My cell phone chimed at 3:00 a.m. on Christmas morning. I knew it was Duke.
“Where are you, doc?”
“Morocco. Long, complicated story.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Bah. I read your blog. I don’t believe you’re done with politics.”
“It’s true.”
“Temporarily, maybe; I give you four to six weeks. You need politics as much as I need illegal substances. It’s who you are.”
“Too depressing, doc. I can’t do it anymore.”
“You going cold turkey?”
“That’s the plan.”
“No more Alternet?”
“No.”
“Democracy Now?”
“No.”
“New York Times?”
“No.”
“TruthDig?”
“No.”
“Huffington Post?”
“Done. E-mail lists, too. Move On. Democracy for America. Color of Change. Courage Campaign. All of them.”
“Cold turkey?”
“Cold turkey.”
“I repeat: you’ll last four to six weeks. What else are you going to write about?”
“Dunno yet. My wife thinks I should write about raising kids, parenthood, that sort of thing.”
“Borrrring,” Duke sang.
“When are you coming back, doc?”
“My house is let for another month. Landscape painter. Lady on the run from a knucklehead husband. Paid in cash. I told her she could paint on the ceiling if she felt like it.”
“You’re full of surprises, doc.”
“Surprises. Shit. Sanctimony. Sentimentality. Spite.”
“What’s her name?”
“The painter?”
“No, the woman in Morocco.”
“Why do you assume it’s a woman?”
“When isn’t it a woman?”
Duke laughed. “You know me well. Allahu Akbar, boy. Give me a call when the jones for politics becomes overwhelming.”
I switched the Christmas tree lights on and went back to bed. Right before I drifted off to sleep I reminded myself to cancel my subscription to the Nation.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Done with Change, Over Hope
I’m done with politics for a while.
I’m disgusted, dejected, and discouraged.
I’m done with change and over hope.
No more will I respond to e-mail alerts from well-meaning but underfunded progressive organizations, no more will I e-mail or phone the people who are supposed to represent my interests in Washington D.C., no more will I pull my hair and gnash my teeth over the latest Obama capitulation.
I can’t do it, at least not without driving myself crazy or into a prolonged depression. I thought the Bush years were aggravating – and they were – but to watch the candidate I voted for bend over and spread his ass cheeks to appease the GOP, well, that’s beyond what I can tolerate. The latest tax giveaway to the rich was the straw that snapped the camel’s spine. I called, I wrote, I signed petition after petition, yet the package went forward just the same, pushed by Obama, to the delight of the wealthy; they received the goodies their campaign contributions paid for.
If I keep writing about politics I’m going to become a crank, like the one Philip Roth describes in Exit Ghost: “Otherwise, I told myself, you’ll become the exemplary letter-to-the-editor madman, the village grouch, manifesting the syndrome in all its seething ridiculousness: ranting and raving while you read the paper.”
I’m not naïve. I expected a limited resemblance between candidate Obama and President Obama, but I didn’t expect that Obama would become the second coming of Bill Clinton, surround himself with Clinton-era apparatchiks, and take economic advice from the likes of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner; I didn’t expect that he would bow and scrape and become Wall Street’s lackey.
I never thought that President Obama would endorse the Bush era economic plan: endless tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and endless foreign wars that benefit no one. But endorse them he has, putting his presidency and the Democratic Party in a box come 2012.
For a man blessed with such eloquence, why does Barack Obama find it so difficult to articulate a coherent vision of who he is and what he stands for?
Obama has taken to spinning the truth like a run-of-the-mill D.C. PR flack, calling the tax giveaway the product of compromise with the GOP and an economic stimulus package that will grow the economy. The truth is that the tax deal will exacerbate the federal deficit, add fuel to Republicans who want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, and do little to promote job growth.
In Afghanistan, Obama claims things are on-track and that some American forces may depart next summer, though naturally this depends on conditions on the ground and how prepared the Afghan military is to take over. If the Afghan Army isn’t ready now, after nine years and billions of dollars, why should we believe things will be any different by mid-2011? Or by 2014 for that matter? Obama is selling us a fantasy at a time we cannot afford a costly and unwinnable foreign war. Strip away all the military-speak and the fact is that a few hundred al-Qaeda forces have effectively tied up 100,000 American troops – the sophisticated forces of an empire -- at a cost of $120 billion a year.
The war continues and the tax cuts continue and the calls for spending cuts continue and the tone deafness of the ruling class continues, and the people are impotent, far more interested in American Idol and the Kardashians than they are in how their children’s prospects are being diminished by a political and economic system owned and operated by plutocrats for the benefit of plutocrats.
Time to back off and think about something other than the death spiral of the American Dream.
I’m disgusted, dejected, and discouraged.
I’m done with change and over hope.
No more will I respond to e-mail alerts from well-meaning but underfunded progressive organizations, no more will I e-mail or phone the people who are supposed to represent my interests in Washington D.C., no more will I pull my hair and gnash my teeth over the latest Obama capitulation.
I can’t do it, at least not without driving myself crazy or into a prolonged depression. I thought the Bush years were aggravating – and they were – but to watch the candidate I voted for bend over and spread his ass cheeks to appease the GOP, well, that’s beyond what I can tolerate. The latest tax giveaway to the rich was the straw that snapped the camel’s spine. I called, I wrote, I signed petition after petition, yet the package went forward just the same, pushed by Obama, to the delight of the wealthy; they received the goodies their campaign contributions paid for.
If I keep writing about politics I’m going to become a crank, like the one Philip Roth describes in Exit Ghost: “Otherwise, I told myself, you’ll become the exemplary letter-to-the-editor madman, the village grouch, manifesting the syndrome in all its seething ridiculousness: ranting and raving while you read the paper.”
I’m not naïve. I expected a limited resemblance between candidate Obama and President Obama, but I didn’t expect that Obama would become the second coming of Bill Clinton, surround himself with Clinton-era apparatchiks, and take economic advice from the likes of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner; I didn’t expect that he would bow and scrape and become Wall Street’s lackey.
I never thought that President Obama would endorse the Bush era economic plan: endless tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and endless foreign wars that benefit no one. But endorse them he has, putting his presidency and the Democratic Party in a box come 2012.
For a man blessed with such eloquence, why does Barack Obama find it so difficult to articulate a coherent vision of who he is and what he stands for?
Obama has taken to spinning the truth like a run-of-the-mill D.C. PR flack, calling the tax giveaway the product of compromise with the GOP and an economic stimulus package that will grow the economy. The truth is that the tax deal will exacerbate the federal deficit, add fuel to Republicans who want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, and do little to promote job growth.
In Afghanistan, Obama claims things are on-track and that some American forces may depart next summer, though naturally this depends on conditions on the ground and how prepared the Afghan military is to take over. If the Afghan Army isn’t ready now, after nine years and billions of dollars, why should we believe things will be any different by mid-2011? Or by 2014 for that matter? Obama is selling us a fantasy at a time we cannot afford a costly and unwinnable foreign war. Strip away all the military-speak and the fact is that a few hundred al-Qaeda forces have effectively tied up 100,000 American troops – the sophisticated forces of an empire -- at a cost of $120 billion a year.
The war continues and the tax cuts continue and the calls for spending cuts continue and the tone deafness of the ruling class continues, and the people are impotent, far more interested in American Idol and the Kardashians than they are in how their children’s prospects are being diminished by a political and economic system owned and operated by plutocrats for the benefit of plutocrats.
Time to back off and think about something other than the death spiral of the American Dream.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Last Straw
It’s only a matter of time before House Democrats pass the President’s tax giveaway to the GOP. Nancy Pelosi must be feeling pressure from the White House, the right wing echo chamber, the corporate media and any number of spineless Democrats. When it’s all said and done, signed and delivered, the President will claim victory for bipartisanship, but this claim will be as empty as the one Obama made the other day when he said that most economists think this absurd gift to the GOP will stimulate the economy.
Here’s what’s more likely to happen.
First, the federal deficit is going to get worse – much worse.
The gulf between the wealthy and the rest of us will get wider – much wider.
The temporary payroll tax holiday will hurt Social Security in the long run, exacerbating fears that the trust fund will not be able to meet its commitments; this will fuel calls from the GOP to reduce benefits, raise the retirement age or, at long last, end Social Security as we know it by privatizing the program.
The “temporary” tax cuts will become permanent because no politician of either party is going to suggest letting them expire in 2012. No matter what’s happening with the economy, the cuts will remain, starving the government of the revenue it needs to function. This is precisely what right-wing Republicans want to happen.
What argument will Obama fall back on when this middling “stimulus” fails to jumpstart the economy? What will he say when the official unemployment rate remains stuck between nine and ten percent and the true rate is up around seventeen?
The Democrats allowed themselves to be boxed in by the GOP and now they are stuck with what will be. This is Obama’s recession now.
The GOP offered one economic policy during the Bush reign, one policy prescription for every situation, one policy rain or shine, fire or flood, earthquake or tsunami: tax cuts. And how did that singular policy work out? The rich reaped the vast majority of the benefits, economic growth was anemic, the federal deficit ballooned, real wages for working people stayed dead flat or declined, and household debt exploded.
That’s the legacy of the GOP’s obsession with cutting taxes. It didn’t work last decade and it won’t work in this one.
Here’s what’s more likely to happen.
First, the federal deficit is going to get worse – much worse.
The gulf between the wealthy and the rest of us will get wider – much wider.
The temporary payroll tax holiday will hurt Social Security in the long run, exacerbating fears that the trust fund will not be able to meet its commitments; this will fuel calls from the GOP to reduce benefits, raise the retirement age or, at long last, end Social Security as we know it by privatizing the program.
The “temporary” tax cuts will become permanent because no politician of either party is going to suggest letting them expire in 2012. No matter what’s happening with the economy, the cuts will remain, starving the government of the revenue it needs to function. This is precisely what right-wing Republicans want to happen.
What argument will Obama fall back on when this middling “stimulus” fails to jumpstart the economy? What will he say when the official unemployment rate remains stuck between nine and ten percent and the true rate is up around seventeen?
The Democrats allowed themselves to be boxed in by the GOP and now they are stuck with what will be. This is Obama’s recession now.
The GOP offered one economic policy during the Bush reign, one policy prescription for every situation, one policy rain or shine, fire or flood, earthquake or tsunami: tax cuts. And how did that singular policy work out? The rich reaped the vast majority of the benefits, economic growth was anemic, the federal deficit ballooned, real wages for working people stayed dead flat or declined, and household debt exploded.
That’s the legacy of the GOP’s obsession with cutting taxes. It didn’t work last decade and it won’t work in this one.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
If You See the President's Spine, Please Call
President Obama is wandering around the White House, looking under sofas and behind doors and in closets for his spine.
I’m sitting here in disbelief, having just watched the President’s press conference on the deal he “negotiated” with the GOP on taxes. Obama defended the deal and slammed liberals for being sanctimonious purists, and even said that he was willing to take John Boehner at his word.
Take John Boehner at his word? The Sultan of NO, the Lord of Obstruction, the King of Corruption?
It’s clear that Obama is feeling the pressure because he’s talking complete gibberish, like when he compared the tax debate to the debate over the public health care option. He can’t be serious…the public health insurance option was pushed off the table and buried before one word was said about it…right about the time the health industry lobbyists came in to write the damn bill.
The Republicans gave up nothing and got more than what they asked for from the President. There was no reason to couple extension of the Bush tax cuts with an extension of unemployment benefits. None at all. The issues should have been considered separately.
Obama can spin it any way he wants, send the Vice President out to do the same, dispatch David Axelrod to jaw on Good Morning America, rev up the Obama for America machine, but the fact is that he allowed the GOP to box him in, knock him on his butt and then rub his face in the dirt.
As a percentage of GDP, Americans are not heavily taxed, so all this talk about taxes, taxes, taxes is bizarre. In point of fact, tax rates have fallen for years, particularly for high income people, which is a key reason why the gulf between haves and have nots in America is so dramatic.
The tax cuts will have a minor stimulative effect on jobs and consumer spending and a major impact on the size of the Federal deficit. Two or three years from now, the GOP will claim from every rooftop that America will default, implode or collapse unless spending is slashed to reduce the deficit, and the first programs the GOP will go for will be the same ones they always zero in on: Social Security and Medicare. Not defense spending. Not corporate tax rates. Not farm subsidies. Social Security and Medicare. Got to gut or kill those entitlement programs or the sky will fall.
President Obama is an intelligent man but he’s behaving like a captive. He talks about fighting back, but if he was ever going to roll up his sleeves and get his knuckles bloody, this was the fight, this was the issue, and this was the time. Instead of fighting, the President walked to his corner and sat on his stool.
The presidential spine is on the lam. If you see it on a street in your city or town, please call the White House immediately.
I’m sitting here in disbelief, having just watched the President’s press conference on the deal he “negotiated” with the GOP on taxes. Obama defended the deal and slammed liberals for being sanctimonious purists, and even said that he was willing to take John Boehner at his word.
Take John Boehner at his word? The Sultan of NO, the Lord of Obstruction, the King of Corruption?
It’s clear that Obama is feeling the pressure because he’s talking complete gibberish, like when he compared the tax debate to the debate over the public health care option. He can’t be serious…the public health insurance option was pushed off the table and buried before one word was said about it…right about the time the health industry lobbyists came in to write the damn bill.
The Republicans gave up nothing and got more than what they asked for from the President. There was no reason to couple extension of the Bush tax cuts with an extension of unemployment benefits. None at all. The issues should have been considered separately.
Obama can spin it any way he wants, send the Vice President out to do the same, dispatch David Axelrod to jaw on Good Morning America, rev up the Obama for America machine, but the fact is that he allowed the GOP to box him in, knock him on his butt and then rub his face in the dirt.
As a percentage of GDP, Americans are not heavily taxed, so all this talk about taxes, taxes, taxes is bizarre. In point of fact, tax rates have fallen for years, particularly for high income people, which is a key reason why the gulf between haves and have nots in America is so dramatic.
The tax cuts will have a minor stimulative effect on jobs and consumer spending and a major impact on the size of the Federal deficit. Two or three years from now, the GOP will claim from every rooftop that America will default, implode or collapse unless spending is slashed to reduce the deficit, and the first programs the GOP will go for will be the same ones they always zero in on: Social Security and Medicare. Not defense spending. Not corporate tax rates. Not farm subsidies. Social Security and Medicare. Got to gut or kill those entitlement programs or the sky will fall.
President Obama is an intelligent man but he’s behaving like a captive. He talks about fighting back, but if he was ever going to roll up his sleeves and get his knuckles bloody, this was the fight, this was the issue, and this was the time. Instead of fighting, the President walked to his corner and sat on his stool.
The presidential spine is on the lam. If you see it on a street in your city or town, please call the White House immediately.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
POEM: Rogues Gallery
Palin
Paul
Murdoch
We’ve turned the country over to fools, liars and con artists
At a time when we need our best and brightest
Our bravest and boldest
To rescue the nation from disaster
Boehner
Bachmann
McConnell
Our economy is a shambles
The middle class is dying
The Chinese are kicking our ass
The polar ice caps are melting
Afghanistan is a needle in our arm
Iraq a noose around our neck
We can’t win, can’t withdraw
Might as well invade Yemen
Bomb the hell out of Teheran
Gingrich
Rubio
Armey
The fools call for tax cuts
Tax cuts
More tax cuts
Like an incantation for the damned
The defiled
And the doomed
Rove
Cantor
Roberts
Their America is not my America
Is it yours?
Paul
Murdoch
We’ve turned the country over to fools, liars and con artists
At a time when we need our best and brightest
Our bravest and boldest
To rescue the nation from disaster
Boehner
Bachmann
McConnell
Our economy is a shambles
The middle class is dying
The Chinese are kicking our ass
The polar ice caps are melting
Afghanistan is a needle in our arm
Iraq a noose around our neck
We can’t win, can’t withdraw
Might as well invade Yemen
Bomb the hell out of Teheran
Gingrich
Rubio
Armey
The fools call for tax cuts
Tax cuts
More tax cuts
Like an incantation for the damned
The defiled
And the doomed
Rove
Cantor
Roberts
Their America is not my America
Is it yours?
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Better in the Morning
The odds are strong that Julian Assange will wind up confined to a cell for a long time, possibly the rest of his life.
With the release of hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables, the founder of WikiLeaks has pissed off or embarrassed enough powerful people around the world to insure that those folks go to any lengths to punish him.
I imagine U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton screaming into her phone: “I want Assange hung by his balls. I don’t care how you nail him. I don’t care where you nail him. Just snuff him out!” Other world leaders painted in an unfavorable light in the cables would hardly object if Assange and WikiLeaks suddenly vanished.
Blame the leaker who exposes bad actors rather than the actors themselves.
Assange is wanted in Sweden on sexual assault charges, an accusation that came hard on the heels of a WikiLeaks release of thousands of documents about the Afghanistan war. It may be that I have become paranoid or that I have read too many John Le Carre spy novels, but when the news of the sexual assault charge first surfaced, my immediate thought was: Assange is being framed by the CIA.
Why would the CIA do that? Because even if the charge proves false, as Assange insists it is, the smear attached to his name won’t be easily removed or forgotten. And that’s the point. Discredit the source and you discredit his information; whether or not an accusation is true makes no difference at all.
Maybe. I am certain the clock is winding down for Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, here at home the GOP is standing strong for millionaires and billionaires, pledging to thwart every Democratic proposal unless the Bush Era tax cuts are extended for all income groups. The price tag for these cuts is something like $700 billion over a decade, at a time when millions of Americans are either out of work or stitching together part-time jobs to stay afloat; while money to extend unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed simply cannot be raised without exacerbating the deficit; while the Iraq and Afghan occupations continue without end; while the President’s bipartisan Deficit Commission proposes Draconian cuts to social programs along with – surprise, surprise -- corporate tax cuts; and while the President cannot seem to locate his spine.
It’s all disheartening and frustrating.
Perhaps it will look better in the morning.
With the release of hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables, the founder of WikiLeaks has pissed off or embarrassed enough powerful people around the world to insure that those folks go to any lengths to punish him.
I imagine U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton screaming into her phone: “I want Assange hung by his balls. I don’t care how you nail him. I don’t care where you nail him. Just snuff him out!” Other world leaders painted in an unfavorable light in the cables would hardly object if Assange and WikiLeaks suddenly vanished.
Blame the leaker who exposes bad actors rather than the actors themselves.
Assange is wanted in Sweden on sexual assault charges, an accusation that came hard on the heels of a WikiLeaks release of thousands of documents about the Afghanistan war. It may be that I have become paranoid or that I have read too many John Le Carre spy novels, but when the news of the sexual assault charge first surfaced, my immediate thought was: Assange is being framed by the CIA.
Why would the CIA do that? Because even if the charge proves false, as Assange insists it is, the smear attached to his name won’t be easily removed or forgotten. And that’s the point. Discredit the source and you discredit his information; whether or not an accusation is true makes no difference at all.
Maybe. I am certain the clock is winding down for Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, here at home the GOP is standing strong for millionaires and billionaires, pledging to thwart every Democratic proposal unless the Bush Era tax cuts are extended for all income groups. The price tag for these cuts is something like $700 billion over a decade, at a time when millions of Americans are either out of work or stitching together part-time jobs to stay afloat; while money to extend unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed simply cannot be raised without exacerbating the deficit; while the Iraq and Afghan occupations continue without end; while the President’s bipartisan Deficit Commission proposes Draconian cuts to social programs along with – surprise, surprise -- corporate tax cuts; and while the President cannot seem to locate his spine.
It’s all disheartening and frustrating.
Perhaps it will look better in the morning.
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