, it can pretty much do whatever it wants. We could end up with President-for-Life Obama – for real, or a true corporatist/fascist state like the Randites and other nutjobs want. If it gets too wacko some MacArthur wannabe could declare martial law…[see above]. We might actually start the civil war we’re trying to prevent.

So, this could be dangerous, couldn’t it?

Yup. But I think it’s become abundantly clear that we’re going to have to take some kind of risk. If we stick our heads in the sand now, it’s quite likely that we’ll end up with a true corporate/fascist state run by Hank Paulson, Bernie Ebbers, Jeffery Skilling or one of their clones.

What do we want out of a CC?

We want to update the Constitution to deal with 21st century problems.

Howinhell do we do that?

See Part 4

Reflections in a Dark Room – Part 2

2010-02-10T11:20:00.000-08:00

Note: I wrote this before the SOTU and waited to see if I needed to change anything - I didn't

Obama is not the problem – we are.

OK, what does that mean? It means that Obama is just a symptom of whatever the disease is. It means that he was obvious, even elementary, and why did we - as in 'the electorate' fall for it? It means that we have to start looking in the mirror and really seeing what's there... I came across this review of a critically acclaimed TV show and I think it sheds some light:

“Maybe we deserve it for watching in the first place. Or maybe this is the price those of us who can't chuckle at absolutely everything under the sun will be forced to pay, over and over again in this spectacle-driven nightmare culture, for still having some shred of humanity deep inside us.” -Heather Havrilesky writing about the “Dexter” finale in Salon

“spectacle-driven nightmare culture” is an accurate description, I think, an old friend calls it “modern bread and circuses”. I keep thinking of Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.”

“Buy Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, buy Rinso Blue…” [and so on for the full 30 second TV spot]... and watch Rinso Blue sales skyrocket while all the smugly oblivious tell each other that they’re not affected by those TV ads – hmmm, I wonder if it would work in politics…
Another vapid, content-free cinema extravaganza by James Cameron goes over the $1 billion mark in sales – in two weeks - guaranteeing yet another decade of valueless drivel from Hollywood, all with happy endings (the focus groups say it adds at least $50 million to the bottom line).

Meanwhile...

The ranks of the homeless swell, the poor remain unfed, the ill remain untreated, the unemployed are reduced to begging and yet our several wars go merrily on their way: one useless quagmire, propping up a staggeringly corrupt kleptocracy is winding down just as another is ramping up and of course, after we’ve poured out blood and treasure in an doomed attempt to create a nation-state out of a tribal culture by force majeur in Afghanistan, why we’ll have Pakistan just ripe for yet another American Expeditionary Force.

I’d have a lot more faith in us if we stopped thinking that the Marines are the same thing as the Army Corps of Engineers or Medecins sans Frontiers, but I digress…

The unholy confluence of thirty years of gigantic political lies (supply side “economics”), political sabotage (Ken Starr and the persecution of the Clintons as only one example) and sheer, unadulterated political cowardice (“Impeachment is off the table”) combined with the monstrous entrance of advertising techniques (and amorality) into politics (thank you Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, David Axelrod) has all combined to produce a spineless, feckless, deliberately ill- and under-informed, gullible ‘electorate’ who can be led contentedly down the garden path and blatantly lied to with absolute impunity, (see David Axelrod’s recent remarks on the North Carolina primary: “Yeah, we were behind in the polls so we decided to call Clinton a racist and that did it.” – yes, I’m paraphrasing but he admitted it.

Obama is not the problem – we are.

We now live in a vapid culture of overarching ignorance, obsessed with the ‘now’. We blithely ignore the past (see Santayana).

I’m being bludgeoned into incredulity by the superimposed banality of contemporary life. I was reading, the other day, about the Boskops, a race of hominids whose remains were found in South Africa in the early part of the 20th century. This was a race, very closely related to us (about as close as we are to Chimpanzees) but whose brains were about 25-33% larger than ours especially in the cerebellum (where cognitive thinking occurs). These folks would be geniuses in relation to us and would have probably played a major role in the development of civilization. Incidentally, they appear to have had very child-like faces, 1/5th of the head frontal area vs 1/3rd for Homo Sapiens – much like the non-threatening aliens of sci-fi lore. We don’t know what wiped them out: disease, ecological disaster, attacks by Homo Sapiens… I’m thinking evolution really jumped the shark when the Boskops died out because Homo Sap apparently can’t think its way out of a paper bag.

This isn’t just an oldguy rant (that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it). It’s another attempt to generate a wakeup call to me/we/you/us, before they just cancel elections as irrelevant foregone conclusions, before they kill the internet and free, broadcast TV - that campaign has already started, didja know? Mind you, I wouldn’t be mad about that if they canceled all TV: as an information tool, it’s next to useless; as a propaganda delivery system it’s frighteningly effective.

We just had a primary and an election where massive cheating and illegal campaign tactics by the ‘winning’ candidate (both in delegate counts and in huge duplicitous campaign contributions), race baiting and palpable, outright lies were used to install an obviously incompetent candidate as president. Obama thugs and bully-boys – the same ones were seen in five separate states - threatening and intimidating caucus goers into voting for Obama. Women in the North Carolina primary wept because they wanted Hillary but they were pressured by friends, family and the entire black community into voting for Obama because he is black. The ‘intelligentsia’ of college faculty and ‘lefty intellectuals’ became instant sycophants because he is black and the masses of slackerclones woke momentarily from their fever dreams in mom’s basement (where the parents are the problem), to vote for him because: “he’s cool kewl!”. $200 million flowed into the Obama campaign coffers in the middle of September 2008 (when it looked like he would lose to McCain) does anyone really believe this money came from little Suzie's cookie jar? Really?

We’ve accepted so much that we should have resisted with blood in the streets: “free speech zones” - blocks away from the parade, behind chain link fences topped with concertina razor wire. Congressmen and Senators whose corporate sponsorship should be tattooed on their foreheads, awash in money and privilege telling us that the only thing we can hope for is that your government will now force you to pay a private insurance company for a policy that has no value whatsoever. Regulatory agencies that will “go to the mattresses” to prevent any corporate regulation whatsoever. Corporate propaganda channels masquerading as ‘news’ programs pouring pre-digested pablum down our throats and calling it information.

Obama is not the problem – we are.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it!” you say, so what's your point? What are you/us supposed to do about it?

Stay tuned for Part 3

Obama Revealed!

2010-01-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

The intrepid sleuths at "The Heraclitan Fire" have made a truly astonishing find (dumpster-diving outside the offices of a well known image manipulation and PR firm). An unfinished document which answers many questions we have all had about Obama and offers a peek into the inner operations of the Obama 'operation...'

...at last the truth comes out!

Reflections in a Dark Room - Part 1

2010-01-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

Charles Addams once drew a wonderful cartoon showing a hall with facing mirrors, a man is looking into the mirrors with an astonished look on his face because far, far down the infinite regression of mirrors… someone is peeking back. These days I’m not sure which one I am.

The American Psychiatric Association’s definitive handbook, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, Text Revision”, best known as the DSM-IV-TR says this:

Individuals with this Cluster B Personality Disorder in their actions regularly disregard and violate the rights of others. These behaviors may be aggressive or destructive and may involve breaking laws or rules, deceit or theft.

Diagnostic criteria for 301.7 Antisocial Personality Disorder

There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest

(2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure

(3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead

(4) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults

(5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others

(6) consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations

(7) lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

Diagnostic criteria for 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

If you think I mean to apply these attributes to Obama, you’re right. I’ve consistently referred to him as a “narcissistic, sociopathic sock puppet”. Apparently I’m out of fashion amongst the psychologically-correct, it seems he’s a “narcissistic, antisocial sock puppet” nowadays… mine sounds better and I’m going to keep on taking literary license and use it.

I and many others (especially at NoQuarter) have made something of a second career out of lambasting, deriding and skewering Obama about his lack of affect, his self-reverential sermonizing, his cowardly self-glorification, his tendency to treat his ‘friends’ like used condoms once he’s gotten whatever he wanted from them and his baseline con-man mendacity.

Feels good to be right when everyone else was wrong, doesn’t it? It’s nice to see the new respect in your friends’ eyes and hear it in their voices, tacit acknowledgement that they know they were wrong and you were right. It’s good when people come up to you shaking their heads and saying: “Man, you called it!”

Not getting those righteous kudos? those apologies for not listening to you? those accolades to your perceptive good judgment? …yeah, me neither…

In fact a curious phenomenon has shown up. I keep getting into mini-confrontations with people who were committed Obamabots all through last year’s political fracas.
These confrontations frequently take the form of a continuing debate, as though the other person were responding to an accusation or criticism they think I made about Obama. It’s like they’re having an internal debate with ‘me’ and, having scripted ‘my’ lines for me, they are now answering the script. I’m not instigating these rants or encouraging them, they are sui generis but it’s been enlightening and, in a small way, reflects what I see going on in the larger political and cultural world.

All this fall there has been a steady stream of bewildered, shell-shocked media flacks and so-called ‘netroots’ types wandering in out of the wilderness with stricken looks on their faces, trying to reconcile their messiah fantasy with ugly reality.

Some of them (very, very few) now get it – they understand that they were made fools of by a cynical machine politician – yes, I know, that really isn’t ‘getting’ it but it’s as close to reality as they’re ever going to manage.

Some of them are saddened that, in this day and age, even the greatest of men cannot strike the fetters of our bondage to the past - whatever that means.
Some of them ‘see’ that the entrenched opposition is implacable in its determination destroy ‘the work’ and prevent Obama from attaining the goals he spoke of so eloquently for us, do you remember the speech where he… [blah, blah ,blah]

Many times this takes the form of the ‘reverse rant’: they’ll pick a current topic, like Sarah Palin’s book tour, and start off with a spittle-flecked indictment of SP’s stupidity, incompetence, mendacity, etc., etc. and then segue into a sequential cri du Coeur about Obama’s failure to do “X” or “Y” ending with a blame-a-thon that begins with vast conspiracies and usually narrows down to ‘right wingnuts” or ‘redneck racists’ or both, with the subtext that I must be one of them because I thought that Obama was an incompetent sociopath with fascist tendencies back in 2007 and said so.

A lot of them can’t do it, they were so ‘in the tank’ for Obama that they will cast about for anyone, anyone, else to blame, I saw an impromptu panel on ‘Morning Joe’ (Dec.31, 2009) including: Tom Brokaw, Donny Deutsch, Harold Ford, Jr., David Gregory, Arianna Huffington, Norah O'Donnell, Jon Meacham and Tweety. All these worthies came to the sage conclusion that ‘white racism’ was responsible for Obama’s problems.
White racism apparently gave all our money to the banksters, reinvigorated the Afghan war, forced us to create a health-’care’ bill without the ‘care’ part and has been running a bowing and scraping “America Apologizes’ tour all over the globe. ‘White racists’ also, it seems, determined that the terrorist defense network did/did not work, that we will/will not close Gitmo, can/cannot wind down the Afghan war, will/will not limit bankster bonuses. ‘White racists’ demanded that Nebraska be exempt from Medicare payments, that women be exempted from Medicare (or any other ‘-care’) benefits, that LBGT folks are second class citizens after all.

Pretty powerful, these ‘white racists’…excuse me: the ‘bitter people, clinging to their guns and religion’, have to get my euphemisms straight.

The thing is: a year on, Obama is a known quantity. For good or for ill he has defined himself by his actions (and inactions) in his first year in power. No one, now, can claim ignorance or hide from the truth.

The fact that we knew it a long time ago and shouted it from the rooftops doesn’t change the ugly reality that he’s firmly in power now. Which brings us face to face with the larger question: what’s the problem?

The answer is: Obama is not the problem – we are.

More in Part 2

An Eloquent Voice Raised

2009-12-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

A friend sent this copy of a letter she wrote to her Senator. I think it eloquently lays out a key argument against this atrocious health "care" bill.

Dear Senator _____,

Thank you for voting against the Nelson-Hatch Amendment. I appreciate hearing from you. More needs to be done.

In regard to federal funding of abortion: Please do not buy into “current law” propaganda, and please do not embarrass yourself by selling it. The so-called current law is far from settled law. Social conservatives have worked tirelessly and invested heavily to re-label and sustain the perception that this crazed sexist disconnect passes for evenhandedness and moral rectitude.

What good is the right to reproductive care if there is no way to access it? Access to abortion is a federally guaranteed right. It follows that federal funding for abortion coverage should also be legal. Preserving a right without providing a vehicle for implementation of that right is schizophrenic. Requiring women, especially economically disadvantaged women, to purchase private insurance (that they obviously can’t afford) for abortion coverage establishes an uneven and unjust baseline. The Mikulski Amendment is in the same disquieting class, since the MA has been fitted to the insurance industry, not to the rights of women. Shame on her, by the way, for offering tidbits and for not going further.

When you write that the Senate bill “strikes the right balance” in regard to reproductive care, you echo the reactionary (and disgusting) statement made by the President, for whom upsetting the “status quo” would apparently be a really bad thing. His words not mine.

The President’s status quo, a.k.a. current law, includes the following privative measures: The Hyde Amendment, conscience clauses, and the Bush appointed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, all of which should be abrogated or dissolved. The President, with a nod to the Medieval Era, has said that he is “a believer in conscience clauses”, which he thinks should be “robust”. It’s one of the opinions he shares with the former Grand Inquisitor in Rome, Pope Benedict #16. I wish I were exaggerating, but sadly, according to his own statements, I’m not.

Here’s the 21st century view: Those who formulate or defend federal approbation of gender victimage contravene and circumvent a woman’s rights under the law. Make no mistake, they are wrong, unquestionably, and they should be defeated, unquestionably. The “status quo” is exploitative, anti-science and anti-woman. It is not possible for you, or any other well-intentioned person, to strike a rational, i.e. right, or ethical balance with people who are motivated by gender-bias, superstition, and fear. Why are Congressional Democrats letting the gynophobes win?

This is the time for Democrats to prove that reproductive issues, indeed all gender issues, mean more than electioneering slogans and political expediency. Universal, equal access must become – must be made to become – intrinsic to the healthcare items now under consideration in the Senate. It is vastly more important for you to do this for us, your constituency, than it is for you to please the feckless ephebe in the White House.

It is time to reverse the “current” stigmatizing of women’s health care needs. Health care reform is the perfect venue to bring abortion funding into full compliance with settled law. This is the moment to act.

A bone to pick with Charles Krauthammer

2009-12-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

I have a bone to pick with Charles Krauthammer – especially with his most recent article for the Washington Post “The Environmental Shakedown”.

First off I should say that I like Charles Krauthammer, I like his intelligence and his acerbic wit, I like his refusal to suffer fools, I like the way he uses language. I like him to the point where I sometimes forget that he’s an ideologue.

Fortunately, he can’t help himself and, from time to time, he reminds me of his ideological blinders. Take his latest article: “The Environmental Shakedown” where he attempts to cast the Copenhagen climate “summit” as an attempted shakedown of the rich countries by the Third World:

“One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.”

He then engages in classic conspiracy theory to conflate the BO(zo) administration’s EPA announcement into a vast hippie conspiracy to, well… reduce global carbon emissions

“On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health.”

And he goes on further to cast the entire collections of events as a left wing power grab of unprecedented proportions.

“Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.”

Aside from its unintended humor, his article is very revealing both by what it does not say and by its very wording. What Mr. Krauthammer desperately wants to avoid dealing with is what he finally mentions in as a boogeyman negative:

“Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.”

Well, yes, that’s exactly where we must go: “all cap, no trade”. Trade is just that – pushing carbon around from one place to another, what we need to do is stop pushing carbon out at all.

The other aspect of his article that apparently got through proofreading is the inherent assumption that those grubby little “Third World kleptocracies” are robbing the “hard-working citizens” of their rightful rewards.

”In the name of equality -- wealth redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s).”

This is filled with unintended humor but the glaring omission is that Mr. Krauthammer doesn’t seem to know where or how the “democracies” got hold of all this wealth. Think of it: the entire history of the plundering of the third world by the industrialized West (ongoing today even as we speak)… disappeared and the concept of compensatory relief reduced to a “heist” perpetrated by the “Third World kleptocracies” on the poor rich countries.

Shame on you Mr. Krauthammer, not because you dislike the third world, nor because you defend capitalism. Shame on you for the mendacity and disingenuousness of this article. I’m used to better intellectual honesty from you but I guess that’s what happens when ideology trumps intelligence.

Truth and Consequences

2009-10-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have been accused by some of my more radical colleagues, of being a ‘moral relativist’ ( trust me, they’re using the term pejoratively). Like most things in life that’s both right and wrong: some things are relative to time and circumstance, others are pretty much set in stone so far as I’m concerned. In philosophical tradition I come from the line of Heraclitus, Socrates, Spinoza, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche. Moral relativism is more subtle, more nuanced, more open, more transparent – and a much more difficult space to keep your head on straight, after all, in the end, Sartre was just a selfish prick.

That said, there must be consequences for our actions or the foundation of any society disappears. It’s always been a black amusement to me that the neocon Republicans have blown so hard for so long about ‘personal responsibility’ and yet have managed to evade any such responsibility for any of their actions.

In a bleakly funny offering that illustrates my point, a recent Frontline episode aired on PBS, called “The Warning” here . This program went over the career of Brooksley Born, especially her time in the Clinton administration heading the agency principally responsible for overseeing the derivatives market. Everyone should see this as part of a belated course in contemporary history. Disregard the sententious ‘approaching doom’ tone and you will be amazed by the breathtaking stupidity, arrogance and sheer brazenness of the neocon agenda, even then. The highlight ( or perhaps lowlight) of the hour was the interview snippet of Ayn Rand blatantly spewing forth her astonishingly idiotic credo: “Completely unfettered laissez faire capitalism, ungoverned, unregulated in any way.” (I paraphrase here, I don’t remember the exact quote). How anyone with two brain cells to rub together could swallow this crap is beyond me, and yet, as Frontline alludes, this corrupt, corrosive creed has been the underlying philosophy of almost every significant economic regulator, policy maker and advisor in our country for almost three decades now. No wonder we’re in the toilet. The show goes on to explicate, step by step, how a quietly brilliant lawyer/economist (Born), who absolutely identified the danger, knew it for what it was and devised a real-world solution for the problem; was excoriated, ostracized, hysterically attacked and quite literally forced out of her office. The chilling part of this all is that the very people who did this to her are the selfsame people who created the economic debacle we are now experiencing and who, unbelievably, are now in charge of fixing it.

In an unintended coincidence (I’m pretty sure) Turner Classic Movies recently aired a wonderful old chestnut: “Gabriel Over the White House” . Released in 1933 – just after FDR’s 1st inauguration, the movie plot revolves around a corrupt political hack being elected President, having an accident and waking from his coma with the Archangel Gabriel looking over his shoulder (and writing his speeches). Walter Huston chews the scenery with relish as the hapless President Judd Hammond. The movie joyously descends into a fascist dictatorship, falling, nay – leaping - over the cliff as President Hammond/Archangel Gabriel successively: creates an ‘Army of the Unemployed’, foils a plot by the Vice President to depose him, has impeachment proceedings begun against him, dissolves Congress, declares martial law and threatens the world with destruction unless world leaders accede to his demands to disarm.

The point the movie makes, without meaning to, is that the distance between democracy and dictatorship is very small, oh, so easy to cross and apparent only in the rear view mirror. The point the Frontline piece makes is that there is a history to the Great Recession, a set of causal actions that can be identified, now, and evaluated …and, there are people, who can be identified, who very deliberately made this happen.

There is another facet to this: I call it The Great Conflation. You’ve probably heard this before but it bears repeating: Capitalism and Democracy are blood enemies. Capitalists hate democracy and will do everything they can to destroy it. Like the Terminator: they don’t feel pain, or pity or remorse and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until democracy is dead (this is where the Moral Relativist stuff comes in). Where we, as a democracy, make our mistake is that we think of Capitalism as just an economic infrastructure and subject to our democratic rule of law. This kind of thinking is muddled and foolish and it is, in large part, why we are in the fix we are in. Capitalism certainly is an economic infrastructure but integral and inherent to capitalism is its power structure: pure feudalism. Hierarchical, decentralized, dependent upon reciprocal agreements between competing nobility and warrior classes; all characterized by two overarching principles: “Might makes right” and “The ends justifies the means”.

There is nothing wrong with this in the context of the Marketplace – you can be as Darwinian as you want with each other, I don’t really care, but… there’s an interface between the Marketplace and the rest of the world (just for the sake of the argument let’s call that the “Commons”). The Commons represents the mundane working of the world: family, community, food production, kids, shelter, etc. and the Commons, at its best, is run by the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law is, essentially, a commonly arrived at recognition of boundaries, in Lenny Bruce’s classic reduction: “We agree to eat in Area A, crap in Area B and sleep in Area C”. The Commons doesn’t really give damn about the Marketplace, the problem is that the Marketplace doesn’t recognize any boundaries so it’s constantly leaking over everything and everyone else… crapping in Area C.

There is and must be a response to this state of affairs (here’s where the Moral Absolutist stuff comes in). We have to recognize the external reality of our world and figure out a way to deal with that reality.

Actually, we already know how to deal with the problem – we just don’t want to do it because it involves an unpleasant recognition of the nature of power. It’s one of our weaknesses and the capitalists count on it: we don’t want confrontation and we don’t want to use force. The reality is that we must set the boundaries for the Marketplace because the Marketplace will never do it. We must vigilantly protect our Commons from the never-ending attack of Capitalism on the foundations of our society.
How do we fix this?, you may ask. Well, curiously, we already have all the tools we need to do so and we also have a convenient list of the perpetrators of the crimes wrought against our Commons.

I’ve written about this before here
But here’s the relevant part for our purposes:

1. Bring back Glass-Steagall. Let banks be banks, not financial supermarkets.

2. Clean up the derivatives market, derivatives should be tightly defined and closely controlled.

3. Enforce all extant anti-trust laws, enact new anti-trust laws to deal with the legal end runs developed since Teddy Roosevelt's day - break up the media and banking conglomerates.

4. Mandate position limits in all commodities markets and force immediate disclosure of all positions over 5% in any market.

5. Put into immediate effect strict restrictions on naked short selling and price manipulation.

6. Institute reinstatement of the 'uptick rule'. This rule requires that every short sale transaction be entered at a price that is higher than the price of the previous trade.

7. Prohibit regulated banks from engaging in any speculative markets either for themselves or as agents.

8. Reinstate usury laws and set up oversight and strict regulation of all interstate financial transactions at the national level.

9. Make the bad paper good: go back two years and guarantee all home loans.

10. Eliminate ARMs. All banks must hold all loans they make (ten years or longer) for at least ten years.

11. Reinstate 1932 tax rates, eliminate loopholes.

12. Corporations with headquarters outside the US cannot get US government contracts.

The first eight are pretty much the steps you take if you actually want to get the markets under control again.

Nine and ten are simple ways to redress the balance in the home loan arena and at a far less cost than TARPs I & II. And please don’t talk to me about those evil people who ‘forced’ the poor lenders into giving them loans when they had no ability to pay – I’ll listen to those expressions of outrage when the Guild of Thieves has given back all the obscene profits they made off those loans.

Eleven deals with the ‘redistribution of the wealth’ issue. The tax rate on incomes of $1 million or more in 1932 was: 63%. Y’know how the right wingnuts always get hysterical about this? They keep saying “Soak the rich and they’ll stop producing jobs!”. What a crock! Let me tell you something about rich people: they’re like gerbils in a running wheel - you take away their money, they’ll just go out and make more, it’s what they love, it’s what they do. You couldn’t stop them with a herd of bulldozers. Go look up what percentage of US wealth is held by the richest 5% of US citizens, then go look up those statistics for 1980 when Ronald Reagan started taking care of his friends. If you still want to talk about this, I’ll be here.

Twelve addresses (in a very minor way) the responsibility I feel that corporations owe to the country that made them possible. Halliburton – want to move your HQ to Dubai to avoid paying US corporate taxes? No problem: no more US government contracts for you – have a nice life!

And we have the cast of perpetrators, courtesy of Frontline and some other investigations:

For example: Bill Moyers’ interview with Simon Johnson about what happened in Sept 15, 2008. here

And Mike Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone “Inside The Great American Bubble Machine”, here

The cast of characters is large, long and ancient. The clash of civilizations is ongoing. This isn’t really a conspiracy only because it’s both too large and too old. What it is, is an undeclared war, made more deadly by the fact that only one side knows it’s at war.

We know the names of some of our contemporary enemies, they’ve masqueraded quite successfully as our economic and political advisors for decades now.

Alan Greenspan
Newt Gingrich
Ronald Reagan
Larry Summers
Tim Geithner
Phil Gramm
Grover Norquist

These are just a few of the men who have successfully sabotaged our society. Some may have been dupes – I have trouble believing that Reagan was anything other than a ‘useful fool’. Others are, in my opinion, traitors to our country and should be arrested, jailed, tried and, when found guilty, shot.

So long as we fail to understand that we are in a war, fail to understand who our enemies are – they will prevail, and we will continue to suffer the kind of economic debacle we are undergoing right now.

The larger truth here is about consequences or the lack thereof. We see an ongoing parade of liars, hacks, thieves, swindlers and conmen go by in perpwalk mode. None of them gets more than a slap on the wrist. So far as we can tell by example – there are no consequences for bad action. No one ever gets punished so no one even cares about taking responsibility. This is where Moral Relativism hits the wall. We cosset, enable and forgive our celebrities over and over again until they lose the concept of being responsible for their actions. Now they just shrug and go to the next party. Worse, we celebrate and even adulate individuals who are transparently unworthy of the praise they engender. In a sense they are not guilty because no one has ever told them “No.”

The Moral Absolutists have the point here: we need to set boundaries, make clear rules and enforce punishment for transgressors. Impartially, justly and consistently – that’s our job as the Commons.

The point to remember about taking responsibility is that’s it’s not enough to say the words or even to genuinely express your sorrow for the actions that hurt your victims. You must take recompensatory action and you must atone for your transgression. This means you must find a way to make your victims whole again in some measure, restitution if theft is involved, other remedies for other harms. You must also atone, that is: perform some meaningful action or actions that demonstrates your understanding of the harm you have caused and your willingness to redress the balance. This is where jail time and death are involved.

In some societies, such as Rome and ‘modern’ Japan, the sense of shame over acts inimical to the Commons can be strong enough to result in suicide – this is accepted as proper atonement for some extreme acts. We used to have a similar sense of shame: individuals who had committed crimes thought to be ‘beyond the pale’ were left in a room with a loaded gun and encouraged to ‘do the right thing’, often they did.
I’m not suggesting that we arbitrarily impose death sentences on the Capitalist crowd for their antisocial behavior (although I wouldn’t automatically rule it out either) but I am saying that we need to identify these threats for what they are, clearly draw the lines for them and say: “At your peril, go no further.”

Healthcare letter: for viral distribution

2009-08-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

I've written a sample letter I'm hoping to get out to as many people as possible. This is the last week of the Congressional recess and your Senators and Representatives may think they can relax. We need to keep the pressure on to make them painfully aware that we - their constituents - are mightily pissed off about this and that we don't buy the BS coming out of the White House. I urge everyone to use this sample letter and send a copy to your Representative and to your two Senators. Then send a copy of the letter to everyone you know locally and to everyone you know in any other Congressional districts and states. Perhaps we can get this going virally and deluge the politicians with letters from the very people who elect them. Maybe we'll even get their attention.

Dear (insert Rep or Sen name):

I am a constituent, writing to you about the ‘healthcare’ issue. I use quotes because it is apparent that this is not at all about healthcare but about ensuring insurance company profits for the foreseeable future.

I am adamantly against any ‘healthcare’ legislation at this time, for two reasons: first, the ‘healthcare’ proposals, in any of the five versions of the bill that I have seen, are dedicated to preserving the status quo; which means they are not solutions at all. Second, if this sham proposal goes through it will destroy any chance for true reform, i.e., single payer, for at least one generation, probably two.

I say ‘single payer’ because that is the only way we are ever going to get true healthcare reform – private healthcare insurance has to go. Until we can face that simple fact we will not get healthcare costs under control, ever.

I say ‘we’ but of course I mean you as my Representative or Senator. You are responsible for getting us out of this mess and please don’t talk to me about ‘public options’ or ‘healthcare co-ops’ these are ridiculous red herrings and you know it. There is only one way to contain and control healthcare in this country: single payer. Every other modern country in the world has single payer in one form or another: they all work much better than ours and cost half as much to run.

There is a reason they cost that much less to run, here are the numbers from the 2008 annual reports of the top four private health insurers:

United Health Group 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K
Revenues $81,186,000,000.00
Medical Costs $60,359,000,000.00
Remainder $20,827,000,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Revenue: 25.6%

Wellpoint 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K
Premiums $61,679,200,000.00
Benefit expense $47,742,400,000.00
Remainder $13,936,800,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Premiums: 22.6%

Aetna Inc PA 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K
Revenues $28,775,000,000.00
Medical Costs $20,785,000,000.00
Remainder $7,990,000,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Revenue: 27.7%

Humana 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K

Revenues $28,064,844,000.00
Benefit Expenses $23,708,233,000.00
Remainder $4,356,611,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Revenue: 15.5%

These numbers, proof of the obscenely high profit margins of private insurers, should help you in your argument against this atrociously bad legislation. It may help stiffen your resolve to remember that these profits are made on the suffering of your constituents.

In the legal world there is a phrase used to affix responsibility for actions or failure to act, it is: “Knew or should have known”.

Now that you have the above information, you can no longer claim ignorance, you are responsible.

Please know, also, that we will hold you accountable. This is a defining moment for you as my Representative or Senator. No previous good works will sway me if you fail to represent my interest in this matter – unless you vote against this preternaturally bad legislation, I will vote against you in your next election. Furthermore, I will make every effort to see that you are defeated and turned out of office.

Very truly yours,

(your name)

Go here to find your Representative's contact information.

Go here to find your Senator's contact information.

The Days of Our Lives

2009-08-25T01:55:00.000-07:00

These are the days we have, the ones we number, the ones we’ll always remember, the ones we want to forget, the ones we’ll never forget. There are some we don’t talk about – ever. Some are painful, some are hilarious, some hurt, some make us cry- every time we think of them. They come as a shock, as a stunning relief, as a whisper, as a long soft memory, as a growing realization, some of them have names…

These are some of my Days, not necessarily in chronological order, so far.
What are yours?

The Day You Wake Up
I was just a Malibu kid (whenever possible) diving into the waves and kelp and wrangling stinkbugs in the Hollywood Hills. Then at age six or seven - I woke up. I don’t remember the exact day but I remember looking into the mirror and knowing who I was, knowing that I was different from any other person in the world. It was amazing… and in the next split second I knew I would die one day and sadness, not fear, ran all the way through me…welcome to the human race, I thought.

The Day You Notice Girls
You’ve been a wild thing in a pre-Pandoran paradise. Well, that’s over. Welcome to Hormone World. From now on – for the next ten years or so you will officially be a walking sack of shit and hormones (use that metaphor any way you want to, everything applies). The only good thing is that you are not really responsible for anything that happens during this time.
Note: This release is only for internal bookkeeping, the outside world will pound you over the head for every action you take – whether it was well-intentioned or not.
In other words: you’re screwed.

The Day You Are King of the Jungle
OK, guys, admit it: sometime around age 13, 14, 15 you went to your ‘secret’ place by the river, in the forest, down by the railroad tracks – the place where you could be really, really alone… and you stood there and pounded your chest and practiced your Tarzan roar… it’s OK, we all did it. Usually we hacked and coughed a lot afterwards. For a short time, after we discovered we have muscles, this is irresistible. Don’t be ashamed, it’s kinda a rite of passage… [snicker]… No! I didn’t mean that…

The Day the Music Mattered
I grew up in the ‘60s, yeah I was at Woodstock (eat yer hearts out yuppie poseurs!), when music mattered. This of course has not happened to any other generation… the Beatles were OK but not really cool until they dropped acid and went crazy, the Stones were never satisfied, Cream were gods, Dylan was our poet laureate, Jefferson Airplane wrote the manifesto, The Who were right (they still are), the Dead were always making trouble somewhere, Janis made you want to go all apeman and tear everybody’s clothes off and then there was Jimi… words need not apply.
But, there were rumors in the fall of 1968 that a new supergroup of english blues-rock musicians was forming. Jimmy Page had left the Yardbirds as that legendary group was breaking up. We'd heard that he and Jeff Beck (co-lead guitar with the Yardbirds) might be forming the group, Keith Moon and John Entwistle from The Who were said to be interested. Other rumors said that Page was the only member with a rockstar reputation since Beck and Chris Dreja had dropped out.
No one knew who the other members of the group were, there was just a name: Led Zeppelin (Lead Balloon in American).
An American tour was scheduled for January 1969 - but no one had heard any of their music - anticipation was running high.

One day on a cold November morning in New York I was walking down Washington Place from the Sheridan Square station towards Avenue of the Americas. On the left side of the street there was a great record shop down 4-5 steps into a half basement. They played music through loudspeakers stuffed into the windows and pointed towards the street. They were known to have the very latest imports and the very earliest cuts from across the Atlantic, sometimes including pre-release reviewer copies of extremely hard to get records.
Sometimes they would even sell them to you.

I remember walking towards 6th Avenue and suddenly being frozen in my tracks as the sound came on: the thundering drums, the intimidating, gut-wrenching, shuddering bass, the shrieking, snapping, howling lead guitar… and all of it recorded and played way too loud.
I'd never heard anything like it - no one had.
I hated the annoying singer but it didn't matter, that sound was fearless, uncompromising, an irresistible force in a universe that had never existed before.
It was Led Zeppelin, it was a revolution.

The Day You Fall in Love (for the first time)
The first time I saw her, she was crying. Some handsome, thoughtless cad had broken her heart and she was crying it out. I held her for as long as it took for the sobs to choke to a halt, she looked up and I was lost. The rest is what happens when you are, ‘a friend’. I was all of eighteen and knew less than nothing - but that moment was real. [cue “North Dakota” by Lyle Lovett]

The Day It No Longer Does
Somewhere down the line, the musicianship flagged, the music got bad, then boring and I went back to music of my youth: Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev. Sometime later I awoke to find that music had moved on or I had gotten older, I’m not sure which. In any event, music wasn’t important anymore, that is, it wasn’t integral to my life any longer. It didn’t matter to me if so-and-so had the cred to say thus-and such… really I didn’t even know who half the groups were anymore… or care. The generations move on and on, an ineluctable wave on the time current… and so it goes….

The Day You Realize that You Are Really Smart
A day comes when you are in the middle of a conversation or a game or a meeting at work… and you suddenly realize that the other party or parties in the meeting/conversation/competition have no clue to what you are doing or talking about. This is not arrogance or ego, it is a flash of understanding that there are a host of people out there who will never, ever, get what you are saying or doing. It’s a lonely moment because the world now contains far fewer people you can really talk to, for the rest you will have to find a way to get them the information in a form they can deal with. This sounds cruel and people will usually resent it when they are apprised of it, but it’s real on many levels – I talk to specialists in many fields but especially in mathematics and I feel like a low grade moron when I see them struggling to reduce their brilliance to a level that an idiot like me can understand.

The Day You Stop Leaving Jagged Holes in the Concrete When You Walk
Neal Stephenson said this very well in his novel “Snow Crash” (I’m paraphrasing here) Until a certain point, a man can say to himself: If I dropped everything and went to a Shao-Lin temple in China and studied hard for ten years, I could still be the biggest badass on the planet (trust me ladies, ALL guys have this fantasy – it’s harmless, just ignore it and it will go away). Then something happens that just snaps you into focus and: it’s over. You get on with your life and don’t worry about this particular male pinnacle anymore – the position is taken.

The Day You Become Invisible to Teenage Girls
You’re walking down the street, mid to late twenties. Maybe you’re still ‘buff’ but maybe your hair is starting to thin, in any event, something is giving you away… some teen hotties are coming towards you… and you suddenly realize that you better jump out of their way or you’ll get trampled. Welcome to reality: you are now officially “Old, ewww!”
If you’re like me, you immediately start to think of Catherine Deneuve (the French think a woman isn’t really interesting until she’s in her mid-30s) or at the very least you can tell yourself that fairytale.
The only saving grace here is that you may think, for just a second, “I wouldn’t be seventeen again for all the tea in China.” Good luck.

The Day Your Heart Breaks
The real one, you know it when it happens. ‘Nuff said.

The Day You Grow Up
Can be many things for many people. My feeling is: it’s the day you stop blaming your parents for your problems. If you’re lucky, it happens early, for some poor bastards it never does.

The Halfway Day
Credit to my friend Thun Han for this one. Remember how old your grandparents were when they died (and your parents if they have gone as well). Take the average, divide by two. If you’re older than that number, you’re probably on the downward side of life… better get busy.

The Day You Think You Understand Women
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!... snort!... [wipes nose]…Ha! Ha!... mumble, mumble… [has another drink]…

The Day You Acknowledge that There Might Be, maybe… somewhere… someone who might possibly be… just barely… smarter than you…
Yeah, well I haven’t met the guy yet and besides, I don’t want to talk about it.

The Day You Realize that the World Really Is Divided into…
For me it’s a matrix: one set of dividers is what I call the “Gazelle People” [gorgeous, thin, tanned, obviously having no cares in the world because they will always get whatever they may desire just because they are beautiful] vs the rest of us Ugli’s: balding, gravity challenged, aging…Feh!
The other divide is between the Smart Folks and the Stupid People. This is a big divide, I don’t care what the Bell curve says, there are very, very few Smart Folks and we don’t breed a lot. Stupid People, on the other hand, apparently have little else they know how to do well. I have nothing against them but the numbers mean that, in a democracy, they get to run things – with results for all to see. This isn’t working for me, I want a change. Now if I were a ‘Gazelle-Smart’ I wouldn’t give a damn…

The Day Your Best Friend Dies
My best friend, Geoff Latta, died late last year. I’m still getting over it… actually I’m still in the process of understanding what his death means for me. He was a complex man, as many are. He loved Liszt and Judas Priest, he loved Harleys and he was a gifted artist. He was an expert in color publishing, he was one of the greatest sleight-of-hand, close up magicians who ever lived. He loved/hated women and they loved/hated him right back. One of the most talented/tormented men I ever met. He was an alcoholic and it killed him. He was my friend and I miss him, but that’s not all… I realize that the person I was in this friendship is also gone, in fact there is a door in the universe that is now closed, things I think that we talked about which are opaque to anyone else. “No man is an island…”, indeed…

The Day You Realize that Times Marches On
…and you’re along for the ride whether you like it or not. Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, and all that. Seriously, this is the day you realize you don’t have a minute to waste - really.

The Day You Realize that You Will Probably Not Be Leaving Your Footprints on the Sands of Time
Let’s see: Rockstar? Nope. Great American Novel? Nope. Magnificent Scientific Discovery? Nope. Nobel Peace Prize? Nope. *Sigh*…

The Day You Are Free
This used to mean, for me, how much “fuck you” money I had. It was how much money do I need to be “free”? It started out at about $2 million, then $5M, now it’s probably up to about $10M. But along the way I discovered that the “fuck you” part wasn’t as important anymore. The “free” part is a lot more important now. I don’t have the answer to the equation yet… but I’m working on it…

There are more Days to come for me and, I trust, for you. Some will, I hope, be delightful. Many, I know, will now have shadows. As time goes on I will savor my Days for I think we carry them too lightly, too much of the time.
Tread carefully, stride bravely, consider wisely.

Healthcare Followup

2009-08-14T17:49:00.000-07:00

My Congressman held two teleconference townhall meetings this week and I got to listen in but wasn’t able to get to ask a question. That was probably better in the end because I would likely have used bad language and offended a lot of the little old ladies who were also listening.

The meeting was edifying in a couple of ways: I was struck by the trust and goodwill of the people calling in. They were concerned about their relatives or their friends and sometimes themselves. They wanted to know if thus and such would be changed for the better (or for the worse). They were worried that they or someone they loved would be left out or denied something by the new regime. And the Congressman was empathic and did his best to allay their concerns. He was also well-versed in the details of the plan, such as it is. I don’t know if I would have had the heart to confront him in front of constituents in that kind of need.

However, I will be writing him about this disastrous bill and letting him know that there are those of us who will not let this stand. The Congressman is on the Ways and Means committee and obviously has invested his time and effort to make the best of this bad legislation. He has, of course, lost his view of the forest in concentrating on the trees. The more this goes on the more it becomes clear that this is the bastard child of Tom Daschle and Rahm Emmanuel, combining the worst features of each political hacks wet dreams. And the very worst thing about this is that, if it is passed, it will vitiate any energy for true change for at least a generation, maybe two. There’s still time before the recess ends to make it clear to all the politicians out there that this is unacceptable and if they vote for it, they can expect consequences at the ballot box next time.

In the comments on my last post, someone asked where I was getting my figures from, a legitimate question given all the folderol going around. So I went to EdgarOnline go here the free service which provides SEC required documents that are filed by all publically held companies. The following are excerpts from the top four healthcare insurers in the US. The 10-K form is the annual report, the Operating Revenues and Expenses information is usually found in the Selected Financial Data, Item 6 of the form. These are the results for 2008. I did not include Cigna because they found another way to hide their profits by only presenting expenses as a combination of ‘benefits paid on policies’ and ‘general company expenses’.

Caveat: almost all these companies are holding companies for yet other companies – Wellpoint has three different companies, Aetna at least one other and it looks like United Health Group has five alter egos. Each of these entities provides a menu of different ways to hide profits. I also note that these companies seems to have remarkably similar after-tax profits year on year – a very modest 3-5% (nothing to see here, go on about your business) while they continue to raise rates (according to them) about 7-10% each year.

>Wellpoint, for example claims a profit before taxes of 5.1% - $3,135,649,200.00 and an after tax profit of 4.1% - $2,467,168,000.00. Leaving aside the fact that they’re only paying a 1% tax rate, according to their own figures (can I have that rate, please?). Where did the other $10,801,150,800.00 go? If that truly represents what is cost to administer their plan then the CEO is easily the worst administrator since Hammurabi and should be kicked to the curb instantly.
My original statement was that private insurance companies reap 20-30% profits from the suffering of others. I’m certainly in the ballpark and I’m willing to argue the point with anyone. Another statement I made was that any profit made from the suffering of others was obscene. These figures only make that point more poignant.

United Health Group
United Health Group 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K
Revenues $81,186,000,000.00
Medical Costs $60,359,000,000.00
Remainder $20,827,000,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Revenue: 25.6%

Wellpoint
Wellpoint 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K
Premiums $61,679,200,000.00
Benefit expense $47,742,400,000.00
Remainder ; $13,936,800,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Premiums: 22.6%

Aetna PA
Aetna Inc PA 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K
Revenues $28,775,000,000.00
Medical Costs $20,785,000,000.00
Remainder $7,990,000,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Revenue: 27.7%

Humana
Humana 2008 Results of Operations SEC filing 10-K Item 6
Revenues $28,064,844,000.00
Benefit Expenses $23,708,233,000.00
Remainder $4,356,611,000.00
Remainder as percentage of Revenue: 15.5%

The Penny Drops

2009-08-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

“The Health Insurers Have Already Won” reads the Business Week title go here for article .
“Is Obama Punking Us?” reads the title of Frank Rich’s column in the NYT go here for article

Rich actually has an epiphany:

“The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.”

All I can say, Frank is “Well… Duh!” it only took you 545 days to figure out what we knew and told you way back in February 2008. No grass grows under your toes, boy.

These are the latest in a growing stream of pundits experiencing the OMO (‘Oh, My Obama’ – formerly ‘Omigod’) syndrome, they’re waking up and saying ”Wha.. wha happened?”. The answer, of course, is: “Well, while you were stoned on your acid-infused Kool-Aid, somebody stole your country, guess who?”
So, here’s the skinny on the healthcare reform ‘debate’, as I see it.

First: it’s over, you won’t be getting any health care help.

There, you can stop reading now and get on with your life – in fact, don’t lose a minute because it looks very much like you’ll have to make some extra money to pay for the publically mandated payments to private companies for insurance that won’t insure you. Let me rephrase that: the likelihood is very high that by the end of the year Team Obama will have instituted a national government program that will require you to pay a private company for medical insurance (or pay a fine roughly equivalent to the insurance payments you would have made). Let’s repeat that: the US government is going to force you to pay insurance premiums to a private business. Think about that, is this what you meant when you asked for healthcare reform?

Ostensibly, there will be safeguards in place so that, 1.) You will not be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. And, 2.) You will actually be covered in case you come down with something.
…and if you believe that, I’ve got a friend in New Orleans with some great property deals… I can guarantee you that, by the time the bill goes to Obama’s desk for signing, there will be enough loopholes you could drive a truck through to ensure that no insurer is ever vexed with the problem of actually having to pay for anyone’s medical expenses.

Second: The debate is no longer about health care reform, it is about health insurance reform. This happened almost instantly – remember Max Baccus face turning purple as he shrieked “Single payer is off the table! Single payer is off the table!”. There is no health care reform in the offing. Obama has never had any intention whatsoever of providing universal health care. Yes, I know he said as much during the campaign – sit down and have a drink, take a deep breath – are you ready?

HE LIED.

But anyone who was interested could have easily found out where Obama’s heart (or pocketbook) was.
From a Boston Globe article in 2007 go here for article:

“The bill originally called for a "Bipartisan Health Care Reform Commission" to implement a program reaching all 12.4 million Illinois residents. The legislation would have made it official state policy to ensure that all residents could access "quality healthcare at costs that are reasonable." Insurers feared that language would result in a government takeover of healthcare, even though the bill did not explicitly say that.

By the time the legislation passed the Senate, in May 2004, Obama had written three successful amendments, at least one of which made key changes favorable to insurers.
Most significant, universal healthcare became merely a policy goal instead of state policy - the proposed commission, renamed the Adequate Health Care Task Force, was charged only with studying how to expand healthcare access. In the same amendment, Obama also sought to give insurers a voice in how the task force developed its plan.

Lobbyists praised Obama for taking the insurance industry's concerns into consideration.
"Barack is a very reasonable person who clearly recognized the various roles involved in the healthcare system," said Phil Lackman, a lobbyist for insurance agents and brokers. Obama "understood our concern that we didn't want a predetermined outcome."

There is no reason for anyone to have had any illusions about who Obama was or what he was going to do.

There will be a lot of kabuki theatre going on over the next few months but it is just that – theatre.

The Bottom Line

For the insurance industry it’s all about the bottom line and I don’t blame them for that, it’s foolish in the extreme for us to assume that a profit-making business would do anything other than attempt to make a profit. What it comes down to is that we can’t have decent healthcare in the context of a profit-making model – it just doesn’t work and it never will.

The numbers themselves tell the tale: after you sweep away the bandit bookkeeping the insurance industry uses to hide their profits (very much like the bandit bookkeeping movie studios and record companies use to avoid paying artists any royalties) you find that the ‘overhead’ (read: actual profits) for private health insurance runs about 20-30%. The overhead (in this case actual administration costs) for Medicare runs at 2-3%. 20-30% vs 2-3%. Are there any questions?

The healthcare debate is over in terms of anything actually happening which might benefit Americans but it does serve a larger purpose: like pus coming out of a wound, it shows us the utter corruption that has enveloped our government. Even setting aside Obama as the sockpuppet-in-chief of the insurance industry, there was as much support for real healthcare reform in the Congress as there has ever been i.e., none. Let’s remember who torched HRC’s healthcare reform in the ‘90’s: Democrats.

For the record: it is not possible to have universal healthcare using the for-profit model; Not Possible. Universal healthcare will only and can only exist when it is a public service. Those are the facts, anyone who tells you anything else is lying to you.

The astonishing thing about this is that we already have a fully functioning, tried and tested universal healthcare system up and running: Medicare. And, like icing on the cake, Medicare actually serves the part of the populace most likely to need medical : those pesky oldsters. No less personage than Paul Krugman said recently that private insurance couldn’t even exist if Medicare weren’t there to skim off all the people with actual medical needs. All we have to do to provide basic healthcare to every American is to remove the age limit on Medicare. Does it have problems? Yes. Are they fixable? Again yes. But, out of the box, Medicare provides universal healthcare for all Americans and that’s exactly what we want, no more, no less.

But, apparently, we will do absolutely anything to avoid facing that fact. In itself, that is a pathetic commentary on our civic life.

We are seeing some signs of revolt: loudmouths at town meetings all over the country who are incensed at the monumental ripoff that is being perpetrated on us. I don’t even mind that they are incensed for all the wrong reasons as long as they, and we, can make this atrocious bill go down in flames.
I notice that many members of Congress are trying to find excuses to stay in Washington over the August break, not surprising as they are going to face a shitstorm of protest if and when they do go home. My congressman has made the mistake of scheduling a teleconference ‘townhall meeting’, heh, heh, heh! I can’t wait…

I urge everyone to write to their Senators and Representatives to let them know that this is a watershed issue. Let them know that single payer is the only acceptable path for healthcare reform. Not insurance reform, not ‘public’ option, only single payer. Suggest taking the age limit off Medicare as a starting point and fixing what needs fixing in five years or so. But please make sure they know that this one matters, let them know that if they do not come through with single payer healthcare reform you will not vote for them in the next election. Make it clear that, whatever other good works they may have done, whatever respect you hold for them; this is a deal breaker for you. Either come through for me on this one or expect me to vote for someone else next time.

Changing the Paradigm

2009-08-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

Note: this is the first of what I expect to be a series of rather longish articles presenting my analysis of the current state of things, how we got here and what we can do about it.
A valid question is: Who the hell are you and why should we listen to you? My answer is: I’m a critical thinker who has spent most of his life in the technology field where there is a premium on the ability to sift through vast amounts of data, extract the salient information, create an actionable plan and see the plan through to a successful resolution. In these articles I am using a set of tools, developed and honed over a lifetime, and training them on issues I think are crucial to the continued development of the human race. That may sound grandiose but we humans are much too powerful now – what we do in the next few years really can affect how and even whether, we survive.
My position is that we have the intelligence and we have the tools (technology) to fix our problems. We need to identify and analyze those problems and then go out and fix them – we have to be smart and organized now, we can’t afford to be stupid and chaotic any longer.

This is going to be a long one folks: there's going to be some venting and there's going to be some name calling and some general pissoffedness. There's going to be some reddirt analysis and, at the end, there are going to be a few suggestions. To quote Bette Davis “fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride!”

First, I've held off writing about President-for-life Obama in a genuine attempt to give him a chance to prove me wrong. I figured that he should have the opportunity to change his spots and become the inspirational figure he claimed to be during the campaign... perhaps I was wrong in my assessment, perhaps he really was that noble, original, transcendent political miracle he stated, over and over and over again, that he was – you may detect a hint of sarcasm here (there may be more sarcasm later on, be prepared) – apparently, he is not.

In fact, in just over six months on the job, he has already had three vacations, four pointless campaigning sprints, several overseas ‘foreign policy’ junkets and an untold number of photo ops, press ‘conferences’, PR disasters and ongoing political gaffes that rival Joe Biden for sententiousness and utter senselessness, as well as, I understand, parties every weekend at Camp David. He has sucker-punched the US taxpayers (TARP II) and dumped on us the astonishing Bush III budget, replete with pork rinds for everyone. He has thrown at least three major supporters/cabinet members under the bus (Kerry, Richardson and Dean – there may be more now) and produced an economic policy and a so-called middle class mortgage salvage proposal so utterly chaotic that no one, not even the thieves on Wall Street, can figure it out.

My, my – what will he do next month? Oh, apparently, he will do his damndest to steamroller through the Congress the most gawdawful piece of crap ‘healthcare’ legislation that has ever existed. No one knows just how bad it is because no one has actually read it.

This is an idiot-in-action who needs three teleprompters so he can swivel left-center-right whilst delivering his canned platitudes and a computer monitor sunk into his lectern so he can get his “off-the-cuff” answers to questions he should know cold but hasn't a clue how to answer. Nevertheless, he has managed to give away another $900 Billion dollars, plans to disburse yet another $250 Billion and passed a budget of $3.5 Trillion all while reducing the deficit by half... as Bullwinkle used to say ”Hey Rocky! Want to see me pull a rabbit out of my hat?”… I think BO(zo) is pulling something, all right, but it's not a rabbit and it isn't coming out of his hat.

In contrast, we have HRC running around the world as the US Foreign Policy President with clear statements, crisp decision making and nobullshit policy positions. What a difference! I can't imagine that the clown in the White House will let that continue much longer – he just looks weak and stupid by comparison. Oh wait, he is weak and stupid by comparison!
And it looks like BO(zo)'s long expected attack on HRC has begun. Just after her speech supporting women's rights in Afghanistan, President Karzai folded like a cheap suit in a confrontation with tribal and religious conservatives and signed a bill that, essentially, stripped women in Afghanistan of all their rights. Karzai's not much of a leader but the speed and alacrity with which he signed this law can only mean that he was denied any kind of support from the US for resisting it. This is a win-win-win for Obama: he gets to indulge his native hatred for women, kiss ass with religious conservatives both at home and in the Hindu Kush (lovely name, means “Killer of Hindus” – ya just gotta love those Muslims) and cut off HRC at the knees – all at the same time and with perfect “plausible deniability”. You have to hand it BO(zo): he's very, very good with a knife to someone's back.
I also notice that the North Koreans wanted to talk to the president of the US about the reporters they were holding hostage… so they asked for Bill Clinton.

OK, I got that off my chest... what I really want to talk about here is the domestic politico/economic mess we're in. This is a multi-layered mess, like quicksand – just when you think you've hit the bottom, it sucks you down into a whole new layer of crud. There are three descending crud layers I want to explore: the surface layer, where we see what we're meant to see and react the way we're instructed to react; the middle layer of financial fallacy and folly which is intimately connected to the peculiar political kabuki show we are now seeing; and the lower layer of economic unraveling and global responsibility upon which the American Empire uneasily rests. At another time (hopefully soon) I will have some specific proposals to make, proposals which would, if adopted, truly change the world. We have a unique confluence of technological capability, financial upheaval and political opportunity which would make it possible to achieve really radical change if we had a leader with the vision and will to do it – unfortunately all we have is Obama. Nevertheless, I think the ideas should be put out there in case he gets tired of the job and resigns (hope springs eternal…).

There are several reference items you should take a look at to get the full flavor of what we're experiencing here in Year One of the Reign of the Lightbringer.

First, go to Bill Moyers and watch the interview he had with Simon Johnson about what happened in Sept 15, 2008.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02132009/profile.html

Next, you should watch the Frontline program “Inside the Meltdown” about the slow moving train wreck of our economy in 2008 (air date: Feb 17, 2009)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/

...and don't miss Rep. Kanjorski's tale of what happened on Sept 18, 2008 (about 2 minutes in)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8viQ_DhS4

Last, you should watch the Charlie Rose show from Feb 16th, 2009 – the first part is an extremely informative piece on what's really going on in Afghanistan, but the second part is an interview with Michael Kirk, the writer/director of the Frontline piece mentioned above.

The articles/interviews mentioned above are all background for the fascinating story of what looks very much like The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (apologies to Gibbon) with helping hands from Bush/Cheney all in the interest of prolonging the financial debacle into and through the next administration. I should also mention that I think this was done with the collusion of and in the interest of the Obama campaign (I think we should dispense with the fairytale notion that this was a Democratic Party campaign at this point, don't you?)

Let's take a closer look at these interlocking perspectives and try to establish some sort of rough timeline, shall we?

Crud Layer 1

The Fairytale Analysis.
First let's use the Frontline piece to examine the pattern. We start with the accelerating overgrowth of the housing market in the past eight years – yes, you may try to lay some of the blame at Clinton's doorstep – and I'll come right back and trace the whole thing back to Ronald Reagan so let's agree to leave the history alone at this point. It is inarguable that Bush/Cheney had eight years to figure the housing bubble out and didn't lift a finger to stop it, in fact it appears that they willfully eviscerated any meaningful regulation and/or oversight and signaled full-speed ahead to the Wall Street Guild of Thieves.
This had the altogether predictable result that the housing market bubble collapsed. There were early signs of the collapse starting in 2005, and even some brave souls who yelled themselves hoarse (Peter Schiff, for example) saying that there was a bear in the woods. They were, quite literally, laughed off the floor.

So, what is it that 'they' want you to believe?

They want you to believe that, basically, things are OK. We had a bad scare but the swift action of the bright, shiny Team Obama has started to turn things around. They want you to go back to the things you know because that’s what they’re going to do: try to go back to the financial world they just blew up. They want you to forget that you just mortgaged your grandchildren’s future to pay for their theft (did you know that you are still paying for Ronald Reagan’s deficit spending? The bonds they issued are still commanding interest payments 20 years later).
They want you to forget that you are living in a country with a real unemployment rate (“official” unemployment + part-time + those who have stopped looking) of over 16.8% as of June 2, 2009. (see http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm for confirmation). They want you to believe that the housing crisis is over – it’s not, housing prices will decline another 10-20% before the curve flattens. They want you to forget that there’s a credit crisis right behind the housing crisis, only ten times larger.
But most of all they want you to forget that the current bunch of money-crazed madmen who ran this country into the ground in order steal more money than dreams of avarice could provide – are still not in jail and still in charge. No, they don’t want you to remember that at all. You might wake up. You might get angry. You might do something about it…

Crud Layer 2

The intention of it all.
What a catastrophe, they cried. What a horrific financial debacle, the sky is truly falling and we must have all your money right this instant lest even more dire events come to pass… how could this have happened? Who could have foreseen this… Whoa!, wait just a minute, it kinda looks like some folks did see it coming:

Simon Johnson was the former chief economist for the IMF, presumably he knows what he's talking about and knows whom he is talking about as well. He makes a statement part way through his interview with Bill Moyers that is absolutely staggering, in reference to a statement by one of Morgan Stanley's top officials, Johnson says:

“What he's basically saying is business as usual. Go about your daily lives. Get the bonuses. Re-brand them as awards. But it really shows you the arrogance, and I think these people think that they've won. They think it's over. They think it's won. They think that we're going to pay out ten or 20 percent of GDP to basically make them whole. It's astonishing.”

Mr. Johnson goes on to describe the coup de main that occurred last fall as eerily familiar to him. It’s the exact scenario the IMF and the World Bank have used for decades to destroy the economies of Third World countries, except this time it was used on the US – deliberately.

Another part of the puzzle is revealed almost by accident by Representative Paul Kanjorski (D-PA). In a C-SPAN interview on his opinions about the financial crisis, Rep. Kanjorski makes the following statement:

“On Thursday (Sept 18, 2008), at 11am the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.

If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2pm that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.”

Another piece drops into place courtesy of Matt Taibbi who writes an article in Rolling Stone, titled:
“Inside The Great American Bubble Machine”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine
Where he shows that Goldman Sachs has been involved in the engineering and manipulation of every market financial crisis of the 20th – and now the 21st – centuries. It is interesting to note that no other company has GS’s history of placing (one might almost say: infiltrating) so many, many partners in positions of authority in the US government (and other influential positions) :
• Henry H. Fowler - 58th United States Secretary of the Treasury (1965-1969)
• Robert Rubin - Former United States Treasury Secretary, ex-Chairman of Citigroup.
• Henry Paulson - Former United States Treasury Secretary.
• Joshua Bolten - former White House Chief of Staff
• Jon Corzine - Governor of the State of New Jersey.
• Michael Cohrs - Head of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank
• Jim Cramer - founder of TheStreet.com, best selling author, and host of Mad Money on CNBC
• Ashwin Navin - President and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc.
• George Herbert Walker IV - member of the Bush family and current managing director at Neuberger Berman
• Robert Zoellick - United States Trade Representative (2001-2005), Deputy Secretary of State (2005-2006), World Bank President.
• Mark Carney - Current Governor of the Bank of Canada [89][90]
• Neel Kashkari - former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability
• Malcolm Turnbull - Australian politician, currently the federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
• John Thain - former Chairman and CEO, Merrill Lynch, and former chairman of the NYSE.
• Robert Steel - Chairman and President, Wachovia.
• Reuben Jeffery III, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs (2007-)
• Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy twice (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) and President of the European Commission (1999-2004)[91]
• Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy (2006- )[91]
• Massimo Tononi, Italian deputy treasury chief (2006-2008)[91]

Way too cozy for effective regulation of the financial industry, note discussion below of how GS alumni Henry Paulson torpedoed a GS rival to trigger the Obama Election Financial Crisis.

Last, let’s go to Professor James Galbraith (yes, son of…) on the causes of the financial crisis (From the Texas Observer):

Causes of the Crisis
James K. Galbraith
May 01, 2009

...This is a panel on the crisis. Mr. Moderator, you ask what is the root cause? My reply is in three parts.

First, an idea. The idea that capitalism, for all its considerable virtues, is inherently self-stabilizing, that government and private business are adversaries rather than partners...; the idea that regulation, in financial matters especially, can be dispensed with. We tried it, and we see the result.

Second, a person. It would not be right to blame any single person for these events, but if I had to choose one to name it would be... former Senator Phil Gramm. I’d cite specifically the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act—the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act—in 1999, after which it took less than a decade to reproduce all the pathologies that Glass-Steagall had been enacted to deal with in 1933.

I’d also cite the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, slipped into an 11,000-page appropriations bill in December 2000 as Congress was adjourning following Bush v. Gore. This measure deregulated energy futures trading, enabling Enron and legitimating credit-default swaps, and creating a massive vector for the transmission of financial risk throughout the global system. ...

Third, a policy. This was the abandonment of state responsibility for financial regulation... This abandonment was not subtle: The first head of the Office of Thrift Supervision in the George W. Bush administration came to a press conference on one occasion with a stack of copies of the Federal Register and a chainsaw. A chainsaw. The message was clear. And it led to the explosion of liars’ loans, neutron loans (which destroy people but leave buildings intact), and toxic waste. That these were terms of art in finance tells you what you need to know. ...

The consequence ... is a collapse of trust, a collapse of asset values, and a collapse of the financial system. That is what has happened, and what we have to deal with now.

Can “stimulus” get us out?

As a matter of economics, public spending substitutes for private spending. ... But it is not self-sustaining in the absence of a viable private credit system. The idea that we will be on the road to full recovery and returning to high employment in a year or so therefore seems to me to be an illusion.

And for this reason, the emphasis on short-term, “shovel-ready” projects in the expansion package, while understandable, was a mistake. As in the New Deal, we need both the Works Progress Administration ... to provide employment, and the Public Works Administration ... to rebuild the country. ...

The risk we run, in public policy, is not inflation. It is lack of persistence, a premature reversal of direction, and of course the fear of large numbers. If deficits in the trillions and public debt in the tens of trillions scare you, this is not a line of work you should be in.

The ultimate goals of policy are not measured by deficits or debt. They are measured by the performance of the economy itself. Here Leader Armey and I agree. He spoke with approval, in his remarks, of the goals of 3 percent unemployment and 4 percent inflation embodied in the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978. Which, as a 24-year-old member of the staff of the House Banking Committee in 1976, I drafted.

Professor Galbraith leaves out some key components in my opinion, such as Alan Greenspan, the Ayn Randite Chairman of the Fed who blithely ignored his duties to regulate the Federal Reserve, choosing instead to allow classic laissez faire capitalism to pillage the economy unchecked until, at last, there was just nothing left to steal. And the original cardboard cutout president: Ronald Reagan – this dumb cluck bought into every idiot notion of trans-national capitalism extant and held the door open for every lowlife scumbag thief in the entire political/financial spectrum. Yes, I’m talking about Gingrich and Gramm and Norquist and all the rest of the neo-con bastards who have tried to take this country apart brick by brick for almost 30 years.

And last, but certainly not least, there is our Glorious Leader…

Crud Layer 3

The Zen of the Con
…How did BO(zo) get elected anyway? All the hype aside let’s look at what happened in the last six weeks of the general election campaign (and let’s leave the primaries alone, I’m still burning about them but that’s a story for another day).

In the middle of September it was looking bad for BO(zo). His numbers weren’t going anywhere and McCain was trending up. It was looking increasingly like McCain had the momentum and could win by 1 or 2 points in November.
Then several very important things happened in quick succession:

1. Financial crises were triggered on several fronts simultaneously (see above). I say ‘triggered’ because these crises did not happen sui generis they were very deliberately set off to gain a desired effect.

2. Major financial backers moved en mass to back the Obama campaign.

3. Ad buys by the Obama campaign increased to a ratio of 3-4 to 1 and in some cases 10 to 1 over the McCain campaign.

4. The Obama campaign collected almost $200 million in September.

Do you really think that Obama got $200 million in September 2008 because Grandma emptied the cookie jar and little Suzie gave up her lunch money? …really?

The financial ‘crisis’ that had everyone running around in the middle of the night doing their Chicken Little imitations was, first – very real but, second – artificially initiated. The fact is that this crisis could have occurred at any time over the last 2-3 years, the entire thing was being held together by spit, baling wire …and mutual terror, the Wall Street Guild of Thieves knew that the jig was nearly up, they just didn’t want it to go Postal while their hands were in the till.
The most likely tipping point was in the spring of 2008 when Bear Stearns collapsed but that was papered over by a shotgun marriage to JPMorgan/Chase (do some research on those names and your head will explode), why? Because a financial collapse at that time served no useful purpose, the Bush administration had one foot out the door, there wasn’t going to be an impeachment or even an investigation and it was way too far from the election to make any difference – people who can’t find Iraq on a map simply can’t be expected to remember a financial crisis that happened six whole months ago, jeez!
Ah, but there was a convenient fall guy close at hand for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (ex-CEO of, wait for it… Goldman Sachs) in the form of Lehman Bros a fierce competitor of GS and run by Richard Fuld, a personal enemy of Hank Paulson who thought he was truly pond scum (it’s all relative in the financial services world). So, in early September, as things were beginning to sour for BO(zo), some calls were made, some rumors launched, some flags went up in the air and, lo and behold, Lehman Bros is denied the help that was given to Bear Stearns just six months earlier although both firms were in strikingly similar situations – and Wall Street went down in flames.

Think I’m a garden variety conspiracy nut? Read on…

Bush/Cheney knew in 2006 that there weren’t going to be any repercussions for any of their crimes (remember Nancy “Impeachment is off the table.” Pelosi?) so they forged on with their plans to control the agenda of the four years 2008-2012.
Foreign policy was already charted so far as they were able, the Iraq war was winding down and the Bush/Cheney policy of having a standing US army in Iraq borders for decades to come was as safe as possible. Think I’m wrong? Take a look at Bush’s pronouncements on the size and length of stay for US forces and then compare them to what BO(zo) is actually doing there, identical aren’t they?
But foreign policy is Republican meat & potatoes, the real problem was how to:

1. Continue to suck the blood out of the US economy, while

2. Laying the groundwork for a Republican victory in 2012

The economy is usually a solid Democratic issue, when it’s bad the people vote in the Dems to fix is (so they can then vote in the Repubs to steal it all again, there now, isn’t that all clear?). But no one gets out alive if they’ve got a financial disaster on their hands, yes, I know FDR was the exception but he was exceptional – do you think BO(zo) has those kinds of chops?
So, how to create a continuing financial train wreck that will devastate the country long enough to guarantee a Republican White House in 2012?

First, you have to have a ‘useful fool’ to front for you – this is why BO(zo) won the nomination, his Astroturf campaign was actually supported again and again by generous donations from the corporate elite, not the netroots support you heard so much about (I can show you exactly how this was done: it’s fun, foolproof and completely untraceable).

Next, you need to manufacture a compelling financial narrative that does three things:

1. Shuts down real consideration of issues in the election in favor of knee jerk responses to perceived impending disaster.

2. Mandates predetermined actions for at least a year, probably two - guts the opposition in the 2010 elections and guarantees no meaningful action until 2012.

3. Remains so radioactive it drowns the ‘useful fool’ as it becomes impossible to blame the previous administration for the continuing debacle.

Hmmm… sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?

Last, there is the Law of Maximum Inertia of Stupidity. Ever hear of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus? No? Well, he was the unfortunate guy the Roman Senate put in charge of defeating Hannibal in the Second Punic War. Hannibal was a military genius who had brought his army from Carthage in North Africa (about where Tunis is today) and was merrily romping about northern Italy pillaging and burning anything in his path with gay abandon. The Senate had sent several other generals to get rid of this pest but they kept being massacred (along with several tens of thousands of troops) as Hannibal thought up new and clever ways of running circles around them.
Fabius (for short) knew he was no match for Hannibal in the field but he also knew that Hannibal was vulnerable because his supply lines were very, very long. Fabius harried Hannibal’s foraging parties, never engaged in a pitched battle, kept his own lines internal so Hannibal had no chance to march directly on Rome. In short, Fabius waged a war of attrition, wearing down Hannibal’s resources until he had to abandon the campaign. He did it so well that it’s now called the Fabian Strategy.

What the heck does this have to do with the here and now?
Well, over the past eight years the Bushies have been assiduous in placing and replacing mid and senior-level posts in government with dyed-in-the-wool neocon soldiers. In the last two years of the Bush/Cheney administration there was a concerted effort to get these parasites ensconced in the civil service where they can never be dislodged. Remember the fanatics they got into the Justice Department? Well, it looks like they were doing the same thing in every other government department.

The feckless Democrats have either completely ignored this maneuver or are just too damn dumb to think of it, I‘m not sure which. So they are now confronted with a solid wall of bureaucracy that is fundamentally opposed to everything they are supposed to stand for. Good luck to Team Obama in getting any results through this Fabian crew.

Not that they need help in screwing up their follow through. Huge numbers of political positions remain unfilled six months into the Obama administration’s first year – the kinds of positions that do the grunt work on getting legislation passed and programs funded and implemented. No one seems to care about the actual workings of government. Important positions at crucial agencies, Treasury for instance, remain unfilled – now because no one wants the jobs. Anyone with a brain can see the train wreck coming and no one wants to be on board when it happens. To top it all off, the cabinet departments themselves are in disarray, since Obama has appointed a Czar for almost every cabinet post no one knows where the actual governing power lies: Who gives the orders? Who has the imprimatur to carry them out? And most important: to whom does Obama listen?
We don’t have a government, we have a Persian court.

What’s it all mean?

The truth will set your fee…
Well, you’re not paranoid if they really are after you. In 2008 David Rothkopf published a book called “Superclass” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) wherein he discusses the 6,000 or so people who run the world, how they got to be there and what they intend to do. Highly recommended, very scary.
These folks pretty much have all the useful power and money they need to make things work just the way they want it – then again, so did the Tsars.

The preferred method of control used by the Superclass is the Transnational corporation. These entities have managed, over the last couple of hundred years, to get themselves legal status as ‘persons’, thereby gaining rights of privacy, property and legal recognition that were more properly reserved for individuals. This means they can represent themselves in court on an equal(?) basis as individuals. This seems innocuous until you understand that they now have the ability sue and be sued by other person/entities and that means they have the ability to shield every individual in that corporation from culpability for any actions the corporation might undertake. Most of the tort actions taken by the infamous ‘trial lawyers’ (btw, which lawyers aren’t ‘trial lawyers’?) over the last 123 years are attempts to pierce that veil of protection (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad for more information) In addition, these quasi-legal maneuvers have allowed the transnationals to abstract themselves from the suzerainty of any particular nation-state. They are extra-legal insofar as any effective means of control is concerned and pretty much untaxable as well.

Sort of a conspiracy nut’s wet dream, eh? A bunch of freaky rich people with control of vastly powerful mercenary corporations. No rights, no recourse and not conscience in sight…

If you’re looking for information that would confirm this, you need look no further than NAFTA and CAFTA and GATT (oh my!). NAFTA was the trade agreement that would supposedly open up North America as a ‘free trade’ zone with benefits for all. I was originally in favor of this (hey, we all make mistakes) and didn’t believe H. Ross Perot when he described the “loud sucking sound” as the jobs disappeared in a southerly direction – well ‘doom on me’ as they say, south they all went with CAFTA not far behind. The mother of all these agreements is GATT, the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GATT for more information). This document is so evil it should drip blood, signatory countries essentially give up their sovereignty where transnational corporations are concerned, no rights, no recourse, etc.

The information is out there (apologies to Fox Mulder) we just have to believe… that we can find it and act on it.

Sounds like it’s time for torches and pitchforks to me.

OK, smartass, so what do we do about it?

I will be writing more about this and related subjects as time goes on but this piece is overlong already, so…

Let’s start with something simple: how do we clean up financial mess we’re in?

Craig’s Twelve Step Recovery Program to Clean up the Mess

1. Bring back Glass-Steagall. Let banks be banks, not financial supermarkets.

2. Clean up the derivatives market, derivatives should be tightly defined and closely controlled.

3. Enforce all extant anti-trust laws, enact new anti-trust laws to deal with the legal end runs developed since Teddy Roosevelt's day - break up the media and banking conglomerates.

4. Mandate position limits in all commodities markets and force immediate disclosure of all positions over 5% in any market.

5. Put into immediate effect strict restrictions on naked short selling and price manipulation.

6. Institute reinstatement of the 'uptick rule'. This rule requires that every short sale transaction be entered at a price that is higher than the price of the previous trade.

7. Prohibit regulated banks from engaging in any speculative markets either for themselves or as agents.

8. Reinstate usury laws and set up oversight and strict regulation of all interstate financial transactions at the national level.

9. Make the bad paper good: go back two years and guarantee all home loans.

10. Eliminate ARMs. All banks must hold all loans they make (ten years or longer) for at least ten years.

11. Reinstate 1932 tax rates, eliminate loopholes.

12. Corporations with headquarters outside the US cannot get US government contracts.

The first eight are pretty much the steps you take if you actually want to get the markets under control again.

Nine and ten are simple ways to redress the balance in the home loan arena and at a far less cost than TARPs I & II. And please don’t talk to me about those evil people who ‘forced’ the poor lenders into giving them loans when they had no ability to pay – I’ll listen to those expressions of outrage when the Guild of Thieves has given back all the obscene profits they made off those loans.

Eleven deals with the ‘redistribution of the wealth’ issue. The tax rate on incomes of $1 million or more in 1932 was: 63%. Y’know how the right wingnuts always get hysterical about this? They keep saying “Soak the rich and they’ll stop producing jobs!”. What a crock! Let me tell you something about rich people: they’re like gerbils in a running wheel - you take away their money, they’ll just go out and make more, it’s what they love, it’s what they do. You couldn’t stop them with a herd of bulldozers. Go look up what percentage of US wealth is held by the richest 5% of US citizens, then go look up those statistics for 1980 when Ronald Reagan started taking care of his friends. If you still want to talk about this, I’ll be here.

Twelve addresses (in a very minor way) the responsibility I feel that corporations owe to the country that made them possible. Halliburton – want to move your HQ to Dubai to avoid paying US corporate taxes? No problem: no more US government contracts for you – have a nice life!

To wrap this up: there are a lot of bad people out there doing a lot of bad things. We just saw them install a sock puppet as president and go merrily on their way looting and pillaging our country.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to see the writing on this wall, at this point they’re so confident that they’re barely bothering to conceal their tracks.

The question for us becomes: what do we get out of all of this? How do we find our way through this bog of liars, thieves and con men?

What we get is the opportunity to be clear eyed and perceptive, to refuse to be steamrollered by a truly shitty healthcare plan because Max Baucus’ face turns purple when he shrieks “Single payer is off the table, single payer is off the table!”

We get to insist that, while not all questions have simple answers, some do. We can have instant, universal, single payer healthcare – tomorrow. Just take the age limit off Medicare, sure there are and will be problems – these can be fixed. What we will have is a framework that works, we know this because it’s already there and it already works. So, what’s the problem?

We get to insist that acting is important, that actually reading a bill you are voting on is a necessary precursor to that vote. We get to insist that every representative and Senator be held personally responsible by his/her constituents for their votes – we get to let them know that we will absolutely vote them out of office if they fail us on crucial issues.

We get to subvert this corrupt and evil paradigm with our intelligence and with our commitment and with our action. We have the tools, we know what needs to be done, all that is left is to act.

ObamaBots Anonymous

2009-03-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

I think it's time to start preparing to ease the Obamabots back into the real world. The signs are starting to appear here and there, like signs of Spring.

Living, as I do, in The People's Republic of Portland (Hawthorne Soviet, Richmond Collective) I've been in the thick of Obamabot zombieland. During the primaries there were forests of Obama signs strewn about the landscape, houses with three and four signs in the windows, on the lawn, big banners hung across the porch railing. One guy built a lawn housing for his Obama sign, complete with turned columns and a broken pediment on the top, indicating that he intended his sign to last for generations. Shop windows on Hawthorne Blvd. were plastered with Obama signs both before and after the election (“Yes, We Did!”) coffeehouses and taverns held weekly Obama parties – some still do - and there were hordes of Obama canvassers swarming every street corner, I was accosted by six of them in one ten block stretch in the run up to the election.

All last year and well into February of this year, you rarely had a conversation without one or two Obamabots bursting into an impromptu praise-a-thon.

I think that things are beginning to change here on the Left Coast. We've had a, relatively, hard winter – snow on the valley floor several times, once it stuck for more than a week.

A short word here about Portlanders: I like them a lot, I like their weird ways, their optimistic self-reliance, their fundamental courtesy, but you'd think that folks who spend so much time in the rain would know how to drive in it – and snow! They see snowflakes come down and just hafta rush out to drive the old beater with the bald tires to see how many 360's they can do down the hill on their way to the I-5 where they can spin out in front of a oncoming semi. I swear there's a secret prize waiting for the first person to completely block the highway.

Back to the Bots: the signs are far fewer now, one by one they're disappearing, usually in the middle of the night, the cars are showing bumpersticker scraper stigmata, the eager young canvassers are now back to self-righteously assuming you care nothing about starving children or dying whales or evaporating boreal forests. No one advertises Obama block parties in the community newpapers. The “Yes, We Did!” signs have vanished, their spaces sometimes replaced with “Quitting Business” signs. The street buskers are more numerous, they now have turf scuffles with the old familiar beggars who believe they have squatter's rights to prime territory, the corner by the bank, the service doorway of the supermarket...

Late winter reflection time, the gray days when you look in the mirror a lot. I think the Obots are poised at the edge of the abyss, so...

I'm proposing we set up a 12-step recovery group for them – someone's got to do it, we can't have them wandering glassy-eyed about the landscape, arms outstretched, grasping blindly for another hit of the “O-juice”.

First: what to call it? OA is taken, I believe, (Overeaters Anonymous) so I'm proposing OBA (pronounced: obey) for ObamaBots Anonymous.

The ObamaBots Anonymous 12-step Recovery Program:

Step 1 - We admit we are powerless over our Obama addiction - that our lives have become unmanageable and that we are prone to hissy fits and screaming “I don't understand!” at inappropriate moments.

Step 2 – We have come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity but that this Power is NOT Obama.

Step 3 – We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Obama as we understood Him - no, wait, we already did that... we mean we have decided that we will NOT turn our every waking thought over to Obama.

Step 4 – We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We have looked into the mirror and said ”I am a moron who has thrown his/her rational thought processes out the window in favor of mindless adulation of a sociopathic, narcissistic sock-puppet.”

Step 5 – We admit to the world, to ourselves and to another human being – preferably someone who told us we were idiots to support Obama - the exact nature of our wrongs: see Step 4.

Step 6 - We're entirely ready to have a frying pan to the side of the head or a dentist with a high-speed drill or a construction worker with a jackhammer, remove all these defects of character depending on just how dumb we were.

Step 7 – We have humbly asked if there's some kind of capable Power which can remove our shortcomings and return our brains.

Step 8 – We've made a list of all persons we have harmed, and are willing to make amends to them all: you know who we are and we know you know – we prefer cash, please.

Step 9 – We have made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others - you don't get to make these kinds of judgment calls anymore, the evidence shows you're spectacularly bad at it - pay up.

Step 10 – We continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it. ...we're waiting...

Step 11 – We seek, through prayer and adoration to improve our conscious contact with Obama as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of Obama's will for us and the power to carry out His will... NO, NO, NO! Stop trying to get O's Blackberry address, put down the tripleshot, soy chai latte and remember Steps 1-10... Jeez! Get a grip willya!

Step 12 - Having had a rational thought process re-awakening as the result of these steps, we will carry this message to other Obamabots, and attempt to de-program these poor fools and bring them back to reality.

I think that a whole-hearted embrace of these steps by recovering Obamabots will go a long way toward re-integrating them into the real world again. Of course they'll probably have to go to OBA meetings for a long, long time and we should be as gentle as possible with them, don't shock them by pointing out things like: all O's 'ideas' are stolen in part or as a whole from others (like Hillary) who actually had thought about how to implement their plans. This kind of shock may be too much for OBAs, cases have been known where they go directly into CDS and may require hospitalization.

Remember, they were thinking humans once, with time and care they may become so again – they can Change and there's always Hope.

The Greatest Composers - Part 1

2009-02-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

I publish sometimes at NoQuarter and Old Grumpy Guy writes for them as well. His latest series on The Greatest Composers of All Time falls significantly short of the mark IMO, so I now feel compelled to take up his implicit challenge and proffer my own list of The Greatest Composers of All Time. Right off the bat let me say that while I may not be older, I am probably grumpier, certainly more dyspeptic and, I think, a lot farther on my way to being a true curmudgeon.

I thought about all of this and realized that, when talking about music and 'best' lists, you are immediately presented with two major problems:

First: what are your parameters? Style, era, standards? For example, the list of great blues guitarists is different from jazz specialists and, of course, so-called 'classical' music is in a category of its own.

Second: even with the best of intentions, you are the prisoner of your own musical tastes and preferences.

I mention these problems (especially the second one) because I have been both delighted and dismayed by OGG's articles and the videos of his list of the “10 Greatest Composers of All Time”. As the series progressed, I came to understand that OGG and I have a drastically different conceptions of who is 'great' and what makes them 'great'. I also came to see that I would have to write up my own list in order to have an interesting response to his, so...

Full disclosure: here are my 'credentials'. OK, I'll admit it – I was a child star. Actually I was a boy soprano and soloist at St. Thomas Church Choir School in NYC for four years. During that time I recorded commercial records, sang on national TV under the direction of Leonard Bernstein and performed at Carnegie Hall with Leopold Stokowski (St. Matthews Passion). I have sung the Bach Magnificat in D, the Beethoven Mass, the Brahms German Requiem, among other masterworks. My professional career came to a crashing halt at age 13 when my voice cracked and I was no longer in demand (the horror!, the horror!). While this may not qualify me as a musical expert, it does mean that I am not entirely an amateur when it comes to music. In addition, my father has been a professional musician all his life, working in film, TV and Broadway and I have been an amateur pianist and flautist as long as I can remember.

Next, there are my definitions: when I talk about great music, I'm pretty much talking about western music from the Rennaisance up until about 1950. I apologize in advance for any insult to other musical traditions and I have great love and respect for many other musics – Indian Ragas, for example... but, western classical music stands head and shoulders above every other musical tradition in human history because of the development of its musical system, organization of multiple musicians into an organized musical entity with written musical orchestrations which ensure that the composer's work can be faithfully rendered – this is unique to western music.

And last, there is my process: OGG has chosen to make his choices as the

“10 Greatest Composers of All Time” - with tongue somewhat in cheek, I suspect. With all due respect, I just can't rank composers that way. Instead, I've chosen to select the 10 “Best of the Best” and present them in chronological order so that I can attempt to explain why this or that person was so singularly important at that time in musical history. I've also (a la OGG) mentioned the “Best of the Rest”, mainly because there are so many extraordinary composers who bring us nothing but beauty, not to acknowledge them would be a crime.

I also have one major bone to pick with OGG – no Russian composers! In fact, an almost complete dearth of Romantic composers on his list! Tch, tch! For shame, Sir! In my list I have endeavored to redress his unfortunate omission(s).

N.B.: These are my choices and I make no apologies, just as OGG has his choices – you are free to make your own.

I have divided this series into three parts in order keep everyone awake and on tenterhooks. You may notice some glaring(?!) ommisions, don't worry, all will be addressed (or perhaps redressed)... don't like my list? Have at it!

Best of the Best

From the Renaissance to the Baroque

Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643)

Generally regarded by scholars as one of the most important musicians ever. His work consists mostly of madrigals and operas (he was a singer and gambaist (the Viola da Gamba was a Renaissance viola-cello). Monteverdi was instrumental in transitioning western music from the Renaissance polyphonal style to the Baroque especially with his invention of the Basso Continuo. This advance loosely corresponded with the transition of musical notation from neumes to staff and key, which made the specification of pitch possible.

Go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monteverdi for the Wikipedia entry on Monteverdi with links to samples of his work.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)

Opera impressario, priest, violinist, asthmatic. He wrote operas, concerti, sonatas and various liturgical music including the widely known and loved Four Seasons concerto and the great Stabat Mater. He was daring and inventive, he alternately delighted and scandalized his musical audiences... and, like most non-rockstar musicians, he died a pauper.

Go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi for the Wikipedia entry on Vivaldi with links to samples of his work.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)

If the aliens came down and said “Earthpeople, show us your best.” I would show them Johann Sebastian Bach. Now, having revealed my massive prejudice, let me explain why...

First, on the technical side (forgive me, that's my field) JSB championed Well-Tempered tuning. This is a system that alters the tuning of some of the 12 notes of the octave so that modulation from one key to another can be accomplished seamlessly, without jarring dissonance. Because of Bach's support, Well-Tempered tuning has become the dominant tuning system in all of western music. I cannot overemphasize the importance of Well-Tempered tuning to all that followed. Try to imagine a 120 piece orchestra playing the Beethoven Symphony No.9 with the first and second violin sections playing with slightly different tunings – including so-called 'pure' tunings and with the brass and woodwinds following tuning systems of their own...

Second, JSB was a complete musician, writing a cantata a week for St. Thomas church in Leipzig, books and books of teaching materials (The Well Tempered Clavier among others), fugues, toccatas, partitas, sonatas, concertos, orchestra and choral compositions almost without number... ok, there's over 1100. Father of some 20 children (not strictly a musical accomplishment but it kinda solidifies his rockstar status). Further, JSB didn't make his reputation in church – his legacy would have disappeared into the fishwrap of history if Felix Mendelsohn hadn't resurrected it (but that's another story). JSB made his reputation as a master of improvisation, i.e., in modern parlance: a jazz musician. He was famous for it – Frederick the Great asked him to improvise on a theme the monarch provided, he did and later wrote his variations down, which became “A Musical Offering”.

Third, most important of all, JS Bach was that rarest of musical geniuses, a mathematical/musical savant. Running through all of Bach's work but especially in the great organ works, the toccatas, fugues and passacaglias; Bach takes us step-by-step through each ineluctable variation, each building on the one before, each revealing a new perspective, a new truth... until at the last, the great resolving codas take us to the bedrock of the music itself, all that must be said has been said, we are at rest. Listening to the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor is one of life's great experiences.

Stay tuned for Part 2...

A New Series: The Obama Orwell Watch

2009-01-15T09:50:00.000-08:00

In which items will be noted and stored which indicate the true nature of Obamanation.

Item 1:

On January 6th, the day after Obama was officially certified as the next POTUS, Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) introduced H.J.Res 5, which states:

JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:
`Article--
`The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.'.

The bill has been referred to the Judiciary committee, which is exactly where it would go if it were to be studied and reported out to the House floor – or buried forever in committee consideration. We'll see.

Item 2:

On January 14th the LA Times published and artiocle entitled:

“Retooling Obama's campaign machine for the long haul”

Full story here.

Wherein the LA Times details the creation of a permanent Obama-only political cadre dedicated to pressuring 'Democrats' to fully and continuously support Obama. This organization is entirely independent of the DNC and is focused solely on re-electing Obama and pushing his agenda.

...stay tuned...

Ragnarök

2008-10-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

Ragnarök – the world tree, Yggdrasil uprooted, the road to Hel opened, the Bifrost bridge destroyed and Asgard forever rent asunder from us, Jörmungandr, the Midgard serpent bound around the world – writhes free, Fenris breaks his mighty chains and Garm, the Helhound is loosed at last. Heimdall sounds his horn as the Aesir assemble – Odin, Thor, Tyr and Freyr come forth, the lesser gods fill in their ranks and the heroes from Valhalla at last fulfill their ancient oaths to fight the hordes of frost giants: Jotunn from Muspelhiem and Niflheim – the cities of Fire and Ice that mark the ends of the Ginnungagap – the Void. The Aesir know it is the Last Battle and they know that they, too, will die. It is the end of the world, it is end of the gods, it is the end of all things...

Whew! If you want a real end-'o-times apocalypse scenario - don't waste time with the Greeks or the Romans, don't even bother with Yaweh or Revelations – go due North, the Norsemen have that story all sewn up.

Why talk about this now? Well, we've seen the financial folks running around these past few weeks saying 'the sky is falling, the sky is falling' till they're hoarse. The international markets are jittery and the usual suspects (Russia and China) are twisting the knife as much as they can. The election is only two or three weeks away and it looks like it may be very, very close – again. You'd think that by this time the US electorate would be able to tell a con man when they see one...

So what else is new? Well, as they say, there's good news and there's bad news and then there's the really ugly stuff:

The Good News

Even the Vikings weren't completely despondent about the future, Ragnarok notwithstanding – there was a 'morning after'. After the last battle, when all the elder gods are dead and the earth has sunk beneath the waves, it rises again, green and beautiful, self-stocked with amber waves of grain. Vioarr and Vali, Odin's sons, appear (somehow), as do Mooi and Magni, the sons of Thor as well as Baldr and Hoor – all the younger gods are suddenly present to order the Sun and Moon upon their ways and bring order to the universe. The general sense of good feeling is increased when it seems that none of the Jotunn has survived to make mischief, not even one of Loki's sons. Worse luck in my opinion, it looks to be rather boring in the Norse 'brave new world'. Oh, and there are some brand new humans, Lif and Lifhrasir, available to repopulate the earth.

All of the above is in aid of saying that, despite our fears, our anger and our rage. Things will likely muddle along for quite some time – certainly for our lifetimes and probably for our childrens' as well. A colossus like the United States doesn't fold like a cheap suit, it takes time to let the air out. Even spectacularly bad mangement like W's (and likely Gumby's as well) can only do so much damage.

“Don't Panic!” as THGTTG*used to admonish. We'll survive. Even if we, as a nation, elect another grinning idiot. BushCheneyPaulson represent a class of predatory ferals, they see only their own needs and desires and have no conception that they represent another or owe anything to someone other than themselves. BHO belongs to this group by deed as well as by avocation.
Nonetheless, his impact will be limited by factors already in play (see below) not to speak of his total lack of vision, jellyfish leadership potential and an interest level approaching that of a sponge. Vapid suitracks may con their way into power but their elemental stupidity prevents them from doing nearly as much damage as they could wish.

The Bad News
The bad news on the political front is that BHO could win – more incompetence at the helm, possibly a fascist coup, definitely democracy in serious jeopardy.
On the international front we have the usual crew of tinpot dictators: Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Putin as well as the military/fascist juntas in Burma, China and elsewhere. The end result of seven years of misrule by BushCo is that we have lost the respect of the world and what's more, we have lost our claim to the moral high ground so the jackals think they are in the ascendent.

The bad news on the financial front is truly staggering – you think $700 Billion is a lot for the mortgage banker bailout (actually the true cost of this is more like $1.5 Trillion)? Here's the part of the iceberg below the surface: the companies that insure those mortgage notes, like AIG, are on the hook for $62Trillion if this all goes south.

The big bad news is that, in this world, economics and politics are joined at the hip.

Ok, let's take these in order:
BHO could win – let's not forget that this is the country that elected Richard Nixon – twice; elected Ronald Reagan – twice; and George W. Bush – twice. With this extensive track record of electing grinning idiots, why wouldn't we elect Barack Obama?
So, what does that mean for real Democrats (I don't count Obamabots as Democrats)? In the best case scenario it means that we've lost the party and will have to form another – I've been advocating this for some time now.

In the worst case it may mean we have to form a resistance movement, if as I suspect, Obama will move to take the country in the direction of an authoritarian dicatatorship. If you think I've gone 'Area 51' on you, I refer you to the current power grab inherent in the so-called 'bailout bill' that just went through Congress: Paulson wanted no oversight, no questions and no redress, just total control of more money than anyone has ever had in the history of the world. See also, the Patriot Acts I & II, see The March to Iraq, subset: WMD, sub-subset, ref.: mushroom cloud. Yes, these are all Republican perfidies but listen to any of Elmer Gantry's BHO's speeches, see 'The Triumph of the Swill' production at Invesco Field, note adoring crowds, also note US flags in the trash.
No, I don't think he'll try to dissolve Congress or use the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Division under NorthCom – now stationed in the territorial US for use in quelling 'domestic disturbances' - to stage a military coup d'etat (not enough troops yet to stage a successful operation on a country the size of the US). He won't have to, the pitifull compliance of the Congress to GWB's every whim has set the standard for the stature of future congressional representatives: on bended knee.

Oh, and by the way, I think we've already seen the 'October Surprise'. I know it's supposed to be the one that the Republicans use to swing the election their way but let's look at the facts on the ground:

GWB and his cronies hate, and have always hated, John McCain and everything he stands for i.e., reform.

Why would they back a candidate who promises reform and transparency?

Cheney and company believe in a closed-door informational system, viciously attack anyone who has the termerity to question them in any way, believe in unlimited autocratic power for the executive and have no qualms about using propaganda, misdirection and outright lies in defense of their actual, hidden, agenda.

...remind you of anyone? Of course it does.

Add to this the fact that the big transnational money donors who usually back Republican conservatives surreptitiously moved to back a particular Democratic candidate starting early in 2007, guess who?

Notice also the peculiar silence from BushCo on all fronts... this is usually the case when things are going your way – no complaints.

If you look at it with your critical thinking cap on the puzzle pieces fall into order:

Our several wars are simmering along quite nicely:

Iraq is in wind-down status; we've paid off enough of the Sunni tribal leaders to avert them from starting a civil war and...

Our proxy war with Iran is taking up the slack: the Imams are keeping al-Sadr on a short leash in return for us muzzling the Israelis. I notice that there's been a virtually complete lack of activity on either side of the latest 'Intifada' for more than a year now, interesting isn't it? Even such activity as there was, got absolutely zero attention in the press – other fish to fry, perhaps?

We continue to run our brushfire wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (guess who wants to ramp up the Afghan conflict?)

Essentially, the United States foreign policy agenda has already been set for the next four years, no matter who is in the Oval Office next year.

On the economic front the power of choice has, similarly, been taken away from the next president.

The current 'financial meltdown' is a completely fabricated crisis and it is a financial crisis, not an economic crisis. This doesn't mean it can't have real world consequences but it does mean that this crisis was set up and triggered for a particular purpose and at a selected time. This meltdown could easily have been triggered last year with the collapse of BearStearns but that would have had minimal political impact – too far away from the election for people to remember. But – create a crisis in late September when your chosen candidate is sinking in the polls (remember that BHO was looking like a loser at that point) and, voila! you revitalize the Democratic candidate's campaign – the threat of domestic economic disaster being both a traditional Democratic election issue and revving up the anti-imcumbent party resentment to boot.

Look at the firestorm of panic promulgated by Hank Paulson and the US Treasury – Cheney's financial storm troopers - the constant push to take drastic action, instantly, with neither reflection nor examination and without regard to efficacy or consequences.

Look at what is achieved by these concerted actions: an enormous injection of cash into companies selected to survive (selected by Paulson, no less) with the promise of as much more cash as they want, whenever they have another hissy fit.

Look in the dark corner of this mess, look right where they don't want you to: what is being done to correct the problem? What is being done to make those bad loans whole? What is being done to turn the ARMs into reasonable fixed rate mortgages that the home 'owners' could actually afford to pay?
Answer: nothing

Oh, an actual fix has been suggested by, among others, one Hillary Rodham Clinton. Based on the old HOLC idea that FDR used to begin rebuilding the US economy in the '30s. Go out and take in all that bad paper, guarantee it, make the payments affordable, turn it into good paper. This restores confidence to the financial markets because, mirable dictu, the loans are actually good loans now.
Yes, this has some cost but it's far less than the $700 billion extortion we've just experienced, not to speak of the next round coming to your neighborhood soon (just need to get that pesky election out of the way).

Want to really jump start the financial markets? Go back over the last two years and make those 2 million foreclosed loans good as well, put those people back in their homes and paying their mortgages again.
Yes, of course it's more complicated than just that, but that's where you start.

You'd think this idea would spread like wildfire after all it's already been shown to work, but instead we get: [crickets]

This is because the whole point of the exercise has been to continue the economic policies of BushCheneyPaulson into the foreseeable future – and it's been wildly successful. The next president, whoever he is, will be absolutely hamstrung on economic policy. By the nature and extent of the financial choices that BushCheneyPaulson have made in the last year the course of economics for the next four years has been completely determined. The next president will be unable to get out from under the consequences of these decisions, he will have no choice but to follow the BushCheney economic plan as it plays out.

The Really Ugly Stuff

The really ugly stuff begins to make itself felt when you start extending your view.

In general I think we have “misunderestimated” GWB+Co. Looked at in the light of what's good for the United States, they've been a catastrophe, easily the worst administration in our entire history, right enough... but looked at by their own lights they've not only accomplished everything they set out to do but they've actually managed to extend their administration's policies over the next four, possibly eight, years (if Gumby is elected).

Add to that their other subversive activites: suborning the Justice Department by stocking, and topping, the department with incompetent, ideological political hacks, they've managed to destroy the credibility of the 'brand'. No one for the next 20 years is going to look at the US Justice Department with anything other than thinly-veiled contempt. This isn't good for us but it is good for people who despise democracy.

The discrediting of government agencies. BushCo, over the last 7⅝ years, has made a fetish of demoting, degrading and dismissing crowds of public servants and replacing them with incompetent, ideological political hacks (No, Johnny, it's not just the Justice Dept, anymore). This is all part of the neocon political agenda which says that government is always bad, always wrong and always intruding on your property, er, privacy.

Note FEMA – revitalized under the demon Clinton and made into a useful government agency for helping citizens when natural disaster strikes. The gutting of FEMA began on day one of the GWB's reign, with results for all the world to see. This kind of sabotage has been going on wholesale throughout the entire civil service... and through the federal judiciary as well. Competent judges are harrassed and hounded by well-funded, outside 'interest groups' to be replaced with cadres of ideologically correct know-nothings.

Oddly enough one of the great shibboleths of the foaming-at-the-mouth right wingnuts was the inclusion of emergency powers granted to FEMA in the event of, well, an emergency. These folks fairly blew the tops of their heads off ranting about posse comitatus and the rights of the individual under the Constitution, they sat with 'locked and loaded' street sweepers waiting for the black helicopters and FEAM assault teams to break down their doors.

Fast forward a few years: Patriot Acts I & II, the sequential gutting of FISA, 'Gitmo' and where are those stalwarts now? Apparently, the danger has passed... but wait: early this year in an utterly unnoticed action, FEMA powers to usurp Consitutional rights were transferred out from FEMA to... the White House. So now vast powers to suspend the Bill of Rights, commandeer transportation systems, declare martial law and control and censor all communications media are fully under the control of the Executive branch. No oversight by the Legislative branch, no resourse to the Judicial branch.

Next we have the dismantling of the Posse Comitatus Act:

Major Craig T. Trebilcock of the JAG wrote in October 2000:

"The Posse Comitatus Act has traditionally been viewed as a major barrier to the use of U.S. military forces in planning for homeland defense. In fact, many in uniform believe that the act precludes the use of U.S. military assets in domestic security operations in any but the most extraordinary situations. As is often the case, reality bears little resemblance to the myth for homeland defense planners. Through a gradual erosion of the act’s prohibitions over the past 20 years, posse comitatus today is more of a procedural formality than an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in homeland defense."

This is pre-911, folks.
After, it gets even worse:

"Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

A revision of the bill was enacted in 2008 purporting to somehwat limit the Executive's powers but GWB's signing statement averred that he had no intention of respecting those limitations.

Look, I could go on for pages about this stuff, in fact there's probably a book in here somewhere (like the proverbial pony). The point is: we're looking at a new future and it extends way past the horizon. I've written elsewhere about this but things have really changed, it's no longer just about you and me and the folks on the block, it's no longer about Demmican or Republicrat, it's no longer even about America vs the world.

Like it or not, we are all citizens of the planet now and the new conflict will be on that global stage, it will also be an enveloping conflict: the Jihadis are a global phenomenon, so are the transnational corporations. Neither of these groups has any love whatsoever for democracy, truth, human rights or the rights of individuals.

The ecological balance of the planet is a global phenomenon, pollution transcends all boundaries, melamine in your milk gets from China to your baby formula faster than you can say “This tastes funny.” So does Avian flu...

At the same time that all this is going on, we are on the brink of profound change rooted in our understanding of technology. It will soon be possible to make the kinds of changes we'll need to make to move us out of the mess we've made of things. But these changes will need to be coordinated and accessible on a global scale, that means we'll have to cooperate on that kind of scale, which means we'll have to change the way we interoperate – on a global scale.

Everyone has a stake in this, so all the stakeholders need to be recognized. In like wise, everyone has an ox to gore and that needs to be recognized as well.

How we handle this will define life on Earth for the next hundred years, at least.

A last word here to talk about my writing 'style'. Anyone who's read my articles has noticed that I use a lot of historical and mythological references. I do this for several reasons: the historical references are obvious, Santayana was right: “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.” My observation is that very few of us study history at all – we always seem to be repeating our mistakes. It may be futile but I keep thinking that I must include the historical references so that the curious can follow up and get a better underpinning for their own critical thinking.

As to the mythological themes I sometimes use, I think that the pantheons of gods and demigods (both past and present) provide us with the opportunity to objectify our aspirations, our capabilities... and our fears. Jung (among others) understood this well, though I won't go so far as to call upon the 'collective unconscious' for any insight.

And... they're fun. By using them I can try to give readers, and myself, a little laugh now and then.

*”The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”by Douglas Adams

A Little Light Reading

2008-09-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

A young colleague asked me to draw up a list of books I liked... he had no idea what he was in for.

Great Books and Shows

I don’t know your level of intellectual involvement, so I’m going from the ground up – no insult intended

Cultural Classics

The Iliad & The Odyssey

Get the translations done by Stanley Lombardo, he’s done them as performance pieces and the language is very modern and non-stilted. These are both extremely important to understanding how we got where we are.

Anaximenes, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Democritus and Thucydides

on general principles, learn about life, the universe and everything.

Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles

Every plot under the sun was invented by these guys.

Plato

Because this is where dialectic begins, this is also where critical thought begins.

Aristotle

Because this is where dialectic ends (until Marx), the man had an opinion on everything – and he was usually right. Defined western thought for a thousand years and more.

Ovid – “Metamorphoses”

The most subtle use of Latin - ever.

Julius Caesar

Clear, insightful, explicative… bloody, cruel, awful... brilliant, perceptive, prescient... shall I go on?

Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius

On general principles: Lucretius for the most beautiful Latin ever written and especially Marcus Aurelius 'Meditations' for the view of the Empire in Autumn.

Augustine – “The City of God”

To find out how one severely fucked up (probably sexually abused) priest proceeded to fuck up the entire western world for a thousand years or more…

Shakespeare

If you read nothing else, Shakespeare would give you a complete education. Also the most beautiful period of the English language.

Spinoza

Proved you didn’t need god to justify your existence.

Leibniz

Proved you could be god if you wanted to (and re-invented The Calculus on the side – Archimedes did it first).

Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations

Proved you didn’t have to be god if you understood markets.

BTW “The Invisible Hand” so beloved of ‘free’ market aficionados is mentioned only once in 1200 pages and even then in a very narrow context.

Locke, Hume, Rousseau

Progenitors of the Enlightenment, midwives of the American and French revolutions – some real thought here.

Darwin - The Origin of the Species

Everyone claims to have read this book but very few actually have, beautifully written by an excellent observer. Every religious fanatic should be required to read this, it will pretty much shut them up once and for all.

Nietzsche

High priest of German Romanticism (aside from Goethe), thought deeply, wrote beautifully and was barking mad, nonetheless, read “Genealogy of Morals” and “Thus Spake Zarathustra”
BTW “ubermensch” means “overman” not “superman”. He was referring to the ethical and moral qualities of the evolved human being, the fascist fanatics, as usual, got it completely wrong.

Von Clausewitz

Though a mere lieutenant in the Jaeger-Prussian army, his writings on the principles of war in simple, elegant prose have made him standard reading for warriors for two hundred years.

Bertrand Russell - Principia Mathematica

The last great re-invention of mathematics and written in Latin, no less. He and Alfred North Whitehead pretty much rewrote mathematics from the ground up at the start of the 20^th century. Also was the first of the great modern peace activists.

Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky on general principles

That pretty much covers my range of Great Western Thought. There are many more of course, but I think these represent the best of the best. Frankly, I think that anyone who wants to understand our culture should read as many of these folks as they can or just read Will and Ariel Durant’s 26 volume tome “The History of Philosophy” as an alternative.

…now on to more fun stuff

Speculative fiction

The earliest SF writers are an astonishing lot:

Cyrano de Bergerac – From the Earth to the Moon

Jules Verne – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

H.G. Wells – War of the Worlds

But science fiction didn’t really arrive until…

The pulp authors – 30s and 40s authors who wrote the original space operas, cited for their adventurous imaginations not their technical or scientific rigor

E.E. “Doc” Smith

The Lensman series – everything George Lucas ever did, he stole from this.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Martian Series – just wonderful, completely off the scale as fantasy

There are many others here worth reading but these two are the class of the field.

The new guard (now old I suppose)

These are the first wave of serious speculative fiction writers who appeared in the late 40s and early 50s. A lot of these authors wrote short stories, novellas and novels that they realized later were connected in some way. You will often find ‘timelines’ with the various stories plotted along the way. These were mostly done after the fact but recognized the natural commonality of the tales. Some of these folks are in here for one or two of their tales only but they deserve their place nonetheless. I haven’t put in many from later periods, partly because I haven’t read them and that is mostly because they are derivative and boring. (So I’m a curmudgeon, sue me).

Arthur C Clarke

'Childhood’s End', 'The Deep Range', 'Tales from The White Hart', '2001'

Clarke invented the concepts of: geo-synchronous orbit satellites, re-usable orbital shuttles, tethered lifting ribbons, setting space colonies at the L3 and L5 points, and many other technologies.

Robert Heinlein

'Stranger in a Strange Land', 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress', 'I Will Fear No Evil', 'The Green Hills of Earth', 'Starship Troopers', 'Friday', 'The Tales of Lazarus Long' and many, many others.

Bob Heinlein is not really a great writer, in fact he’s not a very good writer at all – he is, however, an absolutely wonderful storyteller with a keen eye for human foibles and a fearless advocacy for human freedom.

Isaac Asimov

'The Foundation Series', 'I Robot' and about 140 other books both fiction and non-fiction

Prolific and sometimes profound Asimov is always interesting. His intelligence and imagination have a huge range and depth.

Frank Herbert – Dune

The Dune series is probably the most complex political SF series ever. Intricate, complex, intriguing and exasperating.

Ray Bradbury

‘R is for Rocket’, ‘The Martian Chronicles’, ‘Dandelion Wine’, ‘Green Hills, White Whale’

Wonderful, evocative writer with a unique style, a peculiar look at the world and an unbounded imagination.

Larry Niven

'Protector', 'Ringworld', the Polesotechnic League, The Long Night

Great hard science type writer, the description of a realistic space battle complete with Bussard ramjets and using a neutron star in a battle maneuver in “Protector” are priceless.

Orson Scott Card

The Ender series – a series of six (?) books all revolving around a ‘first contact’ gone awry and the ramifications that ensue, “Speaker for the Dead” is especially good. Very empathic, try reading “The Lost Boys” with the knowledge that he has an autistic son.

Note: Quite a few of these authors run hot and cold, some of their books are really great while others are junk. If you’re not sure, ask me.

Robert Silverberg

Wrote three great books: ‘Dying Inside’, ‘The Stochastic Man’ and ‘Up the Line’. The Majipoor stuff is crap.

John Brunner

Great British writer, always provocative, ‘Stand on Zanzibar’, the unbelievably prophetic ‘The Sheep Look Up’ and many more… doesn’t like America very much but his critiques are spot on.

Phillip K. Dick

You already know him from 'Bladerunner', he wrote some great books: ‘Ubik’, ‘A Scanner Darkly’, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’, wrote some others that are crap: ‘Clans of the Alphane Moon’, etc. Sad to say he kinda went round the bend at the last ‘Valis’ and ‘The Transmigration of Timothy Archer’ are pretty much paranoid-schizophrenic nightmares.

Ursula LeGuin

‘The Earthsea Trilogy’, ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’, ‘The Dispossessed’ A woman’s view on SF. She really understands dragons.

Philip Jose Farmer

‘Riverworld’ and a great many others. Farmer wrote a lot of really out there stuff, alien thought, alien-human sex, underworld/netherworld. Sometimes very erotic, sometimes very disturbing.

R.A. Lafferty

Unique style, off the wall imagination, funny and scary, never what you expected. Mostly short stories, well worth finding/reading.

Harlan Ellison

Insulting, irascible, insanely intelligent. Most famous for ‘Repent, Harlequin, Cried the Tick-Tock Man’

Theodore Sturgeon

Short stories that bite: ‘Occam’s Scalpel’, ‘If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?’ Author of Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of Everything is Crap”, his stuff is in the other 10%.

Cordwainer Smith

Brilliant, odd, funny, awful, charming, gut-churning… just the titles tell a tale: ‘The Burning of the Brain’, ‘Scanners Live in Vain’, ‘The Lady Who Sailed The Soul’, ‘The Ballad of Lost C’Mell’, ‘The Game of Rat and Dragon’. All the stories meld into a timeline/evolution of man and near-man over thirty thousand years of change.

Kim Stanley Robinson

‘Red Mars’ ‘Green Mars’ ‘Blue Mars’ trilogy. How Mars will really be terraformed and the interplanetary politics involved. Very well done, a little dry but essentially a manual for how to do it.

J.R.R.Tolkien

‘The Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy

IF you haven’t read this, read it right away… no the movie doesn’t even come close, in fact, try to forget the movie completely. This is the oldest, and by far the best, of the fantasy genre. It helps that Tolkien was a gifted writer, it helps that he was a professor of linguistics at Oxford, most of all he is original and creates layer upon layer upon layer to give his created world authenticity and credibility.

Robert Jordan

‘Wheel of Time’ series

Not the greatest of writers but I got snagged and if you’ve got a week or two to throw away get the series and read it through, he’s still writing the last two but has amyloidosis and may die before it’s done. Strong on magic and the Source, female characters very strong but basically batshit crazy, pretty much a typical ‘guy’s eye’ view. Some good moments.

Update: Robert Jordan died late last year and the last book of the series is being completed from his extensive notes

George R.R. Martin

“The Song of Ice and Fire’ series

Blood ‘n Guts sword-and-sorcery epic. You can see the denouement a mile off, but it’s the journey that counts. Pretty good characters, involving and interesting, each in their own revolting way. He has a nasty habit of killing off or gruesomely maiming anyone you might actually get to like. The Dragon Empress is a hottie.

William Gibson

‘Neuromancer’ etc

He’s here because he got famous for work that a lot of other people actually did before him, nevertheless his stuff is a good read, in a techno-punk, dystopian sorta way.

Neal Stephenson

‘Snow Crash’, ‘The Diamond Age’, ‘Cryptonomicon’. ‘The Baroque Cycle’

The first three are brilliant, prophetic, warp-speed, up to the nanosecond books chock full of excellent writing, total contemporaneity (wow! what a crappy neologism). What William Gibson wishes he were.

‘The Baroque Cycle’ is a 3,000 page romp through the 18^th century, lots of fun characters, oh and BTW you'll learn about the origins of scientific methodology, modern economics and how to deal with syphilis if you don't have access to penicillin.

There are others out there working in associated fields, such as:

Graphic novels

Neil Gaiman and ‘The Sandman’ series. Neil is a cult figure for many – not my cuppa

Frank Miller and, basically anything he’s involved in: ‘The Dark Knight’ (Batman), ‘Sin City’, ‘Elektra Assassin’ and many others. Frank's also a cult figure, I like him.

Movies

‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ intelligent SF (see also ‘This Island Earth’ made in the same year for a hilarious comparison

‘Forbidden Planet’ Monsters from the Id! Aaiieeee!! Still really good SF (although stolen wholesale from ‘The Tempest’) Note the very young Leslie Nielsen in a dramatic role.

‘Alien’ Ridley Scott’s version of: ‘There’s a Mouse in the House’ it’s seven feet tall, drips slime and wants to eat you, nevertheless… it has the all time greatest role for a woman since ‘Ninotchka’ Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley, the uber-competent second mate of the ‘Nostromo’ (look it up, see Joseph Conrad). Makes you proud to be a human being.

‘Aliens’ James Cameron cut his teeth on this one, did Jimmy. Not much for story but it’s in the running for the greatest action flick of all time, and we get to see Ripley be even more heroic.

‘Bladerunner’ Ridley Scott’s staggering SF opus, still arguably the best SF film ever made. Note the very young Edward James Olmos (since Miles Davis’ death, officially the ‘Coolest Man on the Planet’ see below: Battlestar Galactica)

I won’t go on about the films, you’ve probably seen a lot of the newer ones: long on SFX, short on intelligence. The one good thing about low budget films is that they make you think harder.

You might try comparing versions of ‘Solaris’ Tarkovsky vs Clooney, not as lopsided as you might think although Clooney is merely good while Tarkovsky is (was) a genius.

Oddly enough some pretty good SF has leaked through into the boob tube (no, I’m not talking about 'Blake’s Seven' or 'Red Dwarf')

'Doctor Who' is an acquired taste but has some good moments (I prefer David Tenant in the role).

Obviously, 'Star Trek' is legendary, you should really watch some of the early episodes, hilarious, complete with space-bimbo of the week. There were some very good ones though: ‘City on the Edge of Forever’ (written by Harlan Ellison, see above) and ‘Space Seed’ with Ricardo Montalban as Khan, one of a genetically enhanced breed of ‘supermen’.

Actually ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ was pretty good as a series, good actors, good writing. See ‘Inner Light’ and ‘Metaphor’ and the dark ‘Yesterday's Enterprise’.

I liked ‘Babylon 5’ quite a lot but didn’t get excited about ‘Firefly’. I liked ‘Andromeda’ but detested 'Star Trek Voyager'.

This is a little off topic but I’d like to nominate ‘La Femme Nikita’, the TV series as an actual SF show notwithstanding their conceit that it was real-world, it definitely wins as the most paranoid television series ever shown, the tension was palpable in every episode, every relationship, every movement… the relief when each show was over was like serotonin overload.

But pride of place for best TV SF ever must go to 'Battlestar Galactica' (no, not the original series done back in the eighties, although watching that one is absolutely hilarious, I fall off my chair every time they push the “Turbo” button on the Vipers). The new one is fabulous, highly charged, rife with conflict, brilliantly written, superbly acted and confirms that Edward James Olmos (as Commander Adama) is the “Coolest Man on the Planet” (the honor used to belong to Miles Davis but even Miles can’t hold onto this one when he’s dead). To get a feel for this show see the episode “33 Minutes”, after your heartbeat slows down and you stop sweating, give me a call.

That’s about all I can think of for now, I’ll send more if/when I smack myself in the forehead and say ‘Why didn’t I think of that one!”

Once again, you may know all of these, I certainly don’t mean to presume that you don’t and no condescension is either overt or implied.

Have fun,

Craig

There definitely will be more added to the list, as I went over this several more candidates appeared iin my memory...

A Distant Sound of Thunder

2008-08-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

In the old, old days before the cities and the highways, before the smokestacks and the chimneys, before we knew the sea and the sun, the sky and the stars for what they truly are - even in those ancient days - we knew what leadership was and we know it still. We feel its presence - the ancient Greeks said "the God is near" when they felt it, we know its absence too...

From the gods and demi-gods of Sumer: Enki and Innana through Gilgamesh with his friend and nemesis Enkidu to the heroes of the Iliad: "god-like" Achilles, Ajax, Hector, Diomedes and Odysseus, there is a common thread. In our ancient dreams we draw forth the leader from among us, we invest them with our trust and our collective honor and we demand one special thing from them...

Those whom the gods choose, we anoint with oil, we clothe with gold and in their honor we burn precious Frankincense from Ubar... Why?

Through the ages we have had many leaders - not all of them good, nor any of them perfect. They have a few attributes in common: some can mesmerize a crowd with thrilling rhetoric, some speak softly and move quietly along their way, some beguile with dreams of wonder or 'cry havoc' on an oppressor, stirring us to do what we had thought we could not do. There are some who revel in chaos or who are possessed by a holy fire; they send their acolytes to oblivion with promises of paradise ringing in their ears - they, too, are leaders. And there are some who have the power but, sadly, have nowhere to put it, no plan or one plan too many...

Most often we find the qualities of true leadership - in the place we would look first: the military. Leadership in the military is not an option, it is a bare, stark necessity. And, like courage, it need not be displayed because it is assumed. Woe to the young JG who fails this test, if he's lucky he may just be shouldered aside by his NCO, if not he may wake in the middle of the night next to a live grenade.

Here's the thing:

Leadership is comprised of many qualities: responsibility, courage, wisdom, experience, judgment, instinct, passion, vision, perseverance, loyalty... among others. But it is founded upon one quality only: sacrifice. All leaders understand this innately but most skew the interpretation to stand it on its ear, they think it must mean your sacrifice. These are always the bad leaders, the narcissists, the warmongers, the tinpot dictators, the power-mad politicians who will sacrifice anyone and everyone to gain their grail. They never seem to achieve it... and because of this fundamental misunderstanding, they never will.

True leadership, is based on self-sacrifice, on the willing gift or, as the Greeks put it, "the sacrifice that goes, consenting". In the elder days this was literal truth, in times of emergency, of war, of drought or famine, plague or pestilence; the king was called by the god to sacrifice himself for the people.

Oedipus, the King of Thebes sent to the Oracle at Delphi to ask Apollo what to do in a time of great drought and famine. He expected to be called to account for the city's sins and, in a way, he was. The Oracle told him to "seek out the unclean thing"; he did, and found himself.

We do not demand that our leaders hurl themselves from high places any more nor immolate themselves in the sacred fire nor battle dragons in their lairs. The nightmares are different now: the mushroom cloud, the ravening packs of corporate wolves, the manic hordes of religious madmen (perhaps not so different after all) but the bedrock principle of self-sacrifice remains the defining characteristic of leadership.

Why is this important?

It is important because the tale of history hangs on simple choices, choices that, in retrospect, look freighted with overt meaning but which looked innocent and simple at the time - simple as a hanging chad.
It is important because we have two exemplars in front of us right now, showing both sides and qualities of leadership. The one who spoke on Tuesday showed us elegance and grace, intelligence and compassion, aspiration and accomplishment. More than that, she exhibited all the qualities of the good leader: she shared with us and invited us to share with her and most of all she spoke of her dedication and continuing commitment to core principles and to the common good. Every idea was based on internal conviction and was applied to an external solution. This is the good leadership model: showing by thought and by action, the path forward and speaking the magic incantation: "Follow me!"

The other exemplar we will hear tonight and, if the past has any instructive value, he will, once again, tell us his story, tell us that he is the one he has been waiting for. He will use the rhetoric that attempts to make the 'other' into himself, subsuming his followers into his own ego, demanding that sacrifice to himself and then speaking of his dreams, his hope, his change. But there will be an emptiness in his words, as there always is, the hollowness of his core deprives his words of value, the emptiness of his principles is revealed as his lofty rhetoric falls flat. Because there is no internal transcendence of self, his speeches are devoid of power and worse, they show us his inner emptiness. This is why we recoil when he speaks.

One can also tell something about a leader by the company s/he keeps, by the actions of his/her followers and by the environment s/he chooses.

Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and Tony Rezco are not role models we want for our children, what they have in common is a willingness to suborn the good will of others in search of power. The actions of Axelrod, Pelosi, Dean and Brazile are wanton in their blatant contempt for democracy and savage in their zealotry.

The strutting, preening, pompous parade that is the Obama presentation will reach its climax tonight with his investiture at Invesco Field where, before 80,000 adoring acolytes, he will emerge from the colonnades of a faux Greek temple to accept their adulation. The histories of mad Roman emperors comes to mind. But that pales beside the modern mirror - an instantaneous comparison will rocket to the mind of anyone old enough to remember "Triumph of the Will". Perhaps there is no one on his staff who can remember those times - or has even seen the movie...

The faux presidential seal, the replacement of the US flag on the tail of his campaign plane with his branded logo, the 'beer and sausages' rock concert in Berlin - not at the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of hope and freedom, but at the Siegessäule, the "Victory Column" used, among others, by Hitler to celebrate his victories over neighboring states. All these ornate trappings, the egregious excesses, the arrogance and contempt... all bespeak a man who knows his reach has exceeded his grasp, they are all an attempt to create the very thing they lack, to engender the confidence in others that is not manifest in the self.

There are many paths to self-knowledge, they all require hard work on the inner self to achieve that knowledge and they all require us to give up what we love best: ourselves. Musashi - the master swordsman of Japan, tells us in his "Book of Five Rings" that victory is only achieved when we can look into the Void.

The problem in general is that there are different types of people who grow or acquire leadership capabilities - being a leader is not a guarantee of good humor, good judgment or good sense. Certainly there is a quantum of talent involved in leadership, and there are a shelf full of books that will teach you everything you ever wanted to know (and a lot you didn't want to know) about how to practice leadership. A leader can be dedicated, passionate, loyal to his cause... and utterly evil (Pol Pot for instance) or he can have those same qualities and be regarded as a secular saint (Lincoln for instance - unless you're from the South).

The essential quality of the man or woman will always make itself manifest - you are known by the company you keep, by the deeds that you do and by the quality of the relationships that you form. If your relationships are about trust and honor, respect, consultation and mutually beneficial collaboration - the god stays with you and, sometimes, you will hear the distant sound of thunder.

If, on the other hand, your relationships are all about steppingstones to power or about power itself, then you may indeed ascend the rungs of power over the bodies of erstwhile friends and enemies alike - but the only sound you are likely to hear is the echo of your own thoughts...

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." - Euripides

A Crack in the StoneWall?

2008-08-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

Today Ray McGovern, a boyhood friend of Colin Powell's and a 27-year veteran on the CIA's internecine wars published a challenge to Secretary Powell to, finally, come forward and tell the truth about his infamous UN speech on Iraq go here, for the original article.

In his letter, McGovern charges Powell to speak or be tarred forever as a participant in the Cheney-Bush debacle that is Iraq.

“If you were blindsided, well, here’s an opportunity to try to wipe off some of the blot. There is no need for you to end up like Lady Macbeth, wandering around aimlessly muttering, Out damn spot…or blot.“

McGovern goes back to their boyhood friendship to remind Powell of the code of honor they both grew up with:

“On those Bronx streets, rough as they were, there was also a strong sense of what was honorable —honorable even among thieves and liars, you might say. And we had words, which I will not repeat here, for sycophants, pimps, and cowards.”

And he reminds Powell (and us) of the price we have paid for this folly:

“With 4,141 American soldiers — not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens — dead, and over 30,000 GIs badly wounded...”

In withering detail, McGovern recounts the fraud perpetrated on the American public and on the world by Cheney-Bush, and he clearly states “J'Accuse!” directly at both Bush and Cheney for deliberately foisting this fraudulent war upon us:

“But when President Bush was first told of Habbush’s report that there were no WMD in Iraq, Suskind’s sources say the president reacted by saying, “Well, why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?” “

McGovern goes on to say that the investigative work of Sydney Blumenthal and Ron Suskind has been instrumental in meticulously laying out the process and progress of lies, step by step. And, apparently, the coverup goes on to this day:

“It was, no doubt, pure coincidence that President Bush made a highly unusual visit to CIA headquarters, also on Thursday, before leaving for Crawford on vacation... [snip] given the record of the past seven years, it is reasonable to suggest that he also wanted to assure malleable Mike Hayden, the CIA director, and his minions that they will be protected if they continue to stiff-arm appropriate congressional committees, denying them the information they need for a successful investigation. “

McGovern winds up his letter by challenging Powell to step up and tell the truth – and thereby repair his deeply tarnished reputation – or remain silent and, by that silence, let us know that he was part of the deception after all.

Your choice Mr Secretary, we're waiting...

Couldn't resist...

2008-08-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

BHO claims that he "doesn't look like those other guys on the dollar bills..."

...problem solved.

Red Dirt Talk - Part 1, the Setup

2008-06-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

So it looks like Hillary and Bill, kinda, are going to be good Democrats and try to lead the Unity Donkey down the garden path. A lot of folks will sigh "Oh well, we tried." and trudge back into line because they been told (and so they believe) that Obama is the lesser of two evils, that a McCain presidency would be such a catastrophic event that it is simply unthinkable... some of us won't buy that for any price. We're hearing hysterical wailings about the dreadfulness of McCain and blue sky predictions about the coming Obamatopia. Not so fast...

Most of the time, in business, in life and in politics, people throw around “blue sky” predictions. A lot of us do it for the sake of optimism, salesmen and politicians do it for a living. This is not a bad thing, per se, and we learn to counter the ‘blue sky’ talk with a healthy dose of skepticism: “Oh, come on,” we’ll say, “don’t tell me that Mustang GT was only driven on Sundays by a little old lady who never went over twenty miles per hour – I just don’t believe you.” It tends to work out and if it doesn’t, well, experience is a very fine teacher.

Sometimes, however, in life and business… and in politics, we need to get down from the blue sky to what I call the “Red Dirt Talk”. What are the numbers? Who’s on the hook? Who gets what and when do they get it? And the bedrock question: What’s it going to cost me?

I think we’ve reached a Red Dirt Talk point now – there can be as many Red Dirt Talk points as needed –we need to sit down, stare at the wall and really think about where we are, how we got here and what we really want to do next. It’s important, critical in fact, because history will be changed by what we do in the next several months – even if we do nothing at all, the world will change, just a bit, go there when it might have gone here… and a different future unfolds.

Let's review the facts, then look at the options and see if we can form a plan.

Fact: Hillary blew the campaign - why? I don't know, maybe Patti Solis Doyle was a fifth columnist but they should not have lost all those caucuses, especially after they did it right in Nevada. I don't like it but it's true.

Fact: the Democratic Party nomination has been taken from the obviously stronger, better qualified candidate and bestowed upon the weaker and less qualified candidate. There are numerous theories about who did what to whom, all the way from the massive collusion plot in which the Bushies have manipulated this in order to stage a coup before the election to the David Axelrod channeling Karl Rove with the complicity of the radical leftie-Bolsheviks to take over the Democratic Party for nefarious purposes (I actually kinda like that one myself). For the purposes of the Red Dirt Talk, it doesn't really matter. It has happened, barring a major reversal of fortune, BHO will be the Democratic Party candidate this fall.

"A newly released CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that if Obama does not select Clinton as his running mate, 22 percent of her supporters would stay home this fall (almost 4 million voters) -- and another 17 percent (a little over 3 million) would vote for McCain." --CNN (parentheses are mine). So, if we use 2004 as the baseline - GWB won with 62 million voters vs Kerry's 59 million. then take away 4 million Democratic votes, that leaves BHO with 55 million. Now take away another 3 million from that (Clinton supporters who will not stay home but will vote for McCain) and add 3 million to the Republican side. You end up with 65 million for McCain to 52 million for BHO. There is a word for this: landslide.

Fact: the Democratic Party won the 2006 congressional elections and now has a majority in both houses (233 v 202 in the House and 51 v 49 in the Senate) - granted the Senate majority rests on two independents and Lieberman is a Republican in all but name. This is certainly not veto-proof territory but it is also certainly enough to stop inimical legislation and prevent more damage by the GWB crowd... you would think. Curiously enough, there has been no action to counter GWBs excesses and people in leadership roles have averred that any health care reform is DOA. Impeachment is, famously, off the table sez Ms Pelosi (in one of the greatest acts of political stupidity in the history of American politics). Our several wars go merrily on their way, dispensing billions in government contracts (the cost of the Iraq war is now $5,000 per second) to titular American companies who have shifted their HQs to Dubai to avoid paying American taxes. GWBs tax cuts for the rich go on and on with no end in sight.

Remind me: what is it that makes Democrats so different from Republicans?

Estimates are that Democrats will pick up 15 more House seats in the Fall and as many as 6 more Senate seats. That would give an incoming Democratic president a 248 to 187 advantage in the house an 57 to 43 in the Senate well within arm-twisting range of a filibuster-proof majority (AKA rubber stamp Congress).

In the technology world there's a thing called "FUD", it stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Dismay. It's a propaganda strategy that Microsoft used effectively for years to destroy its rivals. Keep overhyping your (usually mediocre) accomplishments, trumpeting the crushing inevitability of your overwhelming (potential) victory, demeaning the quality and value of your competition with innuendo and implications of questionable moral lapses. Your target audience may not like you very much but they become afraid to stand against you... and your success is assured. If this feels familiar it is because the Obamabot/bolsheviks are waging a FUD campaign against you right now. To recognize this is to resist it, be aware.

I cite specifics of BHO's programs from his website but they seem to change depending on the audience he's speaking to at the moment. I've also included John McCain's positions on the same subjects. We can all run around with our hair on fire screaming and yelling about our issues and concerns but, at some point, we need to put on our critical thinking caps and look at the choices we have to make.