Progressive politics, Culture abd Humor for working stiffs
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Where To From Here?
As the reality of economic disaster sets in, many are pointing fingers and looking for blame. Economist Joseph Stiglitz gets to the meat of it in his article Reversal of Fortune pointing to "special interest pressure, populist politics, bad economics, and sheer incompetence."
The bottom line is that the false ideology of the "free market" has failed miserably. It is corruption in practice and We the People are now beginning to pay the price for the unmitigated plunder of the country and the planet by the corporate ruling class. This has become so obvious that, as noted in an excellent article in Political Affairs Magazine, capitalism itself is being examined and it's future called into question in the mainstream press as Marx inevitably appears increasingly more relevant to our times than the delusional raving of the usual Wall Street sycophants.
While I continue to remain cautiously optimistic about the incoming Obama Administration, his choices of economic counsel are in fact some of the same folks who espoused the "free market" policies that are at the root of the present crisis. I continue to believe that Obama's intentions and agenda are good and that he feels he is tapping the most qualified expertise there is but he would do well to include some progressive minds from outside the inner sanctums of Capital. One of the good things about the Obama transition, though it may be more image that meat, is his interactive website in which he attempts to keep us informed as well as having the mechanism by which we can respond with our ideas and comments. It is important that we do that. We need to demand public works jobs to rebuild a non-fossil fuel national power grid and a national electric rail system because as George Monibot points out, if we don't radically alter our energy use nothing else will matter as the environment spins out of control. We need to push for a National Single-Payer Health system. We also need to demand a dismantling of the so-called "Homeland Security" apparatus and the return to a constitutional republic.
The Real Willam Ayers Speaks Out
As the refuse of the election season is swept away like used confetti the Republicans left in the fuhrerbunker are in damage control mode. Moderate Repugs are spreading stories further discrediting Sarah Palin to prevent her return as the more reactionary base stews in their own hatred.
The Republicans are in tatters after running the worst campaign in history -- a campaign based on increasingly ridiculous accusations against Obama replete with racism and red-baiting. A big part of this involved every attempt to link Obama first to Black nationalism via the Rev. Wright, then to 60's radicalism via William Ayers, and finally to Palestinians (returning to anti-Muslim prejudices) via Rashid Khalidi. That all of their lies, bigotry and dirty politics failed adds to the victory and repudiation of the right. Still, the slander lives on and has victims so it is good to read what William Ayers has to say. The truth of his wise words again rips apart the lies of the radical right and their two-dimensional version of reality.
A Moment To Savor
Savoring the Moment 11/04/2008
This is a moment for the blare of horns in the night for fireworks and guns shooting the sky in poor neighborhoods long ignored by everyone but the police time for hosannas and poetry time for tears and laughter time to breathe a little easier with a hope not felt for years.
Let the first glimmer of a new dawn illuminate the faces, the memory of those who didn't make it here as the long night recedes at least a little bit --
Let the nightmare of Patriot acts and torture cells of "rendition" and war be broken Let Justice roll down an unstoppable deluge washing away the murderers and liars, the cynical imperialists and all the parasitic hucksters of misery leaving in its wake a new topography on which to build that tomorrow we have all dreamt of
It is a great moment to realize that after so long we have a President with intelligence, a visionary and even better, a visionary with the brown skin which has been a stigma in this country for so long. Let this historic sweep be seen as what it is, the repudiation of the fascist/neocon ideology of hate, racism and imperialism, of nationalism, Evangelical repression and fear. Yes We Did!
Before he has the chance to disappoint us let us savor the hope he embodies and the progress he symbolizes. However bad he may be, he will be a great improvement. There is hope for us yet. I drank myself sober last night expecting the worst in time to cry listening to his victory speech. One more time for all of us.
Selection Day
Well, here it is, selection day. We know that the ruling class will choose whomever they feel their investments are safer with but we should pretend our votes really count (and are counted). The more of us that manage to traverse the obstacles the better. Lets show them a public repudiation. I personally expect another stolen election, or at least every attempt to do so. If that happens let's build on the anger and organize a more powerful resistance. If not -- if Obama wins by significant margins, lets remember to keep the pressure on him. As we have touchscreen machines where I live, I voted absentee and I can tall you the lines to do so were long a week ago. A record turnout and mostly pro Obama.
I'm going to do my best to ignore the spin until late tonight when the votes are mostly in. I may go and buy some poster board in preparation for protesting a stolen election tomorrow but otherwise, a good day to stay home and drink it out of my head or go up to a local bar and hang out. Whatever happens, tomorrow will be different. For you collectors of historical and hysterical memorabilia, buy up some of my anti-Bush T-shirts while they last and do your part to feed the presently jobless Prole!
John Dean, Former Nixon Counsel Speaks Out
A once prominent Republican, John Dean speaks out about authoritarian Republicans and the continuing danger they pose to the US and world. He knows up close and through much experience how these slimy bastards operate and lays out their basic traits as well as the traits of their followers. This is an important article as well as an endorsement for Obama. He ends by saying:
"This election should be a slam dunk for Barack Obama, who has run a masterful campaign. It was no small undertaking winning the nomination from Hillary Clinton, and in doing so, he has shown without any doubt (in my mind anyway) that he is not only qualified to be president, but that he might be a once-in-a-lifetime leader who can forever change the nation and the world for the better.
If Obama is rejected on November 4th for another authoritarian conservative like McCain, I must ask if Americans are sufficiently intelligent to competently govern themselves. I can understand authoritarian conservatives voting for McCain, for they know no better. It is well-understood that most everyone votes with his or her heart, not his or her head. Polls show that 81 percent of Americans "feel" (in their hearts and their heads) that our country is going the wrong way. How could anyone with such thoughts and feelings vote for more authoritarian conservatism, which has done so much to take the nation in the wrong direction?
We will all find out on (or about) November 5th."
Election Scenarios -- What's Next?
As we all wait with baited breath for the final outcome of another divisive election season its time to put it all in perspective.
The only "electable" candidates in our country are pre-chosen as "front-runners" by our elite and then, we get to vote for the electors that will cast the actual votes -- though they are not required to tie their votes to ours. Alternative candidates get very few if any electors and so can't win even if we all voted for them. In short, our electoral system is a joke, a sham, as is our democracy. The ruling elite will select the candidate with whom they feel their investment is safest.
While many comfort themselves with the illusion that Obama, undoubtedly the "lesser of evils" with herald change, how much change can we really expect from someone who has received more than $37 million from lawyers and lobbyists, $21.6 million from the communications and electronics industries, and $16 million from health care interests? He is part of and beholden to the same interests that have had influence all along. The support for "health care interests" all but guarantees we won't see real national health care on his watch.
As Michael Parenti has explained, the real power however lies with the state, those unelected, behind the scenes high level apparatchiks who decide what is possible for our elected officials to do and what isn't.
As this corrupt system implodes due to conflicts with economic, ecological and political reality, it will be up to all of us to build a real alternative on the ground. We can learn much for the Argentine experience. We must come together and build real community support systems that can give our neighbors some semblance of hope and security in the very hard time ahead no matter which corporate candidate is selected and we must do this in earnest ASAP. Thousands of us are already facing homelessness as foreclosures continue and work dries up. You can bet that the same hate-mongering employed by the Repugs in this selection will be used to divert public anger into scapegoating and fascist violence. Without real alternatives that provide material security they will draw support of many desperate people with nowhere to turn.
If this election is stolen like the last two, we should be out in the streets. We can tap that anger to build a stronger movement of resistance which must be the foundation for the on the ground alternatives we must build. If Obama is the next President, we must keep the heat on him to follow through with a break from the policies of the last eight years including an end to the so-called Patriot Act and stop the planned use of troops against US citizens.
As Republican rhetoric continues to spew hatred, fear, and angry division it occurs to me they have crossed the line from merely being the repugnant political wing of the most reactionary segments of the corporate ruling class to being a hate group. From Republican hate rallies to the harrassing of voters at the polls they have set alight the flames of hatred, intolerance and xenophobia that are the basis for fascist violence and genocidal behavior. As many moderate Republicans flee what's become of their party,it can no longer be tolerated as a legal organization anymore than the Ku Klux Klan and should be prosecuted under the RICO laws for organized domestic fomenting of hate speech and violence.
Denial and the Electoral Circus
Never mind that the economy has all but collapsed. Never mind that the election will be stolen like the last two. The The Fall Election Musical Comedy continues unaffected by reality as "faith-based" voters, bloodthirsty nationalists and rank and file liberals shout at each other across the unbridgeable chasm of American society.
Denial
By SAUL LANDAU
Historians will write of the 2008 election campaign as a bizarre comedy in which audiences watched the United States morph from the top of its imperial trajectory into the sick joke of the early 21st Century. It stars not just the cancerous -- in body, mind and soul – John McCain, the modern would-be emperor without clothes and Sarah “Pinup” Palin, who sings in “pompom palaver” (Maureen Dowd), but pious imperialist Democrats who play straight men in this televised farce.
Unlike typical Gilbert and Sullivan light opera singers, “Denial” actors croon their lines against a backdrop of world crises – wars, economic descent, hunger, disease and climate change – but studiously avoid these obvious and compelling themes.
The comely Alaska Governor threatens to wrest from President George W. Bush his title as prime public English language torturer. In the play, she epitomizes “dirty fighting” – wink, wink – the equivalent of what old gym rats said about talent challenged pugilists who repeatedly punched below the belt.
The October 4 song of the sex kitten cum Vice Presidential candidate charged that Obama “sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.” This dramatic scene refers to Obama once attending a fundraiser at William Ayres’ home. Ayres reportedly belonged to the Weather Underground some of whose members detonated bombs in the early 1970s -- including at the U.S. Capitol and Pentagon. Ayers – never convicted-- told the New York Times (Sept. 11, 2001) that “I don’t regret setting bombs.'”
“Palling around?” sing the Obamaites. “One Ayers fundraiser means palling around?” Tthe Carson, California Republican chorus cheered Sarah’s incitement. “Upatriotic,” she sings of Obama, “My saying it makes it so.” Her chorus sings: “You go girl, go.”
The program notes explain that in 2001, University of Illinois (Chicago) Education Professor Ayers donated $200 to Obama’s Illinois State Senate Campaign and, like Obama, belonged to an anti-poverty charity board (Woods Fund) from 1999 to 2002. Both had kids at the same school.
Even Karl Rove, master of dirty campaign organizers, appears in the comedy. The Prince of Darkness scene appears on Fox News (September 28). Some McCain ads had “gone one step too far sort of attributing to Obama things that are beyond the ‘100 percent truth’ test. There ought to be an adult who says ‘Do we really need to go that far in this ad?’”
“The notion that somehow as a consequence of knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense,” hummed Obama in a monotone.
“Sense” makes no appearances in McCain’s or Palin’s script. The writers offer them light airs on minor subjects like the economy -- regulate and deregulate and always cut taxes while spending more on the military. Obama and Biden yodel typical imperialist campaign pap -- the “we fight for freedom everywhere with our allies” song – McCain and Palin rev up their base section as if to hint of both their ignorance and dangerous recklessness.
According to more than 2,768 doctors (Oct. 5 ad in NY Times) McCain faces a very possible melanoma relapse – and soon. An oncologist friend suggested McCain’s dotty remarks – implying the Prime Minister of Spain, a NATO ally, was a US enemy, confusing Shia and Sunni and Iran and Iraq-- could derive from an incipient brain tumor. In any case, one doesn’t have to invent the possibility in 2010, of President Palin addressing the nation. “Golly, ya know I had to deploy those nukes against Russia,” she pauses to smile and wink at someone in the audience, “because Alaska or Washington, I mean we’re so close I could feel, like all hockey Moms and dads too, the ya know vibrations from Putin, you betcha.”
In her vice presidential debate and in her two news interviews (Charles Gibson, ABC, and Katie Couric, CBS) Sarah Six Pack began to chant one-line cliché answers to questions she wasn’t asked and then aggressively defended her sing-song idiocy while flashing grins at members of the audience, a reincarnated Liberace mouthing lyrics instead of playing schmaltz on the piano. She excelled at self-promoting, a vice presidential candidate “speaking in tongues,” wrote Sam Smith. (The Progressive Review, Oct. 4) Smith described Palin’s behavior on TV as possibly a variety of Asperger’s Syndrome: “Meaningless or pointless repetition of words, phrases, ideas, or actions.”
McCain, a self-proclaimed responsible politician, has cast himself as elder statesman, maverick and self-sacrificing war hero. So, how could he then choose an empty-headed, flaming rod of ambition as his running partner? Perhaps, someone should remind McCain: he can enter Walter Reed’s Intensive Care Unit without passing through the White House!
Indeed, the McCain character offers his “recitativo” for those who opened their their 401 K retirement plans. “My friends,” he calls them. They groan in pain overt their financial losses. Not to worry, he assures them. Privatizing their social security – placing their pensions in the hands of those who just brought down Wall Street -- would make their lives better. “Ha Ha” laughs the chorus.
“Denial” tries to distract a grim world. In Europe, banks and stock markets have begun their own frightening downslide. In Iraq, the public remains engulfed in daily bloodshed. Listening to McCain promise longer US military presence must certainly make them smile – or is that a gas pain? Imagine how the Taliban propaganda apparatus reviews “Denial!” They emphasize the parts in which all the actors promise to dispatch more US military forces to Afghanistan! Well, the Obama and McCain campaign care little about non-voting audiences, no matter how they pretend to promise things to “those people.”
“Denial” runs every four years, but this year’s version has become downright slapstick. “Time to take the gloves off,” Palin sang, although many noticed she had worn them all along. The media chorus offers endless atonal chattering and nattering before, during and after campaign events, and we hear the steady percussion section of pollsters tapping their nervous rhythms to show anxiety in the public – referring to people off stage who lost homes and jobs. Cacophonous sounds also emerge to show white people conflicted about voting for a black as President.
The campaign show has an appropriate backdrop, as stocks slid in early October, falling below 10,000: A nation that has spent its treasure on war and militarism and whose candidates all vow to spend more. The political and media elite still hum tunes about the great republic, not dirges fit for a collapsing empire.
Obama and Biden sing lines about Bush raising US gross national debt rose from $5.7 trillion to $10 trillion (“under Clinton we had a surplus,” sings the chorus). In the face of this horrifying figure, McCain without smiling swears to continue cutting taxes on the rich as Bush did, to pursue endless war in Iraq as Bush has, and expand the war in Afghanistan and possibly take it to Pakistan. The Democrats also want more troops in Afghanistan, where they will build schools and hospitals while sending forces to find and kill Bin Laden in Pakistan. “Screw borders” is the tile of one of their songs. Someone cut the line that says “this will cost more than $600 billion.”
Democrats also intone about investing hugely in US education. One refrain that originally appeared in the script was cut: “A fairy from Heaven will deliver, bagfuls of money forever.”
The aging McCain character calls for more military action while advocates deregulating everything else. The flighty Palin agrees, but wants to also regulate while deregulating, “ya know what I mean!” (Hockey moms will all understand.) In another TV show, Katie Couric asked the ingenue about McCain supposedly advocating regulation of The Street. She couldn’t answer, but had she read in one of the many newspapers she always reads, but whose title she couldn’t recall -- the Wall Street Journal -- she would have seen McCain prominently denouncing regulation, as he always has. Oh Well! Another song!
In the original script, there appear a historical context for “Denial”: “The United States once possessed (1945) 55% of the world’s manufacturing capacity. It controlled the world’s banking system and established the dollar as world currency. As Europe, including the Soviet Union, licked war wounds and began massive rebuilding, financed in part by the Marshall Plan (not including the USSR), rearmament took place, including the buildup of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and the stationing of troops around the world. When the “evil empire” collapsed, the “good empire” took no notice, and continued to maintain a super expensive and world-traveling military. Indeed, the nation has become so inured to this institutionalized massive waste that no major political or media figure even dares mention it.”
This section was cut from all scripts.
“Denial” plays on through early November amidst growing world ruin. Sarah and John sing: “Obama’s a Muslim with terrorist allies, John and Minnie Moose As American as apple pies.”
The chorus chants: “Drill baby drill. USA USA USA.”
Saul Landau, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, once wrote plays for the SF Mime Troupe.
1. Congress should hold a series of hearings and invite broad public comment on any proposed bailout. Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch of our federal government. It needs to stop the stampede to give Bush a $700 billion check. Public hearings should be held to determine what alternatives might exist to the four-page proposal advanced by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.
2. Whatever is ultimately done, the bailout plan should not be insulated from judicial review. Remember there is a third co-equal branch of government – the judiciary. The judiciary does not need to review each buy-and-sell decision by the Treasury Department, but there should be some boundaries established to the Treasury Department's discretion, and judicial review is needed to ensure that unbridled discretion is not abused.
3. Sunlight is a good disinfectant. The bailout that is ultimately approved must provide for full and timely disclosure of all bailout details. This will discourage conflicts of interest and limit the potential of sweetheart deals.
4. Firms that accept government bailout monies must agree to disclose their transactions and be more honest in their accounting. They should agree to end off-the-books accounting maneuvers, for example. 5. Taxpayers must be protected by having a stake in any recovery. The bailout plan should provide opportunities for taxpayers to recoup funds that are made available to problem financial institutions or to benefit from the financial institutions' rising stock price and increased profitability after being bailed out.
6. The current so-called “regulators” cannot be trusted. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), "the investigative arm of Congress" and "the congressional watchdog,” must regularly review the bailout. We cannot trust the financial “regulators,” who allowed the slide into financial disaster, to manage the bailout without outside monitoring.
7. It is time to put the federal cop back on the financial services beat. Strong financial regulations and independent regulators are necessary to rebuild trust in our financial institutions and to prevent further squandering of our tax dollars. The Justice Department and the SEC also need to scrutinize the expanding mess with an eye to uncovering corporate crime and misdeeds. Major news outlets are reporting that the FBI is investigating American International Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers.
8. Cap executive compensation and stop giving the Wall Street gamblers golden parachutes. The CEOs who have created the financial disaster should not be allowed to leave with millions in hand when so many pensioners and small shareholders are seeing their investments evaporate. The taxpayers are bailing out Wall Street so that the financial system continues to function, not to further enrich the CEOs and executives who created this mess.
9. Congress should pass the Financial Consumers' Information and Representation Act, to permit citizens to form a federally-chartered nonprofit membership organization to strengthen consumer representation in government proceedings that concern the financial services industry. As the savings and loan disasters of the 1980s and the Wall Street debacles of the last few years have demonstrated, there is an overriding need for consumers and taxpayers to have the organized means to enhance their influence on financial issues.
10. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, separating traditional banks from investment banks, helped pave the way for the current disaster. It is time to re-regulate the financial sector. The current crisis is also leading to even further conglomeration and concentration in the financial sector. We must revive and apply antitrust principles, so that banking consumers can benefit from competition and taxpayers are less vulnerable to too-big-to-fail institutions, merging with each other to further concentration.
11. Congress should impose a securities and derivatives speculation tax. A tax on financial trading would slow down the churning of stocks and financial instruments, and could raise substantial monies to pay for the bailout.
12. Regulators should impose greater margin requirements, making speculators use more of their own money and diminishing reckless casino capitalism.
Ask your representative a few questions: "What should be done to limit banking institutions from investing in high-risk activities? What should be done to ensure banks are meeting proper capital standards given the financial quicksand that has spread as a result of the former Senator Phil Gramm’s deregulation efforts? And, “What is being done to protect small investors?”
Bringing the Troops Home
You know the projections for our economy are bleak when the government decides to station the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division to our own country. As Army Times point out, "They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."
I've said for many years that we could not as a nation act with violent impunity around the world and not do so at home. As our economy sinks into depression more of us will be unemployed. Many of us will lose our homes. Dissatisfaction and desperation will give way to anger -- organized anger at a dysfunctional criminal system of corruption. The criminals in charge are preparing for that. As Lenin pointed out many years ago, the state is a tool for the oppression of one class by another. That class has not felt the need to up the ante of oppression from economic to the brutality of force as long as wage slavery and economic terror could keep us in line. When it no longer can, they will not hesitate to use their army against us. We must be prepared.
Public Subsidies for Whom?
Thomas Riggins writes:
Most of the experts agree that that nationalization of AIG as well as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae was carried out to prevent not only the collapse of financial capital in the US but to stave off a world wide economic crisis.
These nationalizations will cost over a trillion dollars to the US tax payers-- that is the US working class which pays the bulk of the taxes in this country. But this money is going to the capitalist class.
What the workers should demand is that the trillion dollars not be handed over to the capitalists to make up for the money they lost on the sub prime mortgage market. That still leaves the workers with mortgages and the potential loss of their houses.
The demand should be that the tax money be used to buy up and pay off the mortgages directly. People who were lied to and tricked into taking out loans that had they been fully informed of the consequences they would not have taken out are the people to look out for, not greedy capitalists who brought their own problems on themselves.
We are seeing, right now, an intensification of class warfare directed by the capitalist state against the working class in this country. The take over by the government of AIG, etc., is being done not to help the workers and their mortgage plight, but to give the capitalists the money they could not squeeze out of the workers and still leave the workers holding the bag. Again, I think the demand must be to make this money available to the workers themselves to pay off the mortgages-- at least that is a minimum demand. The capitalists however have no right to be paid off since they made these loans knowing that people couldn't sustain the debt.
Since Bush wants to play at socialism (for the rich) we should also propose as a more just measure than the minimum demand that the government cancel the debt entirely and nationalize the banking system and run it for the benefit of the people not the moguls of Wall Street.
Military Madness has Killed Our Country
A perverted, inverted form of Socialism known as Military Keynesianism - a reliance on government investment in militarism and the arms industry to keep our economy afloat, has now reached it's inescapable conclusion. trying to maintain annual military budget of over a trillion dollars has required borrowing on a massive scale. We have become an unstable debtor nation whose national gross product is weaponry -- much of which is unusable. What has been neglected is the basic domestic infrastructure on which a functional nation depends.
In an excellent article Chalmers Johnson explains why we are in the economic mess we are in.
It's Capiatlism Stupid
Ideologues of the so-called "free-market" are known to rave against any regulation as an intrusion on the free flow of business and the magic of those invisible hands, the ones most of us feel tightening on our necks. The vilest curses fly whenever government programs are involved with the constant accusation of "socialism" being the norm, How their tune changes when reality sets in! Apparently it is OK for the debts of the wealthiest, earned through theft and blunder, to be socialized at our expense. We weren't invited to the party (in fact it was at our expense) but we will be subsidizing the clean-up.
We can do better. It's time to replace the system of theft known as capitalism. If we are going to subsidize anything, let us subsidize each other. Instead of paying to keep a wealthy class temporarily afloat so they can exploit us further, lets put our money and efforts into building a sustainable, accountable, non-market based system based on a rational approach to serving the public.
We can start by using that money to create national projects to build a new national power-grid using alternative energy, restoring infrastructure, and rebuilding a nationalized rail system. This will also create good jobs. We can save a great deal of money by bringing our troops home and closing our bases overseas. We can enhance our security by nationalizing banks, healthcare, education, and big industries like pharmaceuticals, steel, agriculture and mining.
The options are clear -- an era of depression and decline or a time of rebuilding and ascension.
R.I.P. Richard Wright
Lipstick on a (Fascist) Pig
The Repug choice of Sarah Palin is more than telling as to the kind of administration we would see from McCain. As revealed in the New York Times, Palin is a secretive, vindictive, power-hungry and corrupt character. The more I see and hear of her, the more she seems like a cross between a right-wing Huey Long and another George W.
It should go without saying that the last thing we need is another Evangelically deluded ignoramus in the White House but her zeal and lust for power may be even too much for the dodering McCain.
Republic Police State
The Republicans, true to their fascist nature, have organized police state repression in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The have raided houses of activists and anyone they suspect of anti-Republican sentiments kicking in doors, seizing computers and jailing many. Their focus has been on the RNC Welcoming Committee, an organizing center for protests around the convention but arrests have included journalists including Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and progressives in general.
The National Lawyers Guild is actively engaged in fighting this unprecedented police abuse directed by the federal "Homeland Security" apparatus and is defending arrestees and trying to get seized property returned.
The unfolding pig-state nightmare seems to perfectly represent what the repugs are all about.
The Bottom Line
Once the US economy was based on gold. Later it was based on silver. For the last few decades it has been based on debt and bullshit but it looks as if reality is catching up quickly. The borrowing and spending spree of the last eight years has led to a crisis that will bring the US Empire to a grinding halt. We have buried ourselves. Asia and especially our main lender, China however, is in good shape and will remain ascendant for some time. The only thing the US has left is a broken military in a world where militarism of the classic variety is increasingly irrelevant.
What does this mean for most of us working stiffs? Hard times. Jobs are harder to get and hold and salaries don't keep up with costs. Construction will grind to a halt as the overproduction of the last decades has left us with a glut of houses, condos, strip malls and big box stores based on delusional projections.
As popular desperation turns to anger, the already built and legislated police state will be used to keep us from doing what we have to and to protect private property even as many are forcibly removed from their foreclosed homes. This will happen no matter which corporate candidates win the present selection. We will have to unite as a class to take care of each other. We will have to rebuild a system that works for us. We will have no choice.
Michael Moore lays out the consistent losing strategy that the Dims are sticking to. Will they listen? No, but it's good that he's pointed it out. Strategy aside however, the platform the Dims are designing (which unlike the very real platform of the Repugs is a phony list of positions designed for a campaign and dumped afterwards) is list of weak positions and compromises created by poll-based electioneers and represents not "change" but the consistency of corporate influence and the continuation of the same imperialist agenda.
1. Keep saying nice things about McCain. If you want to help elect McCain, keep blessing him as if he were the white knight who accidentally hopped on the wrong horse. Keep reminding a country at war that he, and he alone, is a war hero. That he's been "good on global warming" and campaign finance. Say that enough, and you know what happens? People start to believe it! You've sold them on the idea that McCain isn't a bad egg, and they do not hear the rest of what you have to say: "But John McCain is four more years of George W. Bush."
Don't remind people that McCain wants to help the oil companies even more than Bush did. Don't bring up that he wants to outlaw abortion. Back away from painting him as the guy who thinks it's a good idea to stay in Iraq until pigs fly. That way, if you keep praising him, you can send a mixed message to the less informed, who are simply not going to figure it out. When they walk into a voting booth, they will see two names on the ballot:
☐ BARACK OBAMA ☐ WAR HERO
Trust me, this ain't Sweden you're living in. War Hero wins every time.
2. Pick a running mate who is a conservative white guy or a general or a Republican. Yes, it will seem like smart politics at first. Shore up Obama's lack of military experience with a hawk. Be true to Obama's message that he'll be a president for everybody by having him run with a Republican. Make a pitch to the purple states of Virginia and Indiana by putting one of their own on the ticket. Or make the red state of Ohio happy by handing the vice presidential slot to its governor. Just so long as Obama's running mate screams "same old, same old," making it harder for him to attract the new voters he needs to win.
There is nothing wrong with picking someone who can help him win a swing state or someone who has more experience than he does in certain areas. But when I hear pundits say things like, "He has to pick a Catholic," well, John Kerry was a total Catholic, and the Catholic vote went to Mr. W. I mean, here's one of the largest groups in the country — 66 million Catholics — and they/we have only allowed one Catholic to be president in 219 years. You would think they would have been flocking to Kerry in 2004. THAT IS NOT THE WAY PEOPLE THINK. IT IS THE WAY PUNDITS THINK. Keep listening to them and you can help elect John McCain the next President of the United States.
3. Keep writing speeches for Obama that make him sound like a hawk. Here's what Obama said in front of the American-Israeli lobbying group the day after the final primaries:
"The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."
And: "Let there be no doubt — I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation."
Sounds like a speech McCain would give. Sounds like he's ready to invade Iran. Obama staked out an even worse position for the Palestinians vis-à-vis Jerusalem than the one held by George W. Bush. Keep that up, and more and more supporters will be less and less enthused. He also says he wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. The implied message of all of this is that the Republican plan is a good plan. So why would voters want to elect the candidate imitating the Republican when they can get the real thing?
4. Forget that this was a historic year for women. Obama should be making a speech about gender like the brilliant one he gave on race back in March. Millions of people, especially women, had high hopes for the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Attention must be paid. And you don't pay attention to it by having your advisers run your wife through the makeover machine, trying to soften her up and pipe her down. Michelle Obama has been one of the most refreshing things about this election year. But within weeks of the end of the primary season, the handlers stepped in to deal with the "Michelle problem."
What problem? She speaks her mind? She wears what she wants? Her biggest sin, according to the punditocracy, was to say that, as a black woman, this may be the first time in her adult life she's been really proud of her country. Shock! Surprise! Outrage! But not from any of the black women I know.
You have to be white and stupid to not know what she was really saying. If you don't understand, let me ask you this: Have you been proud of what this country has been doing in the past few years? Are you proud your neighbors had their house taken from them? Are you proud to be sending a good chunk of your paycheck to the oil companies so they can post record profits? Are you proud to know your vice president outed one of our spies and put her life and the lives of others at risk?
That's all she was saying — what we are all feeling.
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both lost the white-male vote but won the White House. They did so by winning the black, Hispanic and female vote. That HAS to be Obama's strategy to win. Otherwise, Cindy McCain will be our new First Lady.
5. Show up to a gunfight with a peashooter. Convince yourself that the Republicans are just going to roll over and play dead because there is simply no life left in their party. Convince yourself this one is in the bag! Convince yourself that if you play by the rules, the Republicans will too.
And when McCain and his people roll out their nuclear arsenal on you, just go all sweet and sensitive and logical. Believe that the truth shall prevail, that good people will see what the Republicans are up to. As they smear you, your family, your religious beliefs — cower, back down, go on the defensive.
If they say you should quit your church, quit your church! If they explode over your speaking the truth about the anger and despair of the white working class, take it all back! If they ask you to stand on your head and do the hokeypokey, snap to it and do it with a smile on your face — and don't forget to apologize for not doing the hokeypokey earlier; you meant no disrespect, and please don't take it as any indication that you do not love your country, your flag and your Christian God.
Do all of that and then listen for that sound — the sound of your supporters shuffling away in silence. They'll stop showing up at campaign headquarters. They'll say they're too busy to go on another door-to-door literature drop. On Election Day, they'll do their duty and vote, but they will not be up at 6 a.m. driving around the city's neighborhoods, picking up strangers who need a ride to the polls.
And on the way to the polls, some of them might just come to a stoplight, turn around and go home. Maybe they'll pick up a six-pack on the way. Maybe there's a new episode of Deal or No Deal on tonight. That would be nice. The girls are pretty, especially the blonde in the third row. Wait, they're all blond. No, not that one — THAT one! Oh yes, I see her. She is pretty. But the Man in the Booth has picked up the phone! He's calling down to you. Deal? Or no deal? No deal! No deal! Don't do it! Hey, I'm outta beer! Why didn't I pick up a case? Now I gotta spend eight bucks on gas to go buy more beer! Aaaaarrrggggghhhhhh!!!! HOWIE MANDEL ISN'T WEARING A FLAG PIN!! U-S-A! U-S-A!
6. Denounce me! Obama, at some point, might be asked this question: "Michael Moore has endorsed you. But he recently said (fill in the blank with some outrageously offensive line taken out of context). Will you still accept his endorsement, or do you denounce him?"
And he better denounce me, or they will tear him to shreds. He had better back away not only from me but from anyone and everyone who veers a bit too far to the left of where his advisers have told him is the sweet spot for all those red-state voters. I won't take it personally. After all, I'm not the guy who married him or baptized his kids. I'm just the idiot who went to the same terrorist, Muslim school of flag-pin desecrators he went to.
I remember poor John Kerry not even being able to admit, when asked by Larry King, if he had seen Fahrenheit 9/11. "No," he said, "I haven't. . . . I don't plan to, right now." But he had indeed seen it. I sat there watching him say this, and I just felt sorry for him and for the election he was about to lose.
We can't take four more years of this madness, Barack. We need you to be a candidate who will fight back every time they attack you. Actually, don't even wait till you have to fight back. Fight first! Show some vision and courage and smoke them out. Keep asking why these lobbyists are McCain's best friends. Let's finally have a Democrat who's got the balls to fire first.
So Barack, by denouncing me, you can help McCain get elected. Because when you denounce me, it's not really me you're distancing yourself from — it's the millions upon millions of people who feel the same way about things as I do. And many of them are the kind of crazy voters who have no problem voting for a Nader just to prove a point.
Elections have been lost by just 537 votes. I don't want that to happen to you.
American Hero Dies
When we think about the Pentagon Papers and the revelations that led to Nixon's downfall and the end of the Vietnam war, many think of Daniel Ellsberg. What many forget or don't know is that the real instigating activist responsible for the publicizing of the Pentagon Papers was Tony Russo. It is our sad loss that Tony Russo died last week. His courage, principle and tenacity changed history and though he paid a price, he never regretted his actions. Evil doesn't thrive well in the clear light and it is the responsibility of those with access to knowledge of crimes against humanity to expose them. Tony didn't flinch in the face of real danger. He did what was right. He will be missed.
The Economics of Calamity
Ever wondered why anyone would deny the reality of Global warming as vociferously as some do and why business interests in particular seem so intransigent on the issue? Could it be because any realistic approach to doing what is necessary to preserve the biosphere requires the end of capitalism? Are profits for the few really worth the destruction of civilization and maybe life on earth? Do capitalists really have a choice or is the system itself a juggernaut out of control? What should we do about it? What can we do? Here is an interesting article exploring the economic realities of our ecological crisis.
Green Party Candidates Speak
Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente are genuine progressive candidates worthy of support. If Progressives can't support an alternative to the corporatocracy than we won't have one and we won't be heard.
