That's because...it is!
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Debate Is Dangerous
This is why we can't have nice things: we can't even talk about them without our corporate overlords overruling us.
The Luckiest Man On The Face Of The Earth
Now, this is no knock on President Obama. I think he's done a good job in office, especially given the mess he was left with: he's passed some signature legislation that will matter for decades in the progressive agenda.
I think he could have done more, but that's a personal opinion.
And I think he's been hammered hard from the right for being competent. The grand machine that somehow tarred a decorated war hero as a coward and fraud is not silent, and has had a big hand in smearing the President's image.
So while his re-election should be a cakewalk, it's not. His approval ratings have sunk, largely because of the appearance of ineffectuality, summoned in large part by a Congress that is lazy and cowardly.
Why is he so lucky, then? Here's why: he basically gets to choose his opponent.
Now, I'm not suggesting that a black President would be the one to plant a story in the WaPo about "Niggerhead," or that President Obama would prefer to run against Herman Cain rather than Rick Perry or Mitt Romney. I think he matches up well against anyone in the Republican field, and even some who still have the shrinkwrap around them, like Christie.
It is interesting to me that the Republicans have such an incredibly weak field of contenders, that's why I think Obama gets to choose his opponent. Anyone with a brain who is Republican isn't going to run and have to pander to the drooling mobs of half-hearted patriots, and then pivot and run a general election campaign, knowing that all the pandering they did will come back to haunt them. Like it or not, even as far right as this nation has shifted, independent voters still make up the lion's share of uncommitted votes, and independent voters do not like hatred.
Joe Klein highlights this in his column in Time magazine:
A week ago, the owner of a furniture store in Conway, Ark., asked me, "Why don't you media people, especially the cable news, ever ask politicians what they agree on? Why is it always about disagreements?" The folks in Ellston thought that was a very good idea. It's one I'll take home. But it's also a lesson that politicians, even extremists like Bachmann, should heed: the Americans who feel most ignored these days are not the screamers. They are the solid citizens who are sick to death of pols who play to the rant.
Indeed.
The odd thing about the political landscape is how much the people on the left and the people on the right and the people in the middle agree on things: this nation has gotten out of control of the people, money now rules politics which means corporations now rule politics, and the rhetoric you hear from the right echoes the rhetoric you hear from the left.
The disagreements are deep, to be sure. To make the ludicrous claim that the richest one percent pay 20% of the taxes-- while they *earn* over 1000% more in income-- is pandering of the worst kind. The left has it more right than the right, to be sure. That's why I haven't abandoned my liberal principles.
But I digress...
You'd think, as weak as Obama's approval ratings make him appear, the Republicans would be six deep trying to run against him, and yet people you might expect to run, like Condoleeza Rice or Marco Rubio, remain oddly out of the spotlight.
One has to wonder why. My guess would be the volatile nature of the GOP voting base: there's a power struggle going on. One thing Republicans hae always been very very good at is keeping internal discipline even when the walls are crumbling. It happened during the last years of the Bush administration. You never heard about how Bush was a liberal until after he'd left office.
You won't hear about this split until it cleaves the party in two. You're starting to see signs of this: Jim Jeffords was a pioneer, of course, but David Frum has all but abandoned the GOP, Lamar Alexander has resigned what leadership posts he holds in the Senate, and now the long-time head of the Florida Republican party is leaving to take a consulting job. The rats, such as they are, are abandoning ship.
2012 could see a GOP decimated by internal strife and proven deadly wrong on so many of their cherished beliefs (as expressed in the primary run) that they'll be lucky to hold onto the House.
And then, it will be up to Obama to do SOMEthing about the nation.
Monday, October 03, 2011
One The One Hand...
...I really want to see Snowbilly get her lunch eaten.
On the other, why don't we just leave her alone?
You know, for our sake?
Today's Number: $100,000
That's the average foreclosure deficiency, what's owed on a mortgage versus what the bank received in a fire sale, in America.
Because, goodness knows, having a mortgage rammed down your throat by a loan shark is something you should have to live with, in perpetuity.
We really do live in a serfdom.
What It Looks Like When...
(photo credit)
...your planet is blanketed with atmospheric carbon.
Whether you believe global climate change is manmade or not, this ought to give you pause.
A Sardonic Irony
A Nobel prize winner in medicine died last week, just days before being awarded the Prize.
He had an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed four years ago, and managed to extend his life this long.
Using the technology he was awarded the prize for.
Put Christine Quinn On The Hot Seat
The big phony ought to make a stand here: are you with the people, or with the bankstahs?
You want to be mayor. We ought to know.
I Can Solve The Problem
"There's always a balance between privacy and monetizing data, and at this moment folks are trying to find the balance, which is why there's litigation against Facebook," Rob Enderle.
Simple answer: People come first. Always.
Good Point
Say what you will about an Al Qaeda operative who targets Americans and needs to be stopped, even if it means killing him.
He was an American citizen. That means it's just a line between him and me. That line may be a mile wide, but lines tend to narrow as expedience sets in.
I'd like to know why it's OK to kill him.
One Would Hope He Means Much More Than This
Leon Panetta has signaled that the US will not unilaterally intervene in Iran
I'd hope he'd drop "unilaterally" from that statement, full stop.
Art With Meaning
I kind of like this latest wrinkle in the Popular People's Liberation Front of Judea:
Protesters speaking out against corporate greed and other issues in New York City are dressing as corporate zombies and greeting Wall Street workers as they head into the office.Patrick Bruner, a spokesman for the group, says Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are being urged to dress in business wear with white faces and blood, and will march while eating monopoly money. He says financial workers should see them "reflecting the metaphor of their actions."
It is, of course, a most excellent point to make with respect to the people who are responsible for the mess we are in, and have been for thirty-odd years.
See, it's not just the CEOs of Citibank or Goldman Sachs who bear sole responsibility for this mess, although they bear a massive amount of it. And it's not the heads of the trading desks, or the quants who developed the new casino games of derivatives, or the floor brokers who cynically sent grandma to the poor house.
Altho they too bear a large amount of the responsibility.
It's really all of us: from the people who believed a home was a speculative investment to the secretaries who took dictation from the aforementioned asshats and pleaded for a bigger bonus, to the guy who charged $2 for a soda that cost him 50 cents.
Indeed, anyone who's found a way to game the capitalist system for a few pennies, or a few million. Blame doled out on a proportionate scale.
It's the people who nodded quietly during Wall Street when Gordon Gecko intoned "Greed is good." It's people who cheer (or boo) an athlete who makes a quarter billion dollars a year playing a kid's game. It's people who believe a miniscule, incremental tax hike on genetically lucky Americans is a bad thing because, there but for God's hatred, go I; I could be earning that $10 million compensation package. Stupid parents.
The responsibility lies with people who believe the only measure of a nation's net worth is its monetary wealth, not the well-being of its citizens and those who aspire to citizenship. It lies with people who believe that big government is an obstacle but that big business only has our best interests at heart.
The responsibility lies with churches and sinners, with black and white, with men and women. We sit by and cheer those who would lead us into the abyss, all the while believing the abyss is a bad thing.
It lies with all of us who remain willfully ignorant of the world around us, from the high schooler who can't find England on a globe to the bloggers who deny climate change to the people who somehow believe we can emerge from this financial crisis a better nation.
Maybe eventually, but it will require a massive alteration in the perspective of the American people who remain inundated on a daily basis with urges to "Buy! Buy!! BUY!!!!"
We are all insane. We think working for fifty years enriching someone else then spending the last decades or even years of our lives in futile pursuit of something called "relaxation," while sweating out whether we can stretch our life savings out far enough, and "oh what if I get really sick?" is a full life.
That may have been true, when we made things, and created things, and could find a truth in our work, once upon a time.
But once upon a time only works in fairy tales.
Now we are drones, and even if we do still create some value in this world, its been snapped up, marketed, massaged, and cheapened all in the name of "maximizing profit." And yet, we get up every morning, put on the same damned uniform, be it an actual uniform, overalls, a suit and a tie, or "business casual" (an oxymoron, that). We travel the same road most traveled to find our places in the interchangable corporate cogs, and sit in our cubicle farms, poking our heads up like prairie dogs when something unusual happens (usually, someone runs out of creamer for the coffee.)
We are all zombies on this bus.
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