Why The World Is Topsy-Turvy

You get the impression that there is a distinct disconnect between the real world, the world of people living in the reality of life, and what goes on in the news.

You wouldn't be far off. Exhibit A is this item from the Associated Press:

NEW YORK (AP) -- A rise in jobless claims and a drop in a key forecasting gauge provided the latest evidence that the U.S. economy is faltering and may be slipping into recession.

The Conference Board, a business-backed research group, said Thursday that its index of leading economic indicators fell in February for the fifth consecutive month. The index, which is designed to forecast where the nation's economy is headed in the next three to six months, dipped 0.3 percent to 135.0 in February after slumping 0.4 percent the month before.

In Washington, meanwhile, the Labor Department said that applications for unemployment benefits totaled 378,000 last week. That was an increase of 22,000 from the previous week and the highest level in nearly two months.

The four-week average for new claims rose to 365,250, which was the highest level since a flood of claims caused by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.

That's pretty sucky news, to be sure. Those are leading economic indicators, "leading" in this instance, meaning "forecasting".

The stock market is generally a lagging indicator, or one that confirms what we've all known all along about the economy:

In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 158.02, or 1.3 percent, to 12,257.68. Other indexes also were up.

Admittedly, this week the market has been up and down more times than a cheap date in a poolroom bar.

And despite the recent anomaly of Bear Stearns, investment banks have been losing money less rapidly than analysts expected, which has buoyed the market.

Yes, losing money is considered a positive on the Street. It doesn't matter that you've lost money. What matters is that you beat the analysts at their own game.

Kinda silly. It's a lot like the Jets losing to New England by two touchdowns, but hey, the spread was three touchdowns, so hurrah!

And there's the clue: money lives in a different world than you or I do. Money, like power, live in lofty regions that if we're lucky, we'll glimpse.

See, this is why even the debate over race v. gender, Republican v. Democrat, black v. white, even to a large degree, poor v. rich pales in my mind. None of this matters.

Indeed, about the only way it matters is that these divisions can be used by a certain stratum of society that wants us to keep fighting amongst ourselves. Maybe not every single member of that stratum-- indeed, many of these folks work for the good of the planet-- but there is a general momentum towards keeping the lid on things.

Think about this for a moment: Bill Gates has more in common with Bono of U2 than he does with Bob, the guy who mows his lawn.

Bob and he live in the same neighborhood. Bob and he breathe the same air, drive the same roads, see the same sun each day.

But who can call Gates at the drop of a hat?

I specifically used Gates and Bono, because, folks, these are the good guys! Now imagine, if Gates has so little in common with the lawn guy, what would we expect from, say, Dick Cheney?

I was tempted to use George Bush, but this elite "social order" tends to be pretty choosy as to whom they make long-term members. My suspicion is, once he's left the White House, there will be no more deals except for whatever crumbs his daddy can bestow upon him and I'm not sure Poppy is much for that anymore.

I say all this, because I wanted to make a larger point: the Internet.

See, you have more in common, right now, with someone sitting at his computer in Lahore, Pakistan or Birmingham, England, or Vladivostok, Russia, than you do with your Senator, possibly even your Congresscritter.

Re-read that. You have more in common with someone sitting at his computer in a hovel in Pakistan than you do with the guy who's supposedly voting your interests in Washington, DC.

(This dynamic is also why I firmly believe Hillary will win the nomination, since it has to go to the superdelegates: more skin in the game for her.)

And this, too, is partly why stock markets don't really feel your pain. They would rather support the guy who's firing you and paying them a higher dividend, than mourn with you.

Truthfully, looking down the road, I don't see a whole lot that we can do to turn this thing around, short of blood in the streets. We could, I suppose, start interacting with people across the ponds. That would be a good thing, of course, Information should be traded, and this would help others as well as ourselves.

Maybe in so doing, we can start to wake up to the fact that the earth and everything in it is ultimately a zero sum game. There's only one earth with limited-if-substantive resources, which means that as one person gains, another must by definition lose, or more correctly, one person, plus the earth and its resources.

David Suzuki likes to tell a story about a bacterium, placed in a beaker with all the food it could possibly want. The bacterium begins to reproduce, doubling it's population every second, so that after 60 seconds, it will have used up all its resources and the entire colony will die off.

After 59 seconds, the beaker would only be half full. At fifty eight seconds, a quarter full, and so on.

If, at fifty five seconds, one of the colony spoke up and said "Hey, we're going to die in five seconds!" the other would have laughed him off.

"How can you say that? We still have 98% of the beaker left to go!"

When we speak upwards, truth to power, we have to overcome the numbnuts in our midsts who would say something like "98%!" back to us. What we need to do is to foment the belief amongst ourselves and our peers that we have to stop this, from the ground up.

By "this", I mean the segregation of people along strata and class lines delineated by power. It's not enough that we dismantle the power structure in America anymore, the Eisenhower "military-industrial complex" is too simplistic to describe a world where the President of the United States and the head of Al Qaeda, as well as a B-list shlub blogger in New York City, all profit from the same investment firm's trough.

A fundamental change in society, and I'm not just talking political change and I'm not just talking America, is on the horizon.

A "New World Order" was a good idea, in theory, until you start to realize that the people who are putting it together are more beholden to the megacorporate entities that foot their campaigns political and military than they are to the people who they chew up and spit out in those campaigns.

Change from the bottom up, like democracy, cannot be forced on people. It has to be coaxed in order for it to be effective and it has to start with one voice, speaking to another voice. There's precious little time left, so we have to start now.

Medical Update

OK, yes, it's been three weeks and believe it or not, there hasn't been news on this front since then.

You may recall that another tumor was taken out of the inside of my nostril and tested malignant.

Well, two confirming tests in the interim have come back non-malignant, so all that's left is to close up my nose...or install a gill.

That's now scheduled for April 1. No joke.

Oppression Impressions

I'd like to expand on my thoughts regarding Obama's speech yesterday, and why I think there's an enormous gap in his thinking.

If Obama had spoken truthfully, and he touched upon this in his speech, he would have said the following:

I repudiate and denounce Rev. Wright's specific comments, and make no apologies or defense for them. Further, I apologize to Senator Clinton, because his comments make it sound as though she has never been discriminated against. They were wrong-headed and stupid.

However, some of the issues he raises, about inequality, are issues we Democrats have been trying to address for decades. We've been trying to level the playing field, to make opportunity possible for all, regardless of race, religion, gender, or orientation. That the issues coalesce around race is a function of the simple ability to identify a black man or woman by sight.

And gone on from there. There's a speech that truly speaks to unity, to making people understand that it's not about black or white, female or male, poor or rich.

It's about equality. Fairness. Justice.

Go read his speech. Not once, NOT ONCE, does he mention being a woman in America, or being gay, or being anything else but African American (he does have one instance of talking about the working classes, in passing).

Rev. Wright's hideous comments deserved to be repudiated, and then expanded upon to mine the kernel of truth within. People are hurting in George Bush's America. People are hurting a LOT more in George Bush's America than they were in Bill Clinton's America, despite Obama's attempts to rewrite history to suit his purposes.

If your campaign is based solely on words, and those words themselves are found lacking and half-hearted, then what's to be made of your candidacy and your heart?

Imagine John Edwards making this same speech. He would not have limited himself to describing the "black experience" but would have correctly pointed out that this describes Two Americas. It was the one big reason I voted for Edwards in 2004 and the one big reason he remained in my considerations going into the primary season this year.

He gets it. I see this all around me. America is supposed to be about opportunity, but America is slipping away from those who have had a hard time keeping up.

Indeed, I'd make the case that America is turning its back on those who can't keep up.

It's not about minorities, because in truth, any equality program would begin with the majority who suffer degradations in this society: women.

African Americans make up, what? Less than a quarter of America's population?

Women make up 51%, and you can look that up. By addressing only the "black experience," Obama foolishly leaves out an entire group of Americans that can speak bigger volumes about repression, degradations, discrimination, even physical and mental abuse.

It's about levelling the playing field. Again, Bill Clinton's legacy. Instead of spending so much time defending the indefensible, he could have easily done 26 minutes on how the poor and working class see their jobs lost, with no hope of a better future even for their children through education and training.

How in this country, the quiet shame is that the largest group of poverty stricken Americans is not blacks or whites, but single mothers. Women. How economic "opportunity" for them usually means choosing between losing a job or taking care of a sick child.

He squandered a golden moment in American history to speak about how race is no longer codified in law, but in money, and how to break those chains requires an intensive effort to move the country forward in economics, not in some ethereal dialogue regarding "scary black men," as one commenter at my blog put it.

But what really got my knickers in a twist was how he so off-handedly claimed the mantle of repression as the "black experience" when in truth, women have had it far worse, for far longer, and have only recently made up some of the grounds that African Americans have taken from American white male hegemony.

How many women can sit alone in a bar reading a book and not worry about how many eyes are mentally undressing her? Or walk down a street, for that matter?

How many women can run for President without being called a "bitch" or "Hitlery" or "cunt"? How many women can attain an executive office in a corporation without having smears of "sleeping her way up" being launched?

Why does a woman have to act "like a man" to be taken seriously?

Hell, we even joke about how long it takes for a woman to pee in a public place, which by all rights should be an insult to anyone! If blacks had to queue up for the few toilets while whites had a few dozen, there'd be marching in the street.

Even Obama himself, blinded by the log in his eye even as he speaks about the mote in mine, has poopooed and denigrated Hillary Clinton, speaking of her "periodic outbursts," with little note in the popular press.

Why is that, do you think, that he's allowed to remind people that she has a menstruating vagina with all its entanglements like PMS with that kind of code, when if someone mentions, say, his "articulation" like Joe Biden did, the world goes crazy with charges of racism? Or why is it that Obama's minions go nuts if Bill Clinton calls him on his "fairy tale," assuming the Big Dog meant his candidacy, when he was very clear he was talking about the fallacy of his war opposition?

And the Obombers aren't bothered one bit by this hypocrisy on the part of their candidate?

They aren't bothered by the fact that Geraldine Ferraro said effectively the same thing that Rev. Wright did, that there's a "black experience" in America that differs from the white experience, and they screamed bloody murder, while shooing away any criticism of Wright as being "irrelevant"?

Why do they give Obama a pass to be a white man in black skin on this stuff?

Eeb Plebneesta!

Barack Obama's speech today is a watershed event in this campaign. Some notes:

1) Usually, when a candidate has to give a single issue speech during the primaries that doesn't deal with the general populace, you can write him off. Think about Mitt Romeny and the Mormon address.

If this speech had happened even a month ago, I'd say that was a possible, even probable, outcome, but despite the fact that NBC news polling indicates that roughly six percent of voters who have voted already would switch votes from Obama to Hillary (page 17 of this document), it may be too late in the race for this speech to have much impact, positive or negative.

2) “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Whenever you start a speech of with that phrase, you run the risk of turning off your audience, as it is without a doubt the most overused phrase in American speechifying today. You can't stop at a campaign rally for dogcatcher in Bumshmuck, Idaho without hearing "more perfect union" intoned as if it was the call-and-response in a church.

Granted, he probably wrote this speech on the fly at 3AM in a fit of pique, but come one, Senator. You're a man of words and little else! Use your own!

3) Even before the speech was given, moderate Democrats I had spoken to had already decided this was just one more speech, that nothing would change their opinions regarding him or the pastor much.

4) In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

While true, that was also the last Southern state he carried with that kind of coalition, and was also the last state that John Edwards was a factor in, which appears to have hurt Hillary more than Obama.

Sorry, this comes dangerously close to a lie, but forgivable as a rhetorical flourish.

5) The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

I agree. It's a pity Obama didn't factor this stuff in when he decided to be ambitious, rather than constructive. America doesn't like change rammed down its throat, or have we learned nothing from the neo-conservative movement, which rose as a backlash against the progressive changes we liberals sought in the 60s and 70s?

We had people peeking out of corners, looking up instead of down, listening, instead of hearing. Now, admittedly, this was a Christmas day sermon. I'm sure that you weren't in attendance.

After all, you had the Iowa caucuses to run for the following week.

Too, Rev. Wright is his own man and speaks his own mind and doesn't speak for you, I'm sure.

Senator, when I was a kid growing up, I attended an Evnaglical church, until a fateful day: I remember it clearly.

It was during catechism classes. The pastor was discussing Revelations, and leaned into us, and whispered, "You do know who the Anti-Christ is, don't you? It's the Pope."

Which is in keeping with conservative Evangelical Protestant thought, but it also drove me away once I was confirmed. I could not tolerate that kind of hate-mongering from a man of the cloth.

When I think back on the hundreds of sermons and discussions and pastorings I had been party to in that church (my parents were both high lay officials), I see the seeds of that hate sewn all around, like birdseed dropped for the flock to peck at.

I find it hard to believe that, in 20 years, you had no other clue that this hatred of white people existed in your congregation. Of white women, in particular, and in particular, this white woman.

To say that Hillary has never heard the word "nigger" is ludicrous. Yoko Ono said it best: "Woman is the nigger of the world."

6) In case you need a refresher:

We make her paint her
face and dance
If she won't be slave, we
say that she don't love us
If she's real, we say she's
trying to be a man
While putting her down we
pretend that she is above us

Senator, you could have, should have, repudiated these kinds of hateful remarks a long time ago. I can't imagine why you haven't.

7) Everything you said in your speech about race in America can just as easily be said about gender. Period. If you were truly interested in uniting, you'd recognize the struggles that women, white and black, have had to overcome in this country. Is it any wonder that women, especially white women of a certain age and understanding and wisdom, haven't heeded your call?

8) At least the black experience finds its voice in the pews and pulpits of church on Sunday morning. Women do not have that option, generally, because most churches still have this quaint notion that women in church should cook and clean, tend to the hearth but not the heart.

9) Dammit, Senator, how could you be so blind and so deaf? How could you be so blind and so deaf to the plight of women who are black? You speak to half their problem only. That's like curing half a cancer or mending half a limb!

10) You speak lovingly and liltingly and sweepingly about things you know, and that's fine. That's great.

But Presidents have to fathom that which they are NOT experienced at, and for someone who's running a race based pretty much solely on not being experienced, of still having that "new pol" smell, you ought to have realized that long before you filed for this goddamned race in the first place! If anything, with this speech, you reveal the precise reasons why Hillary should be the nominee.

At least SHE feels YOUR pain! But I guess it's hard to keep that in focus while you admit you lied about how much Tony Rezko gave you to run.

Olly Olly Ox Unfree!

The dynamic of the American economy is a quasi-free market.

Or rather, it was.

The underlying mechanism of a free market goes something like this: I have a need, say, food. Company A determines there's money to be made in supplying me with food, but only at a price a) I'm willing to pay and b) they can actually make some profit at.

If Company A is the only game in town, they can charge pretty much whatever they want, because they know I need to buy food. Company B realizes there's a boatload of money to be made in food, so it opens up a store and competes with Company A. This drives down the price, since Company B and Company A will now engage in a war for my business. It's not a profit until someone actually earns it.

The rational consumer, of course, will pay the least amount of money he possibly can for food, so long as the quality is comparable from Company A to Company B. Meanwhile, Company A and B will try to maximize their profits, either by charging as much as possible or by cutting their costs to produce food by as much as possible, or both. Again, this is rational.

Supply competes to fulfill demand, and if there's not enough demand, Company A or B goes out of business or tries to create more demand for their product by expanding markets or finding some other advantage for their product.

This scenario assumes a few things that may not always be true, and indeed, one basic assumption has not been true for some time now, ever since the late 80s, early 90s.

This scenario assumes a limited amount of money for the consumer. So long as personal credit markets were tight, this was how free markets worked: people had limited income, so voted for products based on whether they could afford them or not.

The twin barrel gun that shot huge holes in the capitalist system were mortgages and credit cards.

Now, both serve a purpose, when used wisely. After all, if it takes 30 years to pay off a mortgage with a reasonable cushion for your day to day living expenses, then it stands to reason it would take about 30 years to save enough to put down cash on a house, perhaps longer, since you'd be paying rent.

Likewise, credit cards allow us to buy things that we need, but can't afford to pay for right now that would take an awful lot of time to save up for, like kitchen appliances or TVs.

All this posits that eventually you'll earn enough money to pay these bills back.

Right now, that's not the case, and we're at the tail end of a cycle that could be devastating to the global economy, not to mention American independence.

Consumer debt, including mortgages, is higher than it has ever been, rivaling the national debt in magnitude.

That's unheard of, but here's the kicker: not only is it higher than the current savings level for Americans, but there's speculation now that, at present income levels, there is no way America (as a whole) will ever earn enough money to pay down their personal debt.

What happened over the past twenty odd years is probably going to go down in history as mankind's greatest economic folly.

First, let's look in the mortgage market. People started borrowing more and more of their purchase price (you used to have to put down 20%, then 10, and then five, and now, nothing), because banks were having a hard time lending money to people after the recession of the early 80s.

The housing market had collapsed, you see.

By lending more and more money, banks were setting up a vicious cycle, where people had little to no equity to lose in their houses. Rather than homestead and be satisfied with the house they had, they would trade up.

Why? It really didn't cost them anything. What this triggered was a housing market that slowly caught fire, as prices scaled upwards when people started to trade up in house size and price. This attracted more and more buyers, who were offered easier and easier credit as banks were forced to compete with cutthroat lending policies.

All this was fine, so long as housing prices continued to spiral upwards. Sure, we'd had adjustments in housing prices, but over the long run, a house was the best investment anyone could make. You were guaranteed to make money.

Over the long term, however. What we started seeing was people taking advantage of some of these teaser loans that banks felt compelled out of greed to offer: five year adjustable rate mortgages with ultralow interest-only payments until the five year adjustment period had passed.

By then, people moved on and bought a new house with, you guessed it!-- a five year adjustable rate mortgage.

In other words, they kept playing a shell game with the bank's equity.

But notice what else happens here: as people spend less and less income and provide less and less equity in their houses, they are free to spend more and more disposable income on other things: Nike sneakers, iPods, computers, flat screen TVs.

All paid by with credit cards. So long as a consumer was able to make the minimum monthly payment, no one would deny them more credit, despite the fact that not only did they have no real equity to look to in case things fell apart, but they're incomes weren't keeping pace with even the minimal inflation that the economy was suffering.

So people stretched a rubber band in two directions at the same time, and it's only now those bands are breaking. There are a combination of factors, to be sure, as to why the rubber bands chose now to break, but underneath it all, they had to break sometime, so why not now as opposed to two years ago, or two years from now?

The solutions for this are not pretty. It's a little like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle when thirty percent of the pieces are missing. Bottom line is, there ain't no going back to a time when this nation was healthy, not anytime soon, and certainly, business will never been "usual" again.

First and foremost, don't buy any solution that says we can "spend" our way out of this with lower taxes and more economic activity. People can't afford the debt they have already, and they've been conditioned to spend more using debt. They probably don't even remember how to save a buck or two!

Second, keep in mind that bankruptcy laws were changed, with the support of McCain and Obama, to limit individual bankruptcies even further. So that debt relief tap has been turned off, for now. Any attempt to revisit that issue will be met with very stiff resistance by banks.

Third, and most important, keep in mind that with no disposable income, as people try to repay their mortgage balances that weren't covered in the sale of their houses, and have to pay real money to have a roof over their heads and food on the table, there's going to be precious little economic boost to be had. Too, rising gas, food and health care costs will sponge up quickly any left over money.

If we hadn't squandered a few trillion in Iraq, there's a chance we might have the funds in place to have some effective solutions that could speed up and perhaps bolster the recovery, as anemic as it will be. You'll hear a lot of short term hype, but fundamentally, the consumer is ruined.

We owed our children better than we've given them. We've ruined their environment, endangered them with our hubris over global warming, and had until this administration passed along a manageable but difficult economic timebomb.

Which just exploded. In our faces.

Friday Kitten Blogging

Mah peepz!

Es hard werk negotiatin a noo contrack!

Wen I herd dat de Riter's Gild gawt a noo contrack for dey stoff onna web, I tole dadby I wanna noo contrack too, sence I bringed lotsa peepz to hems blawg.

Hem an I argoo lots an den I tole hem I DO NOT WANT mah pitcher onna blawg wifout I get moah foah et.

So hem greed dat I cud git fud twice as often ebery day! Dass two tiems as mush fud!

Hem was worried dat I git fat, so I sed et wuz ok to gib me haff as mush fud at each feedin, but hem such a stoopid hoomin, hem don' reelyze dat I still get too times moah fud cuz I git fud two tiems moah offen!

Yay foah me!

Indiana Wants Me

With Pennsylvania seemingly stuck solidly in Clinton's column (no real movement in the polls, but it's way too early to add it to her delegate total), the key states remaining in the Democratic primary process are Indiana, North Carolina, and Oregon.

I think Indiana is the most interesting case, and certainly the one "must win" Obama has left on his schedule. He's doing well in North Carolina and should win that with a small delegate plurality in the urban and university counties, with Clinton eating up large parts of the suburban and rural vote. Oregon could be a hotly contested state, as it's sandwiched between California (strongly Clinton, with some Obama strength up north) and Washington (one of the few states that Obama won clearly across the board), but it should ultimately fall to Obama.

I call Indiana a "must win" for Obama, because should he fail to win Indiana, he will have failed to win any Ohio valley state (Kentucky and West Virginia look to be strongly Clinton), and Clinton will have a delegate map that stretches in one continuous line across the heart of America, from sea to shining sea, which will be her motto heading into the superdelegate courtship.

Should Clinton win Indiana, she can make the case that Obama wins in states that aren't going to vote Democratic anyway (deep South and Plains states), while she captured states that are crucial to a Democratic win. You've heard her test this strategy after Ohio, and it's among her strongest cases for the nomination.

Much has been made regarding recent statements from superdelegates about respecting the "will of the people."

Two observations to made here: First, this is one of the clearest examples of what I like to call "Polispeak." You say one thing that can be understood in several ways, and you leave it to the recipient to hear what they want.

Charles Degaulle was a master of this. I suspect Obama might even be better at it, but since he's never had to put his money where his mouth is, we may never know.

The question hangs on the meaning of "the people". Do you count the popular vote? Well, yes, Obama should win, except his totals include large numbers of Republicans and Independents, as well as the lion's share of caucus votes, which are cast over a number of hours, hours that "the people" can't really spare from the business of paying the mortgage. Whittle it down to registered Democrats who voted in primaries...you know, the people who cast one vote each, the American way...and Clinton wins in a walk.

Delegates pledged? True, Obama has a lead here, but not enough to put him over the top. The people have spoken and neither Clinton nor Obama has won enough of their support to engage the nomination on the stump, meaning "the people" don't have a clear preference.

Second, superdelegates were put in place precisely to thwart the will of the people. The perverse logic that might drive many superdelegates (mostly elected Democratic officials) is that, since they represent their "people," as with legislating, they are chooising for the people.

My suspicion is superdelegates are leaning towards Clinton (they prefer insiders) but are looking for a compelling reason to vote for Obama. Indiana might give them that reason.

Friday Music Blogging

This is a special dedication of hotwaxxxxxx goin out to Eliot Spitzer...The Tubes -- She's A Beauty!

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) You know it's only a matter of time before "Kristen" appears naked in Playboy or Penthouse.

2) We all get our panties in a twist over these kinds of scandals and we all wring our hands over the aftermath: the appearances, the pop cultural references, the fast money to be made. Look, I'm not familiar with this particular trade. Can someone tell me the price to ask a hooker to JUST. GO. AWAY!

3) Read that last link carefully. "Kristen" made a staggering $1,000,000. Yesterday. Without lifting a finger.

4) I can't fathom why anyone would have downloaded her "single". I mean, if it was a record, and she signed it, and you could turn around and sell it for a few bucks somewhere down the road, maybe I can understand that. But her music sucks, to put it politely. 98 cents wasted, if you ask me.

5) The lesson to learn in all this, referring to my column yesterday, is that money trumps all. It trumps morality, it trumps rationality, it trumps even lust. The greed and ambition required to pursue large sums of money could be the greatest single creative energy on the planet.

6) Which raises an issue related to the Presidential race: I guess part of why I'm very concerned about an Obama candidacy in the general election is the sham he's put forth regarding his campaign.

That there are suckers dumb enough to believe a man who served two terms in the state legislature (he would have served less than one if he had won his Congressional race), and less than one term in the US Senate isn't the single greeediest, most ambitious, self-involved, and self-indulgent dog in the pack doesn't surprise me. It's how many of them sincerely believe he's actually different from anyone else, that he somehow has the "good of the people" at heart.

Yes. He's different. By definition, he's worse! Anything other than that is truly naive thinking, if it's even thinking at all.

6) On to other topics...Gold is soaring over a thousand dollars an ounce. Oil is hovering at $110 a barrel. The dollar is collapsing on world markets today because of the Federal bailout of one of the world's biggest brokerages. Yet, Bush is channeling Kevin Bacon in Animal House: "Remain calm! All is well!"

7) Worse, I expect the Economic Club of New York to respond in kind: "Thank you sir! May I have another!" rather than boo his sorry ass off the dais.

8) Bush can offer at least one piece of good economic news: the single largest cause of America's economic melt-down will be gone within a year. On January 20, 2009, to be precise!


9) Exhibit A: Ten billion a month!

10) George Jetson would be proud.

11) It seems more and more likely that the Florida delegation, at least, is going to be seated at the Democratic National Convention as is. There are legal roadblocks to a mail-in primary, which is a sensible solution, and all other avenues seem to be opposed by some rather large group of Floridians or other. The bottom-line is, after 2000 and 2004, the Democrats cannot afford to insult Florida at the convention. They've had a primary and while no candidate campaigned there, all candidates were on the ticket.

Michigan could be a different story, since it was Democrats there who abetted the decertification of delegates.

12) One thing is clear from this primary season: the Democrats simply have to change their delegate selection process to make it fairer to voters. Period. That means no more of this caucus crap and no more open primaries, but it also means minimize the superdelegates. One person, one vote, only Dems. That's it.

13) Obama can't be Jesus. There can't be two of us.

14) In case you were wondering, yes, that's partly why I don't think he should be the candidate. He's sucking up my base: insane liberals.

15) Let me finish with this: I like David Patterson. I liked his dad, Basil, and I think David will make a fine governor. I am concerned, however, that the New York State GOP has been so quick to embrace him as Spitzer's replacement. There's a whole corollary to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing here which is that if your enemy sees your friend as his friend, you have to be cautious.

Sex And The Shitty

I think it's about time to weigh in on a topic that's troubled me all of my adult life, but has been crystalized this week with the scandal surrounding soon-to-be former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

The topic is morality.

I think we can all agree, left and right, that the fundamental struggle for humanity is the balance between individual rights versus society's betterment.

I think we can all agree, as well, that no one gets it right. Or wrong, for that matter.

We liberals are often accused of situational ethos: what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander, depending on the circumstances.

In other words, we strive to protect the individual against the "tyranny of the majority", to use Mill's phrase.

The right wing would claim that they uphold society's rule over the "tyranny of the minority".

Well, neither side has either a lock on morality or a lock on consistency, which is where the "details devil" lies.

For example, the right wing hasn't eaten their own when it comes to Senators David Vitter or Larry Craig, two men who also committed adultery and committed crimes in executing these adulteries (Craig's was not a felony, to be sure). Yet the right wing sure was quick to level calls for Spitzer's resignation.

Similarly, rather than admit that the campaign Hillary Clinton has run is a winning strategy, liberals have painted her as a "Republican lite", as if there was some moral good to come out of running a clean campaign in the primaries, and then gearing up for the general election in a defensive shell.

Myriad other examples abound, of course, and I'll probably include them as this piece goes on, but let me jump ahead a bit.

The fundamental flaw in American society is this: the economic system and the "morality" system are nearly diametrically opposed.

America was created in a Judeo-Christian form, where fair play and compassion for one's neighbors was tantamount.

The American economy was founded in a morally disinterested theory that the individual, striving for his self-betterment, would contribute to society's overall welfare. Yesterday, I wrote how that evolved into a society where government had to step in to fix deeply entrenched social problems, despite the supposed counterbalance of America's moral code.

See, the thing is, money talks. It is objective, easy to measure, has great utility for everyone, thus makes the perfect vehicle for measuring the progress of a nation.

We talk often about the Gross Domestic Product.

When was the last time you heard someone talk about the Gross Moral Product of the country?

It is against this backdrop that morality plays out: my morality and your morality and the right wing morality all must compete head-to-head in an environment where winners are easily found.

You know the bumper sticker: "He who dies with the most toys, wins."

In truth, whatever moral code we have is pretty arbitrary, despite the facade that it is strict, Christian, and widely enforced by society.

It's an extension of the dichotomy you raised in Sunday School: Thou shalt not kill, but people fight wars in God's name, or kill abortion doctors, or bomb Federal offices in Oklahoma City.

There's always a loophole.

This "loopholic morality" becomes magnified the closer you come to real power: it's moral for George Bush to lie us into war, some would say, but not moral for Eliot Spitzer to pay to get laid.

(I'm disregarding the legal aspect of the case: a bad, immoral law should not be obeyed anyway)

I've even heard liberals make the claim that it was OK for Bill Clinton to have a mistress but for Eliot Spitzer to pay for sex was wrong.

Actually, I thought of a rationale for Spitzer that made pretty good sense to me: by not getting involved with "that (generic) woman," Spitzer avoided dragging another person into his sordid psyche, but also he could portray this as a business decision to have sex for relaxation or release or because he was kinky and his wife wouldn't do whatever it was he needed, like, say diapering.

Getting caught with either a mistress or a hooker would be a bombshell, true, but there's an implied contract, I think, in hiring a hooker. It may not be enforceable like attorney-client privilege, but a hooker who blabs about her (or his) clients will soon find he has no clients at all.

All this leads to the point of this post: sexual mores.

If Bill Clinton made the rest of the world, particularly Europe, embarassed for us, what do you think the reaction is about this story in, say, England, which 50 years ago had it's own "showgirl" scandal, complete with Soviet espionage thrown in as a bonus?

Not surprisingly, they focus on Sptizer's hypocrisy, being known as a straight-arrow, no nonsense prosecutor. There is something to be said about applying one standard of behavior for yourself and then a different one for others. It's not about sex, it's about standards.

Trouble is, those standards, in this instance, wouldn't exist if it wasn't about the sex. There's the rub.

America has a pretty repressed attitude about nearly all things sexual. Most people find something someone else does abhorrent, deviant, and therefore immoral behavior.

Me, I'm pretty tolerant. I don't care if you're an athletic handsome Lothario who travels the country on business getting laid in every town by frustrated housewives, or a fat ugly bisexual domme wannabe who swaps partners like I'd swap baseball cards, that's OK.

I'd like to think that's the way most people are, but I have a sneaking suspicion, based on how sex gets manipulated and perverted by people for other advantages, that I'm in a minority.

Take the woman who gets pregnant, marries the father, then a few years later kicks him out and demands alimony and child support. Sex was a weapon.

Take the guy who demeans his rival by saying to a potential date that he's a womanizer because he has a lot of female friends who find him attractive. "Fear of sex" as a weapon: "Look at all those chicks around him! Look at how he flirts with them!"

Or just look at the gay marriage struggle. Or the abortion fight. Or the persecution of any politician who has even the slightest hint of impropriety in his demeanor.

In this atmosphere, does it surprise anyone that there are women and men, mostly women, who make a pretty good living by indulging sexual fantasies? We're terrified to ask for anything in a relationship that doesn't involve a man, a woman, and a horizontal space.

And does it surprise anyone that, in a society where normal sexual urges are repressed, channeled, and put into boxes like "marriage", "commitment", "romance", and "fidelity", that people will not only stray, but having strayed and found it exciting and good, stray even further? To the point of self-destruction in "polite" society?

I wonder when America is going to grow up?

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

Brilliant!

Now pardon me while I wipe this egg off my face...

The Single Stupidest Thing David Mamet Has Ever Written

Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.

The title of the article, in this week's Village Voice, is Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

Welcome to the party, pal! The last thing we progressives have needed is brain dead zombies.

Essentially what Mamet's piece gets to is the role of government in society is too big. In other words, he's become a libertarian.

This is not inconsistent with being a liberal, Mr. Mamet, or progressive or what have you.

See, big government interferes in lots of ways. Liberal libertarians would like to see government out of our private lives, but more, we'd like to see government stick to the job it really needs to do: referee society.

Government should be like the referee in a hockey game: enforce the rules fairly, and take no part in either side.

Who are the opponents? I'd suggest that the opponents are the commercial sector versus the citizenry, since this is where the bulk of America's problems stem.

Business' job is to maximize profit at the expense of the public weal, to take that which belongs to all of us, resources, and turn them into products or services.

In a fair economy, that's fine. But when business exploits the public for its own selfishness, when business can socialize losses while privatizing profits, when business can pay for government to look the other way while its rapaciousness is snowballing, that's when government is failing.

Like it is now.

There's nothing wrong with free markets, so long as they are fair markets. Even Adam Smith, you know, the original Free Marketeer, said that government is duty-bound to monitor business, to prevent an unbalancing of this fairness by the use of monopolies and other contraventions of the essential free market.

Conceivably, if Adam Smith knew about multinational corporations or megacompanies like ExxonMobil, he'd likely have included those in his warnings that "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

When he wrote those words, I would venture to guess, the largest company around was probably some trading company, or perhaps Lloyds of London or some bank somewhere. None of these would have been offshored business operating out of the Cayman Islands while drawing the bulk of their income from the United States by selling goods manufactured in Taiwan.

It has been in the past thirty years or so that the rise of the corporate-government alliance has picked up steam (the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower so famously warned of was not JUST about warfare), as corporations have been given equal legal status to individual citizens (again, unlikely that Smith foresaw that) and allowed to have not only corporate rights under contracts, but Consitutional rights under the law.

Worse, the very thing Mamet claims happens in American society, a drift in and out of both poverty and wealth, has slowed substantially, particularly in the past seven years of very distinct government NONintervention! There are more Americans in poverty today than in 2000, and the number of wealthy has not only not gone down proportionately, THEY'VE BECOME EVEN RICHER!

This is an unhealthy situation, Mr. Mamet. I do hope you can understand why I will remain a (not-so) "brain dead liberal."

UPDATE

The more I think about this ridiculous screed, the more angry I become.

The reason government programs were put into place in the first instance was that private & charitable attempts to deal with poverty, hunger, the elderly dropping dead in our streets, pollution, food processing standards and so on...WERE FUCKING MISERABLE FAILURES, you fuckin' a-hole, Mamet!

Just ask Sinclair Lewis, or Rachel Carson, or John Steinbeck! You know...real WRITERS????????

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now?

No doubt you've heard the tale of woe of New York's Democratic (you're welcome, Stewart) Governor, Eliot Spitzer, who unwittingly got caught up in a money laundering operation that revolved around an online prostitution ring.:

The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer's suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.

I daresay this is one of those infrequent moments in politics when you lean back and exhale. It was only sex (so far).

Many in the opposing camp of NY State Republicans, chief among them the ethics-challenged Joe Bruno, have called on Spitzer to resign.

Eliot. No. Don't do it. There is no legitimate rationale, based on what's been made public thus far, for you to resign and indeed, to resign might hamper New York politics far more than the battles you will face going forward.

You have a short window of opportunity to put this behind you quickly. From all accounts, this was money you spent out of your own pocket, and the time taken away was your own time. There have been no allegations that state police accompanied you to the DC hotel or stood guard over you.

The real damage you have done is to yourself and more, to those whose trust you have earned over these past forty eight years: your family.

You've made a general apology, no doubt on the advice of your attorney, and kept it ambiguous, again, on the advice of your attorney. That attorney is likely in negotiations with Federal prosecutors to swing a deal.

Here's the deal you should swing:

- A blanket but specific apology to the people of New York, to your family and your friends.

- An acknowledgement that you exhibited poor judgement in your personal life.

- A refusal to resign. Personal weakness is no reason to give up what could yet be a great governorship. Promise to double your commitment to the job and more, to your family.

- Personally see to your administration's involvement in the budget negotiations (New York's fiscal year ends March 31). Convene the Council of Three (Senator Majority Leader Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and yourself) and hammer out the deal. No surrogates. You won't let this distract the state from its business.

This will probably satisfy the DoJ (particularly once Bush is elected out), who are more interested in the money laundering than in counting coup. There is no profit for them in pursuing a two-headed case of prostitution and money laundering. They'd rather focus resources on the real felonious behavior.

One more thing: insist that no charge be levelled against the prostitute in question, the so-called "Kristen". If you walk, she should walk, barring any knowledge of money laundering.

The public humiliation and refocus on your job, particularly in light of your now-dimmed reputation as a stand-up guy, will serve you well.

And make damn sure you remember your wife's birthday this year...

Your Moment of Zen

Women over thirty five who don't support Hillary Clinton ought to turn in their ovaries.

Men over thirty five who don't support Clinton ought to trade for them.

Just When You Thought We Had A Shot...

They moved the goal posts:

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.

Think about what that would mean: not "keep them in line with Kyoto Protocols," but zero.

Nada.

Nil.

None.

No fires. No cooking. No milk farms. No cars. No trucks. No planes. No cigarettes. No cigars. No farting. No belching. No breathing.

Schmittner, lead author of a Feb. 14 article in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, said his modeling indicates that if global emissions continue on a "business as usual" path for the rest of the century, the Earth will warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. If emissions do not drop to zero until 2300, he calculated, the temperature rise at that point would be more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

This matters, because even a three degrees rise in global temperatures would have serious, possibly irreversible, consequences for the planet and for even human survival.

So I'm watching this show last night on my TV...

As Is So Often True....

...whenever there is a windfall, we can expect the parasitic maggots to dig in as deeply as possible and try to find new ways to make even more money:

The FBI is investigating Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, for possible securities fraud, said a person familiar with the probe.

Investigators are focusing on whether Countrywide officials misrepresented the firm's financial position and the quality of its loans in securities filings, said the person, who declined to be identified because he wasn't authorized to speak about the inquiry. He described the inquiry as preliminary.

Countrywide is among at least 14 companies the FBI is checking for possible accounting violations related to the subprime lending crisis, including mortgage lenders, housing developers and Wall Street firms that package loans as securities.

Granted, it's a preliminary investigation and granted, there's no conclusive evidence of securities fraud.

Past history, however, is rife with instances where, when markets are booming, someone will try to grab even more of the windfall in profits and money raining down than is necessary.

The junk bond scandals of the 80s would, you'd think, have alerted investigators overseeing other market bubbles, since in that scandal, several of the biggest names involved in the marketing of sub-prime (there's that word again!) corporate debt were eventually convicted of securities fraud: names like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken stand out in the convictions from those heady days of Reganomics.

Yes, change the world, indeed!

During the dot-com bubble, we saw corporations like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup cited and fined by the SEC for fraudulently humping stocks of companies like WorldCom, JDS Uniphase, Global Crossing, Cisco, and Lucent, all of whom eventually had to answer for some of their own greed.

I personally recall wondering how Cisco Systems could continually make precisely one penny more per share than analysts' estimates each quarter and then realizing there had to be fraud involved. You can't get a much clearer sign than that.

So it's not surprising that, in this latest bubble, there would be fraud going on. Shady mortgages, shady repackaging of those mortgages to shed the risks of the shady mortgages, those stick out as the most obvious strategies a nefarious executive could do in order to squeeze the undeserved buck out of investors and mortgagors.

There's probably more. These things don't happen in a vacuum. I would expect some allegations to be made regarding at least collusion if not conspiracy to commit fraud amongst lenders like Countrywide, DiTech, and other mortgage brokerages and lenders.

Hey, it was practically free money that was lying there for the taking! Who among us wouldn't scoop a little up if we saw a pile of cash in our driveways?

On top of this news, comes some other distressing financial developments, courtesy of Southern Atlantis, we see that the "D" word might have to be used soon:

During the Depression in the 1930's, banks suffered or shut down because their cash amounts and revenues through loans could not meet the balances of their depositors. The Federal Reserve at that time countered the need for cash that remaining banks had through special loans to those institutions. The term auctions the Fed is holding now serve the same purpose, though the interested or borrowing member banks are not mentioned. That, of course, works in the banks' favor: their stock prices don't take a hit, or, at worst, there's no run on the institutions.

OK, so what evidence do we have for this happening now?

Just these:

1) Citi sees $9 bln writedowns at U.S. investment banks

2) Goldman says can't rule out Fed emergency rate cut

The combination of lowered interest rates as well as writedowns of that magnitude will create a deep uncertainty amongst bank account holders. Can you say "run on the bank"?

Too, inflation is already roused, and the rate cut will not help that. Add now the economic slow down we've been experiencing, and you're talking about stagflation, something I've warned about since November of last year.

Another piece of this very complex and ugly puzzle is our foreign relations stances will not be helping us this go-round. Most other developed and -ing nations seem to be doing fine or at least hanging on (there's some trouble in Japan, but growth continues in China and India and Europe).

Normally, we might browbeat some of our allies and trade partners, but I fear that Bush's hubris and naïveté has cost us that potential tool in limiting the damage from a depression that could be as deep as the Great Depression of the late 20s and 30s of the last century.

The real scary part about all this for me is, I can't see the end game to this dip. There's not much good news laying about, no uptick in productivity, no surge in hiring, no growth sector that can't be attributed to inflation or exports.

2008 will not be fun.

No Sizzle, No Steak

Apparently, the media is starting to wake up to the fact that Obama is nothing more than a pretty face.

Outside Washington, Mr. Obama was a multimedia sensation — people offered free tickets to his book readings for $125 on eBay and contributed thousands of dollars each to his political action committee to watch him on stage questioning policy experts.

But inside the Senate, Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, was 99th in seniority and in the minority party his first two years. In committee hearings, he had to wait his turn until every other senator had asked questions. He once telephoned reporters himself to draw attention to his amendments. And some senior colleagues were cool to the newcomer, whom they considered naïve.

Determined to be viewed as substantive, Mr. Obama kept his head down, declining Sunday talk show invitations for his first year, and consulted Senate elders for advice. He was cautious — even on the Iraq war, which he had opposed as a Senate candidate. He voted against the withdrawal of troops and proposed legislation calling for a drawdown only after he was running for president and polls showed voters favoring it.

And while he rightly takes credit for steering through an ethics overhaul that reformers called a “gold standard,” like most freshmen he did not play a significant role in passing much other legislation and disappointed some Democrats for not becoming a more prominent voice in other important debates.

(emphasis added)

It seems that this man of principle, this man dedicated to changing politics as usual in DC, is as committed to the status quo as any man (or woman) who runs on poll-driven platforms: "Gee, that rhetoric tests nicely, but we'll get killed in the sticks if we actually vote that way!"

Too, in that passage are a few other hints regarding Obama's, um, mettle.

Let's take a closer look at them: "He once telephoned reporters himself to draw attention to his amendments."

Now, fair enough. He's was the 99th Senator out of 100 at that point. Press releases might not cut it. I wonder if the 98th Senator called reporters? Or the 90th?

Or is Obama's ego so overinflated that he felt he needed that kind of media spotlight? It seems it must have killed him to be "declining Sunday talk show invitations".

I can't imagine what Michelle must have thought, those first two years. I would imagine they've had it so easy up to this point, everyone pretty much getting out of their way, laying rose petals at their feet. I mean, come on, does anyone seriously believe that the best the Illinois GOP, the party of Abraham Lincoln, could run for Senate against Obama was Alan Keyes? Someone sat on their hands. (and yes, I'm well aware of the crumbled candidacies that preceded Keyes')

More important to me, however, is this: "And some senior colleagues were cool to the newcomer, whom they considered naïve."

This raises a substantive issue, the same substantive issue that a Bloomberg or other independent run would raise.

That is, how would Obama govern?

He hasn't been in the national political arena long enough to forge the connections and network that assists a President in getting his job done, getting his legislative agenda passed. Ask Minnesota about Jessie Ventura for an example. Or look to history.

A quick review of Presidents over the past 30 years points out some bad trends against an Obama presidency. Jimmy Carter was a governor until he stole the nomination away from Ted Kennedy. His first term was beset by woes about legislation and how to fix the crises that hit the nation. He didn't include the Congress in his policies until well into his term, and by then, it was likely too late. He had pissed them off early on by slamming some Democratic bills as pork.

Trying to change politics as usual. It wasn't until 1979, the energy crisis and his Cabinet shake up that Congress came back around to his side. That was more than two years wandering the wilderness and all but guaranteed a Reagan presidency.

Bill Clinton had early legislative successes, primarily because he spent four years building a coalition of support from within, the Democratic Leadship Council, his so-called "Third Way" which included many people in congress and national politics who were respected and listened to for it.

Of course, like Carter, Clinton's hubris about a mandate eventually got in his way, as well, on healthcare. Here, Hillary steps to centerstage. While the final plan was not badly flawed-- indeed, much of it is in her widely regarded and praised healthcare plan in her campaign-- getting to that final plan was, well, like the proverbial watching them make sausage: you didn't want to know how it was being done.

That was pretty much the end of Clinton's Congressional honeymoon, since the following year, Newt Gingrich took over Congress.

In fact, much of Clinton's last six years in office was spent trying to staunch the blood of the zealous and overexuberant legislation of the Republican Congress.

So much for "governing from the right".

The only two state-level Presidents who hit the ground running with Congress were Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. We can see that Bush's connections to his fathers White House helped fill his Rolodex, while Reagan's long-standing in the Republican party-- he ran against the incumbent President, Gerald Ford, in 1976-- gave him an in with the party faithful and insiders long before he won the nomination.

Barack Obama, sadly, has not even the level of exposure that Jimmy Carter has, which is why superdelegates haven't precisely been flocking to his side, despite the media perceptions of Clintonian evil versus Obaman sainthood. While neither of those perceptions is precisely accurate, the media flouting of them should have created a stampede of SDs.

After all, "old" Washington governs by polls, don't you know?

To others, though, the mismatch between Mr. Obama’s outside profile and his inside accomplishments wore thin. While some senators spent hours in closed-door meetings over immigration reform in early 2007, he dropped in only occasionally, prompting complaints that he was something of a dilettante.

He joined a bipartisan group, which included Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and Mr. Kennedy, that agreed to stick to a final compromise bill even though it was sure to face challenges from interest groups on both sides. Yet when the measure reached the floor, Mr. Obama distanced himself from the compromise, advocating changes sought by labor groups. The bill collapsed.

To some in the bipartisan coalition, Mr. Obama’s move showed an unwillingness to take a tough stand.

Welcome To The Big Leagues, Son

I love this paragraph:

But after his defeats this week at the hands of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, there is frustration and anger among his supporters, advisers and contributors about the Clinton campaign’s attacks on him — and still-unresolved tension about how far he can go in striking back without sacrificing his claim to be practicing a new brand of politics.

Hm. All these freshly washed faces attracted to the Obama campaign because, you know, he still has that "new pol" smell about him, which is all that distinguishes him from Clinton or McCain, for that matter.

Ethical questions, close ties to shabby lobbyists, the ability to bald-faced lie to voters while cutting back room deals with the people who his "policies" will affect...as a Clintonista, it's been fun watching Obama peeled back like an onion.

But you know what they say about onions: you keep peeling them and finally you're left with nothing. That, above all else, is probably why Obombers are so angry and frustrated right now with what are very mild hits by the Clinton campaign against their hero.

The Sally Power incident yesterday shows what a deep fracture there is between the Obama public face and what goes on behind the scenes.

“Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign."

That last bit is clearly a lie. She is senior enough in the campaign staff that those sentiments had been reinforced somewhere in the echo chamber that is all campaigns. You are insulated from reality and develop a deeply paranoid sense of both grandeur and suspicion.

That's just the nature of a campaign, like it or not. You're too focused on the work in front of you to take a breath and put things into perspective.

Which is why it's been delicious this week to watch Obombers sweat a little. The assumption that the nomination was there for the taking has been shattered like the illusion it was ever since there was no clear winner on Super Tuesday, and Hillary Clinton has exposed a deep flaw in the nominating process: once you take it off the table and put it into subjective territory, the case for either candidate can be made.

We Clintonistas knew that, which is why when the Obombers were gloating, we merely smiled, and egged them on. Neither Obama nor Clinton will win this on the hustings. It will be up to the superdelegates, and the Clintons have far more to deal to them, because, you see...well, it's like legislation: you don't want to see what goes in it to get it passed.

The end game is starting to take shape here: Obama will end up with about a 100 delegate lead in elected delegates. He might end up with the popular vote (depending on Florida and Michigan, both heavily Clintonian strongholds), but Clinton can point out that more Democrats voted for her, even disallowing Florida and Michigan, therefore she deserves to represent the majority of Democrats.

That, I think, is a very strong argument, and she can back that up by pointing out that in primaries alone, you know, where the people vote, people who vote and then go to their jobs and not the idle rich who can put in two or three hours standing around a school cafeteria, she not only clobbered Obama in the popular vote, but in the delegate count as well.

In other words, we've got a brokered ticket. And then the fun begins at the convention or before.

Friday Cat Kitten Blogging

Hallo mah peepz! I no fel so gud dis week. Muss bin sumfin dadby feeded me. Butt I dint wanna dispoind you!

Friday Music Blogging

Blondie - Rapture

Y'know, if you hang around long enough, things take on a whole new meaning that you're certain the creators couldn't possibly think about. While there was never a deep philosophical discussion regarding the meaning of this song..."Duuuuude, great beat, easy to dahnce to, I give it a 74, mon!...after twenty years of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and eight years of Bush...listen closely to the lyrics and think about the song title.

I've Made A Decision

I'm going to write a book. A series of them, in fact.

I won't reveal details until I've submitted to a publisher, but the very very few people I've approached with the idea believe it could sell quite nicely.

The best part is, no research! I can do all this in my sleep, which is how I write most blogposts anyway...

One Reason To Be A Little Worried

While the primary Democrats have raised nearly a half billion dollars in funds, the party is broke. The Republicans are not:

The Democratic National Committee ended 2007 nearly flat broke, with cash of $2.9 million and debts of $2.2 million. Since then it has raised some money, paid down debt and managed to put $3.7 million in its piggy bank. This compares, however, with $25 million that the Republican National Committee has in cash on hand, after having raised $97 million since the beginning of 2007.

And with Senator John McCain now the presumptive Republican nominee, party officials started plotting with his campaign this week on deploying those resources against the well-financed Democratic candidacies of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Remember, the parties can spend money on the presidential campaigns, particularly in the grey zone between the primary campaigns and the convention, when candidates are barred from using general election funds OR primary funds.

Howard Dean, the 2004 Barack Obama, screwed this up, royally, according to the article.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) You know, this is the third similar bombing in roughly three years. You'd think a bombing at the embassy of two of our stanuchest allies might get as much national attention.

2) Someone will have to explain to me how caucuses are valid means of selecting a candidate, since they favor the wealthy and discourage the working classes. We've heard from the folks who claim the election was stolen in Ohio since people had to stand in line for hours to vote, choosing between voting (presumably for Kerry) and their jobs. Well, doesn't spending two hours in the middle of the working week constitute a similar burden? Haven't we had enough plutocractic decisions made for us? Can Obama truly represent the least among us if he's been chosen by the elites? How patrician!

3) This is interesting, and I'm shocked that more noise hasn't been made about it. Colombia is gearing up for what appears to be border skirmishes with Venezuela and Ecuador, both of whom, to put it politely, have certain antagonisms and animosities towards the Bush administration. You'd *think* they'd want to make this case go away, yet they are the ones pressing it. It could be that this same guy has been funneling arms to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It could also be that the guy is Russian. Together, those might trump any PR stink that Chavez can raise.

4) This is truly a tragic loss, for her family and her school of course, but for all of us. it has been written than any man's death diminishes me. This death in particular shows just how much we lose. She could have been the next generation of great woman.

5) It's time for the annual reminder that 20% of soldiers returning from combat are returning with serious emotional timebombs in their heads. And the annual observation that near not a damn thing is being done to help them.

6) Yea. Barack Obama's a new kind of politician...from as far back as the hate-filled "1984" spoof to the race-baiting after Bill Clinton's comments regarding Obama's Iraq fairy tale, up to this point, Barack Obama has never taken responsibility or denounced OR rejected the misogynism and hatred his followers have spewed. To his credit, for this last comment, Obama very quietly said there was no place for it. I challenge you to go find that part of the tale. At the law, and Obama is a lawyer, silence means consent. He could have, should have, spoken out if he finds this kind of politics so unattractive, as loudly as he does when he perceives it's being lobbed at him.

7) Neither candidate can win this on the hustings, that much is clear. Once you open the door to subjective considerations, all bets are off as to who the nominee will be. It doesn't matter who has "the most votes". And for those who believe it does, I have three words for you: Al Gore 2000.

8) And for those who plead with Hillary to leave the race "for the good of the party", I have three words for you: Al Gore 2000. You didn't like it then, so stop being a hypocrite now.

9) You might think a sport like golf would be a bit more civilized than to engage in animal slaughter. He fired ten times to do the trick.

10) Not that this helps me much this year anyway, I'm still due for one, but it's nice to have them cut back a little. The procedure is not completely horrible, but the preparation is.

11) Finally, it may be symbolic, but it is historic! Thank you, Brattleboro and Marlboro!

What An Unusual Choice Of Phrase...

“I don’t think it is fair to suggest somehow that we have been trying to hide the bone on this,” Obama told Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times.

...and then he turned and ran out of the room, reporters' questions trailing behind him like passengers trying to catch a train leaving early.

Seven Weeks

That's an eternity in a political calendar, particularly in the modern political calendar where stories no longer have "second day" details, but have follow ups in the second hour. I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of stories like these:

1) 'NAFTAgate' began with remark from Harper's chief of staff

2) ONLY GORE CAN STOP A MELTDOWN (relax...it's the Rupert Murdoch-owned NY Post...it can't be true!)

3) They must go for Hillary Clinton

4) Obama and Clinton Supporters Must Drop Out of the Race (a not-particularly comic take on the candidates themselves dropping out...I'd like to think I was some influence on this, but damn! I'd hate to bear any responsibility for "teh UNfunny"!)

5) The Sanjaya Effect? (And a Few Other Stray March 4 Thoughts) (skip the article. It's NRO's The Corner)

6) HILLARY, 'MOST SECRETIVE POLITICIAN IN AMERICA'? (Surprisingly, not a Murdoch-onwed outlet, it's MSNBC (= Misogynists Slap Nice Blonde Candidate?))

...and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, add Pepto Bismol and lie down...

You get the sense that a bunch of bloggers and writers, looking down at a blank screen after imbibing way too much Tuesday night and needing something to post because they're bumping up against their expense account limits, decided to, you know, get stupid.

Stupider, I should say. This goes beyond "hangover stupid" straight to "hair of the dog, and another, and another" stupid reporting and analysis. This goes straight to "Ohmygod, I slept with THAT?!" stupid. This goes straight to "Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and is trying to get uranium" stupid reporting.

It's hard to coax breathless prose to signify THE! MOST! IMPORTANT! STORY! EVER! when in fact nothing is happening and nothing is going to happen at least until Saturday. April 5, I mean.

Guys, give your livers, your brains and your readers a break! It's nearly Spring. Take a walk, stop imagining that you're still in Manchester, NH, and enjoy yourselves. We'll have plenty to occupy ourselves!

American Idol is in full swing! We're about due for a Britney sighting any day now! Baseball is about to get underway! Some celebrity somewhere is about to give birth to a baby! A bear's about to shit in the woods!

On the other hand, maybe you could, you know, write about something that matters?

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

The Inimitable Lisa Nova on the Democratic primaries

It Ain't Over...

...'til the pantsuited lady sings...which would be pretty scary, I think!:

“No candidate in recent history — Democratic or Republican — has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary,” Mrs. Clinton, of New York, said at a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “We all know that if we want a Democratic president, we need a Democratic nominee who can win Democratic states just like Ohio.”

It doesn't sound like she's even warming up her voice yet.

Interesting possibilities arise out of last night's V,O,T,R primary: Vermont, Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island.

For one thing, Hillary swept all of Ohio except for the isolated counties containing large urban areas like Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Cleveland. A startling observation for Obama is that he didn't carry the surrounding suburbs of those cities. That would concern me because he's never had that problem in other big-ticket states. Indeed, in Texas, he carried the suburbs of Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Curiously, he didn't carry San Antonio. We might chalk that up to that city being more conservative than the other three.

Clinton's electoral map is starting to show great strength in the Southwest and Northeast. This is comforting news for her should she continue on to the convention and be within striking distance of Obama at that point: she can make a very strong case that she will win in states that Democrats must win in order to win the elecdtion, where Obama's strengths are in states that normally won't vote Democratic if you held a gun to the voters' heads.

Should a brokered ticket be necessary, meaning Obama and Clinton agree to both appear on the ticket, this might be enough for her to win the top spot.

While Pennsylvania is the next truly key battleground state, should Clinton prevail there, which seems likely now given that nearly all the counties surrounding it have gone into the Clinton column, the next race of interest after that would be Oregon on May 20, which could prove to be the stopper for either Obama or Clinton.

North Carolina on the 6th of May should be an easy Obama victory, but look for Bill Clinton to pull the same moral victory there that he did in Alabama: Obama won that state by 14% points in the popular vote, but the Big Dog's campaigning made the delegate race a 27-25 split.

Apart from Mississippi and Wyoming, there are no more primaries this month. Obama should do well in both of those states, but keep an eye on Wyoming in terms of the Afghanistan oversight issue.

One side note to the Obombers who believe Hillary's done for: we all castigated Al Gore for giving up too easily. Maybe you guys should cut her some slack. She has a point about her candidacy being viable, still.

Walking Back the Cat

This interview with Stephen Kinzer on Democracy Now is a must read/see. In a nutshell, a Middle East primer from the author of "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" and "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terrorism".
"....—they call it in the CIA “walking back the cat.” You can walk back the cat endlessly on this one. And the reason the story is so relevant is that it tells us the main thing you need to know in assessing the current idea of an attack on Iran, which is the worst consequences are ones you can’t even imagine. Not even the wisest analysts, the most prescient specialists, in 1953 could ever have imagined all these consequences. Ah, the Shah’s going to fall; there’s going to be mullahs in power; the Soviets are going to invade Afghanistan; all these other things will happen. It shows you that when you violently interfere in the affairs of another country, you’re like setting off a wheel at the top of a hill. You let it go; you have no idea how it’s going to bounce."
Also, the exchange between hostage Bruce Laingen and one of his hostage taker/jailers is, well, let's just say, NOT part of the perspective widely circulated in the West. But certainly gives one pause given current affairs in Iraq. Not to mention Iran again. When will we ever learn......

Easy For HIM To Say!

On the face of things, this sounds like a good idea:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, battling the worst housing recession in a quarter century, urged lenders to forgive portions of mortgages held by homeowners at risk of defaulting.

``Efforts by both government and private-sector entities to reduce unnecessary foreclosures are helping, but more can, and should, be done,'' Bernanke said in a speech in Orlando, Florida today. ``Principal reductions that restore some equity for the homeowner may be a relatively more effective means of avoiding delinquency and foreclosure.''

Approximately ten percent of mortgages in the country are in technical default, meaning that the amount owed to the lender exceeds the market value of the house. Figure another twenty percent beyond that are at or just around a default, meaning that if housing prices drop any further, they too would risk being in technical default. This doesn't take into account actual defaults, where families simply toss the keys on the table and walk away, unable to make anymore payments.

So would banks agree to this?

Probably not, except in limited circumstances. I can visualize a scenario where banks decided to reduce some mortgages on borrowers who they deemed to be good re-risks: in other words, likely to come back and borrow more, which would make up some of the reduction in loans receivable for the bank's balance sheets.

Widespread mortgage reductions simply ain't happening and we have only to look as far as the new Visa IPO to see how silly this talk is.

If you don't know about this, a consortium of banks owns the Visa credit card as a private joint venture amongst them. These banks are attempting to spin off the Visa division as a stand-alone public company.

Odd time to spin off a credit card company, don't you think? Consumer defaults on credit cards are at all-time highs, lending risk is skyrocketing, and people are maxed out on their credit cards. How could Visa possibly mine new territory now in order to make the IPO work?

Many reasons have been put forth for this, but underlying all these excuses seems to me a very simple piece of logic: the banks are seeing what Bernanke is seeing and taking self-serving action to support their own stock prices: they are off-loading bad debts not by expensing them and taking a hit to the bottom line, but by moving them into the new Visa entity, then spinning that off to basically drop dead and drop their debt off on the suckers who buy the stock.

This will give the banks the funds necessary to try to salvage their mortgage banking business, roughly $10 billion across the IPO.

Naturally, this makes the shareholders of the banks happy and they would not be pleased to see that money "squandered" on some bunch of suckers who borrowed more than they should have.

I guess it's easy to be bloodless when your blood runs cold anyway.

Hm. This Is Troubling...

(via) In July 2005, ChicagoBusiness.com reported that Rezmar, Inc., a corporation owned by Tony Rezko (Obama's indicated bagman who is about to stand trila for corruption charges today in Chicago), signed a joint venture agreement with Iraq to operate...wait for it...a power plant in Iraq.

What makes this truly interesting is another piece of the Obama puzzle I reported on the other day: the connections between an exiled Iraqi oil billionaire Nadhmi Auchi and Barack Obama's campaign, in which the billionaire feloniously financed through a loan to Obama's campaign an Obama fundraiser in May of that same year, 2005 (presumably this was to repay debts incurred in his rookie run for Senate).

For the mapless, let me draw one:Iraqi oil billionaire, repatriated oil assets, ready customer base, US President

The deal was signed before the $3.5 million dollar loan to Obama, and was arranged through Tony Rezko. Quid pro quo? Maybe not, but it sure smells funny.

But wait, there's more, as the kids say: Tony Rezko has ties to former Iraqi Energy Minister Aiham Alsammarae, who was tried and convicted of stealing $650 million in Iraqi reconstruction funding provided by the Bush administration. He also lived while in exile from Iraq in...Chicago!

This theft also partly explains why Iraqis only have about eight to ten hours of electricity every day.

Funny how all this corruption surrounds the energy industry in Iraq, isn't it?

Funny how it all centers around Barack Obama's Presidential candidacy. After all this is a man who's positions on Iraq have run from "No war" to his July 27, 2004 comment that there's "not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage" to his current "once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out," flimflam.

We now get a look behind the curtain at this particular "evolution in action" moment of Barack Obama, lubricated in large part by illegal campaign financing, outright theft of American taxpayer money, and shady connections to a country whose economic and physical future is dependent upon who will be the next President.

I think Obama, for the good of the Democratic party, should consider dropping out now, before this embarassment becomes exploited by the Republican party.

BEFORE You Get All Cocky About November

Watch this video (roughly an hour and twenty minutes)

This was a recent panel in a symposium held in the New York Public Library called "There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America", which invited experts from fields as diverse as linguistics and government to speak about manipulation and propaganda.

This particular panel, comprised of George Lakoff (Co-Founder and Senior Fellow, Rockridge Institute and the Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, UC Berkeley), Frank Luntz (political pollster and consultant; author of "Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear."), and Drew Westen (professor of psychology/psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Emory University; author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."), moderated by Nicholas Lemann (dean and Henry R. Luce Professor, The Journalism School, Columbia University), was on the topic of "Deceiving Images: The Science of Manipulation".

Much has happened since this symposium, just five short months ago, but some of the conclusions drawn are fascinating.

In a nutshell, this video helps explain why Democrats have had such horrible times trying to win elections. In particular, pay close attention to George Lakoff's discussion, and to the reaction people have to Frank Luntz, who, while a reprehensible little man, has some valuable insight into the political process and for that, deserved a respectful-if-chilled reception.

He speaks about Kerry and Gore losing their elections, and then gets roundly heckled by folks who point out those elections were stolen.

No matter how true that is (and certainly, cases can be made for both), the simple fact is, neither election should have been close enough to steal and here, Luntz is golden in explaining how the GOP managed to turn the election to that plane. This is stuff we NEED to hear and only goes towards proving Luntz's points about communications.

It's Sunday. There's no football on. You can spend some time watching.

And then go throw LinkTV a few bucks for showing it. You can even pick up two DVDs that will show you how the Republicans plan on stealing this year's election, including BBC reporter Greg Palast's "The Election Files 2008" which includes early efforts to cage voters this year, as well as reports on Diebold failures from 2006 and how that company has been having elected officials who reported them fired! That's right: elected officials are being fired on the orders of a private corporation.

Medical Update

I got some possibly good news yesterday.

The first surgeon called, and she said that the Columbia U review of her slides showed that her diagnosis was accurate: she got that entire first tumour in her surgery.

She's asked the second surgeon to send over those slides so she can review them herself. As she put it, he's not a dermapathologist, and they may not have had one on staff at the hospital.

So my surgery this week has been postponed.