State of Disunion or The Great American Circle Jerk

With assistance from a bottle of zinfandel, I watched the entire State of the Union address, an event that always strikes me as a somewhat silly spectacle -- the ruling class coming together in order to congratulate itself. The pols shake hands and slap one another on the back, and even those that despise one another make nice for the TV cameras. I wonder how many of them are drunk on expensive booze provided by industry lobbyists. I wonder why John Boehner from Ohio looks like he just returned from a week in the Bahamas – but of course Boehner always looks like that, so a better question is: how much time does this jackass spend in a tanning salon? Why does the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court look so smug?

As Obama found his rhythm and laid out a laundry list of initiatives that will never come to pass, one could easily get the impression that things in America, Inc., are hunky-dory. The financial meltdown was bad, but it could have been worse if the Obama Administration had not acted as it did. I was encouraged to hear Obama admit that he hated the big bank bailout, though last I looked Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers were still on his economic team, and that Wall Street-adoring-duo seems to believe that the bank rescue was a perfectly acceptable and wise use of taxpayer money.

Obama tossed crumbs to this group and that, a tax cut here, a small business assist there, all designed to give the appearance of forward momentum, though never was the prevailing order seriously challenged. The rules and parameters of the game remain the same.

I was pleased to hear Obama remind (finally!) the Republicans of the deep hole his administration started in – a hole dug by eight years of Bush-Cheney and Republican majority misrule and corruption. Lest we forget the Bush-Cheney-GOP scorecard: two costly wars, a ruined financial sector, anemic job growth, huge debt, and runaway health care costs. On the other hand, I was dumbfounded when Obama stumped for “safe” nuclear power (no such thing), expanded off shore oil drilling, and the myth of “clean” coal. That’s not the change in energy or environmental policy I voted for.

Obama makes a fine speech, no doubt about it, but what happens now? Will he retreat to the sidelines once again and allow lobbyists and Congress to dominate the agenda? Times are bad, make no mistake – you only have to look at California to understand how bad – and we desperately need a president who can channel FDR, not Herbert Hoover.

It’s hard to argue with Obama’s assertion that Washington has created a deficit of trust. Polls consistently make clear that Americans want a comprehensive publicly funded health insurance system like Medicare, but the politicians won’t deliver it – and even worse, few of them, including Obama himself, are brave enough to try. Expanding Medicare for all Americans was never on the table.

The real State of the Union circle jerk takes place in the media – before the speech and for days thereafter, on talk radio and all the major TV networks. The coverage and commentary on Fox News is the most out of touch with reality, as if Hannity and Company watched an entirely different speech. CNN’s coverage takes top prize for sheer ridiculousness – with its large cast of talking heads, high tech props, and breathless analysis of Twitter messages. Sweet Jesus, no wonder the American people are so easily duped.

I don’t quit, Obama said, and the American people don’t quit. I’m sure about the latter – at least when the people are allowed to play the game fairly and with a stake in the outcome. For the past thirty years, however, the game has been rigged in favor of the wealthy, in favor of corporate power, in favor of the few at the expense of the many. The balance of power has tilted too drastically to one side, and so the ship of state lists, takes on water, and threatens to sink.

All Over the Map

Where to begin? With Haiti? With the decision by the Supreme Court in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission? With what happened in Massachusetts? Or with the idea that the gravest danger to the United States is not the Taliban or al Qaeda or unfettered corporate power, but the short attention span and porous memory of the American electorate?

It’s hard to watch what’s happening in Haiti and not feel useless; sure, you can donate a few dollars and feel satisfied that you’ve done your part, but it will be a long, long while before Haiti is back on her feet. The earthquake is not a tragedy, as the mainstream American media intones over and over; Haiti’s history is the real tragedy, a history that includes numerous interventions by the United States. How many Americans know that the U.S. occupied Haiti for nearly two decades in the early part of the last century? Or that the U.S. was in bed with the Duvalier family, Papa and Baby Doc, and stood aside, mute and blind, while father, then son, looted Haiti’s wealth and terrorized the populace? Papa and Baby were anti-Communist – and that was the only criteria that counted with the U.S. No real surprise there – the U.S. pulled the same stunt all over the hemisphere, always under the guise of promoting democracy or protecting private economic interests from the red menace.

It’s absolutely ironic that President Obama tapped Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to spearhead fund raising efforts – two American presidents whose hands are caked with Haitian dirt and blood. The Bush Administration was deeply involved in the 2004 machinations that removed (some say kidnapped) democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power. The U.S. feared Aristide, you see, so democratically elected or not, he had to go.

After Katrina and Iraq, it’s difficult to imagine a reconstruction effort that isn’t fraught with political maneuvering, corporate greed, incompetence and failure. How many former residents of New Orleans remain dispersed, unable to return home because there are no homes to return to? Have the schools and hospitals that were damaged by Katrina been rebuilt? You can bet the corporate vultures are circling Haiti, angling to get in on the ground floor of the rebuilding effort, grab a share of all those donated dollars; get in early, hook up with influential Haitians, and get out with plenty of cash.

And if a mess is left in their wake, well, that’s just Capitalism, baby.

How long will it be before the world loses interest in Haiti, shifts its limited attention to the next natural disaster? When was the last time you saw a news story about recovery in New Orleans?

According to the Supreme Court of the United States, corporations have the same rights as individual citizens when it comes to free speech. This despite the fact that a corporate charter is a privilege, not a right, granted by the people (through their duly elected government), and that heretofore the court has held that corporations do not have the same rights as individuals. The five right-wing members of the high court put the myth of American democracy to rest for all time. There should now be no doubt in our minds that our elected representatives and appointed judges exist only to serve their corporate benefactors. We should now insist that they wear the logos of the corporations they serve. Yes, plaster those somber, sober judicial robes with AT&T, Verizon, DOW, Microsoft, Dell, ABC, NBC, Bravo, and Taco Bell. At least this way the people will know which team the whores really play for.

Ah, and old Massachusetts, cradle of American defiance and democracy, what are we to make of the fact that the Democrats somehow lost the senate seat owned by Teddy Kennedy for decades? Depends on who you get your news from. If you take your dose of truth and wisdom from Fox News and Limbaugh, you probably believe that the Democrats lost because their party has moved too far to the left. The facts don’t support this, of course, but Fox News and Limbaugh rarely bother with facts; they have an agenda to push.

If you read the New York Times and the Washington Post, you might think that the Democrats are in deep trouble, set up for major losses in the mid-term elections, and while this may be partially true, the Times and the Post attribute the reasons to the wrong source.

Barack Obama was elected because voters believed he could deliver on his promise of change, and with the economy in freefall and solid Democratic majorities in Congress, it seemed to many that bold changes were inevitable, and that these changes would help the millions of people ignored, penalized or forgotten during the Bush Era. Instead, Barack Obama, for all his eloquence and intelligence, has stumbled around like the ghost of Jimmy Carter, tripping over his own feet, kowtowing to miscreant Republicans, and pushing an anemic, uninspiring agenda. Perhaps most egregious of all, Obama surrounded himself with champions of the established order, the sort of players who sleep with the enemy by night and crow about their virtue by day.

Perhaps Barack Obama is too intelligent to become a great president; perhaps he lacks a street fighter’s mentality, the innate sense of when to kick butt and take no prisoners; perhaps, however well intentioned, he’s too detached and aloof, unwilling to scrape his knuckles and have his nose bloodied.

We can only hope he finds his way before it’s too late.

War: The Real National Pastime

The other day I found myself thinking about the military mentality of the United States. Perhaps this is the reason why professional football is our national pastime; with its complex formations and carefully diagrammed plays, the communication between coaches on the field and those in the press box -- which is not unlike that between a platoon leader and a forward observer -- football is war-like. Broadcasters often refer to football seasons as “campaigns,” certain players earn the title of “warriors,” and top-tier quarterbacks are sometimes called “field generals.”

We like to declare war on conditions, objects and tactics almost as much as we do on other nations. Back in 1964, the Johnson Administration declared War on Poverty, spawning a slew of programs that widened the social safety net and provided minorities greater opportunities to get a leg up on the American Dream. Unfortunately, LBJ was as preoccupied with the war in Vietnam as he was with poverty in America, and the costs of propping up the corrupt government of South Vietnam against the communists up north hampered his administration’s efforts to eradicate poverty. Moral of the story: choose guns or butter, but not both.

Good old Dick Nixon continued many of LBJ’s anti-poverty programs, but also decided in 1968 that illegal drugs were a grave and immediate threat to the nation and launched the War on Drugs. Nixon was a law and order type, and in his view the hippies, anti-war protestors and black power advocates were amped on speed or freaked out on LSD and had to be stopped before all hell broke loose. The drug war continues to this very day, fought in our inner cities as well as our suburbs, with harsh legal remedies such as mandatory sentences that are partly responsible for jamming nearly one million non-violent offenders into the prison-industrial complex. The United States now has the distinction of being the undisputed World Champion of Incarceration, with more than two million people locked away. Despite millions of dollars spent on enforcement, eradication and anti-drug education, demand for illicit drugs is as rampant as ever, which is one reason Mexicans are killing one another to control lucrative drug routes to the American market. Lesson here: beware of unintended consequences. Second lesson: drop the hypocrisy and legalize the drugs that Americans are going to use anyway. The Volstead Act didn’t work against alcohol, remember? We came to our senses and dropped that bad idea; by now it should be abundantly clear that the War on Drugs is a total failure.

My favorite American war has to be the War on Terror declared by George W. Bush in 2001. War on Terror is a catchy slogan that no doubt captured the nation’s fear and need for revenge after 9/11, but I never understood how war is declared on a tactic. The most successful anti-terrorism efforts involve painstaking police work, intelligence collection and international cooperation, not full-scale military operations. But we needed revenge so Bush sent American forces to Afghanistan to root out the Taliban who were said to aid and abet al Qaeda, even though most of the 9/11 plotters were Saudis operating out of Germany. The overwhelming firepower of the American troops sent the Taliban packing (temporarily) and persuaded Bush (or was it Dick Cheney?) that it was high time to take out another purported sponsor of terrorism – Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Of course, it took a concerted campaign of monumental lies from the Bush gang to convince people that invading Iraq and changing the regime there was critical to winning the War on Terror. The governments of Great Britain and Togo, to name two, swallowed the lies and joined the Coalition of the Willing, but most people knew better and millions the world over took to the streets to protest. Bush carried on anyway, and it wasn’t long before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was crowing about Shock & Awe, and CNN and Fox were hyping the invasion as if it was a football game. Only when successful invasion became failing occupation -- and American casualties began to mount -- did cold reality set in. Lesson: think twice or three times before unleashing the dogs of war.

Well, if you can’t walk tall, at least carry a large stick. And we do. The American military is a colossus that straddles the planet, more ubiquitous than Coca-Cola. Some 280,000 U.S. military personnel (not counting private contractors) are positioned from Guam to Turkey, Greece to Greenland – 135 countries in all. Our economy may be second-tier and getting worse all the time, but for now we can still boast having the biggest stick in the world.

We love war and its trappings. Why else do F18 fighter plans streak over stadiums before major sporting events? Why are West Point cadets used as human props for presidential speeches? Why is such deference given to generals and admirals? We love military spectacle as much as the Soviets ever did. What we shy from are the human costs of war: images of dead civilians, flag-draped coffins being off-loaded from cargo planes, and photographs from VA hospitals of the wounded, the maimed, the burned and the forever shell-shocked.

Far too often we confuse brute military force with moral authority, deluding ourselves into believing that our military might is only used for just purposes.

If you believe that, then you must also believe that pigs will one day sprout wings and take flight.

Men And Their Balls

The “progressive” community, liberals, people who lean left on the American political spectrum, are deeply concerned about Barrack Obama. OK, that’s an understatement. Ticked off, disappointed, angry, worried, incensed, furious and depressed is more like it.

Obama says the right things with eloquence rarely matched in American politics, but when the last perfect note fades away, he does little if anything to make his soaring rhetoric reality. When faced with opposition from the whack jobs of the dying GOP, the tea baggers, Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter, he folds his tent and slinks into the shadows.

We expected so much more. There was no direction to go but up. George and Dick were finally leaving the stage. Hope was in the air when Obama swore his oath on that chilly January day almost one year ago. The hoopla, the crowds, the music, the excitement, the flags and banners and posters – how remote it all feels now. The economy’s feeble, the titans of Wall Street are laughing as they fuck their mistresses on mattresses stuffed with $100 bills, the insurance lobby is licking its chops over health care “reform,” and we’re upping the ante in Afghanistan. What’s changed?

Not much. Obama the commodity was sold with a slogan, like toothpaste or hemorrhoid ointment. “Change We Can Believe In.” Sure. And Chevron really cares about the environment. And the Easter bunny is real. And there’s a leprechaun sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We’re knee deep in the politics of fear and failure, knee deep in limp-dicked efforts to turn the ship of state, knee deep in preening and posturing on the White House lawn. Obama the intelligent incrementalist -- two steps up, one back, one to the side, throw in a little Ali shuffle for good measure -- can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man; slippery when wet, like Bill Clinton and his maddening triangulation strategies.

George W. Bush had an undersized brain and oversized balls. Bush was a faux cowboy from Yale who shot first and questioned later. When the overgrown frat boy wasn’t mooning the world or deferring the tough decisions to Uncle Dick, he was playing Christian crusader, bombing the shit out of innocent Muslims.

Barrack Hussein Obama possesses a large, capable brain and a silver tongue, but his balls are no larger than BB’s -- teeny-weeny things swinging in the presidential scrotum sack. The man can think, the man can speak, the man cuts a fine figure but he can’t get shit done for the folks even with a friendly Congress. Obama has surrounded himself with corporate-friendly types and Clinton-era recycles, and he nuances every damn thing until it’s unrecognizable – like Bill Clinton describing what constitutes the sex act to a federal judge.

Like tired whores we hoped for more. We hoped, for once, that the pimp would take his money and forgo the beating. No such luck. Back on our knees, bowing down before the moneyed class, the political elites, the corporate lawyers and lobbyists, the fixers and the cheats, the charlatans and the untouchable criminals. This is America, this is the dream, this is the one nation under God, better than all the others.

After Bush and Cheney, we needed to believe again, but we elected a man with tiny balls. Guess the joke’s on us and our children and their children. This is what betrayal feels like.

The Good Citizen

Though it gets tougher and more demoralizing every year, I try to be a good, engaged citizen. What with the screwball antics and partisan posturing that passes for legislative activity in Washington D.C., giving up on the whole democratic process often seems more sensible than continuing to push the rock up the slippery slope. Be that as it may, I’ve written dozens of letters this year, signed what must be hundreds of on-line petitions on everything from global warming to reform of the financial system, to easing bankruptcy laws and giving consumers a break on their credit cards, to protests against escalating the war in Afghanistan.

I don’t know what value, if any, to place on my feeble efforts to remind lawmakers that real flesh and blood people are impacted by the deals they cut, fail to cut, or compromise beyond recognition. The replies I receive from my representative and senators are always polite, bland, equivocal, and machine generated.

Anyway, the other night I woke up thinking how refreshing it would be to receive a reply from a “congress critter” (thanks, Jim Hightower for that moniker) that speaks the dead honest truth. No BS, no holds barred. I imagined it might read something like this:

Dear Mr. Tanguay:

Thank you for all the letters you’ve written me about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis and economic meltdown, Wall Street corruption and potential for reform (not likely, ha ha), the TARP program and the climate crisis. I find your letters amusing, both for their trenchant analysis and unbridled anger against the way things are. My staff rarely agrees with your opinions, but they enjoy reading them all the same.

What’s obvious from your correspondence is that you do not understand that people like me do not listen to people like you. I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings or drive you to purchase an automatic weapon at your local gun show. But think about it. What are your letters – no matter how comical and entertaining – compared to a big fat check from an industry lobbyist? Sometimes they even come to call carrying wads of cash. Watching them lay all that money on my desk is an experience I never tire of.

There are other perks as well, like prime concert tickets, Super Bowl tickets, the ever appreciated junket to Hawaii for the NFL Pro Bowl, and World Series tickets. (FYI: Once you’ve sat in a team owner’s private box you can never go back to mingling in the cheap seats with the commoners.)

Does my brutal honesty offend you? If it does I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t create this byzantine system of payoffs and favors, nor am I responsible for the revolving door that propels people from corporate suites to high-level posts in the DC bureaucracy and back again. The game is what it is, and by God, I’m pretty good at it. Average citizens don’t appreciate what a snake pit this place can be. Big time politics is nothing less than blood sport. Trust is as transient on Capitol Hill as it is among Mexican drug dealers.

Bear in mind that these transactions -- if you don’t mind my calling them that -- are perfectly legal. After all, this is a system created by lawyers, interpreted by lawyers, and circumvented by lawyers for the benefit of surprise, surprise – lawyers!

It’s unlikely that you could despise me any more than you do already. Sorry to burst your bubble about the sham our democracy has become, but this is the way things work here in our nation’s capitol.

Keep writing. I can always use a laugh.

P.S. The least I can do is thank you and all the other suckers out there for my defined benefit retirement plan, and my platinum, taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage. Life is good!

Duke Lives

Standard Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The Balcony does not advocate or support armed insurrection against private interests or the government of the United States.

The front door swung open and Duke appeared, wobbly and unsteady, like a boxer after a bad round; he held a .357 magnum in his right hand. I’d never seen a .357 that close before, and the size of the thing shocked me; it was a beast of a pistol.

“Fucking missed,” Duke said sheepishly, brushing plaster dust from his shoulders and eyebrows. “All that stuff about Amsterdam was BS. Come in.”

“Not until you put that canon down. Christ, Doc, you scared the crap out of me.”

“I’ll make some coffee,” Duke said. I followed him into the kitchen, sat at the table and watched Duke measure out the coffee. I noticed that his hand was shaking. The .357 was next to the toaster oven. Good thing Duke lived in a remote, heavily wooded part of Mission Canyon, otherwise his driveway would be jammed with curious neighbors and cops, just the sort of attention a suspected dope dealer tries to avoid.

“Be ready in a minute,” Duke said. He sat down, studied the table. “Lost my nerve at the moment of truth. Offing oneself is harder than I thought. I figured it would be no big deal. Load, aim, pull trigger. Guess I wasn’t ready to depart this earth. You want it black?”

“With cream,” I said.

“You’ll have to settle for 2% milk. I’m out of half and half.”

“Whatever.”

We sipped our coffee in silence. For a man who lived alone and traveled abroad frequently, Duke’s kitchen was surprisingly well-equipped; Sub-Zero refrigerator, Braun espresso maker, restaurant-style gas range, big spice rack, bottles of imported extra virgin olive oil, cookbooks from Williams-Sonoma; a complete set of Calphalon cookware hung from a ceiling rack. Duke even had a Winnie-the-Pooh cookie jar, a nod to his whimsical nature.

“I wrote a note,” Duke said. “Nothing profound. It’s damn hard to come up with a single sentence to encapsulate a long, eventful life. Know what I wrote? ‘The bastards have won.’ Four words.”

“Lean, straightforward, perhaps a bit vague, but it certainly sums up your frame of mind. Glad you missed, Doc.”

“Me, too.”

“What now?”

“I’m in the mood to make some trouble.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Controlled anarchy, Edward Abbey style.”

“Monkey wrenching? Is there a dam somewhere you have a hankering to destroy?”

“More like banks, investment houses, the offices of certain hedge funds, maybe the headquarters of a particular insurance giant, the nearest Wal-Mart. Confront the swine where they live and in a manner that will get their attention. Fuck with their lobbying firms too. There’s no time to lose. Every day we delay the motherfuckers get stronger.”

“So, I quit my job and you and I zip around the country blowing up banks and Wal-Marts? My family might not support this idea with much enthusiasm. They enjoy eating and living under a roof. You do understand that this isn’t the mid-70’s? You are familiar with the Patriot Act? In contemporary America we could go to jail just for having this hypothetical conversation.”

“Killjoy,” Duke said.

He went into his den and a few minutes later came back and tossed a worn copy of Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang on the table. I hadn’t read Abbey in a dozen years, but remembered the characters and their exploits in the slick rock country: Hayduke, Doc Sarvis, Bonnie, Seldom Seen Smith.

“I don’t see another way,” Duke said. His eyes were coming alive again. “The oligarchs are too powerful, their control of the system too absolute. We can’t beat them politically or economically. Massive civil disobedience might work, but do you see any cohesive, coordinated and committed movement springing up from the grassroots of this weary and demoralized nation?”

“Doc,” I said, “you’ve been through a traumatic experience. I think you need to smoke a bowl or two and take a nice long nap.”

He pondered this advice for a moment, then said: “The line between sanity and madness is very thin.”

Lost

You gotta’ love the theatrical aspect of Washington D.C. politics, whether it’s the President using West Point cadets as props for his speech to justify the escalation of our Afghan war or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke explaining to Congress how the Fed rode to the rescue of the financial system.

Way to dodge any accountability and spin the myth, Ben. That must be the reason Time magazine named you as its Person of the Year. CNN reported that, ”the central bank of the U.S. is the most important and least understood force shaping the American – and global – economy.” That’s quite an understatement. Along with the intelligence apparatus, the Fed is the most secretive and unaccountable government agency, able to stonewall Congress with impunity and pimp for its member banks with steely efficiency. I guess the good folks at CNN forgot that the Fed was complicit in creating the real estate bubble – and the tech bubble before that – not to mention guilty of turning a blind eye and a deaf ear while Wall Street went on a risk binge. Some of that shame must be laid on Alan Greenspan, the former wizard-in-residence of the Fed, but Bernanke has kept the tradition alive.

Nevertheless, when Bernanke appeared before Congress recently his message was that the Fed works just fine, thank you, and further oversight of its activities would be counter-productive and might spook global investors.

And we can’t have that, can we?

By choosing Bernanke as its Person of the Year, Time magazine, a charter member of the mainstream media society, affirmed what’s important in this country: the financial sector and the almighty buck. One problem with choosing Bernanke is that the real economy of work and wages hasn’t recovered at all. A $14 trillion taxpayer bail-out may have stabilized Wall Street and worked wonders for financial sector profits, but John and Jane Public are still waiting for a hand to help them out of the ditch; city and state governments are starving for revenue and slashing services for the most vulnerable citizens; banks remain hesitant to lend; unemployment is still high; foreclosures continue; and the gap between haves and have nots is wider than ever.

Some rescue.

Fucking up the lives of average American families in the service of bankers and Wall Street gamblers is merely a misdemeanor in this country. No harm, no foul, no blood, no ambulance as Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn used to say.

$14 trillion could have purchased a lot of health insurance, a lot of teachers, a lot of shelter for the homeless, a lot of medical research, a lot of college tuition. Opportunity costs.

Lost.

Mental Mind F*&K - 09

Too much information, mind can’t handle it, overdrive and overflow, disk full, disk screaming. Information Age – e-mails, text messages, tweets, social networking, TV, fucking TV -- most of it garbage, trash, refuse, flotsam, jetsam, detritus – the sordid compost of our culture. Housewives of Orange County, California, look-alike blondes, fake tans, fake tits, fake nails, shit for brains…Tiger Woods drives his Escalade into a tree, a fire hydrant, a telephone pole…which is it and why? What’s the real story? Media feeding frenzy…blood in the water…prepared statements, Larry King all over it, one woman on the side for Tiger, two, three or was it four? Did Tiger’s Nordic wife take after him with a 9-iron? Riveting. Knocks the Afghan quagmire off the front page. Cue the drama on CNN: Tiger Woods, American icon or incurable skirt chaser and pussy hound? Unthinkable, yet…icons are created to be destroyed, no other reason. Americans love watching the mighty stumble and fall. Stupid human tricks. Can’t avert our eyes from the pedophile in the pulpit or the 20-car pile-up on the freeway…Jon & Kate…dipshits, little kids running around, pissing, shitting, upchucking peas while their parents angle for the best deal they can get…Jon is a dork but he gets chicks, go figure. Brett Michaels? Who the fuck would want to date that has-been? Every slutty girl who calls LA home and desperately wants to become the next “personality,” that’s who. No talent required. Ray J? – same story. Faux ho’s falling all over themselves for second-tier celebrities...as if the feminist movement and women’s liberation never happened…as if Gloria Steinem never existed...as if bras never burned so Women could be respected for who they are not what they do for men. Dumb girls with their tits hanging out, glitter on their eyelids…look at me…look at me…look at me…everybody wants to be on TV, on the red carpet, in the receiving line at the White House whether invited or not. Better not to be invited, better to crash the gilded gig, then sell the story to the highest bidder, always the highest. E. National Enquirer. People. Sell the story, write the book, sit down with Oprah or Larry King. Stock market rises, unemployment does, too. 1 in 8 Americans eligible for food stamps. How about a show devoted to that, Oprah? The ghost of Tom Joad has returned. The criminalization of poverty. The canonization of greed. Welcome to George W. Bush’s recession, the gift that never stops giving, like an untreated hemorrhoid. Aisles in Borders bookstore bursting with vampire novels and apocalyptic fictions. Supernatural beings loiter at the end of the world, trading tales of dark eternity. Pale faces, bloodshot eyes, cold fingers. Rush Limbaugh becomes king, distributes Oxycontin to school kids. Brain melting under this terrible strain, pressure…tremendous urge to castrate Glenn Beck with a dull knife, serve his severed scrotum sack to Ann Coulter or that freak Sarah Palin. Here, bitch, eat Glenn’s balls! Searing pain in the frontal lobes…can’t take any more…can you?

LBJ Rides Again

The era is different. The terrain is different. The culture is different. Yet the similarities between Barack Obama and Lyndon Johnson are remarkable, and the chances of history repeating itself are an odds-makers dream. The Vietnam conflict ruined LBJ’s presidency and derailed his domestic agenda, just as Afghanistan will likely doom Obama’s presidency at a time in America’s history when the country can least afford for him to fail.

LBJ feared the political consequences of appearing weak on Vietnam just as Obama is deathly afraid of appearing wimpy on Afghanistan. Like LBJ in Vietnam, Obama desires to “finish” the job in Afghanistan, though what that job is remains a shifting target.

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in order to root out al-Qaeda terrorists, their Taliban supporters, and to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Superior military firepower allowed the US to rout the Taliban, but Osama bin Laden remains at large, possibly hiding in Pakistan. It is unlikely bin Laden would still be free or alive without a wink and a nod from the Pakistani government – a purported ally of the US in the Global War on Terror and a major recipient of US funding. Pakistan is a key but wildly unpredictable variable in the Afghanistan conflict; for good or ill we’re in bed with a country we cannot trust any more than we can trust the government of Hamid Kharzai.

There’s an element of Keystone Cop in the U.S.’s pursuit of bin Laden. Bill Clinton tried to take bin Laden out with cruise missiles; W. Bush used cowboy rhetoric and an invasion and occupation that have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars; and now Obama seems determined to continue Bush’s misadventure. Despite all this, not to mention the best efforts of the CIA, NSA, DIA and NATO, bin Laden is still alive and dreaming of global jihad.

Now, after months of careful deliberation that has been criticized by the GOP as “dithering,” even though the GOP’s man, W. Bush, bumbled around in Afghanistan for nearly seven years, Obama will dispatch some 30,000 more American troops to the Afghan quagmire. While the number of troops is less than requested by Stan McChrystal, the American commander, Obama will ask, beg, plead, browbeat and threaten our NATO allies to give 6,000 or more additional troops to the meat grinder, providing McChrystal the magic number he wanted from the beginning. Why NATO countries should cough up more soldiers is a mystery, since Afghanistan is clearly America’s war.

By sending fewer than 40,000 American troops, Obama can claim that he’s not a puppet of the Generals, even though he is because not sending thousands more troops was never a serious policy consideration. This is another of those instances where failure is redefined, packaged and sold to the public as success. Will the people buy it? Probably. Millions of Americans are distracted by the rigors of everyday life, deeply worried about keeping or finding a job, making the mortgage payment, or putting food on the table. The economy is fucked – at least for people who work for wages, but things aren’t yet so bad that our government can’t waste billions chasing phantoms in Afghanistan.

When he addresses the nation next Tuesday to justify the troop increase, Obama will appear and sound reasoned, reasonable, realistic and resolved; he will talk about our national security, our freedom and perhaps our way of life in language that will soar and may even inspire. Unlike W. Bush, Obama probably won’t refer to the American people as the chosen ones or toss in many references to God, and in itself this will be a relief, but the bottom line is that the U.S. will be stuck in Afghanistan for years and perhaps decades to come, unable to “win” the conflict or cut its losses and leave. The Soviets poured more than 100,000 soldiers into Afghanistan in the 1980’s and got their clocked cleaned.

I’m afraid the same unfortunate fate awaits us. History may not repeat in exactly the same way, but repeat it does when people are too stupid or stubborn to heed history’s lessons.

Last Visit with Dr. Duke

“I’ve had it,” Duke said, handing me an ice-cold Corona before I even stepped across his threshold. Tossing a slice of lime over his shoulder (I caught it), he plopped into his recliner and sighed deeply, like a man who has reached the end of a long desert march.

“With what?” I asked, taking a seat opposite him.

“The American corporate welfare state, the American military-industrial-intelligence complex, the American prison industry and incarceration complex, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the War on working people, and the endless assault on the environment. Had it. Game over. Moving to Amsterdam.”

I hadn’t seen or heard from Duke in months, not since I watched him toss a coin to decide which of two beautiful young women he would choose to marry. He looked wearier now, all of his 60-plus years, and with a heaviness in his spirit that had never been there before. Duke had always controlled his own environment and lived on his own terms; something was clearly amiss.

“Don Henley was right,” Duke said. “We’re ‘poisoned by these fairy tales,’ unable to confront reality, unable to rise beyond a tribal, siege mentality.”

“I’ve never seen you this down, Doc,” I said. “Last time I was here you were stone in love with two women.”

“Ah, that was hard, Tang, an absolutely untenable position and a dance I don’t recommend to any man, unless he’s as demented as George W. Bush.” Another heavy sigh. “I saw Sarah Palin on Oprah today. Sarah-Fucking-Palin. The woman is a twat – not a twit or a tweet, but a foul-smelling back alley VD-infested twat. She’s a walking, talking testament to the abject failure of our celebrity-obsessed culture. How many of our fellow citizens realize that we are on a one-way street to second-nation status? But don’t get me started.”

Too late for that, I thought.

Duke opened another Corona.

“Why Amsterdam?” I asked.

“No particular reason,” Duke said, “other than I’ve always liked the place, plus it has the benefit of being 5500 miles from this pig-fucked nation. Europe has problems, of course, but the continent remains reasonably civilized. So I’m turning my back on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, on James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, on John Adams and John Jay. If I had bigger balls I’d end my misery with a bullet to the brain, like Hemingway and Hunter Thompson.”

“Jesus, don’t say shit like that, Doc.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Despair’s not your thing, Doc.”

“Maybe. But a man – a thinking man, anyway – reaches a point where what is and what should be cannot be reconciled. My despair is of the unshakeable variety. My sense is of things, people, institutions and nations slipping and sliding into the abyss.”

“Have you seen you physician lately, Doc? Maybe you need a prescription for anti-depressants.”

“I’m on Zoloft and Lithium already. They have no effect. I’ve even lost faith in pharmacology.”

“Shit.”

“Keep writing your flaming screeds, Tang-O, but never forget that you’re battling the most prolific propaganda machine this world has ever seen. It’s owned by the wealthy and in the service of the wealthy. Nonetheless, you can’t quit. Keep screaming from the balcony, the outhouse, the prison cell and the church pew.”

“You’ll be back,” I said.

Duke stared into space for thirty seconds. He seemed to age before my eyes; his passion, audacity and fire seeping out of him like blood from a severed artery -- this man who had resigned from a tenured professorship at UCSB because he disagreed with the chancellor on everything from the treatment of teaching assistants to the salaries of top administrators. (“Parasites on the body of higher education,” Duke called his bosses.) Resigned to become a successful marijuana dealer (suspected by the SBPD but never charged), owner of a large and rustic home in secluded Mission Canyon, and a man who largely did exactly as he pleased.

Duke chuckled. “You know what the last straw was, Tang? The Wall Street bail out. That’s when I realized that all hope was gone, even with an intelligent black man parked in the White House. A trillion taxpayer dollars for reckless financial firms that deserved to die not be rescued. Too big to fail is a crock of horseshit. A trillion dollars for politically connected banks and Wall Street firms, peanuts and crumbs for working people. Look at the banks and Wall Street now? Swimming in profits, paying huge bonuses to their executives, and laughing hysterically at how easy it was to bilk the taxpayers. The Mafia never had it as good. It’s beyond insulting.”

I couldn’t argue with his conclusion. The bail out soured me on the Obama Administration, too. All that talk about audacity and hope, the excitement I felt on Inauguration Day, hadn’t translated into much in the way of concrete policy. On the other hand, a president’s powers are limited.

“The people should be in the streets,” Duke said, “with axe handles and Molotov cocktails, baseball bats, machetes, kitchen knives, hunting rifles. D.C. and Wall Street should be engulfed in flames, burning to the fucking ground. I’m not a violent man, but I see no other way to disrupt and change the status quo. Political solutions can’t work because the system is irreparably corrupt. The cancer has been growing for years, but it metastasized when the Supreme Court installed W. Bush in the White House.”

“How come you’re not out there, Doc?”

“Me? Too old. Too tired. Too comfortable. My generation had its shot.”

“The 60’s?”

“Yep. We climbed part way up the mountain, and then we got corrupted and co-opted. We got fat, happy and greedy. We’re little more than advertising slogans and statistics now.”

“You’re depressing me, Doc.”

“Yes, I’m not fit for human companionship.”

“You’re really leaving?”

“Amsterdam bound, baby. The first thing I’ll do when I get there is take out my dick and piss all over my passport.”

We shook hands on his porch. I told Duke that we would meet again, somewhere in America, but he was adamant that such a meeting would never happen. He was leaving and not coming back.

“Keep writing,” he said before turning to go back inside.

I laughed. “It seems pointless. Nobody reads my shit, Doc.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s an act of resistance and protest.”

Duke closed the door. The porch light went out and I heard the deadbolt slide into place. I stood in the dark of the porch for a moment, listening to the cicadas, the distant rumble of traffic on the 101, the howl of a lone dog. I never imagined that Duke would become a casualty of the American Dream.

And then I heard the single gunshot.

Manny and Me

They arrive at 6:30 a.m. on a bright, clear November Friday morning, the Mexican gardeners who work for my landlord. Manny is the honcho, his helper today is Jose or Juan or Chuy or Paco or Pedro. The helpers come and go, Manny, unfortunately, remains. Hate is a strong and overused word, so I won’t claim to hate Manny, though I dislike him, intensely.

We have history, Manny and I, of broken pots and trampled poppies, sunflowers, morning glory, geraniums and wildflowers; of delicate new grass, roped off with yellow caution tape, mowed weeks before its time, the yellow tape left on the ground. How many times have I asked Manny to be careful of my flowers only to find my request ignored? How many times did Manny or one of his helpers leave the back gate wide open, allowing Sparky, our Jack Russell Terrier, to get out and reconnoiter the neighborhood? Sparky always came home, but as we live on a busy street where drivers routinely flaunt the speed limit, he could have been creamed.

And then there are the trash cans, two for regular trash, one blue can for recyclables. How many times has Manny or one of his boys filled my recycle bin with grass clippings, leaves, twigs or good old-fashioned dirt?

I’ve lost count.

You might be thinking that my problem with Manny springs from lack of a common language, but this isn’t the case. Manny has been in California for more than thirty years and speaks English very well, so there’s no question that he understands me when I point to a four foot tall sunflower and say, “Please don’t pull this up.”

Invariably Manny will nod vigorously and say, “OK, OK.” But as soon as I turn my back, Manny jerks the plant from the ground or stomps it with one of his cloudhoppers. Though I don’t have any concrete evidence to conclude that Manny enjoys murdering my innocent plants, I imagine he does.

My landlord knows Manny is an imbecile, a classic “blow and go” sort of gardener who takes no pride in his work, but because Manny shows up regularly my landlord keeps him on the payroll. This is a sad commentary on the pool of gardening talent in our town. The gig is a snap and if my landlord would let me, I could do it as well if not better, if only because I can tell the difference between a flower and a weed.

Lack of control over when the gardeners come and what they do (or don’t do) when they get here, is a tenant’s dilemma, never easily resolved. On the one hand I appreciate that my landlord tries to maintain his property, even if he hires an imbecile to do it. On the other, there’s no sound quite as annoying or nerve rattling as the whine of a leaf blower before a man has downed his first cup of coffee.

Berries, Bombs and Billions

Per capita annual income in Uruguay is $12,400.

Per capita annual income in Afghanistan is $700.

Uruguay is 6,212 miles from California by air.

Afghanistan is 7,647 miles from California by air.

Trader Joe’s imports blueberries grown in Uruguay.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, “Uruguay’s economy is characterized by an export-oriented agricultural sector.”

According to the same CIA Factbook, major challenges facing Afghanistan include: “Budget sustainability, job creation, corruption, government capacity, and re-building war torn infrastructure.”

In 2006 a UK-based organization called Sustain issued a report that said: “Fruits and vegetables are the largest of all airfreighted commodities.” The report went on to note that airfreight is a heavy contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

The Congressional Research Service reports that our government budgeted $227 billion for the war in Afghanistan in fiscal year 2009. Contracts and payroll alone amounted to $3.6 billion per month.

What do all these facts mean? Primarily it means that when I see blueberries in Trader Joe’s -- on sale, $3.99 for 4.4 ounces – the first thing I do is read the label to see where the berries were grown, and if the label says Mexico, Argentina or Uruguay, the berries stay on the shelf.

Call me a grump, a curmudgeon, a crank. Guilty as charged, but I can’t justify the carbon emission required to bring blueberries to California from Uruguay. Yes, some farmer in Uruguay is delighted to have a worldwide market for his blueberries, and people need jobs, but the total cost to our besieged planet is simply too great.

The other facts put me in a profoundly pessimistic mood, a pervasive sense that the world is descending a long slope, down, down, down into the fiery pit of Hell. Bankers, financiers and lobbyists have an iron grip on my country’s politics; serious action on climate change isn’t going to happen any time soon; and President Obama is almost certain to defy logic and defecate on common sense and commit more American troops to the lost cause that is Afghanistan. (Here’s a suggestion: if Al-Qaeda terrorists want Afghanistan so bad, maybe we should let them have it.)

If they give any thought to the mess in Afghanistan, I’d wager that most Americans probably think Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are one and the same (they’re not, folks). We’d gain more security if we let Al-Qaeda run loose in the wastes of Afghanistan and butt heads with the Taliban when their interests diverge, which they will.

While the real economy at home stumbles, shakes and shivers, our government is dead set on “nation-building” in a ruined, ethnically divided country where hope is as scarce as official corruption is plentiful. Let’s face it – most, if not every damn one, of the justifications for continuing the war in Afghanistan are bogus, particularly this dinger: either we fight Al-Qaeda over there or we fight them in Los Angeles, New York City and Pittsburgh, PA. Think logically: if you wanted to wage global jihad, would you choose a shithole like Afghanistan as your base of operations?

A hard truth: few imperial powers willingly walk away from a conquest. To admit to the world that victory isn’t at hand and never will be, requires uncommon statesmanship coupled with uncommon wisdom, both of which are in short supply in our political leaders, including President Obama. When TV pundits, talk-radio yakkers and Members of Congress compare health insurance reform to Nazi concentration camps – and are allowed to continue uttering such absurd fabrications without a bitch slap from their media colleagues or their political brethren -- it’s a telltale sign that the nation is in the throes of a staggering political paralysis. Next to nothing can be expected from politicians of either party -- particularly when it comes to questions of war.

Before the political class, the hawks, the generals and the defense contractors sour on war, the casualties have to stack up and the coffin supply must run low; the wounded, crippled and maimed must become very visible in our cities and towns and hamlets, and the folks here at home must feel the searing pain and sacrifice of war like we did during Vietnam. Until that happens don’t expect Americans to lift a finger to protest the waste, futility and lost opportunities that Iraq and Afghanistan represent.

Blood and blueberries. Imperial wars and global trade. Failed politics, ruined lives. A farmer in Uruguay just wants to earn his living and feed his family, and an American soldier on patrol in Afghanistan only wants to survive intact and return home to the normal life he or she left behind.

Unarmed, Unheard and Unrepresented

Sitting in sunny Santa Barbara feeling surly and mean. Thinking, what’s an average, law-abiding American citizen to do? Three thousand miles from here, give or take a few hundred miles, in the capitol city of this so-called democracy, lucrative deals are made in large, high-ceilinged rooms by people who are supposed to represent the interests of residents back in their home districts.

That’s the generally accepted idea of representative democracy, but in reality our elected representatives, more often than not, pimp for the narrowly focused interests of industry (pick one—defense, finance and insurance, real estate) groups. Money rules the day. Money talks. Money dictates.

In our name but frequently without our consent, political rulers write laws that benefit their benefactors. Remember the bailout? Trillions of dollars handed over to banks and investment houses, the insurance giant AIG, with virtually no strings, oversight or accountability attached. In itself that was corrosive enough, but as we purport to be a representative democracy, where was the public debate, the open hearings? Talk about a sweetheart deal: Here, boys, take this huge pile of dough and do with it whatever tickles your fancy. Buy other banks, take illogical and insane risks, award huge bonuses to your executives.

The bankers laughed then, laugh raucously now. A sucker is born every minute. Isn’t American-style capitalism great? We get to keep the lion’s share of our profits and lay our gambling debts on the taxpayers. Perfect, no lose system, a veritable money machine. The Mafia never had it this good. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and he lives in a penthouse apartment on Wall Street.

The political class along with their media and corporate enablers don’t fear the masses because they know how easily we are diverted, distracted and divided. Think on it for a second. If you can persuade a Medicare recipient to stand up at a public meeting and denounce “socialized medicine,” you’re not merely good, you’re a grand wizard, like Albus Dumbledore from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. Some overweight redneck, utterly dependent on Medicare for the pills he needs to control his Type-II diabetes, wearing a ratty t-shirt with “DON’T TREAD ON ME” emblazoned across his chest, thinks it’s patriotic to fulminate about the heavy, intrusive hand of the Government. Glenn Beck said so.

There is dumb, and there is Dumb.

The sun shines here on the California coast. A turkey vulture circles high overhead, scouting for his lunch. The clock moves slowly around the dial. Birds chirp, twitter and shriek. A truck backfires, a siren wails. The Food Bank runs low of provisions for the poor, and the homeless shelter down by the beach is short of beds; real people, real pain, flesh and blood, soul and spirit, dreams and demons. Bad luck, bad genes, bad karma.

The down and out harbor no hope for a taxpayer bailout or a bank loan at favorable interest rates. In America, that sort of largesse is reserved for those that need it least.

World Series

Gawd, I hate Fox Sports almost as much as I despise Bill O'Reilly and that nitwit Glenn Beck. Fox Sports is jingoistic, never fails to hype the American military and our "brave men and women" in uniform, sent to fight and die in pointless wars in faraway lands. Of course they never say that on Fox -- it's just the flag and the National Anthem and God Bless America (usually sung by a military man or woman) and some palaver about prayers from a grateful nation.

Sure, and horse shit smells like roses.

The other thing Fox Sports does that makes my blood boil is wring every drop of advertising blood that can be wrung from a sports telecast. "This half-inning brought to you by Chevrolet. This pitch brought to you by the good folks at Budweiser. This thirty-second segment of the Chevrolet pre-game show is brought to you by Taco Bell. Try our new Black Jack Taco! while driving the new and improved Chevrolet Malibu."

It's an orgy of advertising words and images and slogans. Mastercard and Windows 7 and Nikon. All this from the country that shipped its manufacturing base to China and will be in debt for generations to come, the country that cannot figure out an equitable way to provide health care for its citizens, a country that invades and occupies other sovereign countries based on lies and pretext, and a country that is poisoning the environment, like a beagle that defecates in its own bed.

Fox Sports and Major League Baseball conspired to tweak the game schedule of these playoffs in order to reap maximize advertising revenue. This explains why we are playing Game 4 of the World Series on November 1st, in wet, 50 degree weather in Philadelphia. This accounts for the odd intermissions between the games and the series, numerous days off for athletes accustomed to suiting up and playing every day.

Money again -- the American God -- a deity that can be bought, sold, traded, shorted, hedged, insured and transformed into a derivative whose ultimate value nobody can explain.

Anyway, this Game 4 has all the earmarks of a wild affair, probably high scoring, even with C.C. Sabathia on the mound for New York. The Phillies are a good, gritty club and they won't quit.

But hell, who cares about the game. It's the commercials we really care about!

Pissed On, Pissed Off

I feel like I’m pissing into a cold headwind, and I wonder if you feel the same. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs each raked in more than $3 billion in profits in the third quarter. Stop a moment and take that in. $3 billion each. In the fallout from the financial crisis last year, some firms, like Goldman and Morgan, actually got bigger -- and with transfusions of no-strings-attached taxpayer money -- stronger, while others emerged weaker, less able to compete. Incredibly, financial power in this country is now consolidated into even fewer hands, making firms like Goldman and Morgan “too big to fail, ever,” which is almost the same thing as a license to print money. These firms now have nearly unlimited latitude to take enormous risks because they know that Washington politicians will always intervene to save their bacon.

A year after the global financial system nearly plunged over the cliff, the boom is on for politically connected firms whose alumni prowl the corridors of Congress or hold influential positions in the Obama Administration. Of course, bust is the flip side of boom and for millions of Americans the bust shows no sign of abating. Obama’s stimulus package did little for working Americans once Congress was done gutting it and re-arranging its priorities to placate nay-saying Republicans. Unemployment remains stuck in the double-digits, state governments struggle to provide services to a growing population of needy human beings, and small businesses scrimp to make ends meet. Wall Street may be celebrating its recovery with champagne brunches and gargantuan bonuses, but Main Street is still eating Spam and waiting for the kind of assistance that was lavished on the financial industry.

Don’t hold your breath. The real deal is jobs and wages, putting people to work, but don’t expect to hear much about either on ABC, NBC or Fox – or from the Obama Administration for that matter. All mainstream media outlets care about is Wall Street and runaway balloons.

The joke is on you and me, on every taxpayer, and every person who still believes the American Dream is attainable.

What’s the average wage slave to do? The political system is indifferent to our needs and desires, unaccountable even as we foot the bill, and the financial system is rigged against us. As the poet Allen Ginsberg is reported to have said, “You can’t win, can’t break even, and can’t even quit the game.”

But I can sure feel the spray in my face.

The Winds of No Change

The winds are blowing but these winds maintain the status quo rather than change it.

Most Republicans wring their hands and wail about the cost of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, budget deficits, and the burden of high taxes. If you want to see grown men and women frothing at the mouth, get the Republicans (and some Democrats, to be frank) started on the potential costs of “socialized” medicine.

These same Republicans, on the other hand, have no problem at all with corporate socialism, bloated defense budgets or open-ended military campaigns in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Republicans believe, I guess, that spending money on corporate bailouts and wars of choice enhance freedom, while social spending on Medicare or unemployment insurance or regulation enhances the role of the government at the expense of freedom.

The winds blow, but not much changes. President Obama talks a great game, an inspiring game, but appears to lack the staying power to see anything through, not to mention that he has surrounded himself with a posse of recycled champions of the established order.

Lost in the noise of talk radio hyperbole is the need to strike an appropriate balance of power between the government and business, between Capital and Labor, and between the wealthy and the poor. Excessive government interference is no better than excessive corporate socialism. Government can become too large, bloated and stifling, just as unchecked corporate power can, and usually does, lead to the reckless behavior that brought the global financial system to the brink of disaster and made life so difficult and uncertain for so many.

Republicans are suspicious of enlarging the role and power of government while Democrats, generally speaking, view government as a leveling force. But both parties are beholden to moneyed elites and when push comes to shove, big campaign contributors win, average citizens lose.

According to a recent column by Frank Rich in the New York Times, job seekers outnumber openings by a tidy 6-1 margin. The stock market shows signs of bounce – prompting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to declare that the “recession” is over. Sure, maybe on Bernanke’s street. In the real America, where people work for wages, struggle to make the mortgage and decipher the one-sided terms of their credit card accounts, afford college tuition, health insurance, gasoline, heating oil, food, electricity and transportation, the night is still dark, foreboding and full of peril.

Working Americans should be mad as hell and dead set on kicking the shit out of the first fat cat they run across. But try to disrupt the status quo and stand prepared to be attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, as protestors at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh were recently. Americans have the Constitutional right to assemble for the purpose of airing our grievances with the powers that be, but permits are hard to come by in some cities and the authorities prefer to disperse first and answer questions from the ACLU later.

The winds blow, but nothing changes.

Our Collective Insanity

Endless undeclared wars. Unchecked corporate power. A demagogue like Glenn Beck on the cover of Time. Unemployment high. Real health insurance reform held hostage by the status quo. Misguided “revolutionaries” marching on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Has everyone gone insane? Are we experiencing a collective mental meltdown?

Nowhere is the madness more pronounced than in our determination to remain in Afghanistan.

We can deploy as many troops and private contractors as we want in Afghanistan and still “lose” the war because winning is an impossibility. Echoing his predecessor, President Obama claims that winning in Afghanistan is vital to our security. OK, Mr. President, prove it. Prove that after eight years more American casualties are worth it. Prove that more civilian deaths are justified. Prove that Afghanistan won’t descend into chaos no matter what we do or how long we remain. Prove that for every “terrorist” we kill another doesn’t take his place.

Except for those who have served there, and their families and friends, the American public could care less about Afghanistan -- a far away country with a foreign history and culture. No, Afghanistan is out of sight and out of mind, as invisible and inscrutable as the enemy we seek to destroy. The costs of the war are also out of sight and mind -- charged to our national credit card, hidden in massive budget documents with accounting sleight of hand. Institute a draft and start sending well-to-do kids to die in the Korengal Valley and maybe the public mood changes.

Like all imperial powers throughout history, the United States has discovered that invading another country is a relatively easy affair; leaving is the tough trick. The initial surge of overwhelming military might produces a short-lived euphoria. The real war begins when the dust settles. The cakewalk becomes a quagmire. False honor trumps reality every time. The imperial power can’t admit it blundered without appearing weak or lacking in “resolve,” so instead of cutting its losses it digs in, more determined than ever to “win” what can’t be won. Justifications for staying are created, re-created and recycled; bold new “strategies” for securing peace and stability are unveiled.

Meanwhile, domestic problems mount. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, claims that the recession is over or nearly over, but Bernanke and his ilk live in bubbles protected from the hardships faced by ordinary Americans. How can the recession be anywhere near over when the unemployment rate in California is 12%?

Rest assured, the insanity will continue.

Seething Anger?

The McClatchy News Service called it “seething anger at President Barack Obama and his far-reaching agenda.”

Out they came, with signs and whistles, fife and drums, onto Pennsylvania Avenue. One sign read: Stop Obama’s Spending Spree. Another: The Greatest Communist President We Have Ever Had. And this: Save Freedom. Stop Obama.

No hyperbole there, eh?

Now, along with every other evil he stands for, Obama stands for the demise of freedom and liberty.

It’s easy to dismiss the tea baggers and anti-tax, small-government zealots as a sideshow, a gaggle of nitwits who have no idea why they took to the streets on September 12, but to do so would be to miss the larger picture. Something remarkable and scary happened last Saturday in Washington.

Verifiable facts and logic should render the anti-Obama protestors a short-lived circus act, too ridiculous to give a second thought. Right down the line these angry, boisterous people have it wrong: the deficits they decry belong to a conservative duo – George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, not Barrack Obama; Obama is not a Communist by any objective measure and to think otherwise is fantasy; nor is Obama leading the country into an era of socialism for if he was his Administration would have sought real regulation of the financial system rather than bending over backwards to preserve the Wall Street status quo.

What’s in play here is the power of the right-wing media establishment to whip up the American political fringe and goad it into action. Obama wants to take your guns away. Obama is a tax and spend maniac. Obama will place your health care in the hands of the Government and indoctrinate your children in the ways of Socialism. Obama isn’t really an American citizen.

This is the Right’s counter-attack from the stinging defeat it received last November, and the attack is succeeding because Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party cannot come up with a coherent counter-message that resonates with people. Only recently has Obama spoken about health care in terms of morality, which at its core is the crux of the issue. Our for-profit health insurance system is not only immoral – it also happens to be inefficient and ineffective for millions of people and a drain on the national economy. That’s the nuts and bolts of a compelling argument but Democrats would rather play defense against the ridiculous and false claims made by the GOP -- or speak in dry technical terms about slowing the rate of health care cost increases.

White people dominated the photographs I saw of the 912 protestors, making me wonder if what we’re seeing here is just a mass case of racism, a reaction against the fact that a black man occupies the White House. Is Obama merely a lightning rod for white people’s anger and fear? What exactly are they afraid of? The policies Obama has advocated thus far are so moderate in scope that racism can be the only reason that white people are “seething.”

While a particular segment of white Americans may be seething with anger and quaking with fear, I believe the large majority of us are simply waiting for the Barrack Obama we elected to show some leadership – and some backbone. I for one didn’t vote for a continuation of the status quo – I voted with the hope – tempered by the knowledge that politicians always fail us -- that Obama and a Democratic majority in Congress might overturn the worst excesses committed by the Bush-Cheney junta, including torture, domestic spying, extraordinary rendition, the failed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and economic policies that favor the wealthy over working Americans.

Staggering Immorality

The whole health care “debate,” if you can call our national shouting match a debate is very disheartening for about a dozen reasons. The truth has been distorted by a coordinated campaign of scare tactics and disinformation; right-wing crazies have been let off their leashes, and what should have been a serious national conversation about how we care for our young, our sick, our infirm and our elderly has been cast as socialism and a government take over of private health insurance.

It’s total bullshit. The truth is that health insurance companies bring nothing to the health care table. All insurance companies do is cherry-pick the healthy and blacklist the sick so that they collect premiums and avoid paying claims. That’s how the formula works, and if you check insurance company profits, this formula works really, really well. Naturally, the insurance companies and their powerful lobbies want nothing to do with a “public” option or with any government intervention that might tilt the equation in favor of patients rather than profits.

Medicare is a single-payer health insurance plan. Patients choose any physician who accepts Medicare, access the care they need, and Medicare pays the bill. The physicians and laboratories are not in the employ of the government – all the government does is facilitate payment to providers for services rendered. Socialized medicine? Old Karl Marx wouldn’t recognize it as such. No reasonable person would, either. Smart people understand that Medicare’s administrative expenses are absurdly low compared to private insurance companies.

Why does the United States treat health care like a commodity – like oil or soybeans or rubber – while every other industrialized nation treats it as a human right that will, sooner or later, need to be exercised by every one? Why do we spend more per capita on health care and have crummier outcomes than almost every other nation on the planet? Why are so many Americans uninsured or under-insured?

Capitalism, baby, the free market myth that claims government can do no right and unfettered business no wrong.

Too many of the big players – Senators, Representatives, Administration officials -- who are supposed to be working on our behalf to improve our silly system are pimps, sluts or whores, with cozy monetary ties to health insurance companies or the health lobby that render them incapable of doing regular citizens any good. In other words: they have a vested interest in maintaining or enhancing the status quo, not helping working people gain access to affordable health care.

My employer’s health insurance premium went up by something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million this year, an increase that must be passed on to everyone covered under the plan. So, deductibles for office visits rise, co-pays rise, some services are reduced or eliminated altogether, and employees see less take home pay at the end of each month. Yes, we are damn fortunate to have health insurance, but keep in mind that even people with insurance are very often overwhelmed by medical expenses and forced to declare bankruptcy. Small, medium and even large businesses cannot afford sky high premiums either. A couple of more years of $1.5 million premium increases may force my employer to drop health insurance coverage – adding another 2,000 souls to the ranks of the uninsured.

Our health insurance system isn’t about health – it’s all about money, lots of money, which is why it’s so hard to change.

Duck, Cover & Cave

The battle is as good as over. President Obama sodomized his supporters over health insurance reform, just like he did when his administration had a golden opportunity to rein in Wall Street criminals. Despite his smooth style and golden tongue, Obama has caved to pressure from the GOP right and the all-powerful insurance lobby. The bastard wouldn’t even call the so-called public option by its proper title: Medicare for All.

The status quo wins again. This is no real surprise – even with a highly popular president whose party controls both houses of congress – because the insurance lobby has stymied health insurance reform for decades. When the dust settles in the next month or so, and a weak, ineffective bill emerges from congress, Obama will claim victory, but it will be of the pyrrhic variety. Millions of Americans will remain uninsured, and millions more will continue to lose battles with Cigna, Aetna and United Health over care decisions that belong in the hands of physicians but are made by insurance underwriters based on profit not health; personal bankruptcies resulting from medical expenses will also continue largely unabated.

Eric Alterman, who writes for the Nation and other national publications, said last fall that Obama would disappoint us; I figured he would, too, but hoped he would wait until at least midway through his first term. Like Bill Clinton, Obama talks a great game, hits the right notes in his speeches and public appearances, but when push comes to shove and his opponents go on offense, Obama folds like a dandy-lion in a hurricane.

Another similarity between Obama and Bill Clinton is Obama’s love fest with corporate interests. Obama had everything necessary – public opinion, numerous examples of corporate greed and incompetence -- to rein Wall Street in and instead abrogated his power by surrounding himself with the likes of Lawrence Summers, Tim Geithner and Robert Rubin, not to mention a number of lesser alumni from Goldman Sachs. No wonder that Obama went soft on the speculators, crooks, and swindlers who brought our financial system to the brink and laid an enormous hurt on average working Americans.

Inauguration Day was the high water mark of the Obama Administration and the trip has been downhill since. Our President has no one to blame but himself for a fatal absence of cajones. Think back to when George W. Bush and the GOP held sway – that posse of greedheads and power mongers rammed bills through congress and treated Democrats like lackeys. Hell, Bush even sold the world a war without a shred of factual justification, and when the world balked, Bush laughed and pulled the trigger anyway. Because of Dick Cheney, Bush had a better understanding of power politics than Obama or any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson. Politics is war, and in war you don’t seek to make friends with your opponents, you destroy them.

Typical fucking Democratic Party. Give them Congress and the White House and they still can’t get anything of consequence accomplished. This is change we can believe in? This is the second coming, the end of business as usual? Another bill of goods has been sold by a graduate of the Ivy League.

The Distortionist

Rush Limbaugh compares the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler and the media establishment yawns. And why not, what with the ongoing adventures of Jon and Kate, and Paula Abdul possibly leaving American Idol? The media must keep up with these breaking stories, right?

But I wonder if the establishment would have yawned if Keith Olberman had compared George W. Bush to Hitler? Would Limbaugh have let that pass? How about Michael Savage? Bill O’Reilly? Ann Coulter?

No, the right-wing yakkers would have gone totally apeshit and demanded Olberman’s head; they would have declared that the left-wing media was depraved and dangerous, a threat to the nation; the story would have bounced in the echo chamber for days on end, picked up and pushed by Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer and the editors of the Wall Street Journal.

If Rush Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, hasn’t the GOP slandered the President of the United States?

Where’s the outrage? OK, forget outrage. What about accountability? Why aren’t Limbaugh’s corporate sponsors dropping him and running for the aisles? Why does Limbaugh get a pass to say such outlandish, untrue, stupid things?

It’s money, of course. Audience and advertising revenue.

Look, I despised George W. Bush. I believe that Bush was an illegitimate president, and that he was one of the dumbest, if not the dumbest, men to ever occupy the White House, but I can’t remember comparing him with Adolf Hitler. Despising a political figure is one thing, complete ignorance of history is another.

Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk are symptoms of a more serious malady that is deep inside our body politic. We saw it during the financial crisis and see it today in the war of misinformation over health insurance. Sense doesn’t matter, logic doesn’t matter and accuracy doesn’t matter; only volume and repetition matter. Limbaugh distorts, obfuscates, lies, exaggerates, misconstrues and maligns to advance his political agenda. From the safe distance of his studio, where few, if any, competing voices are allowed entry, Limbaugh bludgeons those he disagrees with. It’s not reasoned discourse that aims to find the truth or some middle ground that reasonable people can agree on -- it’s polarizing and divisive, designed to inflame an audience made up largely of people who cannot think critically or independently.

It’s propaganda, in other words, designed to play to people’s fears and prejudices.

I don’t know how our imperfect democracy can survive when our public discourse is as degraded as it is today. Except on rare occasions, common ground seems impossible to find.

Under the Microscope

Weird times, and no end in sight. I know it’s a bitch to fill twenty-four hours of airtime every single day, but from time-to-time the angle CNN takes on stories perplexes me. There’s the Lou Dobbs “Birther” charade, an absolute waste of time. Memo to Lou: Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. He’s been vetted. Get over it. Go back to scaring people about illegal immigrants. There’s Michael Jackson, Paula Abdul, Jon and Kate, fires and floods, bombings, drought, and corporate-sponsored protests about health insurance.

Yep, there’s no end to the weirdness, the trivia, the hyperbole and the BS. We’re a nation of idiots, spoon-fed misinformation day and night.

A day or two ago I happened to see this headline on CNN: Obama under the microscope. Three talking heads were speculating on Obama’s first eight months in office, and whether or not these months can be termed successful. One of the heads said, “It appears that President Obama has discovered that it’s one thing to win an election and another to govern the country.” Wow, bright people on CNN. I don’t remember the illegitimate Bush presidency being slipped under the CNN microscope eight months in, when all Bush had accomplished was passage of a massive tax cut for the richest Americans. Whooppee.

Remember that it was in August 2001 when Bush essentially ignored intelligence warnings that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking within the United States. Bush was too busy cutting brush on his Texas ranch to spend much time worrying about a stateless Muslim fanatic with an axe to grind against the Great Satan. The rest is, of course, history. Bin Laden struck and the nation freaked out, allowing Bush and Cheney to trash the Constitution in the name of “security.” Remember how twisted things became in the aftermath of 9/11? In order to protect our freedom and liberty, we consented to give up our freedom and liberty. Insane and misguided. We started detaining people all over the globe, some of them innocent, though we tortured many of them anyway, just to be sure they didn’t carry Bin Laden’s satellite phone number. Insane and cruel. Then we invaded and occupied a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Insane and stupid.

Obama entered the White House on a tide of hope and optimism, but trapped beneath one of the biggest Eight Ball’s in American history, a cluster-fuck of epic proportion caused by eight years of misrule; the economic system was on the brink of collapse, workers were losing jobs at a precipitous pace, retirement savings had vanished overnight due to massive fraud and manipulation, nothing worthwhile had been done on the environmental front for eight years, and we were (still are) bogged down in two failed wars. CNN has already forgotten the shitty hand Obama was dealt on Day One.

Given his near-total capitulation to Wall Street heavies however, I think some criticism of Obama’s presidency is warranted, but we must be fair and remember what the man had to work with when he assumed office.

For the good of the country in the long term, a perspective rarely taken in American politics, we need the Obama Administration to propose, and Congress to pass, real regulatory reform of the economic system, laws with enough teeth to keep the Titans of Finance on the straight, narrow and honest path, and reduce the iron-grip corporations have on the nation’s politics. Will this happen? No, we’ll get a Band-Aid instead. We also need a reorientation back toward the real economy of productive work and wages, but Obama seems deaf to the plight of working Americans – the economic system is still tilted in favor of investors and speculators and those “too big to fail.” We desperately need a complete overhaul of our health insurance system to make it more accessible, logical and humane, but the Kansas City Royals will win 110 regular season games and the World Series before that happens. We’ll get some tinkering on the margins, but nothing substantial or meaningful; millions will still be uninsured, under-insured, subject to the whims of insurance companies focused on profits rather than care.

I never thought the Obama Administration could reverse eight years of abject failure in eight months. Seems the talking heads on CNN have mistaken Obama for a magician rather than a politician.

Waiting for an Epiphany

I recently had my first colonoscopy. While I was sitting in the waiting area with six other men, all of us dressed in dark blue hospital gowns, with locker keys around our wrists, not one of us venturing to say anything, I began thinking about health insurance and health care, and why the insurance system in the United States is so haphazard, cruel and inefficient. Thirty minutes earlier I had plunked $250 down for this procedure because my Aetna insurance, provided by my employer, does not completely cover a colonoscopy, even though it’s a vital tool in the early detection of cancer, the treatment of which, as most everyone knows, can be extraordinarily expensive. In terms of medical care, requiring a $250 deductible makes no sense; in terms of Aetna’s profit, it makes total sense.

And that, in a nutshell, is the great American health care dilemma. Everything is fine and dandy until a corporation’s desire for profit smacks head on into a patient’s need for medical care. Insurance companies love “subscribers” who pay premiums and never get sick; they hate “patients,” particularly those who need blood transfusions or organ transplants. To put that another way: insurance companies make money by collecting premiums and denying care.

Sitting there in my blue smock, I thought about the 535 members of Congress who enjoy comprehensive, taxpayer-provided health coverage. Not only should average Americans envy the lucky folks in Congress, we should also ask: if a “public” health insurance system is good enough for our elected representatives, why isn’t it good enough for everyone?

Have you ever heard a Congressman or woman complain about access to health care or the quality of the care provided? I haven’t. And it almost goes without saying that they don’t sweat deductibles, pre-existing conditions or pre-authorizations – in other words, the frustrating, often mystifying health insurance tango that most Americans (at least those fortunate enough to have health insurance) must endure in order to access the care they need.

Ours is a fouled up, inefficient, piss-poor system. I’d like to believe that our elected officials will experience a collective epiphany and realize that the United States spends too much money per capita on health care, that health care outcomes are frequently laughable, and that it’s time to let go, once and for all, of the myth that the private, for-profit model is not just the best way to go, but the only way. Conservatives thump the drum and bang the gong for the “free” market approach to health care, when it’s obvious to most Americans that the market is controlled, manipulated and fixed by a few major players who do not have the best interests of the public at heart. In this respect, health care is exactly like the banking system: a game rigged by the few for the benefit of the few.

Every time any momentum builds to reform the financial or health care systems, the drumbeat against the idea begins on talk radio, on Fox News, from the lobbyists who prowl the halls of the capital looking for politicos they can influence (actually, “bribe” is the correct word) with hefty campaign contributions, and from the “experts” who appear on Meet the Press and Face the Nation. We hear cries of “socialism,” “communism,” “Bolshevism,” not to mention horror stories from Canada of patients forced to wait three weeks to have a wart removed. We don’t hear the flip side news that those same Canadian patients receive the primary care they need to prevent minor ailments from becoming major health problems, or that they can afford the prescription medications they need without having to take out a second mortgage or sell a child into slavery. Among industrial nations, only Americans are forced by an inhumane insurance system to choose between medicine and food.

Conservatives believe that, outside of waging war (and with warfare being outsourced to companies like Blackwater and Halliburton even this former government monopoly is slipping away) government – federal, state or local – cannot do anything right, let alone manage something as complex as medical insurance. The popularity and success of the Medicare program makes no impression on conservative true believers, just as Wall Street pyramid schemes are not viewed negatively enough to insure that reasonable external controls are passed into law; conservatives would rather believe that the bad guys can regulate themselves.

There will be no collective epiphany on health care. The industry lobbyists and their craven puppets in Congress will see to that. The bill that finally emerges from Congress will be watered down, convoluted, ineffective, weak, and utterly reliant on “voluntary” rather than mandated reform. In other words, lots of sizzle but no steak. While the legislation may improve the lot of a relative few, it will do nothing for the struggling many. At the end of the day, the insurance companies and financial interests will still maintain control, though the Obama Administration will claim a great, epochal victory.

Sooner or later Americans will mature as a people and see the error of our ways. We may be a second-rate nation by then, living in the shadow cast by China and India, but we’ll get there because there won’t be any other choice.

Better than Squat

People keep asking me what’s happened to the Balcony, why it hasn’t been updated in several weeks, stuff like that. Hey, life happens, seizes control of every waking moment and chokes off the creative impulse. I’ll try to do better but can make no promises.

Michael Jackson died. I missed the hoopla, the televised memorial service, all the media interviews with the parasites and hangers on who call themselves commentators and purport to speak authoritatively about matters they can know nothing about. Jackson had an enormous talent and a very weird existence almost from the time he slipped out of his mother’s womb. His father is creepy and conniving, and the turn Michael took later in his life was bizarre and, ultimately, sad. Nobody, however, really knows what it was like to be Michael Jackson, to stroll around in his medically lightened epidermis or to breathe through his surgically-altered nose or to feel what he felt in the middle of the night when sleep refused to come and the weight of his tarnished legend became too heavy to bear. Media people speculate, and their speculation is passed off as fact, but they don’t know.

Several years ago, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson said that America was locked into a downward spiral of sheer dumbness, and much that has happened since only confirms the Doctor’s analysis. Barack Obama has discovered the time-worn truth that running for president is one thing, and being president another. Obama says the right things in an inspiring way, but the man is surrounded by status quo types who wouldn’t know how to rock a toy boat in a bathtub. The economic “stimulus” package was too small and timid to do much good for average folks, and the Big Pain still lies in front of us. The media and the government fixate on the stock market, but jobs and wages are the real deal, and those aren’t being addressed by anyone in a meaningful way. By the time the political class focuses on jobs and wages, it will be too late. We’re on borrowed time and playing roulette with borrowed money.

Lobbyists for the insurance industry have already derailed Obama’s attempt to reform our absolutely broken health care system. The so-called “public” option – which polls show that a majority of Americans would welcome – is too threatening to Cigna and Aetna and United Healthcare, and the lobby for these profitable giants is so powerful that it can stymie any change that might start the process of dislodging insurance companies from the health care driver’s seat. American CEO’s talk about competition like it’s the Holy Grail, but when it comes right down to it, CEO’s hate competition and prefer the sure, safe profits that monopolies produce and perpetuate. The insurance lobby is on a war footing, armed with large amounts of cash and an ideological rap about the evils of “socialized” medicine. Money and a bullshit argument is all it takes to prevail in America; you don’t have to be right or factual, just loud and persistent.

Sarah Palin is an idiot, OK? This should be the end of the story, but again, this is America and what should be obvious isn’t. Half the political commentators in the country think Palin made a sound political calculation when she decided to bail from the Governor’s mansion, mid-term, even though her justification for the decision sounded ludicrous, self-serving and disconnected from any objective reality. When Palin compares Alaska to the rest of America I giggle uncontrollably because the comparison is ridiculous; no professional journalist should take Palin seriously or allow her to get away with such mindless drivel. Palin is dumber than W. Bush, but no less dangerous. Because the Republican party is in retreat and disarray, it’s a certainty that Palin will surface again as a favored contender, but don’t expect her to act much smarter than she does now; Palin’s dumbness is like a blood stain on a white shirt – damn near impossible to eradicate.

And so on and so on into the dog days of summer.

Guardians of the Status Quo

I’m not sure what to make of the happy talk I hear from the mainstream media about the American economy, but when pundits of every stripe unanimously crow that the worst of the economic crisis is behind us, and that the housing market is poised for a dramatic rebound, I get nervous and then suspicious. What are the masters of the status quo up to now?

In the Men’s Lounge of a posh Connecticut country club, a pack of blue-blooded moguls are sipping scotch and laughing their asses off about how easy it was to turn their gambling losses into gold, courtesy of the American taxpayer. “Is this the greatest country in the world or what? When I make a pile of dough I get to keep it, and when I lose a pile I just transfer the losses to the little people and walk away scot-free. Boo-yaa!” Better still in the eyes of the moguls, there was no messy democratic process to go through in order to socialize their losses; the great, fat, lazy and stupid masses had no say in the matter at all; their easily bought and sold elected representatives made sure of that. Nope, John and Jane Q. Public didn’t have an opportunity to cast a vote or make their voice heard regarding the Wall Street bailout; all they get is the bill.

To this day the Treasury department can’t account for much of the dough it lavished on the criminals, incompetents and liars who drove the economy over the cliff. Ten million here, twenty-five million there, fifty million to the fat man standing by the door, but nobody knows what the fat man did with his share of the loot; for all the government knows he stuffed his mattress with the money or had himself a helluva weekend in Antigua.

And now the forces behind the status quo are telling us that everything is looking rosy and that happy days are dead ahead. For proof all we need do is look at the stock market. If you believe CNBC, things are turning so ducky that we should shift our focus from stimulus to good old-fashioned fiscal austerity. Notwithstanding that it was Dick Cheney himself who boasted a few years back that “deficits don’t matter,” Republicans have seized on the debt issue like a barracuda on a flounder and are blaming Obama for plunging the nation into the abyss. Sorry, GW Bush and Cheney managed that all by themselves.

Of wages and working people we hear next to nothing. The same goes for homes lost to foreclosure, people up to their necks in credit card or medical debt or families who cannot afford decent food or clothing. The misery is hidden inside the media euphoria and cheerleading over the recent up-tick in the stock market. As long as the crisis is over for the investor class who gives a shit if the masses are hurting? Who gives a shit if California goes bankrupt? The stock market is showing signs of life, and part-time real estate agents all over the country insist that the housing bust is a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, those of us who work for wages get no relief. The cost of gasoline is rising again; Iraq and Afghanistan are sinkholes for our tax dollars; Congress is corrupt and deaf to the plight of everyone except large campaign donors; a rational proposal for a single-payer health care system was swept off the negotiating table before talks even began.

Same old, same old. The high hopes many of us had on Inauguration Day are long gone, crushed by the guardians of the status quo.

POEM - The Great Majority

the great majority
will never hit a home run
in a World Series game

discover the cure for cancer

write a symphony

headline a Broadway play

rape somebody

steal from a blind man

kill out of anger

the great majority
will go on year in and year out
doing unspectacular things

like

reading to their children
cooking meals
sweeping floors
planting roses
donating blood

the great majority
will pass away unnoticed
by the great minority
who get all the
attention

The Presidential Version Of Oprah

Where is the change Barrack Obama spoke so eloquently about when he was campaigning for the presidency? When are his actions going to measure up to his soaring rhetoric? Six months into his first term, Obama has shown that he is cool and smooth, articulate as the day is long, attuned to the political vibrations in DC and a compelling photo op when he and Michelle stroll across the White House lawn, but where’s the change, where’s the substance? Obama sneezes and his well-oiled PR machine cranks out an e-mail blast; Obama shoots hoops with inner-city kids and five million text messages are launched; Obama cracks a joke at the pyramids in Egypt and it’s on YouTube in a matter of minutes.

Obama is a wonderful show after the desolation, corruption and stupidity of the Bush-Cheney junta, but the status quo in America is still alive and thriving. Not that any but the most naive observers expected Obama to honestly challenge the status quo or deliver on his many campaign promises, for politicians rarely keep the promises they make in the heat of a campaign. And let’s not forget that the Obama Administration was behind the eight ball from Day One. Still, it’s hard to reconcile how Obama could campaign so boldly and govern so timidly; how with majorities in both houses of Congress and enormous popularity he can be cowed by the warp and wail of Rush Limbaugh and the nitwits from Fox News.

Six months into the Obama Administration, the Whacky Right, aided and abetted by a handful of pusillanimous Democrats, still control the national agenda. We can’t have a sensible discussion about creating an economic system that best meets the needs of the majority of Americans; health care reform is doomed to fail; ditto any meaningful action on the environment or energy policy; average Americans are suffering economic hardship and all the mainstream media can talk about is the stock market; nobody speaks with any intelligence about jobs and wages.

It’s depressing. A great opportunity is slipping away.

When the GOP controlled both houses of Congress they rammed their pet policies into law, stomping Democrats in the process. Tom DeLay lived to fuck Democrats in the ass, and his GOP comrades swaggered through the corridors of power like SS storm troopers. Put Democrats in the power position and they act bewildered.

Obama is the presidential version of Oprah. He makes us feel good, from time to time he makes us think, but in the end little changes. Powerful, vested interests still rule, call the shots and dictate the terms by which the majority of citizens must abide.

Yes, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are light years better than Bush and Cheney, but if that’s the standard by which we measure Obama’s success, we’re really in deep trouble.

A Giant Falls

The tires are flat at GM. The transmission is croaked and the radiator is full of holes. The behemoth American corporation that once stood astride the global automobile market is in the death throes, stumbling into bankruptcy, a ward of the federal government. This is like the day Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, or the day the Berlin Wall came down in chunks -- a day we won’t forget, a milestone, a marker in American history. The symbol of our faded industrial prowess is broken down on the side of a one-way road.

Although this day has been coming for years, it’s hard to accept that the United States has thrown in the towel and quit the manufacturing game in disgrace.

Because that’s really what this means, Mr. Jones.

The reasons for GM’s demise are too numerous to list here. Like every other American corporation that once made money building stuff, GM’s top brass became more enthralled with finance than on building quality products that domestic and foreign consumers wanted to plunk money down for. As the world around it changed and Honda and Toyota elbowed their way into the US market, GM clung stubbornly to the formula that had once made it great. In the end it was simply too many vehicle models with too much similarity between them, too much marketing hype and too little quality. One of the reasons it’s such a sad tale is that it didn’t have to happen.

No, thousands of workers didn’t need to be sacrificed to the gods of downsizing and globalization, ruthlessly discarded so the corporate bottom line might look rosier for Wall Street investors. As GM’s fortunes declined year after year, entire communities in the Midwest watched helplessly as their lifeblood drained away. For at least two generations of working stiffs, GM was the Golden Goose, a place where a worker with a high school education could earn wages and benefits sufficient to support a family, put kids through college, vacation in Mexico, and score all the rest of that American Dream stuff.

Long gone.

UAW members have been on a concession binge for decades, steadily ceding ground in the hope that givebacks would halt GM’s slide. Workers gave and GM executives issued self-congratulatory pronouncements, but it never altered the downward trajectory. With great fanfare, GM reorganized, redesigned, re-engineered, but market share continued to erode. Plants closed, workers got the sack. The management class was immunized from the pain of failure by stock options and golden parachutes.

Nothing new or surprising about that. Protecting executives, stockholders and Wall Street investors at the expense of workers is the American way of doing business. The United Auto Workers union usually played a convenient scapegoat role for GM’s staggering inability to compete with Toyota and Honda, as if earning a decent wage with decent benefits and a decent pension was a crime against the natural order.

An American giant has fallen. Remember the names: Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chevrolet and Pontiac. Remember the glory years of Motown, for we won’t be seeing them again.