Debt, oil, Obama, Walmart and more....

Walmart. This says it all...

A study released this week found that if the nation's largest low-wage employer, Walmart, were to pay its 1.4 million U.S. workers a living wage of at least $12 per hour and pass every single penny of the costs onto consumers, the average Walmart customer would pay just 46 cents more per shopping trip, or around $12 extra dollars each year.

Consider that the next time you hear some corporate mouthpiece warning of massive job losses if some minimally progressive policy were enacted. You never see them arguing on the cable news shows that increasing the minimum wage will hurt Walmart’s or McDonald's bottom lines; it’s always about the jobs that will be destroyed.

We all pay for Walmart's stinginess. Their workers can't afford medical insurance, so when they get very ill, they go to emergency rooms.

The libertarian answer: Shut down emergency rooms.

Debt. Most Americans don't want Congress to raise the debt limit. Most Americans are idiots.

If the debt limit doesn't go up, we will either stop paying back the money we've borrowed -- a move which would end the American experiment once and for all, since the country would be, in essence, bankrupt -- or the government would have to stop issuing Social Security checks.

Good god. Is it possible that even this group of Republican legislators are that stupid?

Studying Trig. Some posts down, we discussed Professor Brad Sharlott's paper on the Sarah Palin conspiracy theory, which holds that she is not the real mother of Trig. I was not convinced, although Sharlott raised some interesting points. Today, Justin Elliot of Salon has offered a resounding rebuttal to Sharlott's monograph.

Trig Truthers have fixated on any number of details about Sarah Palin's pregnancy. Sullivan, for example, thinks it was irresponsible that, shortly before she went into labor, Palin got on a plane from Texas, where she had been speaking at a conference, and flew to Alaska.

But whether Palin acted irresponsibly is beside the point.

Actually, her behavior is very much to the point, if you're asking the right question. The question is not "Is she Trig's mother?" but "Does this woman have any brain cells rattling around in her skull -- and if she doesn't, then why does anyone care about her political opinions?"

Of course, Palin stumps for Trump's forays into birtherism. If she's going to dish out paranoid horseshit, she deserves to receive return fire. So let's not feel sorry for her.

It's not "fraud and manipulation" if it's legal. Obama says that he's going to root out "any fraud and manipulation in the oil markets that might be contributing to higher U.S. gasoline prices." Most people operate according to the misapprehension that oil prices are strictly a matter of supply and demand. If prices rise, supply must be tightening, right?

Wrong.

The real cause of skyrocketing gas prices is commodity speculation. A barrel of oil goes through many owners before it reaches your car, and the costs are passed on to you. Basically, the Wall Streeters are doing to oil and other commodities what they did to housing not many years ago.

Yes, but that's not really "fraud and manipulation," is it? Obama's words seem strong, but they actually allow much room for weaseling. There used to be laws against this sort of thing, and now there aren't. The people who make the laws were purchased by the speculators who want to rob you at the pump. Some forms of robbery are quite legal.

Has Obama done anything to bring back the older regulations? Yes, he did. Believe it or not. Apparently, it was not enough.

If you really want to know what the problem was and is -- if you want to know the real reason why you're paying nearly four bucks a gallon -- read this. The Enron Loophole was supposed to have been closed in 2008, but market speculation continues nonetheless.

My mind keeps on flashing back to that scene in Natural Born Killers, where Mallory voices a longing for a "cop-less town." That's what the libertarians have given us: A cop-less town.

And this is a main point of difference between myself and many of my readers. I'm not angry at Obama per se, even though I expect little good out of him. Nor am I truly pissed off at the Democrats, as wretched as many of them have been.

Obama is a mere symptom. The name of the disease is libertarianism. As soon as you people hip yourself to that fact of political life, as soon as you shift focus from the players to the game, you can start playing a newer and better game. The politicians can't save you, but you can save you.

Change the weltanschauung -- the national ideology -- and you'll suddenly have oodles of great leaders. The toadies will become princes. Presidents don't create a weltanschauung shift, not all by themselves. Even Reagan didn't do that, although a great shift happened on his watch.

A massive propaganda campaign took place at that time. You couldn't turn on the radio without hearing a salesman expound the virtues of the New Way of Life that the country was now destined to lead. Mysterious commercial-free programs showed up all over the teevee, featuring Milton Friedman in serious talks with Maureen Reagan about the virtues of the free market. Teevee commercials also sold fundamentalist Jesusism as though it were a new deoderant, and all of the televangelists spent half their time screeching for unfettered free markets as the only antidote to Godless Bolshevism.

(Side note: Remember the "Power for Living" ad campaign? That one came a few years later. I recall it well because it was particularly crass.)

Even if Barack Obama were on the side of the angels -- and I don't think he is -- you couldn't expect him or any other individual to counter that barrage.

We have to do it ourselves. All of us.

Speaking of Obama... As you watch the video below, you (some of you) will be outraged: How can these people still support Obama? But I see this protest song as a great sign. These people seem truly pissed off, and not just because they hate Obama's treatment of Bradley Manning. They are angry at this whole failed presidency. And they are desperate to support a new leader and a new Democratic movement. (Also see here.)

The song would have worked better if it were half as long, though.