Leave it to the Israeli government to open a locked door with an American made sledgehammer rather than a key. I wonder if Israel’s rulers have finally done something so heinous that the world will not allow it to fade away.
While most of the world condemns Israel, the US is doing its usual contortions, mumbling when it should speak loudly and clearly, calling for an “investigation” that might take months or years to conclude, and come to nothing.
Israel is spinning the story of its assault on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for besieged Gaza, downplaying the death of at least ten and perhaps more people, and acting as if Israel was only retaliating against a direct attack by some of the world’s most notorious and heavily armed terrorists.
Among those in the flotilla were a member of the Israeli parliament, an ex-US Ambassador and a clergyman. Tough bunch, hardened in battle. Sure.
For Israel it’s the same tired and outrageous story of disproportionate response. Eighteen months ago Israel launched a blistering three-weeks-long attack on the Gaza Strip, purportedly in response for Hamas rocket attacks, killing more than 1,000 Palestinians and wreaking total havoc on a defenseless population. Liken it to shooting fish in a barrel. Cluster bombs, white phosphorous, Hellfire missiles, artillery – some of the deadliest hardware available, a good deal of it supplied by the US government – were employed to punish Gazans for supporting Hamas.
Never mind that Hamas won election in Gaza in 2006, fair and square. The Bush-Cheney junta found the outcome unacceptable and refused to recognize the new and legitimate government -- because, you see -- the US only supports democracy when it produces a result the US approves of. Hamas was not supposed to win the election, and even today the CIA makes no mention of the election, instead insisting that Hamas seized power by force.
But back to the flotilla and Israel’s latest outrage: 700 passengers of conscience, young and old, men and women, representing forty nations, determined to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza, knowingly sailing into the teeth of the Israeli blockade, and probably not surprised when gunboats and helicopters appeared, hell bent on stopping the flotilla right there in international waters. Not that Israel gives a damn about international law: no nation on earth flouts international law more frequently than Israel, except perhaps North Korea.
Not that I’m linking Israel to a charter member of the Axis of Evil. No, I support Israel’s right to defend itself as much as I condemn Israel for its brutal, inhuman treatment of the Palestinians. The problem seems to be that Israel can no longer discern a mild threat from a grave one. As Noam Chomsky recently wrote -- after being denied entry into the West Bank city of Ramallah by the Israeli government -- “It (Israel) has become far more paranoid, defensive, irrational and ultranationalist.”
Yes, starving a population of 1.5 million people is irrational, as is attacking a flotilla of vessels carrying aid to those people. Definitely irrational, possibly illegal, certainly inhuman, but Israel acts as defiant as ever, secure under the protection of the American umbrella and armed to the teeth with American military hardware.
Imagine if the tables were turned and ten Israeli civilians were murdered while on a humanitarian mission; I doubt the United States would sit idly by, parsing words.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Endless War Memorials
Nine years fighting in Afghanistan, seven years of occupation in Iraq, a trillion dollars spent, thousands killed, wounded and maimed, and the lives of hundreds of thousands forever changed.
Happy Memorial Day. Slap another burger on the grill, crack another beer, pass the potato chips.
Counting private military contractors paid for by the American taxpayers, and UN personnel, there are upwards of 150,000 foreigners in Afghanistan. In the middle of this onslaught, Stanley McChrystal, the American commander, claims that the safety of Afghan civilians is his top priority.
Memo to Stanley: Civilians are the first casualties of armed conflict. The more of them you kill, the more their survivors will want to kill you.
Iraq is now a “democracy,” but so fractured that a government cannot be assembled. The weakness of the government leads to anger or opportunism among the populace, which leads to shootings and car bombings and suicide attacks, which leads to calls for increased security. U.S. “combat” forces are due to depart Iraq this summer (wink, wink), but don’t fret, the Americans aren’t going anywhere – not with billions of gallons of proven oil reserves under their semi-permanent and permanent military facilities, not to mention the largest embassy complex on the planet.
As author Kevin Phillips said, the U.S. military is now an “oil protection force.” Spread your world map out and notice where U.S. military facilities or rapid deployment resources are positioned, and the correlation between oil supplies and America’s “strategic interests” become sickeningly clear. “Strategic interests” is a euphemism the U.S. employs to give itself the right to use force wherever it deems appropriate.
In other words, where there is oil there are U.S. forces. This is the true fight for freedom and the American way of life.
Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are undeclared. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war. Dick Cheney still laughs about how easy it was to get around that minor stipulation.
Nine years in Afghanistan, seven years in Iraq. Do you feel safer? Has the sacrifice in blood and coin been worth it?
Meanwhile, the source of much of the conflict between the Arab world and the west is ignored: Israel and the Palestinians. Today, in fact, Israeli defense forces attacked a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing between ten and nineteen people depending on what news sources you believe. Naturally, the Israelis claim they were fired upon by the civilians in the flotilla, or battled at close quarters by humanitarian activists armed with knives and clubs. Right. We’re expected to believe that a group of humanitarian activists would choose to take on the Israeli army.
World leaders – with the exception of the U.S., of course -- have been quick to condemn Israel’s latest actions as disproportionate. This is the same condemnation that was leveled when Israel launched a brutal attack against Gaza in 2009. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed and much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed during that campaign – the point of which was to demonstrate to the people of Gaza the futility of siding with Hamas.
Israel has since blockaded Gaza, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that the world would not tolerate were it happening anyplace else, but when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, all bets are off, and the political and diplomatic justifications for saying and doing nothing become as contorted as the lengths taken to ignore all moral questions.
Happy Memorial Day. Slap another burger on the grill, crack another beer, pass the potato chips.
Counting private military contractors paid for by the American taxpayers, and UN personnel, there are upwards of 150,000 foreigners in Afghanistan. In the middle of this onslaught, Stanley McChrystal, the American commander, claims that the safety of Afghan civilians is his top priority.
Memo to Stanley: Civilians are the first casualties of armed conflict. The more of them you kill, the more their survivors will want to kill you.
Iraq is now a “democracy,” but so fractured that a government cannot be assembled. The weakness of the government leads to anger or opportunism among the populace, which leads to shootings and car bombings and suicide attacks, which leads to calls for increased security. U.S. “combat” forces are due to depart Iraq this summer (wink, wink), but don’t fret, the Americans aren’t going anywhere – not with billions of gallons of proven oil reserves under their semi-permanent and permanent military facilities, not to mention the largest embassy complex on the planet.
As author Kevin Phillips said, the U.S. military is now an “oil protection force.” Spread your world map out and notice where U.S. military facilities or rapid deployment resources are positioned, and the correlation between oil supplies and America’s “strategic interests” become sickeningly clear. “Strategic interests” is a euphemism the U.S. employs to give itself the right to use force wherever it deems appropriate.
In other words, where there is oil there are U.S. forces. This is the true fight for freedom and the American way of life.
Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are undeclared. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war. Dick Cheney still laughs about how easy it was to get around that minor stipulation.
Nine years in Afghanistan, seven years in Iraq. Do you feel safer? Has the sacrifice in blood and coin been worth it?
Meanwhile, the source of much of the conflict between the Arab world and the west is ignored: Israel and the Palestinians. Today, in fact, Israeli defense forces attacked a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing between ten and nineteen people depending on what news sources you believe. Naturally, the Israelis claim they were fired upon by the civilians in the flotilla, or battled at close quarters by humanitarian activists armed with knives and clubs. Right. We’re expected to believe that a group of humanitarian activists would choose to take on the Israeli army.
World leaders – with the exception of the U.S., of course -- have been quick to condemn Israel’s latest actions as disproportionate. This is the same condemnation that was leveled when Israel launched a brutal attack against Gaza in 2009. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed and much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed during that campaign – the point of which was to demonstrate to the people of Gaza the futility of siding with Hamas.
Israel has since blockaded Gaza, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that the world would not tolerate were it happening anyplace else, but when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, all bets are off, and the political and diplomatic justifications for saying and doing nothing become as contorted as the lengths taken to ignore all moral questions.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Poem - Flag Burning
I sat with my buddy Dave
In his manicured back yard
The Weber grill smoked and our New York steaks
Hissed and dripped
We drank our bottles of Corona in silence
A dove cooed and the wind danced in the
Chinese elm above our heads
And old Vin Scully called the Dodgers-Cubs game
Dave used to talk a lot, laugh a lot
But that was before Jimmy joined the Army
And got posted to Iraq
Jimmy was a decent kid, tall and skinny
With his father’s strong hands and his mother’s green eyes
Dave was against Jimmy joining
I remember him saying,
“There’s no reason for this war.”
Twenty-seven days after he landed in Iraq
Jimmy got blown to bits by an IED
They found his dog tags and a bloody boot
The Army major that came to Dave’s door
Said the nation owed Jimmy a debt of gratitude
Dave told the man: “Get off my porch.”
And then Dave quit talking and started dying
His grief eating him the same way we ate our steaks
One bite at a time, chewing slowly
Dave soaked the folded flag the Army gave him
With gasoline and put a match to it
In his peaceful American yard
On Memorial Day
In his manicured back yard
The Weber grill smoked and our New York steaks
Hissed and dripped
We drank our bottles of Corona in silence
A dove cooed and the wind danced in the
Chinese elm above our heads
And old Vin Scully called the Dodgers-Cubs game
Dave used to talk a lot, laugh a lot
But that was before Jimmy joined the Army
And got posted to Iraq
Jimmy was a decent kid, tall and skinny
With his father’s strong hands and his mother’s green eyes
Dave was against Jimmy joining
I remember him saying,
“There’s no reason for this war.”
Twenty-seven days after he landed in Iraq
Jimmy got blown to bits by an IED
They found his dog tags and a bloody boot
The Army major that came to Dave’s door
Said the nation owed Jimmy a debt of gratitude
Dave told the man: “Get off my porch.”
And then Dave quit talking and started dying
His grief eating him the same way we ate our steaks
One bite at a time, chewing slowly
Dave soaked the folded flag the Army gave him
With gasoline and put a match to it
In his peaceful American yard
On Memorial Day
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Poem - Calamity
Caused by the greed of man
The insatiable desire for profit
At any cost
Millions of gallons of oil
Flowing
Oozing
Seeping
Toward the pristine marshes
Along the Louisiana coastline
BP talks
The US Government talks
The media tries to explain
A golden chain of deceit stretches from one corporate
Boardroom to the next;
The best lawyers in the land seek
To minimize the damage;
PR flacks spin like ice dancers
The oil keeps flowing
But even staring down disaster
The oil barons seek to drill and pump and destroy
And our cowardly government can’t say no
The barons and the government regulators
Have slept in the same bed for too long
We the People and our planet
Are treated like pawns
In their great game
The insatiable desire for profit
At any cost
Millions of gallons of oil
Flowing
Oozing
Seeping
Toward the pristine marshes
Along the Louisiana coastline
BP talks
The US Government talks
The media tries to explain
A golden chain of deceit stretches from one corporate
Boardroom to the next;
The best lawyers in the land seek
To minimize the damage;
PR flacks spin like ice dancers
The oil keeps flowing
But even staring down disaster
The oil barons seek to drill and pump and destroy
And our cowardly government can’t say no
The barons and the government regulators
Have slept in the same bed for too long
We the People and our planet
Are treated like pawns
In their great game
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Kill the Golden Bear, Once and for All
Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are slugging it out in California with fistfuls of cash and platoons of campaign consultants.
At stake is the GOP nomination for the Governorship of a state that is reeling under the weight of a $19 billion budget shortfall – and zero new ideas for how to close that stifling gap. All the Schwarzenegger administration can muster is a plan to slash health care services for children and shut-ins, and continue to fund public education at a level where it can only produce Mississippi-type mediocrity – ideas that are sure to be stymied by the Democrats.
Meaning the state budget will be held hostage as it usually is, with much posturing, lies, fabrications, wild speeches and threats of IOU’s and shuttered parks, all through the hot summer and probably into the early Fall.
While that goes on, Whitman the political neophyte and Poizner the nerdy wannabe, argue about who will be tougher on illegal immigrants, who will tame the evil “unions” that pull the Democrats’ strings, and who will create thousands of new, green, good paying jobs. Both candidates harp on their experience in the private sector – as if the for-profit arena is the Holy Grail. The logic goes something like this: “If I can run a company like E-Bay then I can surely run the State of California, and I promise you I will run it like a business.”
Business, you see, is always efficient, cost-effective, fair, just, color blind, mindful of the environment and focused on delivering the products and services people want at a price they can afford.
Government, in contrast, is slow, wasteful, inefficient, unfair, bloated and populated with slackers who can’t cut it in the free market.
That logic is fatally flawed, of course, but truth is elusive on the campaign trail, and in a 30 second TV ad almost anything goes. So Poizner claims that Whitman supports Obama’s immigration policies (which are, what, exactly?) and Whitman claims that Poizner is really a closet liberal who once voted for – hold on here – Al Gore!
Every time I think politics can’t get any dumber up pops some Tea Party spokesperson yammering about taking our country back. I still don’t know whose iron grip the Tea Party folks want to break. I think they mean Barack Obama, but that’s so nonsensical given the Obama Administration’s limp policies that it can’t possibly be true.
But back to California, the steadily expiring Golden Bear. Republicans will fall on their swords before supporting tax increases of any kind. Democrats, on the other hand, face ostracism if they dare support cuts to social services. Talk about stalemate. The state’s structural deficit will never be addressed, Proposition 13 will remain the most sacred of sacred cows, and the oil industry will continue to extract oil from California without paying a dime in severance taxes. The more the state flounders, the more desperate voters become, with the end result being that wing-nut politicians, professional or novice, begin to look attractive, even reasonable.
The Golden Bear is blind in one eye, minus a hind paw, and lame in its front leg; it can barely shuffle along let alone run as it once did from the high sierras to the coast, from the redwoods to the desert. Nobody messed with the Golden Bear back in the day, but that day ended a long time ago.
At stake is the GOP nomination for the Governorship of a state that is reeling under the weight of a $19 billion budget shortfall – and zero new ideas for how to close that stifling gap. All the Schwarzenegger administration can muster is a plan to slash health care services for children and shut-ins, and continue to fund public education at a level where it can only produce Mississippi-type mediocrity – ideas that are sure to be stymied by the Democrats.
Meaning the state budget will be held hostage as it usually is, with much posturing, lies, fabrications, wild speeches and threats of IOU’s and shuttered parks, all through the hot summer and probably into the early Fall.
While that goes on, Whitman the political neophyte and Poizner the nerdy wannabe, argue about who will be tougher on illegal immigrants, who will tame the evil “unions” that pull the Democrats’ strings, and who will create thousands of new, green, good paying jobs. Both candidates harp on their experience in the private sector – as if the for-profit arena is the Holy Grail. The logic goes something like this: “If I can run a company like E-Bay then I can surely run the State of California, and I promise you I will run it like a business.”
Business, you see, is always efficient, cost-effective, fair, just, color blind, mindful of the environment and focused on delivering the products and services people want at a price they can afford.
Government, in contrast, is slow, wasteful, inefficient, unfair, bloated and populated with slackers who can’t cut it in the free market.
That logic is fatally flawed, of course, but truth is elusive on the campaign trail, and in a 30 second TV ad almost anything goes. So Poizner claims that Whitman supports Obama’s immigration policies (which are, what, exactly?) and Whitman claims that Poizner is really a closet liberal who once voted for – hold on here – Al Gore!
Every time I think politics can’t get any dumber up pops some Tea Party spokesperson yammering about taking our country back. I still don’t know whose iron grip the Tea Party folks want to break. I think they mean Barack Obama, but that’s so nonsensical given the Obama Administration’s limp policies that it can’t possibly be true.
But back to California, the steadily expiring Golden Bear. Republicans will fall on their swords before supporting tax increases of any kind. Democrats, on the other hand, face ostracism if they dare support cuts to social services. Talk about stalemate. The state’s structural deficit will never be addressed, Proposition 13 will remain the most sacred of sacred cows, and the oil industry will continue to extract oil from California without paying a dime in severance taxes. The more the state flounders, the more desperate voters become, with the end result being that wing-nut politicians, professional or novice, begin to look attractive, even reasonable.
The Golden Bear is blind in one eye, minus a hind paw, and lame in its front leg; it can barely shuffle along let alone run as it once did from the high sierras to the coast, from the redwoods to the desert. Nobody messed with the Golden Bear back in the day, but that day ended a long time ago.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Goliath vs The Pygmies
Glory to the French and the Greeks. May Americans learn something from our feisty European friends.
When the governments of France or Greece try to screw their people with austerity measures and unravel the social safety net, the people have enough gumption to pour into the streets and make some racket.
By contrast, Americans display all the fire of tree sloths. We’ve been getting screwed for decades, and for the most part have taken our screwing silently and on our knees. Oh, we get exercised about abortion and illegal immigration, make no mistake about that, but when it comes to having our pockets picked clean by corporate greed heads, we can’t be bothered to lift a middle finger in protest.
As the crime goes down we listen to fools like Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh and O’Reilly, swallow the rot they spew about the evil federal government; we watch network news anchors who rarely connect the dots between economic policy and the fate of average Americans; and we routinely vote against our self-interests because we believe the “free” market gibberish peddled from the corporate media.
Our problem isn’t too much government; our problem is too little government. Ever since Ronald Reagan rode into Washington D.C. determined to restore America’s faith in its own myths and fables, corporate power has grown while the countervailing power of government has declined. The results are visible in almost every industry: energy, food, telecommunications, transportation, banking, and finance, health care. Corporations are bigger and more economically and politically potent than at any time since the Gilded Age and the heyday of big trusts. Tea Party faithful constantly evoke the Founding Fathers, but what that rabble conveniently forget is how wary the Founders were of power – particularly power concentrated in too few hands. This is one reason why we have (or had until Bush Jr’s imperial presidency) three co-equal branches of government. Each branch has certain powers along with limits to those powers, all designed to check and balance one another.
Balancing power is the same reason we had anti-trust laws and the Glass-Steagal act.
But the anti-trust laws that helped crack Standard Oil and other trusts have been systematically weakened ever since Reagan set his jellybean jar on the desk in the Oval Office. Regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor have been systematically gutted or neutered, tilting the balance of power in favor of the wealthy and corporations. Size and capital equate to political power, lobbying power and campaign contribution (bribery) power. Corporations are not only too big to fail, they are also too big to regulate and control.
It’s not David vs. Goliath anymore – it’s Goliath vs. an unarmed pygmy.
This revolution of power happened right in front of us and with our silent consent. Trade and monetary policies eliminated our jobs and sent them to Mexico, Thailand and China; tax policies favored capital over labor; labor laws were diluted, overturned or ignored without penalty, and our entire economy became dedicated to the enrichment of corporations, investors, speculators and stockholders. Government services that were designed to help ordinary people live better lives were outsourced to corporations who always place profit first and people second. In the brave new universe of the infallible free market, the inherently fair and just free market, the efficient free market, wage earners no longer mattered, and neither did the public’s interest.
The Greeks and the French take to the streets; Americans retreat to the safety of their living rooms, hunker down in front of plasma TV’s with a bucket of fast food and lose themselves in trivia. The corporations and the wealthy have nothing to fear from us; they know how accustomed we’ve become to living on our knees, pygmies in Goliath’s shadow.
When the governments of France or Greece try to screw their people with austerity measures and unravel the social safety net, the people have enough gumption to pour into the streets and make some racket.
By contrast, Americans display all the fire of tree sloths. We’ve been getting screwed for decades, and for the most part have taken our screwing silently and on our knees. Oh, we get exercised about abortion and illegal immigration, make no mistake about that, but when it comes to having our pockets picked clean by corporate greed heads, we can’t be bothered to lift a middle finger in protest.
As the crime goes down we listen to fools like Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh and O’Reilly, swallow the rot they spew about the evil federal government; we watch network news anchors who rarely connect the dots between economic policy and the fate of average Americans; and we routinely vote against our self-interests because we believe the “free” market gibberish peddled from the corporate media.
Our problem isn’t too much government; our problem is too little government. Ever since Ronald Reagan rode into Washington D.C. determined to restore America’s faith in its own myths and fables, corporate power has grown while the countervailing power of government has declined. The results are visible in almost every industry: energy, food, telecommunications, transportation, banking, and finance, health care. Corporations are bigger and more economically and politically potent than at any time since the Gilded Age and the heyday of big trusts. Tea Party faithful constantly evoke the Founding Fathers, but what that rabble conveniently forget is how wary the Founders were of power – particularly power concentrated in too few hands. This is one reason why we have (or had until Bush Jr’s imperial presidency) three co-equal branches of government. Each branch has certain powers along with limits to those powers, all designed to check and balance one another.
Balancing power is the same reason we had anti-trust laws and the Glass-Steagal act.
But the anti-trust laws that helped crack Standard Oil and other trusts have been systematically weakened ever since Reagan set his jellybean jar on the desk in the Oval Office. Regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor have been systematically gutted or neutered, tilting the balance of power in favor of the wealthy and corporations. Size and capital equate to political power, lobbying power and campaign contribution (bribery) power. Corporations are not only too big to fail, they are also too big to regulate and control.
It’s not David vs. Goliath anymore – it’s Goliath vs. an unarmed pygmy.
This revolution of power happened right in front of us and with our silent consent. Trade and monetary policies eliminated our jobs and sent them to Mexico, Thailand and China; tax policies favored capital over labor; labor laws were diluted, overturned or ignored without penalty, and our entire economy became dedicated to the enrichment of corporations, investors, speculators and stockholders. Government services that were designed to help ordinary people live better lives were outsourced to corporations who always place profit first and people second. In the brave new universe of the infallible free market, the inherently fair and just free market, the efficient free market, wage earners no longer mattered, and neither did the public’s interest.
The Greeks and the French take to the streets; Americans retreat to the safety of their living rooms, hunker down in front of plasma TV’s with a bucket of fast food and lose themselves in trivia. The corporations and the wealthy have nothing to fear from us; they know how accustomed we’ve become to living on our knees, pygmies in Goliath’s shadow.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Voices: Chet Walker, Escondido, California
My son is all into politics. Campaigned for Obama, plastered his Toyota with bumper stickers, the whole bit. I’m getting old and cynical. I tell him not to waste his time trying to make the country better. The only way to clean a cesspool is to drain it, know what I mean? Jeff complains that the whole system is corrupted by money, well, no kidding, Sherlock! I’ve been a plumbing contractor for 38 years, never spent a minute in a college classroom, and I know that money talks – and big money talks really loud. Jeff seems surprised that congressmen and senators and judges are bought every day. It’s like he believes these people get into politics for pure motives or something, or that once they get elected or appointed they become saints. Jeff’s educated, but he’s not smart, know what I mean? Understand the difference? Brains, yes, smarts, no. Jeff wants me to call my congressman about this, my senator about that, as if those people give a rat’s behind for my opinion. I tell him to put himself in their place. Are you going to listen to some schmuck back home or the corporate lobbyist who pays for your TV ads? No brainer, right? Might as well vote for Donald Duck. Rich people own this country, always have and always will. Don’t get me wrong, though – Jeff’s heart is in the right place – it’s just that his head is buried in the sand. You want to know what politics does? I’ll tell you. When you get right down to it all it does is make robbery legal. What the hell do I need it for? Like I don’t have enough aggravation in my daily life? What I care about is whether or not my Mexican crew will show up tomorrow, on time, sober, prepared to do a day’s work. Dumb as posts, some of these Mexicans, but in the plumbing business that’s what you work with. Jeff says I’m racist, but it’s not true. I could pay my guys less, squeeze them a little more, but I don’t and never have. Give me the choice between a Mexican and a white redneck, I take the Mexican every single time. I care about customers who don’t pay my invoices on time and don’t seem concerned about it, like I’m some sort of charitable organization. I care about sub-contractors who cut corners and make me look bad. Yeah, I got plenty to worry about without taking on politics. My son’s a bleeding heart, just like his mother, my first wife, who slept with my partner and screwed me but good in the divorce. Don’t get me started. Politics, OK, that’s one thing, my ex-wife’s a whole different story. I’d rather spend a day digging a trench in hell than talk about her. Know what I mean?
Saturday, May 01, 2010
It's Just Brown People Dying
Imagine for a moment that in the last three years the murder rate in Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, Canada had shot up 300%, and that by official government statistics more than 20,000 people had died at the hands of drug traffickers, small-time drug dealers, run-of-the-mill thugs and corrupt local, state and federal police. Imagine that Canada’s army now patrols the streets of the three cities, but despite the presence of armed troops, the murder rate continues at the same relentless pace. Some citizens claim the army itself is implicated in the killings. The government insists that the police and the court system are turning the tide, winning the war, but few arrests are ever made, even when murders happen in broad daylight on a crowded avenue. Everyone seems to know who the killers are, but nobody ever sees a thing.
If this were happening in Canada, what would the response be on this side of the border? Would the American media devote some precious airtime – say a quarter of the time devoted to Tiger Woods and his many mistresses -- to report on the killings? Would Diane Sawyer from ABC News or Katie Couric from CBS jet across the border for a hard-hitting interview with Canada’s Prime Minister? Would Anderson Cooper report live from the scene of a killing?
If this were happening in Canada, would it merit more than passing attention from the politicians and pundits in Washington D.C.?
Not to worry -- Canada is as peaceful as ever. It’s Mexico, our southern neighbor that is awash in violence and death and at a risk of becoming a completely failed state, though if you depend for information on the American news media, you’d hardly know it.
Why the selective myopia? Is it because most of the people being murdered are brown-skinned? Is this simply racism, writ large? Given the draconian law recently passed in Arizona – and let us hope the courts strike this perversity from the books - one wonders about the racist bent in the American character.
According to author and journalist Charles Bowden, the U.S. gives Mexico around a half billion dollars a year to fight the drug war. The money is used for training and equipment, logistics, and so on. Half a billion dollars in annual aid, but the war goes on and the murders continue at a pace that makes the U.S. death toll in Iraq look frivolous by comparison. The major drug cartels battle one another for control of territory and routes. Local, state and federal police are supposed to stop the cartels, disrupt supply lines and make arrests, but the “authorities” seem bent on capturing a piece of the business rather than shutting it down.
And, of course, drugs continue to flow across the border, arriving on schedule for those that want or need them.
Everything related to Mexico and the drug business is upside down, Alice in Wonderland style. The cartels are as well armed as the Mexican army, the police act like drug lords, the courts never convict anyone, and trust is the scarcest commodity in the country.
The drug trade has replaced foreign factories as the employer of choice for young Mexican men. Why slave in a maquiladora for peanut wages when you can make real money in the drug business? What’s the incentive to lead a virtuous life when everyone around you is living on the dim side of what law and order remains? The desire for a long life might lose currency when all seems destined to get worse, never better.
What is behind all this death and suffering? Sure, the American appetite for illegal drugs has played a supporting role, but isn’t it more systemic than that? What role has NAFTA played in changing Mexico’s economy? The trade treaty obliterated small farmers and sent thousands, perhaps millions, of people in search of work. When manufacturing jobs began to dry up because production moved to China – whose workers were willing to slave for even less than Mexicans -- millions of Mexican workers had little choice but to make the trek to El Norte. Hard to blame them: on one side, unemployment, drug killings, lawlessness, endemic official corruption, failed institutions; on the other, the unknown in a country that has grown increasingly inhospitable to Mexican immigrants, even though the economies of border states depend on a steady supply of Mexicans willing to do difficult, dangerous, dirty, tedious and low-paying jobs.
Today in Los Angeles it’s estimated that 100,000 people will march to protest Arizona’s new immigration law. Will this demonstration and others like it lead the U.S. to begin asking deeper, more fundamental questions about Mexico?
Don’t count on it.
If this were happening in Canada, what would the response be on this side of the border? Would the American media devote some precious airtime – say a quarter of the time devoted to Tiger Woods and his many mistresses -- to report on the killings? Would Diane Sawyer from ABC News or Katie Couric from CBS jet across the border for a hard-hitting interview with Canada’s Prime Minister? Would Anderson Cooper report live from the scene of a killing?
If this were happening in Canada, would it merit more than passing attention from the politicians and pundits in Washington D.C.?
Not to worry -- Canada is as peaceful as ever. It’s Mexico, our southern neighbor that is awash in violence and death and at a risk of becoming a completely failed state, though if you depend for information on the American news media, you’d hardly know it.
Why the selective myopia? Is it because most of the people being murdered are brown-skinned? Is this simply racism, writ large? Given the draconian law recently passed in Arizona – and let us hope the courts strike this perversity from the books - one wonders about the racist bent in the American character.
According to author and journalist Charles Bowden, the U.S. gives Mexico around a half billion dollars a year to fight the drug war. The money is used for training and equipment, logistics, and so on. Half a billion dollars in annual aid, but the war goes on and the murders continue at a pace that makes the U.S. death toll in Iraq look frivolous by comparison. The major drug cartels battle one another for control of territory and routes. Local, state and federal police are supposed to stop the cartels, disrupt supply lines and make arrests, but the “authorities” seem bent on capturing a piece of the business rather than shutting it down.
And, of course, drugs continue to flow across the border, arriving on schedule for those that want or need them.
Everything related to Mexico and the drug business is upside down, Alice in Wonderland style. The cartels are as well armed as the Mexican army, the police act like drug lords, the courts never convict anyone, and trust is the scarcest commodity in the country.
The drug trade has replaced foreign factories as the employer of choice for young Mexican men. Why slave in a maquiladora for peanut wages when you can make real money in the drug business? What’s the incentive to lead a virtuous life when everyone around you is living on the dim side of what law and order remains? The desire for a long life might lose currency when all seems destined to get worse, never better.
What is behind all this death and suffering? Sure, the American appetite for illegal drugs has played a supporting role, but isn’t it more systemic than that? What role has NAFTA played in changing Mexico’s economy? The trade treaty obliterated small farmers and sent thousands, perhaps millions, of people in search of work. When manufacturing jobs began to dry up because production moved to China – whose workers were willing to slave for even less than Mexicans -- millions of Mexican workers had little choice but to make the trek to El Norte. Hard to blame them: on one side, unemployment, drug killings, lawlessness, endemic official corruption, failed institutions; on the other, the unknown in a country that has grown increasingly inhospitable to Mexican immigrants, even though the economies of border states depend on a steady supply of Mexicans willing to do difficult, dangerous, dirty, tedious and low-paying jobs.
Today in Los Angeles it’s estimated that 100,000 people will march to protest Arizona’s new immigration law. Will this demonstration and others like it lead the U.S. to begin asking deeper, more fundamental questions about Mexico?
Don’t count on it.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Boiling Point
If you’re an average American who works for wages you should be madder than hell, and if you’re not, well, maybe you’re deaf, dumb and blind, comatose from habitual drug use or just too damn busy trying to earn a living to pay attention to the heist that has been perpetrated on you for the last thirty years or so.
We’ve been bottle-fed poison Kool-Aid.
I’m talking the Reagan Revolution, supply side economics, union busting, disdain for the environment, and a steady expansion of corporate power at the expense of wage earners, consumers and, in some cases, stock holders. Ronnie rode tall in the saddle and spouted platitudes about the American Dream, hard work, pulling oneself up by his or her bootstraps, the glory of capitalism, shining cities on far away hills reserved for the very rich and fair skinned.
Nothing’s been the same since that seismic shift in the political landscape. Democrats panicked and moved rightward, closer to Reagan’s long shadow, and in the process abandoned their historical constituencies. Today, once you sift through the hyperbole and the posturing and the disinformation talking points, it’s impossible to tell a Democrat from a Republican; both take money from Big Business and worship at the crooked temple of crony capitalism.
We’ve been lied to.
Working people should be furious, steaming, bursting with rage, and these feelings should – unlike those light-skinned Tea Party whack jobs who are mainly pissed off at becoming a demographic minority and rail against liberals and phantom socialists because at least doing so gives them a target -- be directed where they belong and where they might make change possible.
We’ve been lulled to sleep by fairy tales and folk tales, myth and fantasy.
Here’s the truth: Goldman Sachs recently reported its first quarter earnings, a tidy sum of $3.5 billion. Not bad for a firm that was on the ropes and might have expired save for Henry Paulson and an infusion of our dollars; not bad for a firm that may soon be under investigation from the SEC, though that possibility is unlikely to keep the politically-connected folks at Goldman awake at night. They’ll take a hand slap for their pals in the financial services industry, if they have to, but then it will be back to business as usual. Goldman knows this, and so does the government. But the charade is useful on the off chance the public wakes up and realizes how thoroughly it has been deceived.
Timothy Geithner, Wall Street alum and current Treasury Secretary, was on ABC’s Good Morning America the other day, spinning his tale of financial industry reform. According to TG, legislation now worming its way through Congress will make future bank bailouts unlikely, prevent banks from growing into behemoths (too late, TG! the handful of major banks left are already behemoth-size and get to stay that way), and bring derivatives and other esoteric financial instruments out of the darkness and into the light of day. Oh, and TG also advanced the laughable fiction that the American economy is growing stronger. Yes, TG of Wall Street said that. He could just as well have claimed that white is black, black is white, nicotine isn’t addictive and Oxycontin is good for the soul.
Stronger? Cities, counties and state governments are broke, cutting back essential services that primarily benefit the poor, laying off workers, bitching about pension obligations, demanding wage concessions, firing teachers and shortening the school year. Unemployment is still sky high and the pace of home foreclosures isn’t slowing. Where except on Wall Street and K Street in Washington D.C. are these signs of strength? Get with the program, sucker: Wall Street investors and speculators are feeling optimistic, and what else matters in America but how the investor class feels? Our entire economy is organized to make the investor class happy.
Fuck Main Street.
Yeah, raging mad, short of breath, heart banging in the chest like a piston gone berserk. Every industry is too fucking big to fail: banking, insurance, telecommunications, energy, food. Under the banner of “capitalism” and “free enterprise” the corporate honchos and their lobbying firms wrote the rules that became the laws that allowed them to create profitable monopolies. And guess what? They have no intention of giving up those monopolies. CEO’s talk a good game about competition and how it brings out the best in people and companies and weeds out the weak, timid and slow, but it’s all bullshit. Like Russian mobsters, CEO’s want a rigged game and a reliable revenue stream. Why compete when you can acquire your competition and grow, grow, grow, free from anti-trust hassles?
We’ve been molested, like deaf altar boys.
Reagan’s homilies and Clinton’s betrayal of working people with NAFTA sent American jobs out of this country like roaches running from ultraviolet light; first it was Mexico, and after that Taiwan and Thailand, Vietnam, and then the Promised Land of cheap, exploitable labor: China. China, the corporate CEO’s wet dream. Cheap labor, no unions or pesky EPA regulations to grapple with, no OSHA headaches or wage disputes. China and Wal-Mart gave us low prices for people who make peanut wages – and this was, is, touted as a miraculous thing, that though you toil 40 hours a week for minimum wage at a dead-end job, you can still buy the latest crap at Wal-Mart. Thank you, China and your exploited workers. Then Bush Jr’s complete and total fucking of working people, the environment, and the constitution.
The campaign money, the lobbyists, the buying and selling of politicians, judges, regulators, pollsters and journalists that is now part and parcel of our political system have produced a bumper crop of social injustice.
Aren’t you sick of it?
Might as well get used to it because it’s probably here to stay.
Our rectums are bleeding, swollen, torn from the abuse we’ve taken at the hands of crooked politicians and criminal corporations. Take a good look around with your eyes wide open: note the devastation made possible by our collective passivity.
We’ve been bottle-fed poison Kool-Aid.
I’m talking the Reagan Revolution, supply side economics, union busting, disdain for the environment, and a steady expansion of corporate power at the expense of wage earners, consumers and, in some cases, stock holders. Ronnie rode tall in the saddle and spouted platitudes about the American Dream, hard work, pulling oneself up by his or her bootstraps, the glory of capitalism, shining cities on far away hills reserved for the very rich and fair skinned.
Nothing’s been the same since that seismic shift in the political landscape. Democrats panicked and moved rightward, closer to Reagan’s long shadow, and in the process abandoned their historical constituencies. Today, once you sift through the hyperbole and the posturing and the disinformation talking points, it’s impossible to tell a Democrat from a Republican; both take money from Big Business and worship at the crooked temple of crony capitalism.
We’ve been lied to.
Working people should be furious, steaming, bursting with rage, and these feelings should – unlike those light-skinned Tea Party whack jobs who are mainly pissed off at becoming a demographic minority and rail against liberals and phantom socialists because at least doing so gives them a target -- be directed where they belong and where they might make change possible.
We’ve been lulled to sleep by fairy tales and folk tales, myth and fantasy.
Here’s the truth: Goldman Sachs recently reported its first quarter earnings, a tidy sum of $3.5 billion. Not bad for a firm that was on the ropes and might have expired save for Henry Paulson and an infusion of our dollars; not bad for a firm that may soon be under investigation from the SEC, though that possibility is unlikely to keep the politically-connected folks at Goldman awake at night. They’ll take a hand slap for their pals in the financial services industry, if they have to, but then it will be back to business as usual. Goldman knows this, and so does the government. But the charade is useful on the off chance the public wakes up and realizes how thoroughly it has been deceived.
Timothy Geithner, Wall Street alum and current Treasury Secretary, was on ABC’s Good Morning America the other day, spinning his tale of financial industry reform. According to TG, legislation now worming its way through Congress will make future bank bailouts unlikely, prevent banks from growing into behemoths (too late, TG! the handful of major banks left are already behemoth-size and get to stay that way), and bring derivatives and other esoteric financial instruments out of the darkness and into the light of day. Oh, and TG also advanced the laughable fiction that the American economy is growing stronger. Yes, TG of Wall Street said that. He could just as well have claimed that white is black, black is white, nicotine isn’t addictive and Oxycontin is good for the soul.
Stronger? Cities, counties and state governments are broke, cutting back essential services that primarily benefit the poor, laying off workers, bitching about pension obligations, demanding wage concessions, firing teachers and shortening the school year. Unemployment is still sky high and the pace of home foreclosures isn’t slowing. Where except on Wall Street and K Street in Washington D.C. are these signs of strength? Get with the program, sucker: Wall Street investors and speculators are feeling optimistic, and what else matters in America but how the investor class feels? Our entire economy is organized to make the investor class happy.
Fuck Main Street.
Yeah, raging mad, short of breath, heart banging in the chest like a piston gone berserk. Every industry is too fucking big to fail: banking, insurance, telecommunications, energy, food. Under the banner of “capitalism” and “free enterprise” the corporate honchos and their lobbying firms wrote the rules that became the laws that allowed them to create profitable monopolies. And guess what? They have no intention of giving up those monopolies. CEO’s talk a good game about competition and how it brings out the best in people and companies and weeds out the weak, timid and slow, but it’s all bullshit. Like Russian mobsters, CEO’s want a rigged game and a reliable revenue stream. Why compete when you can acquire your competition and grow, grow, grow, free from anti-trust hassles?
We’ve been molested, like deaf altar boys.
Reagan’s homilies and Clinton’s betrayal of working people with NAFTA sent American jobs out of this country like roaches running from ultraviolet light; first it was Mexico, and after that Taiwan and Thailand, Vietnam, and then the Promised Land of cheap, exploitable labor: China. China, the corporate CEO’s wet dream. Cheap labor, no unions or pesky EPA regulations to grapple with, no OSHA headaches or wage disputes. China and Wal-Mart gave us low prices for people who make peanut wages – and this was, is, touted as a miraculous thing, that though you toil 40 hours a week for minimum wage at a dead-end job, you can still buy the latest crap at Wal-Mart. Thank you, China and your exploited workers. Then Bush Jr’s complete and total fucking of working people, the environment, and the constitution.
The campaign money, the lobbyists, the buying and selling of politicians, judges, regulators, pollsters and journalists that is now part and parcel of our political system have produced a bumper crop of social injustice.
Aren’t you sick of it?
Might as well get used to it because it’s probably here to stay.
Our rectums are bleeding, swollen, torn from the abuse we’ve taken at the hands of crooked politicians and criminal corporations. Take a good look around with your eyes wide open: note the devastation made possible by our collective passivity.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Who Are These People?
Let me make this clear at the outset: the Tea Party does not speak for me. I prefer to think for myself, speak for myself, and not be swayed by the worst excesses of a mob mentality.
Who do these people want to take the nation back from? Do they really think Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are socialists or are they just flat stupid, like their heroine, Sarah Palin? If Obama, Pelosi and Reid are socialists, I’m a fascist. The problem with Obama is not that he leans too far left but that he’s too wedded to the center. Putting Obama on a poster with Chairman Mao is like putting Adolf Hitler on the same poster with Saint Francis of Assisi – it just makes no sense.
Here’s another thing: I don’t mind paying my fair share of income taxes, as long as the money is used to enhance the common good. I like smooth roads and highways, safe airline travel, national parks, clean air, drinking water and oceans, and sensible regulation that prevents too much power from concentrating in too few hands.
What I don’t like is watching public dollars siphoned off for private gain or wasted on wars of choice or for maintaining a gargantuan military/security/intelligence apparatus. Although I’d like to keep more of the money I earn, I’m not in favor of abolishing the federal income tax, as the Tea Party faithful advocate at every turn. That’s a ludicrous idea in a complex, interconnected society, but then again, most of the ideas parroted by the Tea Party are ludicrous.
But, OK, it’s a kick to mass in the streets with like minded folks, carrying a picket sign, chanting slogans (even totally goofy slogans), and making your opinion known.
Where was the Tea Party when Bush and Cheney were raping the Constitution, fabricating a rational to invade Iraq, torturing detainees, and giving the richest Americans generous tax breaks?
Who do these people want to take the nation back from? Do they really think Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are socialists or are they just flat stupid, like their heroine, Sarah Palin? If Obama, Pelosi and Reid are socialists, I’m a fascist. The problem with Obama is not that he leans too far left but that he’s too wedded to the center. Putting Obama on a poster with Chairman Mao is like putting Adolf Hitler on the same poster with Saint Francis of Assisi – it just makes no sense.
Here’s another thing: I don’t mind paying my fair share of income taxes, as long as the money is used to enhance the common good. I like smooth roads and highways, safe airline travel, national parks, clean air, drinking water and oceans, and sensible regulation that prevents too much power from concentrating in too few hands.
What I don’t like is watching public dollars siphoned off for private gain or wasted on wars of choice or for maintaining a gargantuan military/security/intelligence apparatus. Although I’d like to keep more of the money I earn, I’m not in favor of abolishing the federal income tax, as the Tea Party faithful advocate at every turn. That’s a ludicrous idea in a complex, interconnected society, but then again, most of the ideas parroted by the Tea Party are ludicrous.
But, OK, it’s a kick to mass in the streets with like minded folks, carrying a picket sign, chanting slogans (even totally goofy slogans), and making your opinion known.
Where was the Tea Party when Bush and Cheney were raping the Constitution, fabricating a rational to invade Iraq, torturing detainees, and giving the richest Americans generous tax breaks?
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
We're Back, Baby!
The segment on Good Morning America began with the obligatory shot of the trading floor on the New York Stock Exchange, and a breathless voice over about the surging Dow Jones Industrial Average, now above 11,000 points for the first time in more than a year. “U.S. Economy on the Mend” read the caption.
If you reside in the real world of work, wages and debt, mainstream media coverage of the economy never ceases to amuse. The network one watches doesn’t make a difference because they all report the same way, with the stock market portrayed as the Be All, End All, harbinger of the U.S. economy. If the market is up it must mean that the economy is sound. The corporate frame around the story is fitted so tight that it makes the report virtually meaningless.
The surging Dow’s impact on consumers follows the rosy stock report. No mention of jobs or wages, just a straight leap to a prediction of consumer behavior, whether or not more homes and cars will be sold, now that the economy is vibrating again and our woes are behind us. Break out the champagne, in short, because happy days are here again.
Except happy days are not here again, at least not on Elm Street and Main Street and Patriot Avenue – no, on those streets, and hundreds more like them, a hundred or a thousand miles from Wall Street -- jobs are still scarce and homes are still being foreclosed, many sit empty, and broken dreams lay strewn in the street like autumn leaves; city and state governments are broke and cutting services to the poor, leaving streets in disrepair, furloughing employees and letting school teachers go -- though there’s no mention of these cold truths from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS or CNN. The networks have adopted the feel good narrative and facts aren’t allowed to interfere. Say it with us, America: happy days are here again. America is back!
So, how’re things on your street? When was your last pay increase? How’re you making out with the rent or mortgage, food and fuel costs, college tuition, your IRA, insurance premiums, doctor bills, car payments and other household expenses? You feeling optimistic, now that the Dow is above 11,000? Does that piece of news lift your spirits and fill you with hope?
I didn’t think so. We live in the real world.
If you reside in the real world of work, wages and debt, mainstream media coverage of the economy never ceases to amuse. The network one watches doesn’t make a difference because they all report the same way, with the stock market portrayed as the Be All, End All, harbinger of the U.S. economy. If the market is up it must mean that the economy is sound. The corporate frame around the story is fitted so tight that it makes the report virtually meaningless.
The surging Dow’s impact on consumers follows the rosy stock report. No mention of jobs or wages, just a straight leap to a prediction of consumer behavior, whether or not more homes and cars will be sold, now that the economy is vibrating again and our woes are behind us. Break out the champagne, in short, because happy days are here again.
Except happy days are not here again, at least not on Elm Street and Main Street and Patriot Avenue – no, on those streets, and hundreds more like them, a hundred or a thousand miles from Wall Street -- jobs are still scarce and homes are still being foreclosed, many sit empty, and broken dreams lay strewn in the street like autumn leaves; city and state governments are broke and cutting services to the poor, leaving streets in disrepair, furloughing employees and letting school teachers go -- though there’s no mention of these cold truths from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS or CNN. The networks have adopted the feel good narrative and facts aren’t allowed to interfere. Say it with us, America: happy days are here again. America is back!
So, how’re things on your street? When was your last pay increase? How’re you making out with the rent or mortgage, food and fuel costs, college tuition, your IRA, insurance premiums, doctor bills, car payments and other household expenses? You feeling optimistic, now that the Dow is above 11,000? Does that piece of news lift your spirits and fill you with hope?
I didn’t think so. We live in the real world.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Liar, Liar
I hate to be lied to, whether by one of my children or the President of the United States.
Our president was in Afghanistan recently, meeting with our corrupt surrogate, Hamid Karzai, and then, clad in his Air Force One jacket, giving a pep talk to the troops. I certainly wouldn’t expect the president to create a somber mood by telling the troops the truth about our situation in Afghanistan, but on the other hand I don’t expect him to outright lie.
But the fact is that all American presidents lie at some point. Perhaps Obama honestly believes that our Afghan adventure wasn’t a war of choice, and that invading the country in 2001 was the only option by which we could punish Al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps Obama also believes that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are one and the same, interchangeable parts, with identical aims and ideals. Perhaps Obama was expressing realistic hope when he said that our presence is paving the way for a golden age of peace and prosperity in a country that has experienced neither in decades. Perhaps Obama knows something that most Americans don’t, some secret that will allow us to “win” this war and one day soon bid Afghanistan fond farewell, with a ticker tape parade through the streets of Kabul.
And perhaps Obama believes in Santa Claus, leprechauns, and the Easter Bunny.
After 9/11 the United States had options besides launching an invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, but the public needed vengeance to dampen its shock and fear, George W. Bush needed to look tough, so in we went. Recall that American forces routed the Taliban in 2001 and early 2002, though the rout didn’t stick. If we couldn’t defeat the Taliban then what makes our chances any better today? Why do we need more troops in 2010 than we did in 2002?
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are allies of convenience, not a united bloc moving in unison toward world domination though characterizing them as such works effectively for manipulating American voters.
What Obama didn’t say the other day is that this war of choice is unwinnable and will continue for many more years, through shifting strategies, changes in command on the ground, ultimatums to the Afghan government and half-hearted promises to NATO. The U.S. will prop Karzai up until he does something so stupid or outrageous that he leaves the U.S. no choice but to remove him. (You can be sure the CIA already has contingency plans drawn to topple Karzai and install a successor.) American forces and contractors will lumber around Afghanistan, chasing the Taliban, counting the dead and wounded, and causing collateral civilian deaths and casualties that will insure the Taliban always has a fresh supply of recruits. Kill one, recruit six is a sure-fire recipe for endless war.
Obama’s dream of an Afghanistan at peace and enjoying prosperity is preposterous. The President is intelligent and knows very well that Afghans have been at war almost continuously for thirty years; peace and prosperity are not on the horizon.
How will this war play out at home? Coupled with the forever occupation of Iraq, the Afghan war will drive federal budget deficits and create political pressure to slash Medicare costs and “reform” Social Security, in addition to blocking efforts to stimulate the economy and put Americans back to work. Such pressure is building now, with major media outlets like the New York Times sounding dire warnings about Social Security. Cutting entitlement programs is promoted as the only way to control the deficit, because, you see, we cannot cut funding for war and occupation and homeland security while our brave troops are in harm’s way.
History is replete with tales of powerful nations that get in over their heads and then find it difficult, if not impossible, to get out. When a nation sinks blood and coin in a foreign adventure the last thing it can accept is departing empty-handed, in disgrace and with its flag in tatters. President Obama knows we’re headed for that fate in Afghanistan, certainly, and possibly in Iraq as well, but for now he plays his commander-in-chief role, distorting the truth in order to exhort the troops.
Several years hence, when Obama writes his memoirs, he’ll assert that he had no choice but to carry the torch handed him by his predecessor.
That will also be a lie.
Our president was in Afghanistan recently, meeting with our corrupt surrogate, Hamid Karzai, and then, clad in his Air Force One jacket, giving a pep talk to the troops. I certainly wouldn’t expect the president to create a somber mood by telling the troops the truth about our situation in Afghanistan, but on the other hand I don’t expect him to outright lie.
But the fact is that all American presidents lie at some point. Perhaps Obama honestly believes that our Afghan adventure wasn’t a war of choice, and that invading the country in 2001 was the only option by which we could punish Al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps Obama also believes that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are one and the same, interchangeable parts, with identical aims and ideals. Perhaps Obama was expressing realistic hope when he said that our presence is paving the way for a golden age of peace and prosperity in a country that has experienced neither in decades. Perhaps Obama knows something that most Americans don’t, some secret that will allow us to “win” this war and one day soon bid Afghanistan fond farewell, with a ticker tape parade through the streets of Kabul.
And perhaps Obama believes in Santa Claus, leprechauns, and the Easter Bunny.
After 9/11 the United States had options besides launching an invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, but the public needed vengeance to dampen its shock and fear, George W. Bush needed to look tough, so in we went. Recall that American forces routed the Taliban in 2001 and early 2002, though the rout didn’t stick. If we couldn’t defeat the Taliban then what makes our chances any better today? Why do we need more troops in 2010 than we did in 2002?
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are allies of convenience, not a united bloc moving in unison toward world domination though characterizing them as such works effectively for manipulating American voters.
What Obama didn’t say the other day is that this war of choice is unwinnable and will continue for many more years, through shifting strategies, changes in command on the ground, ultimatums to the Afghan government and half-hearted promises to NATO. The U.S. will prop Karzai up until he does something so stupid or outrageous that he leaves the U.S. no choice but to remove him. (You can be sure the CIA already has contingency plans drawn to topple Karzai and install a successor.) American forces and contractors will lumber around Afghanistan, chasing the Taliban, counting the dead and wounded, and causing collateral civilian deaths and casualties that will insure the Taliban always has a fresh supply of recruits. Kill one, recruit six is a sure-fire recipe for endless war.
Obama’s dream of an Afghanistan at peace and enjoying prosperity is preposterous. The President is intelligent and knows very well that Afghans have been at war almost continuously for thirty years; peace and prosperity are not on the horizon.
How will this war play out at home? Coupled with the forever occupation of Iraq, the Afghan war will drive federal budget deficits and create political pressure to slash Medicare costs and “reform” Social Security, in addition to blocking efforts to stimulate the economy and put Americans back to work. Such pressure is building now, with major media outlets like the New York Times sounding dire warnings about Social Security. Cutting entitlement programs is promoted as the only way to control the deficit, because, you see, we cannot cut funding for war and occupation and homeland security while our brave troops are in harm’s way.
History is replete with tales of powerful nations that get in over their heads and then find it difficult, if not impossible, to get out. When a nation sinks blood and coin in a foreign adventure the last thing it can accept is departing empty-handed, in disgrace and with its flag in tatters. President Obama knows we’re headed for that fate in Afghanistan, certainly, and possibly in Iraq as well, but for now he plays his commander-in-chief role, distorting the truth in order to exhort the troops.
Several years hence, when Obama writes his memoirs, he’ll assert that he had no choice but to carry the torch handed him by his predecessor.
That will also be a lie.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Mad As Hell in the GOP
The health care bill passed by a narrow margin late Sunday night, with every member of the Republican party voting nay. Afterwards, while the Democrats were hooting and hollering to beat the band, slapping one another on the back, dancing in the polished corridors, jabbering into cell phones and sending out Twitter messages to their supporters, a group of Republicans including John McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Tom Coburn gathered in McCain’s cavernous office.
“How about a beer, John?” McCain asked Boehner.
“Hell no!” Boehner snarled. “Gimme scotch, straight up.”
“I’ll take a club soda if you have any,” Senator Coburn, an M.D. in his previous incarnation, said.
“Kentucky sour mash,” Mitch McConnell said, dropping on the sofa. “I’ve got two words for Barack Obama: Tea Party!”
“Gay people are tearing apart the moral fabric of our nation,” said Senator Coburn, bowing his head in silent prayer.
McConnell looked at his colleague, shrugged his shoulders, and raised his glass in mock toast. “With this bill, socialism has come to America. There’s no going back, my friends.”
“Hell no!” Boehner said. “I will not let Democrats slap a tax on tanning salons or on decent Americans who want the freedom to stay tanned year round.”
McCain’s cell phone rang. “Oh shit,” he said, “it’s that dingbat, Sarah Palin. What the fuck can she want? Hey, Sarah, what’s up? Yeah, the bill passed. Why? Well, the other side has more votes than we do. Yeah, sure, I hear what you’re saying but we couldn’t refuse to vote on the bill, it doesn’t work that way. We’ll do our best to tie it up in the Senate with procedural moves, but at the end of the day, the lefties have the votes. What’s that? No, I haven’t looked at your FaceBook page. OK, OK, I’ve got to run. Talk to ya’ later.”
McCain snapped his cell phone shut. “Crazy fucking broad. She’d still be a nobody if it weren’t for me.”
“And you might be president if you’d picked a different running mate,” said Mitch McConnell. “Oh, well, water under the bridge.”
“Hell no!” Boehner said, slamming his glass down on McCain’s desk. “The people of America are angry, I’m angry, my mother’s angry.”
“Is your mother on Medicare, John?” McCain asked with a wink.
“As a matter of fact she is,” Boehner said. “Are you calling me a hypocrite?”
“Who will join me in prayer?” asked Tom Coburn.
“May all Democrats go straight to hell,” said McCain.
“Amen,” said Mitch McConnell.
“Amen,” echoed John Boehner. “Another club soda, Tom? I can’t believe you don’t drink. How the hell can you stay sane in this commie town without a stiff drink now and then?”
“I lean on the Lord,” Coburn said.
Mitch McConnell rolled his eyes. “Where was the Lord tonight, Tom? Why did He sit by and allow the Democrats to shove this terrible bill down the throats of the American people?”
“Ah, shit, Mitch,” Boehner said, “you know as well as we do that the Lord works in mysterious ways. C’mon, how we going to repeal this piece of crap?”
McCain refilled his glass. “We’re going to obstruct, delay, reject, and refuse to ratify anything the Administration proposes from this day forward. We’re going to get back to our core values – protecting the American people from terrorists, exploiting natural resources, and providing tax relief to the wealthy.”
“Hell yes!” Boehner said. “And when we regain control of the House and I become Speaker, I will wreak terrible vengeance on the Democrats.”
“Amen,” said Tom Coburn. “I raise my glass of club soda to that.”
“How about a beer, John?” McCain asked Boehner.
“Hell no!” Boehner snarled. “Gimme scotch, straight up.”
“I’ll take a club soda if you have any,” Senator Coburn, an M.D. in his previous incarnation, said.
“Kentucky sour mash,” Mitch McConnell said, dropping on the sofa. “I’ve got two words for Barack Obama: Tea Party!”
“Gay people are tearing apart the moral fabric of our nation,” said Senator Coburn, bowing his head in silent prayer.
McConnell looked at his colleague, shrugged his shoulders, and raised his glass in mock toast. “With this bill, socialism has come to America. There’s no going back, my friends.”
“Hell no!” Boehner said. “I will not let Democrats slap a tax on tanning salons or on decent Americans who want the freedom to stay tanned year round.”
McCain’s cell phone rang. “Oh shit,” he said, “it’s that dingbat, Sarah Palin. What the fuck can she want? Hey, Sarah, what’s up? Yeah, the bill passed. Why? Well, the other side has more votes than we do. Yeah, sure, I hear what you’re saying but we couldn’t refuse to vote on the bill, it doesn’t work that way. We’ll do our best to tie it up in the Senate with procedural moves, but at the end of the day, the lefties have the votes. What’s that? No, I haven’t looked at your FaceBook page. OK, OK, I’ve got to run. Talk to ya’ later.”
McCain snapped his cell phone shut. “Crazy fucking broad. She’d still be a nobody if it weren’t for me.”
“And you might be president if you’d picked a different running mate,” said Mitch McConnell. “Oh, well, water under the bridge.”
“Hell no!” Boehner said, slamming his glass down on McCain’s desk. “The people of America are angry, I’m angry, my mother’s angry.”
“Is your mother on Medicare, John?” McCain asked with a wink.
“As a matter of fact she is,” Boehner said. “Are you calling me a hypocrite?”
“Who will join me in prayer?” asked Tom Coburn.
“May all Democrats go straight to hell,” said McCain.
“Amen,” said Mitch McConnell.
“Amen,” echoed John Boehner. “Another club soda, Tom? I can’t believe you don’t drink. How the hell can you stay sane in this commie town without a stiff drink now and then?”
“I lean on the Lord,” Coburn said.
Mitch McConnell rolled his eyes. “Where was the Lord tonight, Tom? Why did He sit by and allow the Democrats to shove this terrible bill down the throats of the American people?”
“Ah, shit, Mitch,” Boehner said, “you know as well as we do that the Lord works in mysterious ways. C’mon, how we going to repeal this piece of crap?”
McCain refilled his glass. “We’re going to obstruct, delay, reject, and refuse to ratify anything the Administration proposes from this day forward. We’re going to get back to our core values – protecting the American people from terrorists, exploiting natural resources, and providing tax relief to the wealthy.”
“Hell yes!” Boehner said. “And when we regain control of the House and I become Speaker, I will wreak terrible vengeance on the Democrats.”
“Amen,” said Tom Coburn. “I raise my glass of club soda to that.”
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Health Care Flim Flam
You’d think the end of the world is nigh the way President Obama and the Democrats are talking about the health care bill. “Now or never,” they say, or “a flawed bill is better than no bill,” and “if we don’t pass a bill now, we won’t have another chance.” Much of the jabber is of a political nature, with the Democrats focused on the implications of failing to pass a bill rather than passing a bill that will really qualify as “reform.” Obama is campaigning for the bill as if his political future depends on it, framing his talk as the American people against the special interests, which is about as dishonest as it gets if you examine the history of this legislation over the past year.
The special interests -- insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospital lobbies, the American Medical Association, the United States Chamber of Commerce – controlled the debate from the outset. The first thing they made sure of was to sweep real reform from the table by dismissing Medicare for All as unrealistic, even though a majority of Americans support expanding Medicare. Average people understand that a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system is efficient and cost-effective.
If the bill about to emerge from Congress becomes law, some citizens will be forced to buy health insurance from the very companies that have been reaping profits by denying care, dropping the sick, and creating a gauntlet of barriers that only a team of corporate lawyers can decipher.
What will this “historic reform bill,” as the New York Times describes it, do for you and yours? As far as I can tell, it won’t do squat to reduce my employer’s $10 million annual premium, which means that cost increases will continue to be passed to employees. Another two or three years of double digit premium hikes and it won’t surprise me one bit if my employer is forced to drop its health insurance plan all together.
Politics is said to be the art of the possible, but what can one hope for when what is possible is limited from the opening bell? Regardless of what happens with this health bill, the United States will still have a dismal health care delivery system that is expensive, inefficient and unfair. Sick people, be they young or old, will continue to die unnecessarily because to treat them appropriately would cut into insurance company and Big Pharma profits, and that’s a no-no in a country dominated by corporate interests.
The special interests -- insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospital lobbies, the American Medical Association, the United States Chamber of Commerce – controlled the debate from the outset. The first thing they made sure of was to sweep real reform from the table by dismissing Medicare for All as unrealistic, even though a majority of Americans support expanding Medicare. Average people understand that a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system is efficient and cost-effective.
If the bill about to emerge from Congress becomes law, some citizens will be forced to buy health insurance from the very companies that have been reaping profits by denying care, dropping the sick, and creating a gauntlet of barriers that only a team of corporate lawyers can decipher.
What will this “historic reform bill,” as the New York Times describes it, do for you and yours? As far as I can tell, it won’t do squat to reduce my employer’s $10 million annual premium, which means that cost increases will continue to be passed to employees. Another two or three years of double digit premium hikes and it won’t surprise me one bit if my employer is forced to drop its health insurance plan all together.
Politics is said to be the art of the possible, but what can one hope for when what is possible is limited from the opening bell? Regardless of what happens with this health bill, the United States will still have a dismal health care delivery system that is expensive, inefficient and unfair. Sick people, be they young or old, will continue to die unnecessarily because to treat them appropriately would cut into insurance company and Big Pharma profits, and that’s a no-no in a country dominated by corporate interests.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Scattershot
We need a new dryer.
What makes you say that?
My socks never get dry. Neither do the towels.
Dryer’s are expensive.
What isn’t? Remember Mack, my old buddy from the shipping department at Melco? Lost his job last week. His wife’s got ovarian cancer and he can’t afford COBRA payments. He’s upside down on his mortgage, too, and to top if off his daughter ran off with a gangbanger. He’s pretty sure she’s knocked up. Poor bastard’s dying inside.
Yeah. How long would you say it takes your socks to dry?
///
Amy’s teacher pushed the report card across the table for me to look at. “As you can see, she’s doing well in Language Arts, reading fluency and comprehension are all at grade level.”
“She likes to read. Looks like her writing skills need a little improvement.”
“Sometimes she works too quickly and makes careless mistakes. We’ve been working on revising and re-writing.”
“I’m surprised the kids are assessed on their cursive writing. Who writes by hand anymore?”
“It’s a dying art, I admit, but it’s part of the state standards.”
“Let’s get to the math.”
“Amy has made some real progress with her multiplication tables and division. She still has trouble with word problems, and fractions are – “
“Torture?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Amy struggles, but we work in small groups a lot and I’m sure Amy will show progress by the next assessment.”
“But suppose she doesn’t? Suppose she never grasps fractions or basic algebra? How’s she going to compete for work against the Chinese, the Indians and the Brazilians? Can you answer that? What’s my little girl going to do, work at K-Mart for minimum wage? Have you ever worked for minimum wage? Ever stuffed greasy French fries into little bags? Ever delivered pizzas in a blizzard?”
“No, but I’m not sure what any of that has to do with – “
“It has everything to do with it. Fear is the only reason the state makes you do all these assessments. Fear that our kids will grow up and be unable to compete with the Chinese and the Indians. Isn’t that why you stuff algebra into the heads of third graders?”
“I don’t think that’s what I do.”
“Why do you think all the parents are so stressed out? The white ones most of all. They’re scared out of their minds. They hire tutors for their kindergarteners. But hey, it’s not your fault. I’m sure you do the best you can, every day, rain or shine. Not your fault the system’s rotten. Can’t lay that on your doorstep. It’s all about accountability, but nobody’s responsible, right?”
///
Did you take $20 out of my purse?
No.
Because it was there this morning and it’s not now.
Maybe you spent it and don’t remember.
I’d remember if I spent it. You sure you didn’t take it? Because it’s OK if you did.
I didn’t.
I won’t be mad or anything.
Nothing to be mad about because I didn’t take your $20. Why would I? Maybe the $20 is swimming around in the bottom of your purse, along with the car key you lost last month and the bracelet I gave you for your birthday.
You have a habit of losing things, you know?
Do not.
It’s like that purse of yours has a hole in it.
Does not.
No telling what you’d find if you ever cleaned it out.
Who else took it then?
Nobody took it; you lost it, pure and simple. $20 down the drain at the bottom of your purse.
At least I never lost an animal like you lost Sam.
I didn’t lose Sam. Dell Willits’ truck backfired and Sam got spooked and ran into the street and got run over by the UPS truck.
You lost him.
How do you figure?
You left the house with him and came home without him.
Because he got run over by a UPS truck not twenty yards from where I was standing. He was never out of my sight.
You just don’t want to admit that you lost him the same way you won’t admit you took my $20.
Why do I even bother talking to you?
Because ever since you lost Sam there ain’t nobody else that’ll listen to you, that’s why.
///
He was a homeless man, sitting on a bench outside Rite Aid, panhandling passersby.
Hey, buddy, can I have your tie?
What?
I really like that tie, brother. Let me have it?
Don’t think so. It’s the only tie I own that goes with this shirt.
I think it would look good on me.
Looks better on me because it goes with my shirt.
You ain’t giving it to me, are you?
Don’t think so.
Charity begins at home, man. Don’t you want to be charitable?
Not with my tie, no.
Maybe you can spare a dollar then?
You working me? Ask for this beautiful tie, settle for a buck? That what you’re doing?
Hey, man, time’s are rough and people ain’t generous.
What makes you say that?
My socks never get dry. Neither do the towels.
Dryer’s are expensive.
What isn’t? Remember Mack, my old buddy from the shipping department at Melco? Lost his job last week. His wife’s got ovarian cancer and he can’t afford COBRA payments. He’s upside down on his mortgage, too, and to top if off his daughter ran off with a gangbanger. He’s pretty sure she’s knocked up. Poor bastard’s dying inside.
Yeah. How long would you say it takes your socks to dry?
///
Amy’s teacher pushed the report card across the table for me to look at. “As you can see, she’s doing well in Language Arts, reading fluency and comprehension are all at grade level.”
“She likes to read. Looks like her writing skills need a little improvement.”
“Sometimes she works too quickly and makes careless mistakes. We’ve been working on revising and re-writing.”
“I’m surprised the kids are assessed on their cursive writing. Who writes by hand anymore?”
“It’s a dying art, I admit, but it’s part of the state standards.”
“Let’s get to the math.”
“Amy has made some real progress with her multiplication tables and division. She still has trouble with word problems, and fractions are – “
“Torture?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Amy struggles, but we work in small groups a lot and I’m sure Amy will show progress by the next assessment.”
“But suppose she doesn’t? Suppose she never grasps fractions or basic algebra? How’s she going to compete for work against the Chinese, the Indians and the Brazilians? Can you answer that? What’s my little girl going to do, work at K-Mart for minimum wage? Have you ever worked for minimum wage? Ever stuffed greasy French fries into little bags? Ever delivered pizzas in a blizzard?”
“No, but I’m not sure what any of that has to do with – “
“It has everything to do with it. Fear is the only reason the state makes you do all these assessments. Fear that our kids will grow up and be unable to compete with the Chinese and the Indians. Isn’t that why you stuff algebra into the heads of third graders?”
“I don’t think that’s what I do.”
“Why do you think all the parents are so stressed out? The white ones most of all. They’re scared out of their minds. They hire tutors for their kindergarteners. But hey, it’s not your fault. I’m sure you do the best you can, every day, rain or shine. Not your fault the system’s rotten. Can’t lay that on your doorstep. It’s all about accountability, but nobody’s responsible, right?”
///
Did you take $20 out of my purse?
No.
Because it was there this morning and it’s not now.
Maybe you spent it and don’t remember.
I’d remember if I spent it. You sure you didn’t take it? Because it’s OK if you did.
I didn’t.
I won’t be mad or anything.
Nothing to be mad about because I didn’t take your $20. Why would I? Maybe the $20 is swimming around in the bottom of your purse, along with the car key you lost last month and the bracelet I gave you for your birthday.
You have a habit of losing things, you know?
Do not.
It’s like that purse of yours has a hole in it.
Does not.
No telling what you’d find if you ever cleaned it out.
Who else took it then?
Nobody took it; you lost it, pure and simple. $20 down the drain at the bottom of your purse.
At least I never lost an animal like you lost Sam.
I didn’t lose Sam. Dell Willits’ truck backfired and Sam got spooked and ran into the street and got run over by the UPS truck.
You lost him.
How do you figure?
You left the house with him and came home without him.
Because he got run over by a UPS truck not twenty yards from where I was standing. He was never out of my sight.
You just don’t want to admit that you lost him the same way you won’t admit you took my $20.
Why do I even bother talking to you?
Because ever since you lost Sam there ain’t nobody else that’ll listen to you, that’s why.
///
He was a homeless man, sitting on a bench outside Rite Aid, panhandling passersby.
Hey, buddy, can I have your tie?
What?
I really like that tie, brother. Let me have it?
Don’t think so. It’s the only tie I own that goes with this shirt.
I think it would look good on me.
Looks better on me because it goes with my shirt.
You ain’t giving it to me, are you?
Don’t think so.
Charity begins at home, man. Don’t you want to be charitable?
Not with my tie, no.
Maybe you can spare a dollar then?
You working me? Ask for this beautiful tie, settle for a buck? That what you’re doing?
Hey, man, time’s are rough and people ain’t generous.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
March of the Forgotten
Just back from the March for Education -- De la Guerra Plaza to the Courthouse Sunken Garden. Lively crowd, waving signs, pounding drums, blowing whistles, mostly City College and UCSB students who find themselves on the wrong end of budget cuts, tuition increases and relentless privatization; teachers and school employees frustrated by several consecutive years of budget cuts that have sliced to the marrow; local elected officials, school administrators, some regular citizens. The same groups were marching all across the state of California today.
The route up State was controlled by the Santa Barbara PD with barricades and cops on bicycles, pairs of cops on the corners, arms folded, watching; I saw one officer shooting video of the marchers, and I wondered what that was about. Tourists and office workers stopped to gawk, a few waved, others shouted words of encouragement.
Student organizers with bullhorns led the marchers in chants like “Hey ho, these budget cuts have got to go!” and “Whose education? Our education!” A year or two ago most of the students were in high school, and I wondered how many of them had ever before participated in an act of civil protest. It was difficult to gauge how many people were marching; in 2003 I marched this same route to protest the Iraq invasion; that crowd was much bigger. I saw the photographer from the News-Press and Paul Wellstone from the Indy.
The marchers streamed into the Sunken Garden, across the green grass, up the stone steps. They were fired up, punching the air with their signs, making their whistles shriek, hammering their drums. I moved off to the eastern side, away from the main body, to get a better feel for the turn-out; 350 or 400, maybe.
Speeches began, the speakers using a bullhorn rather than a PA system – always a mistake. Voices don’t carry well through a bullhorn, and much of what was said was unintelligible. Not that it mattered. There’s an art to speaking outdoors to a crowd that few will ever master. Telling the crowd what they already know – that budget cuts and fee increases are hurting people and driving a rusty stake through the heart of the American Dream – is less effective than asking them what they’re going to do when the march ends and everyone goes home. A large, well-organized public event is important, no doubt about it, but without follow-up action, what’s the point? Without phone calls, faxes, letters, e-mails, in-person visits and Twitters to local elected officials, Assembly members, state senators, members of Congress and U.S. Senators, the march is merely an event, a one-shot and out deal that will not sway the powers-that-be to listen, let alone change. Pressure must be applied strategically and continuously because the people are fighting a well-financed machine that has no interest in altering the status quo.
One lobbyist with a checkbook speaks louder than one hundred hard-up students.
I agree with what the students and schoolteachers want, but I wonder what they’re willing to sacrifice to get it. That’s the nut of the thing now – the cold fact that the people of California are unwilling to sacrifice in the form of taxes to fund effective schools, adequate public safety, social services for the poor and elderly, environmental protections, transportation systems, and on and on. People say they want these things, but when it comes down to paying for them, the people balk: not on my dime.
And so on a beautiful afternoon in one of the most beautiful cities in America, 400 or so people take to the street in a peaceful demonstration of common purpose and unity that will likely be forgotten by tomorrow’s sunrise.
The route up State was controlled by the Santa Barbara PD with barricades and cops on bicycles, pairs of cops on the corners, arms folded, watching; I saw one officer shooting video of the marchers, and I wondered what that was about. Tourists and office workers stopped to gawk, a few waved, others shouted words of encouragement.
Student organizers with bullhorns led the marchers in chants like “Hey ho, these budget cuts have got to go!” and “Whose education? Our education!” A year or two ago most of the students were in high school, and I wondered how many of them had ever before participated in an act of civil protest. It was difficult to gauge how many people were marching; in 2003 I marched this same route to protest the Iraq invasion; that crowd was much bigger. I saw the photographer from the News-Press and Paul Wellstone from the Indy.
The marchers streamed into the Sunken Garden, across the green grass, up the stone steps. They were fired up, punching the air with their signs, making their whistles shriek, hammering their drums. I moved off to the eastern side, away from the main body, to get a better feel for the turn-out; 350 or 400, maybe.
Speeches began, the speakers using a bullhorn rather than a PA system – always a mistake. Voices don’t carry well through a bullhorn, and much of what was said was unintelligible. Not that it mattered. There’s an art to speaking outdoors to a crowd that few will ever master. Telling the crowd what they already know – that budget cuts and fee increases are hurting people and driving a rusty stake through the heart of the American Dream – is less effective than asking them what they’re going to do when the march ends and everyone goes home. A large, well-organized public event is important, no doubt about it, but without follow-up action, what’s the point? Without phone calls, faxes, letters, e-mails, in-person visits and Twitters to local elected officials, Assembly members, state senators, members of Congress and U.S. Senators, the march is merely an event, a one-shot and out deal that will not sway the powers-that-be to listen, let alone change. Pressure must be applied strategically and continuously because the people are fighting a well-financed machine that has no interest in altering the status quo.
One lobbyist with a checkbook speaks louder than one hundred hard-up students.
I agree with what the students and schoolteachers want, but I wonder what they’re willing to sacrifice to get it. That’s the nut of the thing now – the cold fact that the people of California are unwilling to sacrifice in the form of taxes to fund effective schools, adequate public safety, social services for the poor and elderly, environmental protections, transportation systems, and on and on. People say they want these things, but when it comes down to paying for them, the people balk: not on my dime.
And so on a beautiful afternoon in one of the most beautiful cities in America, 400 or so people take to the street in a peaceful demonstration of common purpose and unity that will likely be forgotten by tomorrow’s sunrise.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Minutiae
Clubhouse, TPC Sawgrass, Friday, February 19, 2010. The chosen few begin to filter into the ballroom where in less than an hour Tiger Woods will make a long awaited statement about his recent domestic troubles and his golfing future.
Less fortunate people are herded into another room where they will watch Tiger’s statement on television. Wolf Blitzer of CNN is part of this cohort and he’s not happy about it. Jim Nance from CBS Sports and Mike Tirico from ESPN are as unhappy as Blitzer. The three men are sipping coffee and grousing about being relegated to the cheap seats.
Meanwhile, representatives from TMZ, Showbiz Tonight and ENews are filling cups with free coffee and loading paper plates with fresh fruit and bran muffins. The TMZ representative complains that the cantaloupe is sour. No one pays any attention.
E News goes on the air with a special report about Tiger’s breakfast.
ENews: “Sources close to Tiger’s representatives tell us that he typically eats a bowl of oatmeal, half a grapefruit, 8 – 10 ounces of freshly squeezed orange juice and two pieces of wheat toast. They will not tell us what he ate this morning, though a kitchen worker claimed she saw Tiger enter an office holding a can of Red Bull. The kitchen worker doesn’t speak English so we’re not really sure what kind of beverage Tiger was allegedly holding.”
Showbiz Tonight: “The big question on everyone’s mind this morning is what Tiger will wear for this appearance – an appearance he hopes will resurrect his image as a golfing icon. Will he wear a suit, a coat and tie or try for a more informal look and appear in his signature red polo shirt? Showbiz Tonight fashion editor Wendy Woolover is outside the TPC complex where Tiger will address the world. What can you tell us, Wendy?”
Wendy Woolover: “Almost nothing, I’m afraid, but we have a lot of air time to fill, don’t we? As with everything else related to Tiger Woods, secrecy is the order of the day. We tried to talk to one of Tiger’s inner circle and were told to go away and not come back. Tiger’s people seem very jumpy and agitated, but when you’re working to rehabilitate a reputation that has been battered as hard as Tiger’s has, that’s to be expected. Back to you.”
TMZ: “The anticipation is definitely building here at TPC Sawgrass. What will Tiger say about the events that have transpired since his SUV had that unfortunate meeting with a telephone pole on Thanksgiving night? Hey, that sounds pretty good. Transpired! Unfortunate meeting! Hell, the man was running for his life. Of course what America really wants to know is how the 34-year-old golfing legend managed to juggle a dozen mistresses, a Nordic wife, two children and his career. Is there a big-breasted cocktail waitress that Tiger didn’t wiggle his driver at?”
Wolf Blitzer, CNN: “Welcome back to our special report - Tiger: Icon or Philanderer. CNN will cover this breaking story as no other network can, so stay tuned for our team coverage and in-depth analysis.
“Let’s start by making clear that we do not expect Tiger’s wife, Elin, to be in the audience today. It’s almost a rite of passage for the scorned wife to appear with her husband when he makes a public mea culpa, but that probably won’t happen today. We have a further report about Elin Woods from Lisa Bloom. Lisa?”
“Thank you, Wolf. You’re absolutely correct. Sources tell us that Elin will not make an appearance here today. Let me quickly add that there’s no truth to the rumor that she was seen in the parking lot at TPC Sawgrass early this morning wielding a 1-iron. Elin may want to bash her husband’s head in, but it won’t happen today. As you mentioned, Wolf, we’ve become accustomed to seeing scorned and humiliated wives stand by their sleazy, emotionally-stunted men. But make no mistake -- Elin Woods is clearly a different kind of scorned woman; she has no qualms about letting her lying, cheating husband twist in the wind, alone. Wolf.”
“Thank you, Lisa for that insightful report.”
Mike Tirico, ABC News, unaware that his mic is open: “That little prick from TMZ knocked over my coffee. Hey, asshole, do that again and I’ll throw you in the lake! Damn bottom feeders. What? Oh crap, turn the mic off, turn it off…”
ENews: “Let’s bring Douglas Douchetard, a PhD in abnormal psychology, into the discussion. Douglas has worked with other troubled athletes like Tanya Harding, Milton Bradley, and Dennis Rodman. Douglas, what do you think will be going through Tiger’s mind today?”
Douchetard: “Sex, without a doubt. While he’ll do his best to appear contrite and mollify his public, part of Tiger will be totally obsessed with the loss of his wide-open sex life. As a lothario, Tiger was nearly as dominant as he is on the golf course, and I doubt he can easily set that part of himself aside, even with the most expensive therapy known to man. I expect Tiger will be torn between his recent past and the future, between satisfying his every sexual whim with busty cocktail waitresses and his desire to project a safe, solid and all-American image.”
ENews: “Do you think he can ever restore his image?”
Douchetard: “Frankly, it would be easier for pigs to fly.”
ENews: “One last question, Dr. Douchetard. Will Tiger wear briefs or boxers today?”
Douchetard: “Briefs, though I’d recommend boxers.”
Less fortunate people are herded into another room where they will watch Tiger’s statement on television. Wolf Blitzer of CNN is part of this cohort and he’s not happy about it. Jim Nance from CBS Sports and Mike Tirico from ESPN are as unhappy as Blitzer. The three men are sipping coffee and grousing about being relegated to the cheap seats.
Meanwhile, representatives from TMZ, Showbiz Tonight and ENews are filling cups with free coffee and loading paper plates with fresh fruit and bran muffins. The TMZ representative complains that the cantaloupe is sour. No one pays any attention.
E News goes on the air with a special report about Tiger’s breakfast.
ENews: “Sources close to Tiger’s representatives tell us that he typically eats a bowl of oatmeal, half a grapefruit, 8 – 10 ounces of freshly squeezed orange juice and two pieces of wheat toast. They will not tell us what he ate this morning, though a kitchen worker claimed she saw Tiger enter an office holding a can of Red Bull. The kitchen worker doesn’t speak English so we’re not really sure what kind of beverage Tiger was allegedly holding.”
Showbiz Tonight: “The big question on everyone’s mind this morning is what Tiger will wear for this appearance – an appearance he hopes will resurrect his image as a golfing icon. Will he wear a suit, a coat and tie or try for a more informal look and appear in his signature red polo shirt? Showbiz Tonight fashion editor Wendy Woolover is outside the TPC complex where Tiger will address the world. What can you tell us, Wendy?”
Wendy Woolover: “Almost nothing, I’m afraid, but we have a lot of air time to fill, don’t we? As with everything else related to Tiger Woods, secrecy is the order of the day. We tried to talk to one of Tiger’s inner circle and were told to go away and not come back. Tiger’s people seem very jumpy and agitated, but when you’re working to rehabilitate a reputation that has been battered as hard as Tiger’s has, that’s to be expected. Back to you.”
TMZ: “The anticipation is definitely building here at TPC Sawgrass. What will Tiger say about the events that have transpired since his SUV had that unfortunate meeting with a telephone pole on Thanksgiving night? Hey, that sounds pretty good. Transpired! Unfortunate meeting! Hell, the man was running for his life. Of course what America really wants to know is how the 34-year-old golfing legend managed to juggle a dozen mistresses, a Nordic wife, two children and his career. Is there a big-breasted cocktail waitress that Tiger didn’t wiggle his driver at?”
Wolf Blitzer, CNN: “Welcome back to our special report - Tiger: Icon or Philanderer. CNN will cover this breaking story as no other network can, so stay tuned for our team coverage and in-depth analysis.
“Let’s start by making clear that we do not expect Tiger’s wife, Elin, to be in the audience today. It’s almost a rite of passage for the scorned wife to appear with her husband when he makes a public mea culpa, but that probably won’t happen today. We have a further report about Elin Woods from Lisa Bloom. Lisa?”
“Thank you, Wolf. You’re absolutely correct. Sources tell us that Elin will not make an appearance here today. Let me quickly add that there’s no truth to the rumor that she was seen in the parking lot at TPC Sawgrass early this morning wielding a 1-iron. Elin may want to bash her husband’s head in, but it won’t happen today. As you mentioned, Wolf, we’ve become accustomed to seeing scorned and humiliated wives stand by their sleazy, emotionally-stunted men. But make no mistake -- Elin Woods is clearly a different kind of scorned woman; she has no qualms about letting her lying, cheating husband twist in the wind, alone. Wolf.”
“Thank you, Lisa for that insightful report.”
Mike Tirico, ABC News, unaware that his mic is open: “That little prick from TMZ knocked over my coffee. Hey, asshole, do that again and I’ll throw you in the lake! Damn bottom feeders. What? Oh crap, turn the mic off, turn it off…”
ENews: “Let’s bring Douglas Douchetard, a PhD in abnormal psychology, into the discussion. Douglas has worked with other troubled athletes like Tanya Harding, Milton Bradley, and Dennis Rodman. Douglas, what do you think will be going through Tiger’s mind today?”
Douchetard: “Sex, without a doubt. While he’ll do his best to appear contrite and mollify his public, part of Tiger will be totally obsessed with the loss of his wide-open sex life. As a lothario, Tiger was nearly as dominant as he is on the golf course, and I doubt he can easily set that part of himself aside, even with the most expensive therapy known to man. I expect Tiger will be torn between his recent past and the future, between satisfying his every sexual whim with busty cocktail waitresses and his desire to project a safe, solid and all-American image.”
ENews: “Do you think he can ever restore his image?”
Douchetard: “Frankly, it would be easier for pigs to fly.”
ENews: “One last question, Dr. Douchetard. Will Tiger wear briefs or boxers today?”
Douchetard: “Briefs, though I’d recommend boxers.”
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Savior Cometh
Meg Whitman, wealthy EBay queen, is prepared to spend around $150 million to become the next Governor of California. Apparently, nobody close to Meg has told her what a thankless job she’s after. Oh well. If Meg is successful in outspending her opponents – and odds are that she will by a wide margin – she will learn the terrible truth: the state she so badly wants to revive is ungovernable.
Like the current governor, Meg Whitman is an eternal optimist who wants to do for California what she did for EBay, namely, bring optimism and opportunity to all! Noble goals to be sure, and if we hadn’t heard the same claptrap a hundred times before we might even believe it.
Let’s not forget that Arnold Schwarzenegger blew into Sacramento promising to nuke the boxes and rid state government of fraud, waste and abuse. Arnold was going to take Sacramento by its lapels and shake until government spending fell and school children achieved stupendous scores on standardized tests, stopped gorging themselves on junk food and became physically fit; until plenty of cheap water flowed to central valley farmers, and the brown haze above Los Angeles magically vanished; until thorny immigration issues disappeared. Oh yes, Arnold was going to bring California’s glory back, kicking and screaming if necessary.
Make-believe worked in Hollywood, why couldn’t it work in Sacramento?
For any number of reasons, though the most compelling of all is King Paralysis, the toughest, nastiest motherfucker in the capitol, the dude who murders campaign promises and makes a mockery of reform. Meg Whitman has yet to meet the King, but when she does she’ll never forget the experience.
The King boasts a terrifying arsenal: sacred cows like Prop 13, term limits, a dysfunctional budget process that requires a supermajority to pass any tax or spending proposals, partisan bickering that makes an inner city preschool look civil, legislative gerrymandering that insures the election of extremist crackpots who believe that compromise equals weakness, and an out of whack initiative process.
What sort of damned fool wants to stand toe-to-toe with King Paralysis? OK, Jerry Brown I understand – he wasn’t known as Governor Moonbeam for nothing. Schwarzenegger ran for vanity and ego, and because the sun was setting on his movie career. It wasn’t as if Arnold was going to be cast as Hamlet or King Lear, and no studio was clamoring to make Terminator IV, V or VI. Arnold was antsy and for her own peace of mind Maria wanted him out of the house. Why not leap into the political arena?
Whitman has more jack than she knows what to do with, though why she’s willing to piss it away campaigning for a job that’s destined to humble her is a mystery. Has Meg had a full and complete psychiatric evaluation? We may never know because Whitman’s handlers are playing it coy, keeping Meg away from the media and saturating the airwaves with ads that paint her as tough, smart, competent, brave, compassionate, visionary and kind. In short, the savior that California desperately needs.
Well, why not? We tried Gray Davis, a wimpy career politician, and he got run out of Sacramento. We gave Schwarzenegger, a Hollywood actor, a shot and he will leave the state worse off than he found it. So why not hand the reins to a hot shot corporate CEO who made investors happy as pigs in slop?
Like the current governor, Meg Whitman is an eternal optimist who wants to do for California what she did for EBay, namely, bring optimism and opportunity to all! Noble goals to be sure, and if we hadn’t heard the same claptrap a hundred times before we might even believe it.
Let’s not forget that Arnold Schwarzenegger blew into Sacramento promising to nuke the boxes and rid state government of fraud, waste and abuse. Arnold was going to take Sacramento by its lapels and shake until government spending fell and school children achieved stupendous scores on standardized tests, stopped gorging themselves on junk food and became physically fit; until plenty of cheap water flowed to central valley farmers, and the brown haze above Los Angeles magically vanished; until thorny immigration issues disappeared. Oh yes, Arnold was going to bring California’s glory back, kicking and screaming if necessary.
Make-believe worked in Hollywood, why couldn’t it work in Sacramento?
For any number of reasons, though the most compelling of all is King Paralysis, the toughest, nastiest motherfucker in the capitol, the dude who murders campaign promises and makes a mockery of reform. Meg Whitman has yet to meet the King, but when she does she’ll never forget the experience.
The King boasts a terrifying arsenal: sacred cows like Prop 13, term limits, a dysfunctional budget process that requires a supermajority to pass any tax or spending proposals, partisan bickering that makes an inner city preschool look civil, legislative gerrymandering that insures the election of extremist crackpots who believe that compromise equals weakness, and an out of whack initiative process.
What sort of damned fool wants to stand toe-to-toe with King Paralysis? OK, Jerry Brown I understand – he wasn’t known as Governor Moonbeam for nothing. Schwarzenegger ran for vanity and ego, and because the sun was setting on his movie career. It wasn’t as if Arnold was going to be cast as Hamlet or King Lear, and no studio was clamoring to make Terminator IV, V or VI. Arnold was antsy and for her own peace of mind Maria wanted him out of the house. Why not leap into the political arena?
Whitman has more jack than she knows what to do with, though why she’s willing to piss it away campaigning for a job that’s destined to humble her is a mystery. Has Meg had a full and complete psychiatric evaluation? We may never know because Whitman’s handlers are playing it coy, keeping Meg away from the media and saturating the airwaves with ads that paint her as tough, smart, competent, brave, compassionate, visionary and kind. In short, the savior that California desperately needs.
Well, why not? We tried Gray Davis, a wimpy career politician, and he got run out of Sacramento. We gave Schwarzenegger, a Hollywood actor, a shot and he will leave the state worse off than he found it. So why not hand the reins to a hot shot corporate CEO who made investors happy as pigs in slop?
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
We're No. 1!
I went over to the Home Improvement Center on Gutierrez Street the other day to look for a shower curtain rod. I didn’t need anything with designer or decorator touches, just your basic 72” curtain rod. I figured I’d find one that was cheap and made in China, but to my surprise the rod I found was made in Delaware – right here in these United States.
A few days later I read excerpts of an interview with Vice President Joe Biden in which the Veep defended the US economy and insisted that America would never lose its position as the world’s leading economic power. Biden had strong words for those who claim that America has seen her best days.
Joe Biden tends to be verbose and hyperbolic -- and of course it’s the duty of a Vice President to defend our nation’s honor even if it means denying reality -- but like the majority of politicians, regardless of party affiliation, Biden is unwilling to look reality in the face and admit that America doesn’t manufacture enough shower curtain rods. Or toaster ovens. Or flat screen televisions. Or computers. Or blenders. Or durable medical equipment. Or -- you name it.
And unless Americans are building tangible products that the rest of the world wants to buy, our economy will never fully recover nor will the yawning gap between the haves and have nots narrow. A “financialized” economy cannot produce widespread prosperity; what it will produce is banana republic-like income disparity.
Of course there are many more things that Joe Biden and the ruling class need to wrap their heads around if this country is to pull back from the brink.
Open-ended wars are one. The government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan talks about being dependent on US military assistance for the next two decades. With the exception of opium production, Afghanistan doesn’t possess an economic infrastructure lively enough to produce the revenues needed to build and sustain a functioning police force and military. The US is that revenue source, and we are therefore trapped in Afghanistan, unable to “win” the war and equally incapable of cutting our losses and exiting; we will waste bodies and coin for years to come.
The ruling class in Washington cleverly keeps the true costs of our foreign adventures off the books, but the bottom line is that the capital we are pissing away in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan should be invested in rebuilding our country.
The sclerotic, paralyzed, and corrupt state of our politics isn’t helping matters, either. Forget for a moment the absurd Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, and instead consider the political strategy of the Republican Party. At every turn the GOP says, “No.” Not “maybe,” not “subject to discussion,” not “we’re willing to negotiate,” but flat out “No.” The only policy the GOP will support is tax cuts and obscene amounts of spending on the military-security complex.
Not that the majority Democrats are any less ridiculous. In the Clinton Era they abandoned their traditional constituencies in favor of bribes from corporate America, and now Democrats more often than not sound, look and smell just like Republicans.
To make the political landscape even more toxic and surreal, the mainstream corporate media takes people like Sarah “No-Brains” Palin seriously. Did you hear her rambling speech at the Tea Party convention? One tired, worn out conservative orthodoxy after another tumbled out of Palin’s mouth and the audience lapped it up like she was the second coming of Dutch Reagan.
I hate to admit this, but Palin is so vapid that she makes Reagan look like an Ivy League intellectual.
Palin is the poster child for what Hunter S. Thompson called America’s “downward spiral of dumbness.”
In the same breath, and with no sense of contradiction, Palin advocates that government level the playing field for average Americans AND get out of their lives; she proposes a “market” economy AND “small” government; tax cuts AND big spending on our war machine. It’s as if Palin and her clan have been living in an isolation chamber for the past decade.
Note to Sarah: Bush/Cheney tried that circus act and we are reaping the dire consequences.
I can’t take Sarah Palin seriously and for the life of me can’t understand why anyone does. On the other hand, I’m sure there were plenty of Germans who thought Adolf Hitler was a harmless crackpot right up until the time his henchmen torched the Reichstag.
The state of collective denial in this nation is stunning, but at least there’s a company in Delaware that manufactures a fine shower curtain rod.
A few days later I read excerpts of an interview with Vice President Joe Biden in which the Veep defended the US economy and insisted that America would never lose its position as the world’s leading economic power. Biden had strong words for those who claim that America has seen her best days.
Joe Biden tends to be verbose and hyperbolic -- and of course it’s the duty of a Vice President to defend our nation’s honor even if it means denying reality -- but like the majority of politicians, regardless of party affiliation, Biden is unwilling to look reality in the face and admit that America doesn’t manufacture enough shower curtain rods. Or toaster ovens. Or flat screen televisions. Or computers. Or blenders. Or durable medical equipment. Or -- you name it.
And unless Americans are building tangible products that the rest of the world wants to buy, our economy will never fully recover nor will the yawning gap between the haves and have nots narrow. A “financialized” economy cannot produce widespread prosperity; what it will produce is banana republic-like income disparity.
Of course there are many more things that Joe Biden and the ruling class need to wrap their heads around if this country is to pull back from the brink.
Open-ended wars are one. The government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan talks about being dependent on US military assistance for the next two decades. With the exception of opium production, Afghanistan doesn’t possess an economic infrastructure lively enough to produce the revenues needed to build and sustain a functioning police force and military. The US is that revenue source, and we are therefore trapped in Afghanistan, unable to “win” the war and equally incapable of cutting our losses and exiting; we will waste bodies and coin for years to come.
The ruling class in Washington cleverly keeps the true costs of our foreign adventures off the books, but the bottom line is that the capital we are pissing away in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan should be invested in rebuilding our country.
The sclerotic, paralyzed, and corrupt state of our politics isn’t helping matters, either. Forget for a moment the absurd Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, and instead consider the political strategy of the Republican Party. At every turn the GOP says, “No.” Not “maybe,” not “subject to discussion,” not “we’re willing to negotiate,” but flat out “No.” The only policy the GOP will support is tax cuts and obscene amounts of spending on the military-security complex.
Not that the majority Democrats are any less ridiculous. In the Clinton Era they abandoned their traditional constituencies in favor of bribes from corporate America, and now Democrats more often than not sound, look and smell just like Republicans.
To make the political landscape even more toxic and surreal, the mainstream corporate media takes people like Sarah “No-Brains” Palin seriously. Did you hear her rambling speech at the Tea Party convention? One tired, worn out conservative orthodoxy after another tumbled out of Palin’s mouth and the audience lapped it up like she was the second coming of Dutch Reagan.
I hate to admit this, but Palin is so vapid that she makes Reagan look like an Ivy League intellectual.
Palin is the poster child for what Hunter S. Thompson called America’s “downward spiral of dumbness.”
In the same breath, and with no sense of contradiction, Palin advocates that government level the playing field for average Americans AND get out of their lives; she proposes a “market” economy AND “small” government; tax cuts AND big spending on our war machine. It’s as if Palin and her clan have been living in an isolation chamber for the past decade.
Note to Sarah: Bush/Cheney tried that circus act and we are reaping the dire consequences.
I can’t take Sarah Palin seriously and for the life of me can’t understand why anyone does. On the other hand, I’m sure there were plenty of Germans who thought Adolf Hitler was a harmless crackpot right up until the time his henchmen torched the Reichstag.
The state of collective denial in this nation is stunning, but at least there’s a company in Delaware that manufactures a fine shower curtain rod.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
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!
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!
Saturday, December 26, 2009
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.”
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.”
Saturday, December 19, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
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?
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