In understanding how this most recent, craven capitulation by St. Barry, the Compromiser, to the wackloon, fringoid, cretinous GOPhux could have happened, it is essential to recall that the GOPhux threw the election in '08 for the particular purpose of putting a "novelty" Dim in office: either the first black or the first woman. Both would have served their purposes, which is to undo the public's interest in further pursuing popular sovereignty.
I was brilliant strategy: If I wanted to try to splinter the power of popular sovereignty, I would do everything in my power to drive the populace the fuck AWAY from the State which (in theory, at least) is the servant of the people. One of those handy expedients might include installing someone in the Presidency who SEEMED to be the realization fo SO MANY DREAMS, and turn them into a sham, an empty, predictable imitation of their promise, hollowing them out into becoming a reviled receptacle for all the resentment against the State which had arisen since Reagan, and a scapegoat for it. In doing so, they thought to both supply an easy target for concealed resentments and ready political advantage, and to poison the well for any FUTURE 'diverse' candidates...If I ran the zoo, anyway, that's what I'd do.
The goal all along, since 1934, has been to undo the New Deal. Most of it is either dead or moribund, except Social Security and Johnson's homage, Medicare. (Civil rights, too; but that's the next campaign). Every GOPhucker since Reagan has tried to roll back, or close-out, or privatize Social Security, at $2,8 TRILLION (That's a thousand, thousand, thousand million, times 2.7), the largest pool of money in the world NOT dedicated to the enrichment of the Oligarchs.
But it was a 'third rail.' Like China used to be. Everybody knew China had to be opened up, as Mao's influence waned. But the Dims--who had "lost" China by not attacking Mao with nukes, and restoring Chiang Kai-Shek--couldn't go. It had to be a GOPhucker, and it fell to Nixon to go dance with Madam Mao. And it had to be a DIM to drive the final nails into the coffin of the New Deal--it was just lagniappe that he was a minority.
So I disappeared for a full week, right in the middle of what should have been a busy writing schedule, and I have to claim some "personal days" to cover the time we missed here at the blog - but it won't be time entirely wasted.
Instead, I'm going to jump into my own personal life for today's story, and I'm going to do it so that we can stimulate some thinking about where we really need to go to if we ever hope to make some sense out of the crazy way we deliver health care in this country.
Since this appears to be the weekend that a lot of decisions are either going to be made about the future of our "social safety net"...or they wont; we're entirely unsure...let's talk about how it actually works for a lot of us - and how it could work a lot better.
I've given some thought to what Armando said about re-electing Barack Obama for the sake of the Supreme Court, i.e., women's reproductive rights. I am a complete advocate of women's reproductive rights. To my mind, women quite obviously "own" pregnancy. End of conversation. Goodbye. Click.
Had we carried on beyond the click, suffice it to say that when men get pregnant and carry offspring to term, and be bound to the little curtain climbers for life, then I'll take more interest in men's stupid f****** opinions and moral authority with respect to women's reproductive rights. Until then, men are hardly worthy to discuss it, AND they are genetically conflicted and selfish to boot, which has life-threatening consequences for women, both during pregnancy and not.
The weak May job report has exposed the helplessness and denial of neoliberalism when faced with an economic crisis that 'does not compute'. And Obama and his advisors are such true neoliberal believers:
So 'Creating Jobs Ain't Our Job' is now the Obama jobs program? Jeff Madrick, citing research by Andrew Sum, tells us where we are at after two years of 'recovery' (emphasis in original):
... There has never been an economic recovery since World War II nearly as bad as this one.
Yes, there has been GDP growth, but it has almost all gone to profits, not pay. By most measures, there are still fewer jobs today than there were at the bottom of the recession. Just as disturbing, there has been no increase in wages. There are many measures of wages and salaries, but Sum and his group found that average hourly earnings of all private sector wage and salary workers were unchanged over the seven-quarter recovery. The typical or median full-time worker lost ground over this period. ...
For the first time in more than sixty years, aggregate wages and salaries adjusted for inflation did not rise after seven quarters of recovery. What did rise was corporate profits - and sharply. Here's the stunner, as Sum calculates: Pre-tax corporate profits in 2010 dollars rose by $464 billion and real wage and salaries in 2010 dollars fell by $22 billion.
But President Obama is a Reaganite when it comes to government being part of the jobs solution. This, from his Saturday radio address, is especially revealing:
In less than 48 hours last weekend we were treated to two dominant and opposite drives:
Eros and Thanatos.
Regardless of whatever else one may think of the Brittish Royalty. we were treated to a celebration of Eros with the nuptials of Wills and Kate. I was quite taken with this spectacle. They both seem quite lovely, quite modern. and suffciently aware to perhaps rejuvenate the morbid rigidity of institutional monarchy. Maybe not completely with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, but at least with a human and loving face.
Then, less than 48 hours later, we encountered a gross, hateful celebration of death. The crowds outside the White House shouting "U-S-A---U-S-A---U-S-A" provided a morbid display of a dying culture, a dying empire.
Which do you prefer?
Or:
Eros or Thanatos! Eros was the Greek God of Love. Thanatos was not a god, but a mythological Greek figue representing Death. In her blog, a writer named Lauren has this to say about the two drives:
Freud had a theory that we were all driven by two contrasting instincts or drives: the Eros (or life) drive and the Thanatos (or death) drive. The Eros drive is associated with preserving and creating life. It is associated with positive emotions like love and cooperation. This is the drive that is at the heart of all true artists, even in our darkest moments.
In contrast to the life drive, you have the Thanatos drive. This drive pushes people towards death and extinction. It is associated with negative emotions such as fear, hate, greed, and anger. The Thanatos drive is all about destruction.
Though we have both drives, one is usually dominant over the other. People who are driven mostly by the Thanatos drive often don't care about others. The Thanatos drive is apparent in everything from bullying to murder. Because they are so driven by destructive tendencies, which sometimes manifest as materialism and greed, they are often dismissive of those driven by the Eros drive.
You can find more here And thanks to our Edger for help with embed.
Which do you prefer? Eros or Thanatos? Can't we all just get along?
OF ALL THE IMAGES that have emerged from the morally unclean events of Sunday night, the most politically significant and, one has reason to believe, enduring will prove to be the official photograph, released by the White House, of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other high officials of the United States government seated together in the situation room as they witnessed the killing of Osama bin Laden and several other human beings, including one woman.
Normally, the witnesses to an execution are not photographed. But the White House clearly wanted this "historic moment" captured for posterity. The eyes of all the participants in this ghoulish tableau-with the exception of a military officer who is working his computer-are apparently focused on a television screen. Obama, leaning forward, is stone faced as he stares ahead. Gates wears the sour expression of a man who is too well acquainted with such operations. Hillary Clinton's right hand is raised over her mouth, a gesture that betrays the horror of what is unfolding before her eyes.
Just about 40 seconds after (Yes, He's Actually The) President Barack Obama brought forth his Certificate of Live Birth unto the world Donald Trump was accusing Obama of somehow sneaking his way into some University or another.
If Trump's to be believed, Obama was a terrible student at a College, and then he somehow snuck his way into a University; after that he basically grifted his way into becoming the President of the Harvard Law Review.
Trump would tell you that he's a hustler, that Obama is, and we've got to do whatever it takes to figure out what kind of semi-illegal shenanigans Obama's University experience was all about.
But here's the thing: Donald Trump has his own history of semi-illegal University shenanigans-and it appears that some of his semi-illegal shenanigans continue to this very day.
John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.
Have you ever wondered about standard banking practices that seem to make no sense? Well, consider these:
A bank will accept a car or house as collateral for a loan but not the furniture you just purchased using a bank-issued credit card. What does the bank know that you are not being told? Is it that the furniture is not worth nearly what you have just paid for it? If it were, wouldn't it serve as collateral?
Or this: a person goes to a bank and applies for a loan. S/he is asked to show that her/his debt to income ratio lies at or below one designated by the bank. Perhaps the debt cannot be more that 40 percent of income. Sometimes the bank claims that even lending at that ratio is risky, but is willing to grant the loan at an interest rate greater than what borrowers with better ratios can qualify for. The higher interest rate is supposed to compensate the bank for the risk.
If your view of politics is filtered by a lens marked "Progressive" or "Liberal", there's a pretty good chance that you've been gnashing your teeth and pulling your hair in frustration over the "give away the store, then negotiate" approach professional Democrats have used when facing the challenges from the Tea Party last year, and all that's come after.
Over and over and over people like me have written stories wondering why Democrats, starting with this President, don't get out in a very public way and slam Republican policies, over and over and over-especially when most Americans hate the things Republicans seem to love to support.
Turning over Government to the highest bidder?
Not so popular.
Going back to a heathcare system run by, for, and of the insurance industry?
Again, not so much.
Jacking up taxes and healthcare costs for you and me in order to provide another trillion in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires?
So unpopular pollsters hardly believe it.
But there is another way, and today's story is in two parts: we're going to talk about how hard it is to get Democrats, as a group, to get loud and get aggressive-and then we're going to talk about Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who is out there showing any reluctant Democrat just exactly how you can "grow the brand".
There's been a great deal of concern around here about the effort to prepare the US military for the full repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT), and I've had a few words of my own regarding how long the process might take.
There was a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee last Thursday that had all four Services represented; with one exception these were the same Service Chiefs that were testifying last December when the bill to set the repeal process in motion was still a piece of prospective legislation.
At that time there was concern that the "combat arms" of the Marines and the Army were going to be impacted in a negative way by the transition to "open service"; the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Army's Chief of Staff were the most outspoken in confirming that such concerns exist within the Pentagon as well.
We now have more information to report-including the increasing desperation of some of our Republican friends-and if you ask me, I think things might be better than we thought.
Diligent reporter that I am, I got up Thursday morning to do a bit of fishing for a story, and as so often happens, I've caught something a bit unexpected.
Now what I have for you today starts out as a bit of insider information that came to me on background-but it turns into a chance for those of us who support Social Security to very much get in the faces of our members of Congress, for two whole weeks.
And to make it even better, I'm going to throw out a few direct action ideas "for your consideration" (as they say in Hollywood during Awards Season) that would absolutely make good street actions and YouTube videos, both at the same time...and even more importantly, we'll absolutely make some great Spring Break fun.
Obama's visit to Latin America was little more than a chance for Obama to do what Obama does best: Campaigning.
Obama was pounding the pavement in "America's back yard" campaigning for an expansion of neoliberal economic "reforms" in the region. No shock there. Change schmange. However, the Pope of Hope managed to outdo himself in the audacity department almost every time he opened his mouth.
The most egregious example occurred during a pit stop in Chile. Obama delivered a speech that, if nothing else, demonstrated his confidence Secret Service's ability to protect him. Amidst the standard Obama oratorical drivel, President Hopey McChange basically praised the Chilean people for being a "model" for the rest of the region by eschewing dictatorship in favor of "democracy".
Un-fucking-believably, the Chilean dictator he was referring to was none other than Augusto Pinochet--yes, folks, that would be the ultra-right wing darling of the Chicago Boys and the Godfather of Genocide installed by the US after it overthrew democratically-elected socialist president Salvador Allende.
That is beyond audacity. That is an example of unparalleled arrogance, and perhaps a set of balls that would each dwarf the asteroid Ceres in comparison. I encourage you to watch the entire video of Obama's speech in Chile, as well as the video where he replies to a reporter's question if he would be willing "to ask for forgiveness" for putting Pinochet in power (both posted below the jump). If you know the history of US foreign policy toward Latin America well enough, then you will be foaming at the mouth with outrage before President Prettywords is even 1/3 of the way through his speech.
I don't have time to write very much, but since the media have been too busy engaging in war-with-Libya foreplay with the US public (even Amy Goodman seems to be getting in on the action) to provide even its token parroting of State Department press releases, here are some links to examples of Obie proving to the rest of the world (again) that the Bush admin was merely the US corporatocracy doing its stretches and warm up exercises for Change You Can Believe In:
So it's Day 3 of my fake campaign for Congress, and we've run into our first obstacle
The Fake Campaign, as you may recall, is fake headed for Wisconsin, to show solidarity, and we've fake hitched a ride on a delivery truck headed for Rush Limbaugh's Florida broadcasting studios-but we fake found ourselves caught up in the all-too-real Giant Grip Of Winter that has seized the Midwest over the past week.
We're back on the road now, but we were stuck for darn near a half-day there at Wall...and if you know anything about South Dakota, you know there are really only two things to do in the City of Wall: you can shuffle back and forth between Gold Diggers and the Badlands Bar, partaking of numerous intoxicating liquors along the way...or you can head on into Wall Drug (the same one that's on all those bumper stickers and signs) and partake of the finest display of Giant Jackalopia on the planet.
The Campaign, naturally, chose Jackalopia-and that's why today's Manifesto is all about the fake impromptu 5-cent-coffee-fueled Social Security Town Hall that we held in the Wall Drug Mall for several hours while we waited for I-90 to reopen.
Obama would rather kill or maim a dozen and a half innocent Afghan civilians per day than help millions of the weakest Americans survive life-threatening thermoregulatory challenges during a savage winter in ever harder times. This fits his profile as a "compassionate conservative."
The good news is that when people freeze to death in their homes, you can just carry them out like luggage, even while they're shagged in ice.
(It may be time for us to take to the Streets, and not take no for an answer, either..... RTFO! - promoted by Diane G)
We have seen some amazing days in Egypt, and it's provided a better lesson than anyone could have ever wanted for how taking action, against long odds, can really get something done.
A secret police mechanism has been pushed aside, an Army has chosen not to attack The People, and a President who was backed by the "full faith and credit" of the US Government on Friday was being told by that same US Government on Tuesday that it's time to go.
The People, in fact, spoke so loudly that Mr. Mubarak has informed Egyptians that he's going to "pursue corruption", which, if taken literally, could eventually look like a puppy chasing its own tail.
The People, however, are unhappy with his answer, and they're speaking even louder yet...even to the point of being willing to take beatings, gunfire, and, believe it or not...camel charges...to make their voices heard.
And that got me to thinking about Social Security.
You know, we are facing the potential for a great big Social Security fight for pretty much the entire term of the 112th Congress-and it seems to me that a series of great big "Cairo-style" marches might be the way to make our voices heard, so that this Congress understands that great big benefit cuts are something that we will not tolerate.
This is not about Mubarak. The U.S., us, we're the real boss in Egypt. The people in the Egyptian streets want democracy. The U.S. certainly does NOT want to give them that, because it rejects who the Egyptians would vote for. If you're uncertain of the preceding truths, simply read more Wikileaks (see below for links).
And then there's why the U.S. requires an oppressive, anti-democratic Egypt, briefly and from an unlikely source, JTA:
Egypt's $1.3 billion in annual aid [from the U.S.] -- most of it in defense assistance -- is rooted in its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
More on that topic here, in this interview with U.S. state dept spokesman P.J. Crowley on Al-Jazeera (hat tips to Mondoweiss and shergald):
Rattansi: But you have more leverage than that. Surely the secretary of state or the President can speak to President Mubarak and say, "Call off your repressive security forces, now begin a transition to democracy, and stop torturing people."
Crowley: But again, you're casting that in zero sum terms and I reject that. We respect what Egypt contributes to the region, it is a stabilizing force, it has made its own peace with Israel, and is pursuing normal relations with Israel, we think that's important, we think that's a model that the region should adopt broadly speaking. at the same time, we recognize that Egypt, Tunisia other countries do need to reform, they do need to respond to the needs of their people, and we encourage that reform and are contributing across the region to that reform. ...
In any case, if you read and watch the news using my title as your filter, it becomes easy to understand U.S. reaction, and easy to figure out what President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are likely saying to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak behind the scenes. The second is way more important, by the way. You wouldn't expect anything different than the following from Ms. Clinton, on ABC:
((sorry about the lack of time between FP promotions - I am off to work shortly and many good essays posted at once. I trust you all to scroll :) - promoted by Diane G)
Please note Obama's hack-kneed genuflection to the free market's virtuous fountains of "dazzling ideas," "path-breaking products," and "vibrant entrepreneurialism," as he simultaneously derides "outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive" with "undue interference," from a "patchwork of over-lapping rules" and legislative "tinkering," that need to be "rooted out" when they "conflict," "are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb." These are standard right-wing talking points.
However, the cognitive friction generated between Obama's obtuse insistence that "one of the reasons the free market has worked..." and his acknowledgement of the collapse of the financial markets in the next breath, while forgetting about the BP blow-out of the entire Gulf of Mexico, body-checked the entire order of the universe light years to the right and vastly closer to heat death.
Listen to Obama's disingenuous logic to get a taste of the crap he plans on feeding us in the State of the Union:
For instance, the FDA has long considered saccharin, the artificial sweetener, safe for people to consume. Yet for years, the EPA made companies treat saccharin like other dangerous chemicals. Well, if it goes in your coffee, it is not hazardous waste. The EPA wisely eliminated this rule last month.
Let's change a few words, while retaining the core, business-friendly "logic:"
The FDA has long considered thimerosal, the mercury-based vaccine preservative, safe for people to consume. Yet for years, the EPA made companies treat mercury like other dangerous chemicals. Well, if it goes in your bloodstream, it is not hazardous waste.
So, yeah, by all means, feed all the mercury you want to your daughters, because if you inject it into your butt-cheeks (under doctor's orders, no less!), then it cannot be hazardous. Amirite?
Similarly, the use of radioactive isotopes in medicine to improve health outcomes, or ionizing radiation used in airports to improve "homeland security," proves that radiation is not hazardous. In fact, it is beneficial! It's "dumb" to regulate something beneficial. The president's argument is simply stupid, if not devious, and indicates how cunning and deceitful the regulatory review will be.
When the president says he wants "a more affordable, less intrusive means to the same [regulatory] ends," he is simply indicating what neoliberal deregulatory yahoos and cowboys have meant since time immemorial: The federal regulatory environment will become "leaner and meaner," for businesses and consumers, respectively, until "nothing stands in their way."
There have been many unlikely things that have happened this past month or so: some of them appearing as legislation, some of them appearing in the form of Republicans who set new records for running away from the words they used to get elected-and some of them appearing in the markets, where, believe it or not, many Europeans finds themselves wishing for our economic situation right about now.
There are even improbable sports stories: our frequently hapless Seattle Seahawks, the only team to ever make the NFL Playoffs with a losing record, are today preparing to knock the Chicago Bears out of their bid to play in the Super Bowl, having crushed the defending holders of the Lombardi Trophy just last week before the 12th Man in Seattle.
But as improbable as all that is, the one thing I never thought I would see is Barack Obama getting into a political argument with himself over Social Security-and then losing the argument.
Even more improbably, it looks like there's just about a week left for him to come to a decision...and it looks like you're going to have to help him make up his mind.
The "too-big-to-fail" banks brought the world economy within hours of utter collapse in September 2008 through a chain reaction of insolvency and counter-party risk. The fuse was lit, only to be serially and temporarily retarded by massive government infusions of taxpayer money approximating the size of our entire GDP. A prudent response would have been to dismantle any risk-taking institution that might be considered to be "too big to fail" in any future scenario, to create a more distributed (not all eggs in one basket), and more robust system that could easily withstand isolated failures. This was not done. In fact, just the opposite occurred. The banks took the massive infusions of cash and became even fewer, bigger, and more prone to systemic failure.
"We consider our size an asset that we try hard to preserve."
Or as Lloyd Blankfein might say: We embiggen ourselves!
Simon Johnson explains the "logic" and purpose of becoming "even bigger and failer" after the first near total collapse of the global economy:
As John Cochrane, a University of Chicago professor and frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal puts it, "The incentive for the banks is to be as big, as systemically dangerous as possible."
This is how big banks ensure they will be bailed out.
Financial terrorism using the threat of a "financial weapons of mass destruction" is a feature, not a bug. Holding Americans (and the rest of the world) hostage to financial terrorism is a feature that the Obama administration clearly supports by inviting the perpetrators of financial terrorism into key posts in the White House. Try crashing those gates, Kos! You might need some help from non-Democrats.
The Federal Reserve is fully committed to Wall Street, as well. Fueling asset speculation by giving cheap (to the banks) taxpayer-backed money to the rich, while not one of its two mandates (of full employment and price stability) is now the Fed's primary goal. The Fed has abandoned its mandates of full employment and price stability in favor of letting the rich get richer by gambling with our money.
This comment (from the previous link) explains the Fed's strategy:
The Fed agenda is quite simple: fuel asset speculation in the hope of provoking a price inflation that will validate outstanding debt. Why can't this work? Because the debt is owed by wage earners whose incomes are undermined by globalization.
Of course, as the comment implies, a lot of the speculation is being done in emerging markets overseas (draining away productive capacity and jobs at home) and in commodities, such as food and fuel, making everyday living ever more painful for 90% of us, while the lugals save their own bacon and embiggen themselves.
Don't expect home prices to rise or even stabilize, even after 50-some-odd straight months of housing price declines. We're still a long way from rock bottom.
The real economy, including the surplus eaters (you and I), can literally drop dead.
We have been following the story of Betsie Gallardo lately, she being the woman that, due to a medical decision, was being starved to death in a Florida prison.
She has inoperable cancer, her death is imminent, and her mother was working hard to make it possible for Betsie to die at home with some dignity.
As we reported just a couple days ago, half the battle was already won, as the Florida Department of Corrections had agreed to place her in a hospital so that she could again go back on nutritional support.
On January 5th, the Florida Parole Commission voted to allow her to end her life at home-and that means you spoke out, made a difference, and achieved a complete victory for the effort.
But even as we celebrate that victory, I think we should take a moment to realize that there is a bigger lesson here: the lesson that the fights over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT), benefits for 9/11 first responders (the Zadroga Bill), and Betsie Gallardo's imminent release are all actually pointing us to a political strategy that works, over and over, if we are willing to understand the wisdom that's been laid before us.
Diane Gee's Wild, Wild Left is a Multi-authored collaboration of the Best and the Brightest moving the World to a Sane & Equitable Future for the World!
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