Whiny Moonbats

There's a lot of truth in what John Nichols says in The Nation:

 

In what he admitted was an "inartful" diatribe, the press secretary unleashed on lefties who have objected to Obama's many compromises on economic and social issues and, above all, with regard to the expansion of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

The "professional left," claimed Gibbs, is just a complaint club that will only " be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality." (If we are deferring to reality, it is probably worth noting that very few people on the left propose Pentagon "elimination," although many of them agree with Congressmen Barney Frank and Ron Paul on the need to address the abuses and excesses in defense budgets.)

Gibbs hit with the left with what he apparently thought was his best shot: "They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president."

 

Of course, what Gibbs failed to note, as Nichols points out, is the strong support the fledgling Obama campaign received from the left at critical moments in the campaign. Or we'd be pretty angry at President Hillary right now.

 

There's a lot of understandable anger from the left. We outlasted the wingnut right and their eight year Presidency and decades-long Congressional hijacking, and we expected more from an incoming Democratic President. Here's the thing: we did not win the election for Obama. At best, we gave him an early, fighting chance to win the Presidential nomination, and that's an old favor that should have been called in long ago.

 

As the saying goes, if you want a friend in DC, get a dog. We thought Obama might be our puppy, which conveniently ignored the reality those of us who were Hillbots kept hammering at over and over: Obama is essentially a centrist candidate.

 

He had to be. The dirty fact of American politics is, radicalism does not win elections. It wins nominations, so if you're going to anticipate some sort of quid pro quo, you better be hoping for great seats at the nominating convention, because after that, you're useless. And if you don't believe me, ask any right winger who is still waiting, thirty years on, for Roe v Wade to be overturned.

 

Indeed, liberals have been more fortunate than our conservative counterparts in enacting legislation that advances our causes, mostly because they are the right things to do and the majority of this country knows it. They know that unfettered capitalism is cannibalistic to the economy and to the American population. They know that a woman's pregnancy should be her decision alone, with some consideration given to the baby the further along its developed. They know that mass ownership of guns is a dangerous thing, and needs to be overseen and regulated at least as well as a car.

 

They get it. They get that private health insurance-- while better than no insurance-- is not the best we can do, particularly when we look around us and see nations giving healthcare to their populace no questions asked. They get that war has far fewer advantages to a nation than it has disadvantages, particularly an unnecessary war. 

 

But those same people have been made afraid of these changes by the very frustrated and frightened right. By putting up obstacles, we liberals have become frustrated and feeling a measure of impotence, as well. Advances that we thought were secure, like the Great Society, have been eroded and then successfully scaled back by a party bent on making us all hang separately. 

 

And doing it in the name of Christian charity.

 

My study and experiences with the American political landscape have made me an incrementalist. I confess to that. That makes me a wee bit unpopular in some circles, and I'm OK with that. Radical change happened in the Sixties, and we're paying a toll for that now and have been for thirty years as every "reform" has been laid at the feet of "dirty fucking hippies". 

 

And yet, there's a part of me that's also anarchistic. I see that companies can patent my genome, and imagine the worst scenario that if I contract cancer, I'll be charged a royalty. I see corporations flat out buy elections for candidates, and wonder how my voice can ever be heard again. I see politicians cynically claim to be for something, then in a miraculous change of heart, come out against the very thing they proposed. 

 

And I wonder if incrementalism is a viable option anymore. The worst part about that sentiment is, I may never know. Change in America happens in fits and starts, and can be either evolutionary or revolutionary. It may happen in the next ten years that steps to fight global warming will finally be taken as the Midwest and the Farm Belt choke on another Dust Bowl. And who knows, those steps might even work. 

 

Or it may happen not in my child's lifetime, but in my grandchild's lifetime and be woefully too little, way too late, and evolution will leave us in the dust.   

 

 

 

 

 

The Unusual Suspects

The Federal Reserve is in a quandry. They've pretty much adjusted interest rates as low as possible (at the last meeting, nine banks requested an extension of the current near-zero percent rate, while three wanted it increased to one percent). They've loosened reserve requirements a little, but looser reserves are part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

 

And yet, the economy is stagnant. Sure, companies are showing stellar earnings growth, but revenues are lagging, sales are below expectations and most of the earnings gains have come from increased productivity, as firms have made more out of less, but that horse is being beaten to death.

 

Normally, we'd go declare war on someone, but the dirty little secret is this economic collapse happened despite two majors incursions in South Asia, in large part because of a bonehead President who lowered taxes during a period of war, thus soaking up any available surplus that could have been invested in economic stimulus now.

 

Indeed, part of why President Obama has been recalcitrant in bringing troops home is what he'd do with them. He'd be adding tens of thousands of people to the already bloated unemployed population. At least in Asia, they're doing some busy work under the political cover of two wars that Congress authorized, so therefore can't easily criticize.

 

The possible solution?

 

Print more money.

 

Normally, this is considered a way to kick off inflation, if not hyperinflation. The supply and demand of money works not a whole lot differently than the supply and demand for any commodity: the bigger the supply, the less "value" it has on the demand side. That means it will cost more to buy stuff. 

 

Here's the thing: right now, the economy is in dire danger of falling into deflation. You'd think that would be a good thing, and if there was full employment it might be. Deflation will lower earnings further, which will discourage companies from hiring more people. 

 

Probably. See, no one knows for certain because it's been such a long time since we've faced a truly deflationary economy. In an era where tax increases boosted the economy (see the Clinton tax increases of 1993), who's to say deflation is a negative for employment. 

 

This is what makes the Republican anti-tax mantra so ludicrous. Sure, no one likes paying more taxes but right now, lowering taxes on the wealthiest would be a little like adding sugar frosting to the glaze on a honey-dipped donut. It doesn't add anything but empty calories to the snack. The rich won't do much with this cash except stuff it in a mattress. 

 

Or worse, in China and other emerging markets. 

 

The Fed will gamble, and issue more money in the hopes that a little forced inflation now will mean a little more "real" inflation later. But not too much.   

But There's No Global Warming, Comrade!

Item: Deadly Moscow summer kills 700 daily

 

Item: Greenland glacier calves island 4 times the size of Manhattan, UD scientist reports

 

Still, the clown car brigade refuses to face up to reality. Seven hundred people dying of heat daily. An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan island breaks off from Greenland's main glacier after sliding down a few hundred yards of meltwater, but hey, global warming is just a myth. Or it can't be responsible for this destruction.

 

There's your new meme from the asshats of Alaska et al. "Nobody could have forseen..." will now become extended from Condi Rice's mumbled excuse for the 9/11 attacks to encapsulate the single most reported upon, most documented, environmental disaster ever.

 

No one could have foreseen only if no one took their heads out of their asses.

 

Oh, the Moscow thing? Well, first off, Muscovites have never really needed air conditioning. Average summer highs are around 75. Temperatures this summer have regularly hit 100. This, coupled with weeks without the usual rainfall, has triggered massive wildfires in dry brush. Those have created a thick blanket of smog, and no wind to carry it off.

 

But no one could have foreseen this. Fourteen thousand Frenchmen can't be right.

 

The shortsightedness of the right wing has reached crippling lows. They're wrong about global warming, they're wrong about drilling for oil, they're wrong about budget deficits and healthcare and any number of issues that confront us and that must be tended to now.

 

They're just plain wrong.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1)  Nuclear war  is 65 years old today. Please retire.

 

2) Of course, heartfelt congratulations go out to Elena Kagan, 112th Justice of the US Supreme Court.

 

3) It was a pretty good week for President Obama, almost by accident. Christina Romer, you may recall, was the moron who projected that we'd have unemployment peaking at 8% with the stimulus package, when we were practically at 8% already when the report was issued.

 

4) Whiny conservatives will stop at nothing to project an image of control. Truth will out, is all I'm going to say. Remember Prop 8?

 

5) Less than twenty percent of college age Americans are actually attending college. This article is ridiculous when that context is taken into consideration. Send your kids to college. Give them a leg up on life. What is it with conservatives that they'd deny their own children an education so they can have a few more bucks?

 

6) How stupid are conservatives? David Stockman, Reagan's point man for tax reduction and the cynical idiot who foisted the Laffer Curve on America, thinks taxes are and have been way too low!

 

7) We've turned a corner on Social Security. That's why it's gotten windy.

 

8) Today is National Root Beer Float Day. I was always more partial to Coke floats, myself and as a former ice cream slinger, I found floats to be pretty reprehensible to make, but dayum, they taste good!

 

9) Multiple car pileups. Snow. Fog. Forest fires. All have closed interstate highways in the US. Now add to the list "cheese".

 

10) I'm sorry to end this on a sad note: South Africa's last rhino has been slaughtered.

Come Here Often, H8r?

Sanity rules, in the form of Judge Vaughan Walker.

 

In the event you slept through yesterday and by some miraculous turn of fate, this is the first news source you turn to each morning, Proposition 8 was struck down in California yesterday. The ruling, based heavily on Article 8 and Article 14 of the Constitution, basically says that it is illegal to ban marriage based on a moral repugnance.

 

"The evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples," Walker wrote.

Equal treatment under the law. Homosexuals are no less (or no more) human than heterosexuals (or "opposite lovers"). Since the law is based solely on opinion and not scientific, factual evidence, this ruling should likely stand up to appeal. Until the SCOTUS, where who knows what will happen.

 

A side note: expect a similar challenge to be raised to Arizona's odious "illegal brown people" law.

 

American history is full of examples that show you cannot legislate morality. Some may oppose gay marriage on moral grounds, but their truly is no factual, legal basis to prevent two adults from marrying. Period. End of discussion.

 

Our President may oppose gay marriage on moral grounds and he's entitled to that opinion, as wrong-headed as it is. I support the right of any two people to be as miserable as any married couple. Other noted liberals have held abortion to be morally repugnant, yet have supported Roe v. Wade, most notably Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York and perennial Presidential Hamlet. 

 

That's not to say that morals have no basis in legislation or governance. We ban killing someone for its criminal act, but also for the moral force of our beliefs. Morality also plays into deciding what punishment the killer should receive: were their mitigating circumstances, does the evidence suggest a homicide rather than murder, and so on.

 

Where it has to stop is depriving someone of a common civil right based solely on how you judge them to be, morally. A murderer who is serving his sentence may legally be deprived of his freedom to wander the streets-- his behavior has warranted that-- but not his civil right to an attorney. An innocent person may not be deprived of ANY right, whether to an attorney, to wander the streets or to express his devotion to another adult before the law. 

 

You may find that morally repugnant. I do not. If you do, you are free to socially deny that couple what you personally could offer them: friendship, your assistance, what have you. Your church may deny them the permission to hold a wedding in their facilities. That's still allowed after this ruling.

 

The state, however, is supposed to be above moral judgements in these matters. Judge Walker has ruled correctly.

 

The delicious ironies of this case?

 

Judge Walker was originally nominated to the Federal bench by Ronald Reagan. His nomination was stalled at that time because he was lead counsel on a suit brought by the US Olympic Committee to prevent the "Gay Olympics" from using the word "Olympics" (it's referred to now as the "Gay Games" for that reason).

 

And...Judge Walker is gay.  

 

How Noble Of You!

I want to start with a quote from 1839:

We have not only the most numerous nobility of any country in the world, but perhaps the most powerful. The privileges of the nobility of other lands are limited by laws, and the King on the one hand, and the people on the other, sec that these laws are not transcended. Laws made to restrain our American nobles, have hitherto been found to be but little belter than cobwebs. If a case comes before a Court involving any of the fundamental principles of this system, the boasted " independence of the Judiciary" is soon found to be mere independence of common sense and common justice. And when infractions of the law by any great number of banks are so glaring that even "judicial blindness" can be blind no longer, the State Legislatures are forthwith convened to shelter the transgressors from the penalties they have incurred.

-- The United States Democratic Review, Volume 6, issue 23, p. 459.

That paragraph could be just as easily written today.

If a baseball player slides into home and hands the umpire a hundred dollars before the ump makes his call, we'd call it bribery. But if a businessman sitting in a skybox at the same game sidles up to a congressman and hands him a hundred dollars as that legislator contemplates a bill that might regulate said business, that's a campaign contribution.

Next, take a look at a more contemporary piece, from Amitai Etzioni:

You may not wonder why the auto dealers won exemptions in Congress from the new financial regulations. But the behind-the-scene deals the White House has made are enough to make you sick.

These include deals with private hospitals to drop the public option in exchange for their support of the health care bill and with the pharmaceutical industry to block Americans from purchasing low-cost drugs from other countries.

Some of us have learned to live with these maneuvers as long as something comes out at the other end.

However, many Americans are busy working or looking for a job, taking care of their families and trying to find some spare time to follow their favorite sports team and have a beer. But when they are made aware of these shenanigans, they are nauseated. As they should be.

I choose my words carefully. I suggest that the sense of the tea partiers that they have been had is largely a valid one. At the same time, their ideas of what ought to be done are very much off the mark.

The desire to gut the government ignores the fact that there are many important missions that the government is best-suited to accomplish. However, before those of us who do not belong to this movement can carry this message to the tea partiers, we first need to validate their feelings, rather than dismiss them.

And we must be honest: Reforming the government so that it will be less captured by special interests and more responsive to the public interest is a difficult road to navigate.

(emphasis added)

If there is anything about the Teabagging movement that pisses me off most, it is that they are SO close to having the right answer, yet cannot get past this last gasp to the truth of this nation.

America has a nobility. It is a plutocracy-- more correctly, an oligarchy-- run by an aristocracy that did not gain its power by force (altho they will not hesitate to use it. Ask any early union member.) but by fraud and luck.

 

The con that the nobility maintains on the rest of the nation is simple: You, too, can become a member of this club.

 

See, a titled nobility, such as they have in Europe or Japan, is near impossible to become a member of. You can marry into it, of course, but you cannot, thru the myth of hard work and thrift, earn yuor way in. You might buy a title, and all the trappings that come with it, but you will soon find the cost to you is greater than the initial price. And even there, you still would not be noble. Your children might be, perhaps. Maybe.

 

A monied nobility, such as we have in America, is just slightly easier to get into. It's a lottery, to be sure, one that costs dearly. But you know most of the names: Kennedy, Bush, Cabot, Lodge, Penn, Adams. And there are others who have, thru hard work and luck, earned a place in nobility: Gates, Clinton, Perot, and now Obama.

 

Indeed, one of the reasons our right wing compatriots are so angry with Obama is he opened the door wide to the possibility of minorities entering the club. This is disguised, of course, as "they're taking our jobs," as if somehow being a wage slave would make you wealthy and charismatic enough to become a member.

 

In fact, even hitting the largest lottery jackpot in American history would not make you a member of this club. Accomplishment might, which is why actor George Clooney is a pro-tem member, but if Clooney's influence dies with him, if it is not passed onto another generation, he will lose his nobility.

 

It is this nobility-- less the more visible ones, who consider themselves accountable to public opinion but the private ones, who shield themselves behind boardroom doors and show little regard for the public weal-- that control things around you. They buy politicians with campaign funds and contributions to their private charitable organizations. They engage in the quid pro quo of co-opting our political and judicial process, right up to the Supreme Court and its recent decision that corporations (and as a sop to the working man, labor unions) can directly fund advertising that effectively endorses a candidate for office. They effectively wrote legislation for the Bush administration, manned the various regulatory agencies that oversaw their industries, and lobbied in Congress to the exclusion of any private citizens.

 

Here's the kicker: there's no reason to believe that any of this has changed under Obama, except our faith in his good heart and nature. And to be frank, anyone who believed that going in has probably had cause to doubt themselves by now. What Enron was to Bush, Goldman Sachs may end up being to Obama. 

 

Let's focus for a moment on banks, since I've brought up Goldman. Thirty years ago or so, President Carter abandoned Regulation Q, which essentially prevented savings and loans from engaging in any behavior more risky than lending mortgage money. Banks were running red ink, and needed a boost. President Reagan in 1982, took deregulation of the S&Ls and ran with it, and ever since, every President, EVERY President, has gone one step beyond. 

 

In those thirty odd years, we have had no less than six major banking crises: the S&L scandal, the 1987 junk bond market collapse, the Mexican, Argentinian and Russian foreign exchange crises, and now we have the mortgage collapse. Who knows what other crises could have happened without someone pulling a brake in time?

 

Banks used to be a place where you could be reasonably assured you could put your money for safekeeping. Bank stocks used to be among the most stable (only utilities were more stable, but that's changed too). The prices rarely fluctuated and you could count on a quarterly dividend. 

 

In the 2008 Congressional campaign, banks, insurers and real estate interests donated a half billion dollars to candidates. Five. Hundred. Million.

 

No doubt most of that came before, you know, September. I'd hate to think that TARP money flowed right back into the pockets of the people who gave it away.

 

I said, "I'd HATE to think that." 

 

It's not the government, altho it's hard not to blame them for their own greed. Campaigns cost money and the irony is, if we could take the money out of politics, we could take the politics out of money. Right now, it's impossible to raise funds without kowtowing to some nobleman or other.

 

Maybe that's what we need to do, change the language. Maybe, instead of "special interests", call them what they are.

 

Nobility.

 

Maybe then the Teabaggers will get it.  

Have A Coronal On Me!

Global warming? Bah. Meet solar warming:

Astroboffins are warning that a mighty "eruption" of superhot plasma has been blasted out of the Sun directly at the Earth. The plasma cloud is expected to reach Earth beginning tomorrow, possibly causing strange phenomena - including a mighty geomagnetic storm which could see the Northern Lights aurorae extend as far south as Blighty or the northern USA.

As you may or may not know, the typical solar cycle lasts about eleven years, intense activity followed by a similar period of calm. Well, the calm period extended a little, and now the buildup is about to hit us, in less than 24 hours, a coronal mass ejection has been spotted heading directly towards the earth.

It could mean as little damage as a few power lines disrupted and a lovely display of the Northern Lights. It could, and I stress this is a small possibility, mean a complete electromagnetic failure planetwide. This last is not very likely but not impossible.

On the other hand, the activity in 2013...well, that will likely create all sorts of havoc, and may cause the electromagnetic failure scientists have all but determined is inevitable, starting with cell phone outages worldwide and cascading into complete power failure on any electric grid, including solar and wind driven local grids.

To give you an idea, a solar maximum (as they're referred to) in 1921 knocked out the fledging New York City subway system. That's, um, the underground railway, you'll note.

Your best defense? Preparation, of course. Batteries. Lots of batteries. Capacitors, any type of electical storage that you can insulate from the grid will be safe unless it is directly attacked by the solar storms that will occur (remember, the night side of the planet will be relatively secure).

Consider Thursday a test run.

 

Free Speech And The End Of America

This weekend seemed to be about freedom of speech. As I lay in bed recuperating...oh, the surgery went well, the tumor was much tinier than everyone feared, and now I just look like someone punched me in the eye...I saw no less than five programs that dealt with freedom of speech.

 

The right to say what's on your mind without fear of retribution. I live in a nation where this one freedom seems to be the last bastion of the individual, especially if (s)he can be funny while demarcating the problems he or she perceives around him/her.

 

We live in a dying society. We are no longer a people who live under a government beholden and responsible to us, but under a government enslaved by a handful of corporations who themselves are responsible to no one, not even their board of directors.

 

George Carlin says this far more energetically and far more plainly than I could ever hope to speak. It is not without irony that the man who all but challenged the government to limit his speech is the man who points out that the emperor has no clothes.

 

Here's the thing: it doesn't matter if you support Obama. It doesn't matter if you're conservative. It doesn't matter if you're a wild-eyed anarchist bomber with a poster of Che Guevara over your bed. It doesn't matter if you find your comfort in the life hereafter.

 

You. Are. Sheep. So am I.

 

We live in a nation, a new world order writ small, where we have precious little power. Even a revolutionary movement like the Obama campaign is quickly co-opted by the powers that be. We have the illusion of freedom because that's what our corporate masters have deemed important to maintain.

 

Think about the few indisuputably good pieces of legislation to pass Congress over the past thirty years. Take the Americans With Disabilities act, as an example. It helped people who have become hampered by physical disabilities to access things you and I take for granted: buildings, public transporation, theaters and ballparks.

 

This is a good thing, right? I mean, if I lose my legs tomorrow, I can still get to work and to things I enjoy doing.

 

It means I'm not going to be a long term burden to a Social Security system that my employer pays into on my behalf on top of my mandatory contribution. The same Social Secuirty fund that helps pay the day-to-day operations of the Federal Government. The same fund that helped bail out the banks, the auto industry and AIG, as well as two wars.

 

It means I can make money for my employer, thus lessening his burden by assisting him in pursuit of profit.

 

Once you frame this nation in terms of what benefits the corporatocracy, you begin to understand why I say we are no longer free. Substantially all our freedoms now come with a price: enslavement to corporations that are not required to be responsive to the people, in any way shape or form. They can't be held legally responsible for their actions in that they can't be tried, convicted and sent to prison. If the CEO of AIG is convicted, another steps into take his place, raised in the same corporate atmosphere, with the same noxious values as the last guy, but with the added experience of learning from the mistakes of the first.

 

Worse, he's enlisting the help of our government to offset the people's limited power to hold him accountable. This has been going on for decades and is a slow-motion train wreck that once complete will have no recourse to the way things were. No one gives up power easily, least of all those who can abuse that power at will. It's an illusion to think otherwise.

 

This is why I say the First Amendment right to speak freely seems to be the last inherent freedom in America to go by the wayside-- and I include gun ownership, since that may still be allowed and is correctly regulated to try to balance of the right to hold v. the right of society to be protected from gun owners, but is still highly reliant on the goodwill of the corporatocracy. Own enough guns and they'll come after you somehow. 

 

My ability to post this rant on my silly little blog on the internet is not regulated too much. Why? Because it's a silly little blog. Maybe a hundred of you read it everyday if my statistics bear out. Of those, many of you come here to download pictures of Ann Coulter's manimal hands.

 

Who's going to notice? Hell, even the large mammals in Blogtopia (© Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo) who gather a thousand times as many hits each day, that's maybe a million people a year in a nation of 300,000,000. We have so limited impact on such a fundamental construct of America that it's practically laughable.

 

This is why we're allowed to continue to write what we write and say what we say: who's listening anyway? A hundred years from now, it is my hope that these columns you're reading today will help mitigate history's opinion of our nation and how we let freedom die in front of our eyes. A plea for mercy, that some of us understood, that some of us tried like Cassandra to warn of the impending doom, but were drowned out in the noise of Lindsay Lohan.

 

My "libertarian" friends accuse me of wanting bigger government.

 

I don't.

 

I want government, the way our Founders wanted government: to be responsive to our voices.

 

I want a government that fears us, and not the loss of the backing of the corporatocracy.

 

I want the America I was promised.

Sounds Of Silence

Sorry for the lack of publishing this week. This whole cancer thing, which comes to a head today, has me restless and a little anxious. I haven't had many firm opinions about the news because I can't focus.

With a little good luck, I should be back to my old snarling self by the end of the day.

In the meantime, here's a cat picture:

Wiki The Witch

Some interesting stories come out of the controversial Wikileaks documents.

 

Apparently, Osama bin Laden has been dead for nearly six years now, which is in keeping with some of the videotapes that have been released since that time, in which bin Laden "appears" but does not say anything truly contemporary to the time of those tapes (there are audio tapes that suggest he may still be alive, of course, but faking a voice is not that hard).

 

Apparently, we had multiple opportunities to capture him, knowing ahead of time on at least three occasions where he would be and with whom, yet we either failed to act or decided to let events play out. Apparently, Iran and North Korea have allied themselves with Al Qaeda, which explains much of the aggression of both the Bush and Obama administrations.

 

And there are some "duh!" moments, too, such as a "secret" Senate report that indicates that we had bin Laden in our hands in 2001, yet let him get away. A simple perusal of the nightly television programming on The HIstory Channel will show that, indeed, that's been public knowledge for some time, and that this is hardly a revelation. We had him in the Tora Bora region, and had surrounded the hilltop cave where he hid, but missed picking him up when our Afghan allies...um...well...went home to supper!

 

The response to the leaks? It's been predictable: It's Wikileaks fault that we screwed up.

 

Nevermind that Pakistan has been as Pakistan has always been, an unreliable ally when it comes to Afghanistan. Nevermind that the armed forces in Afghanistan have been questionable in some of their tactics, to say the least. No, it's all about the public perception of the war and the public perception of our chances there.

 

Which brings us back to the essential question: why are we there? That's the question Congress doesn't want to raise at this time, since it is our sole focus on that region (Iraq pretty much having settled into a quiet unease). It is the only war we should have been fighting, the only war that ever really mattered and the war we had to win.

 

Iraq was a choice. Afghanistan was an imperative, and I say that as someone who opposes war, full stop. I don't believe either war was necessary, but understanding the pulse of the nation at the time, and understanding that most Americans are too immature to accept a war waged without lots of colorful explosions and dying enemy soldiers, Afghanistan harbored the people who injured us. I understand that war had to be fought.

 

Much inferential evidence suggests, no, insists that the reason we allowed ourselves to be distracted with Saddam Hussein and Iraq was a plan on the part of neo-conservatives that would brand America forever an empire. Hussein stood between us and wresting South Asia for ourselves and our domestic purposes. The Wolfowitz Doctrine spells that out quite plainly.

 

Conveniently, the time was right to strike. Strategically, it was the single stupidest strategy we could have pursued just into a mild recession and just after a weakening blow to our psyche. We had to fight in Afghanistan. We didn't have to open a second front. The greed of these assholes is almost palpable.

 

And now we have what we have: two lost wars and an aborted attempt at creating a "New American Century" and American empire (which history suggests would have been fleeting and ultimately futile and debilitating).

 

I haz a sad, but thank Wikileaks for bringing out the truth. No need to burn them.

Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!

There are only a few times a decade that I can be proud of my church. Today is one time:

With a laying on of hands, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Sunday welcomed into its fold seven openly gay pastors who had until recently been barred from the church’s ministry.

A couple of notes to make here. First, the Lutheran Evangelical Church is essentially the Roman Catholic Church without the Pope and all the trappings therein. As the first Protestant sect, it remains the one most closely tied to the RCC and has even made attempts to reincorporate into the fold. As such, it can be and has been at points a bellwether for the papal congregations. One hopes that is the case here, as well.

Second, about that second word in its name..."Evangelical". While the Lutheran church in America is not the first evangelical church to recognize gay ministers and/or pastors, it is the most conservative church to do so. Indeed, parts of its doctrine makes churches like the Southern Baptists look practically liberal. This development will put enormous pressure on other evangelical sects to follow, and also opens up the question of gay marriage in places like California, where Proposition 8 passed largely on the basis of votes from evangelicals, white and black.

I have long believed that marriage ought to be available to any two consenting adults. It seems silly to try to keep two people from forming a more perfect union, when our own nation is so divided to begin with.  

 

 

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) The worst fears of BP and the EPA are about to be real.

 

2) Elizabeth Warren MUST. Be. Confirmed.

 

3) Facebook (owned by an Ayn Randian libertarian) must be part of the "librul meedja".

 

4) I don't understand the whole kiddie porn syndrome, but it seems to be a fairly thriving perversion.

 

5) I suppose they'll lob kim chee at us. Of course, they could nuke Japan.

 

6) David Beckham may have been a washout in America, but Thierry Henry seems a bit more focused on putting American soccer on the map.

 

7) There's a new Stonehenge. It's at Stonehenge.

8) Apple's strategy of infiltrating the home computer market by stealth seems to be working. All those iPods and iPhones and iPads are persuading people that Apple makes quality products and are worth the few extra bucks to own.

 

9) Look...Death Stars cost money and ever since Emperor Palpatine had to bail out the Intergalactic Banking Clan...

 

10) Wanna know what's wrong with America? Our current cultural ambassador is John McCain's next wife, Snooki.

Driven To Tears

Anyone who has known me for any length of time and in any intimate capacity (even sharing a beer), knows that I am not afraid of my emotions. When I'm mad, I get mad. When I'm happy, I laugh. When I'm contemplative, I withdraw and look inward. And unlike a lot of men who fight to hold it inside, I cry.

 

I would estimate that I get teary once a week or so. Usually it's because I've been manipulated. Some movies will do that, like Field of Dreams. The scene where Ray calls to his dad to play catch nearly always gets a rise of rage and nostalgia and frustration out of me. I remember playing catch with my dad once, when I was three or four, and never again. He was always too busy or too tired. To have a place like that, where I can play catch with him while he's in his prime, unburdened by responsibility and work, and talk, really talk to him.

 

I know anything I said to him under those circumstances would be pointless, of course. It wouldn't change who I am, how I was raised, and it would only give me the temporary release of knowing I finally said to this ogre the words I longed to say, the words I graciously left out of his eulogy. But that's the point of that whole scene between Ray and his dad, to make men like me bawl like little babies, to feel a little bit less anger the bastards who raised us.

 

Sometimes it's joy. In 1994, when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the first time in my life and for the first time in 54 years, I started crying the second Mark Messier grinned and bounced like a chimpanzee as the commissioner handed him the Cup. As one sign put it, "Now I can die in peace". A weight, however trivial, was lifted from my shoulders and my tears lubricated its journey.

 

Oftentimes, it's nostalgia. I know, for instance, that Sunday as the Tour De France winds down in Paris and Lance Armstrong crosses the finish line, tears will line my cheeks like soft spaghetti strands. I'll raise a glass of Veuve Cliquot (a tradition), salute him, and the tears will start. He is one of my heroes, despite the black cloud of performance enhancements, not because he won, but because of what he went through. It's almost cliche to say he came back from testicular cancer with its 30% fatality rate if caught early enough to win seven straight Tours, a feat likely to never be matched again, but look behind the cliche: at his lowest point, that testicular cancer had metastasized to his lungs, his brain and his stomach.

 

You or I, even with a remission from a brain cancer, might never get on a bike again. He rode nine more Tours, climbing 400,000 feet in each. He won seven.

 

I'll miss him. I'll miss watching him compete. I'll miss hearing his name when I watch the Tour next year. It's a part of my life that goes away, put into a book and shut.

 

Last night,  I was watching an episode of House where there was an outbreak of some mysterious disease in the neo-natal ward. There's a scene where these parents of a newborn are forced to "visit" their baby behind a glass wall because the baby is sick and might be contagious. One of the doctors notices this, and asks them to put on some scrubs because they need help while the sheets in the crib are being changed, so for the first time in days, the mother and father get to hold their child.

 

Of course, I flash back to the first time I cradled my daughter in my arms, how happy I was, how this ugly grey gooey gob of babyslime was my baby, my child, my daughter. It was a joyous moment.

 

It took on new meaning yesterday. I met with the surgeon who will excise my cancer and she has asked a reconstructive surgeon to stand by next Friday for my surgery.

 

You see, I may lose a tear duct. I may lose the very thing that makes us human.  

Even In New York

This is less about race and more about privilege and location, but race plays into it.

 

A couple of interesting facts before I pull a quote from the article:

 

1) New York City has the highest arrest rate for marijuana in the country. No. In the WORLD.

 

2) The Upper East Side (UES) of Manhattan (my hometown) has a median per capita income of over $90,000. Brownsville, in Brooklyn, has a median income of $25,000.

 

3) Brownsville is 75% black, 14% Hispanic, and 12% Caucasian. The UES? 88% Caucasian, 8% black and Hispanic combined.

 

OK, armed with that info, here we go:

 

Among the biggest but least discussed expansions of government power under Mr. Bloomberg has been the explosive increase in arrests for displaying or burning marijuana.

[...]Nearly nine out of ten people charged with violating the law are black or Latino, although national surveys have shown that whites are the heaviest users of pot. Mr. Bloomberg himself acknowledged in 2001 that he had used it, and enjoyed it.

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the mayor lives, an average of 20 people for every 100,000 residents were arrested on the lowest-level misdemeanor pot charge in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

During those same years, the marijuana arrest rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was 3,109 for every 100,000 residents.

That means the chances of getting arrested on pot charges in Brownsville — and nothing else — were 150 times greater than on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

 

Let that sink in for a minute: You are one and one half times more likely to be arrested in Brownsville, Brooklyn-- just six miles from the UES-- for pot than you are in the UES, despite the fact that pot is generally considered a drug of the privileged according to national surveys.

 

This alarming statistic stems from the fact that the Bloomberg administration instituted a "Stop And Frisk" policy in the wake of September 11, whereby police are authorized to stop anyone on the street and search them, no probably cause required.

 

In one eight square block part Brownsville, according to the New York Times, 14,000 people are stopped and frisked each year.

 

Not coincidentally, there are...14,000 residents. That means on average, you stand a 100% chance of being frisked in that portion of Brownsville each year. Citywide, there are 600,000 stop-and-frisks a year for 9 million people. I'd bet that the UES rate of stop-and-frisks is about 1/150th of Brownsville.

 

None of this is to suggest that stop-and-frisk is a bad tool. Or a good one. It has demonstrably lowered crime citywide, but like all tools...well, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. There has to be a better way than to focus on one neighborhood and produce such an eye-popping statistic for a crime that likely shouldn't be as prevalent there, and totally ignore a neighborhood where the crime exists but hardly anyone notices or cares much.

 

The UES is where Mayor Mike Bloomberg lives, not just the official Gracie Mansion residence, but his private quarters as well. 

 

I said this wasn't about race, even though Dwyer's article suggests it is a heavy influence, as the Bloomberg administration seems to lean on white UES kids. I have some personal knowledge about how the precincts in my stomping grounds work.

 

The cops know. The cops know who the mob bosses are (or were). They know who is untouchable, and how to get to them by picking on the wiseasses (*raises hand*), the troublemakers (*raises hand*), and the accomplices of those who would have privilege to protect them (*puts hand down*). They know, block by block who lives where, how much money dad makes in what business he works in, and how much they can roust the kids. They can tell you where drugs are being sold, where they are being used, and who is using and selling. And they can get them to roll if the crime is serious enough. 

 

So even in this overwhelmingly white enclave, there is still some stop-and-frisking going on, and it targets the people who don't have political cover. Among that population, I'd bet the ratio to Brownsville is more reasonable, but still skewed heavily ethnically.

 

Yes. Even in New York City, the melting pot of America, you can still be illegally brown.     

How Come They Can Be Douches, And We Can't?

An interesting little meme is developing over white poutrage in connection with a video that has surfaced.

 

Days after the NAACP clashed with Tea Party members over allegations of racism, a video has surfaced showing an Agriculture Department official regaling an NAACP audience with a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy -- video that now has forced the official to resign.

Shirley Sherrod, the department's Georgia director of Rural Development, is shown in the clip describing "the first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm." Sherrod, who is black, claimed the farmer took a long time trying to show he was "superior" to her. The audience laughed as she described how she determined his fate. 

"He had to come to me for help. What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him," she said. "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land -- so I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough."

The Agriculture Department announced Monday, shortly after FoxNews.com published its initial report on the video, that Sherrod had resigned.

 

Give Sherrod credit. She fell on her sword, knowing that what she had done was wrong.

Not the decision she made with regards to the farmer, but in speaking publicly about it.

The farmer was a douchebag, pure and simple, if what Sherrod is relating is true. If you're a douche to the trooper who pulls you over for a speeding ticket, you're not likely to get off with a warning, and the bigger a douche you are, the closer to seeing the inside of a prison toilet you get.

Likewise, if your family farm is on the line, you don't assume the official helping you is being "uppity". You smile, and even if she irritates you (and believe me, civil servants can irritate the best of us), and politely ask for help.

The clip that BigGovernment.com posted (I refuse to link to the assholes) is a small clip of the whole talk, so who knows what they edited out. Remember, this is the jerkwad who was behind the James O'Keefe smear of ACORN. O'Keefe, you may recall, posted a cleverly edited video allegedly showing ACORN workers giving assistance to a "pimp and his ho," O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the disreputable and shamed daughter of Pastor Douglas Giles, who probably ought to be investigated for the sexual abuse of his daughter.

Here's the thing: likely, had the farmer been black and been as snotty as the farmer Sherrod talks about, she would have handled him in precisely the same way. Only you wouldn't have heard about it, even if she spoke at an NAACP rally or for that matter, at a Klan rally.

It's the overreaction by the privileged white people who suddenly realize with alarm that their little fiefdoms of tyrannical uses and abuses of position, power, and author-i-tay have been wrested away from them in large numbers by "other people."

Worse, these "other people" have proven that you don't have to be white to be an asshole. That's what scares them the most, because once you're the one on the receiving end of bureaucracy oveerseen by people you've demonstrated a determined grudge against when you held power, they are not predisposed to be particularly polite to you.

You can almost smell the panic from BigWhiteywood. 

 

Yea...This Isn't A Problem! No Sirree!

The United States has more intelligence gathering operations than you or I know about. Worse, they don't even really know about each other!

 

To sum up the report in a short paragraph, right now American intelligence agencies grew about twenty percent in number since September 11, or about 250 brand spanking new agencies, each with its own little fiefdom and domain. In a "publish or perish" mentality not unlike that in academia--who said eggheads were only soft and left-leaning?-- in order to justify their budget line item, these agencies issue a flurry of reports and paper that often contradicts other reports, and worse, gets ignored.

 

The scariest item in the investigation is that nearly a million people, 854,000 and one and one half the number that actually live in DC, have the highest security clearance (e.g. actually know what happened at Roswell). That's a rather large number to have access to the most sensitive information on the planet.

 

By contrast, President Obama is about six levels down in security clearances, although by law he must be provided any information he requests, whether his security clearance covers it or not.

 

What does all this mean? If America before 9/11 was unable to connect the dots (and to be fair, Bush should have considering those kinds of games are at his grade level), now there are more splatters than on a Jackson Pollock. Some will connect. Some that should will not. Some that should not, will. And when the next attack happens, I'm betting that there will be more of the middle than of either of the other two.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Here's a political party that could make me drop the Democrats in a heartbeat...unless Sheryl Crow personally convinces me to stay.

 

2) Attention DC residents! That rumbling you felt this morning was the Teabaggers suddenly realizing they are irrelevant.

 

3) It was a good week for the President. Perhaps his best since the spring. Two problems he didn't create and somehow was being blamed for are getting make-overs. There is hope they are both fixes, as well, and not just bandaids.

 

4) US satellite? Russian spy plane? Aliens looking for moo shu pork?

 

5) In case you've missed it, Lance Armstrong's attempt to recapture his Tour De France glory has all but ended except for the formalities. Irony number one: he placed third last year while racing in less than optimum conditioning. This year, he was in far better shape and was challenging early on for the yellow jersey. He was undone by a series of crashes on one stage that left him unable to answer the call when his rivals decided to weed the contender field. Irony number two: he may finally be forced to testify in front of Congress about doping in cycling.

 

Congress? BIKING? Since when do Americans give a damn about cycling? This leads me to irony number three: Because the accusations stem from the short-lived tenure of the US Postal Service team, apparently it falls to Congress to look into it...if they want to be a pain in the ass. I don't support Lance's politics (he's more conservative than I), but to investigate a now nearly twenty year old incident because a few people have made accusations seems pretty silly to me. There's plenty of circumstantial evidence to indicate that the team was doping (three other members of that team tested positive after the team disbanded and they joined other, less well-funded teams who might not have been able to cover their tracks as effectively, as an example) but if the sport itself sees no reason to revisit the issue, then perhaps a Congressional investigation is a waste of energy.

 

6) This is a fascinating story. We tend to forget that people have been industrious long before the age of computers. Early New Yorkers added as much as half a mile of width to the island of Manhattan long before there was asphalt and tar and skyscrapers, and it astounds me that two thousand foot high buildings (and now one 1,776 foot high one) were built on yesterday's garbage.

 

7) As if things weren't tough enough for Linda McMahon in Connecticut, her past is coming back to haunt her. She talks about creating jobs, but she's fired more people than most companies have hired.

 

8) The electric car gains momentum.

 

9) Americans will have to grow up a little this fall.

 

10) Hottest. June. Ever.

Crunch Time

The Teabaggers have made a lot of noise over the past year. But it might signify nothing, after all.

 

The trouble with populist movements that are anti-government is they are also suspicious of anyone who wants to organize the movement for effective change. Now, I'm not suggesting that the Teabaggers have an actual agenda that would create effective change, at least as the normal people in this nation would define it. Indeed, most studies of the movement indicate that there's a lot of rage out there, but apart from Obama and Congress in concept, there's no focus to this rage.

 

What does this mean?

 

It means a couple of things we should keep in mind going into the fall:

 

1) Fundraising for the Teabagger candidates is going to be extra hard. If you aren't focused, you don't have your heart into a movement. Compare, for example, the Teabaggers to the Obama insurgent candidacy in 2007 and 2008. Hillary Clinton all but had the nomination locked up, and all the big money donors were quite happy piling her plate high to fund her general election campaign. Barack Obama made appeals to small donors, liberal donors, and to people who worried that the smear campaign launched against Hillary by the Republicans was true, that she was a corrupt politico who would do little to change DC.

 

Obama's supporters, in other words, had a focus for their anger, so contribute they did. In massive numbers. I suspect that campaign has already generated a large number of masters theses in political science. It was remarkable.

 

The Teabaggers lack that kind of focal point, a body of candidates who can generate the kind of enthusiasm that anger has to be channeled into. People don't like to be angry. They like to have faith that things will get better if they can just get something done. Obama presented that. The folks on the right wing who are exploiting the Teabagger anger have presented no such solution.

 

2) Which brings me to the next point: if you don't have a focal point for your anger, and you don't have an agenda to create effective change, you really have nothing. The Perotistas of the 90s at least had the rallying cry of lower deficits. You don't hear that much from Teabaggers. Lower taxes, yes. Less government, yes. But you don't have the hammering point that the deficit is out of control. That's a change that would get people to join up. What you have instead is a bunch of greedy cheapskates who have zero clue about what it means to be a citizen of a society. They want society out of their lives, not government. They would prefer a nation of loners, not a nation of doers. Life left them behind, and this is their way of getting revenge on the world.

 

3) If a candidate in Alabama, a Teabagger favorite, leading the polls heading into a runoff election loses a runoff to an establishment candidate...IN ALABAMA, the very heart of white anger...your movement has lost its direction already. Indeed, one of the few victories Teabaggers generally point to, Senator Scott Brown of Massachussetts, has already jumped Teabagger ship twice and sided with Democrats on two major issues.

 

I think 2010 will see the end of the Teabagger movement, as well as the collapse of Glenn Beck into Ann Coulter obscurity.

Floating Balloons

A bit of intriguing political theatre took place yesterday. You probably heard about it, but didn't pay much mind to it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bashed White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Tuesday night, even as the president's top spokesman continued to backpedal from his assertion that Democrats could lose control of the House in the November election.

The fusillade from Pelosi and other Democrats at a closed-door meeting escalated an already fiery clash between the White House and its own party in Congress. During the tense evening meeting, the speaker grilled the top White House aide in attendance, senior legislative affairs staffer Dan Turton, about the impact of Gibbs' comments.

"How could [Gibbs] know what is going on in our districts?" Pelosi told her members in the caucus meeting in the basement of the Capitol Tuesday night. "Some may weigh his words more than others. We have made our disagreement known to the White House."

As noted, Gibbs has begun to walk back his comments, predicting the Dems will salvage the House and Senate this fall.

What makes this intriguing is, did Gibbs leave the reservation on his own accord, or was he thrown under the bus? (I must be a real pundit now! I'm using meaningless cliches.)

If Gibbs' words were aimed at Democratic activists, specifically liberal and leftish activists, then this was a surgical strike that had unfortunate (but deliberate) collateral damage. It's true, the Dems have played fast and loose with the party alliance between Congress and the White House. It took forever to pass a watered-down version of healthcare. While that's really a Senate issue, Pelosi could have been more forceful in getting a version slid through the House, forcing the Senate's hand.

 

That this was a scare tactic for liberals has some merit. There's a lot of griping about Obama's failure to live up to the ideals imposed upon him in the heat of the 2008 campaign. Failing to secure a Democratic majority in the House would surely seal his Presidency, since the intractability of Senate Republicans would only double and they could conceivably peel off some moderate Blue Dog Dems to some odious legislation.

 

If Gibbs' words were primarily aimed at Pelosi and company, then likely he's venting the frustrations of the administration as noted above. And he probably did it as a loose cannon and both inartfully and unintentionally. The question then becomes, why this warning?

 

I have a theory: this could have been a signal that the White House is rationing Obama's charisma and power to focus on specific races in key states that would impact his re-election. Why not kill two birds with one stone, and open the re-election campaign, by showing up in key districts and battleground states that he will need in 2012, instead of trying to salvage what the Congress has lost of their own accord?

 

The next few days will be interesting, to say the least.

Thoughts on Steinbrenner

Inarguably, George Steinbrenner was one of the most influential New Yorkers of the past four decades.

 

Inarguably, he was a cancer on baseball as a game for kids and as a sport. He took a perfectly good game and turned it into a multibillion dollar business and in due course, ruined the game.

 

Since 1990, according to ESPN, he spent $2 billion dollars on free agents, just since 1990. That's money taken from people like you and me: working class, middle class folks, people dumb enough to buy into the "winner takes all" mentality that he exploited to outspend nearly all other major league baseball teams combined.

 

Think about what that $2 billion would have meant to the ticket buyers. Yes, it gave them a few hours of joy over the years, but take that money and put it to good use and maybe we're not in the economic pickle we're in. After all, money that doesn't go into Steinbrenner's (and the other owners) pockets is money we're spending on ourselves or better, saving. If he spent $2 billion on free agents, how much did he himself personally pocket? I'd bet it's safe to say a far larger sum.

 

He's being mourned today by "New Yorkers", but Noo Yawkahs know better. I hope he burns in hell.