CANNONFIRE

Romney's taxes: What if he lies?

2012-01-22T22:39:00.001-08:00

A quick question about Romney's taxes. What's stopping him from giving us false forms?

Years ago, back in the 80s, a guy who worked at a bank told me that if someone applying for a home loan hands in a tax form with false info, the bank had no way to double-check. Is there any way to verify Romney's data?

Sounds like an Apocalypse!

2012-01-21T03:40:00.001-08:00

This is a political blog, not a Weird Shit blog. But the political realm -- and life in general -- has left me feeling awfully bleak and blue in recent weeks. So let's welcome some good news: The Apocalypse is nigh!

At least, such is the purport of a mysterious set of videos popping up all over YouTube. These clips document a worldwide phenomenon -- strange, loud, unearthly sounds that have been heard in various locations around the world. A flurry of "unidentified auditory phenomenon" reports came pouring in from all over the world on January 12, 2012, and again on January 17. Near as I can tell, the first wave of videos documenting these sounds showed up in March of 2011, with another outburst in August of 2011.

I know what you're thinking: How do we know that these videos do not constitute a massive con job? Faking up a presentation of this sort would be child's play. Perhaps we are witnessing a viral, global leg-pull.

My response: Dude, you're harshing my buzz. I prefer to think that the Apocalypse is nigh.

On occasion, teevee news has reported on the incidents -- for example, ITN. So has the Huffington Post. Also see here and here. And here. As you'll see, at least one sports broadcast has been interrupted by these audio events.

At this point, I can offer no explanation. Can't even provide you with one of my characteristically outre theories. (Some folks are talking HAARP. Boring! There are people who blame HAARP if a cat coughs up a fur ball.) All you can do is check out the vids and come to your own conclusions.

This one comes from the Czech Republic:

Here's Conklin, Alberta, Canada. This is, perhaps, the most popular of the videos, even though it is almost certainly fake:

Costa Rica coming up. This one is more musical, more David Lynchian...

More on the Costa Rica sitch. Translation, anyone?

Helsinki, Finland, January 17, 2012 (sounding a bit too Hollywood, alas):

Same date, Boulder, CO:

Same date, same sound, Nottingham, England:

Same date, Thunder Bay:

Same date, NYC. Subtle, but cute:

Same date, Philly. Alas, this one sounds quite dubious, like a music track slowed down:

Badajoz, Spain, January 18, 2012:

Belgium, January 19, 2012:

Apparently, something similar occurred worldwide in September of 2011. For some reason, this interesting compilation segues into a commercial for a truly hideous product:

Same damned thing occurred in the south of France (always an epicenter for weirdness) in March of 2011. Here, as elsewhere, the sound resembles the noise emitted by the tripods in the Spielberg version of War of the Worlds:

At the same time France got hit, this occurred in New Jersey:

Poland, August, 2011. This one sounds cool, but methinks I hear indications of Adobe Audition at work...

Take me out to the ball game...

Kiev, in the Ukraine. August, 2011. A news report, in a language I do not understand...

Same time period, St. Petersburg, Florida (this one is subtle)...

Moscow, also in August...

Sweden, again in August...

Unspecified date and locale. But the audio is, like, totally cool.

There are many more such videos on YouTube. Let me say it again: Yes, I know that such presentations are easy to fake. I could do a damned good job of it myself in little more than an hour. But right now, I prefer to ignore your bah-humbuggery, so pooh your poohs elsewhere. In my present mood, just about the only thing that could cheer me up is a really top notch Armageddon.

And popcorn. And beer.

(Wait a minute...! If the world does end in 2012, we'll never find out how Sherlock did what he did at the end of season 2!)

SOPA: How to make your voice heard.

2012-01-18T07:03:00.000-08:00

Needless to say, I support the effort to protest SOPA legislation. GO HERE NOW.

Sorry about the light posting...

2012-01-16T01:36:00.000-08:00

Personal issues. Not sure when I'll return.

How to start a war

2012-01-12T09:01:00.001-08:00

Of course the car-bombings of Iranian nuke scientists are the work of Israel. Even the New York Times and Fox News point in that direction, which means that the artist wants a signature on his canvas. What's interesting is the methodology: There are quieter, subtler ways to kill people.

The Obama administration has strongly denied any involvement. However, the Jerusalem Post, citing a respected blogger named Richard Silverstein (who in turn cites an Israeli intelligence source), claims that Mossad trained terrorists from the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), and that the US was necessarily involved. Silverstein's blog post is here; come to your own assessment.

In a more recent post, Silverstein writes:

What’s disingenuous about this approach is that the U.S. and Israel are joined at the hip in this black ops war against Iran. They developed Stuxnet with Israel. The very same MEK terrorists sticking magnetic bombs to the car doors of Iranian scientists are the ones our government is considering giving a clean bill of health by removing them from the terror list.

Silverstein goes on to ask the right question:

If Iran were assassinating Israeli scientists or the Soviet Union assassinated Edward Teller or J. Robert Oppenheimer does anyone in their right mind believe it wouldn’t arouse a fierce backlash against the perpetrators?

Conclusion: The Israelis hope to provoke a reaction. The car bombings cannot seriously slow the Iranian nuke program, but they can prod Iran to retaliate. In doing so, Iran would give the U.S. the casus belli which the neocons seek.

Israel wants war.

Why would Obama go along with this dangerous game? Well, I haven't seen much "Obama hates Israel" propaganda this election season. And Obama has raised money at an impressive clip.

As Gary Sick writes...

A war with Iran would not be surgical, brief, or one-sided. As memorably noted by Gen. Anthony Zinni, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you will love Iran. It is a huge country, well-defended, with a fierce sense of nationalism. No air campaign, even if prolonged, will end the problem. Regardless of how a conflict begins, it is most likely to end with lots of boots on the ground. A squad of special forces will not do the job.

Paradoxically, the quickest way to insure that the Iranians decide to go for a bomb may be to bomb them. The most predictable result of a military strike would be Iran's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the ejection of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and cameras that watch every step of the Iranian enrichment process.

On the domestic political front: Mitt Romney has given clear signals that he supports the war conspiracy.

Obama? Despite the words written above, he seems to be more of a mixed bag. Although he may be as oily as Romney -- well, almost as oily -- the two men represent differing constituencies. The Democratic party leadership does not want war with Iran. The Demcoratic rank-and-filers, who have put up with an infinitude of crap from this president, will not tolerate that level of military adventurism.

Corrupt Obama may be, but I've never called him a neocon, and I don't think he wants to repeat Dubya's disaster on a larger scale.

On the other hand, it is likely that his administration allowed Israel and MEK to carry out these bombings. My guess is that he intends to play along with the war conspirators until re-election is secured. Until that point, he hopes to keep the pot bubbling without boiling over.

200 pardons

2012-01-12T01:32:00.000-08:00

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was once considered a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, despite his strong resemblance to a spoiled squash. At the end of his term of office, Barbour pardoned or gave clemency to more than 200 criminals, including people convicted of murder and other very serious crimes. His predecessor had issued just one pardon.

The Mississippi Attorney General (who happens to be a Democrat) has issued a temporary injunction blocking further prisoner releases, because the state's constitution requires that prisoner requests for pardons be published 30 days beforehand.

The pardon/clemency list includes the brother of New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre. (The brother accidentally killed a friend while driving drunk.) Also pardoned were David Gatlin (recently denied parole), who shot his wife while she held their small son; Anthony McCray, who also shot his wife; socialite Karen Irby, convicted of manslaughter; and Joseph Ozment, who, while committing a robbery, shot a wounded man point blank in the head.

NRA fundamentalists should rejoice: Pardoned individuals are allowed to carry firearms under federal law.

Barbour has issued a statement defending his pardons. You can read it -- festooned with suitably captious commentary -- on a Mississippi-based blog called Cottonmouth.

Barbour's strange activities made me flash on another famous Republican -- Fred Thompson. Although you may know him best as an actor, he was a lawyer before going Hollywood. He played himself in Marie, a fine 1985 film starring Sissy Spacek. The movie tells the story of Marie Ragghianti, who courageously exposed a scandal centering on certain key cronies of Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton, who ran the state from 1975 to 1979. From Wikipedia:

His administration seemed rife with "cronyism", and this became more apparent when Roger Humphreys, a convicted double murderer, was pardoned for his crimes and it became public knowledge that his father was a county chairman for Blanton. It was later discovered that members of Blanton's staff were involved in the apparent sale of pardons.

In January 1979, with his term expiring, the State's Pardon Board began to make a series of pardons that seemed to be either the product of sheer politics or open bribery.

Blanton had fired Marie Ragghianti for exposing the pay-for-pardons scandal. This site has more:

Blanton was never charged in the clemency scandal, but made the ill-advised decision on January 15, 1979 to pardon three prisoners and reduce the sentences of 49 others, including 24 convicted murderers. Receiving the most attention was Roger Humphreys, who had murdered his ex-wife and her lover in 1973 and was not up for parole until 1984. Blanton commuted his sentence to time served. Humphreys, the son of a Blanton campaign manager, had already been subject to cushy treatment, including working as a photographer for the state.

Let's get back to Barbour.

One of the best reviews of the Barbour pardon scandal comes from this site, run by R.S. Ruckman, who specializes in the politics of pardons.

15 of Barbour's recipients had multiple convictions, in multiple years. Almost 30 were found guilty of murder, manslaughter, accessory to murder or the like. One third of them were originally sentenced to life in prison. It appears three literally walked right out of prison (Harper, Kambule and Irby).

Yes, it was a classic example of just about every thing the pardon power should not be. The only thing that seems to be missing, for now, is some hint of "politics" (donors, supporters, friends, relatives, inside influence and the like). But, give it time. Barbour clearly could have spread these decisions over a period of months, if not years, making each one a little more well-considered, a little less suspicious looking and - for those who really were deserving - something barely worth public celebration. But, no, a Republican governor, in the South, and potential presidential nominee has to keep up appearances.

Haley Barbour and his chief of staff will now join the law firm of Butler, Snow, O'Mara, Stevens and Canada.

The firm will rely on Barbour and Hurst’s expertise in economic development, strategic planning and government relations. Barbour also will be working for the BGR Group, a Washington lobbying firm he helped establish before he became governor

You can learn more about BGR in this Talking Points Memo story. These lobbyists are tied in with union-busting, a Milwaulkee energy utility called WE Energies, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. TPM neglects to mention that Walker sold WE Energies to the Koch brothers for "pennies on the dollar."

The Blanton scandal revisited: If the reader will forgive a small side-jaunt into assassination lore, the Ray Blanton scandal of the late 1970s had a strange connection to the murder of Martin Luther King. This site gives part of the story:

Undercover agents, testing how far the administration would go, met with a bodyguard and asked how much it would take to secure the release of James Earl Ray, who had murdered civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. The bodyguard responded that Ray was too high-profile a prisoner for clemency, but it was possible that he could be allowed to escape for the right price (incidentally, Ray did escape in 1977 along with a handful of other inmates; it was unlikely to be a Blanton administration plot, however, since Blanton promptly called in the troops and Ray and his fellow fugitives were recaptured within days).

I have heard -- but cannot now confirm -- that one of the recipients of an otherwise-inexplicable Blanton pardon was a prisoner who helped James Earl Ray to escape. The fact that Blanton called in the troops is neither surprising nor reassuring: Claiming that a prisoner was "shot while trying to escape" is one of the oldest tricks in the book. (There had been several attempts on Ray's life.)

The escape occurred during the House Select Committee on Assassinations hearings. During a little-noticed 1999 civil case brought by Coretta Scott King, it was established that, immediately after Ray's escape, an FBI SWAT team swarmed the woods surrounding Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Lewis Stokes, Chairman of the HSCA, called Blanton and pressured him to make sure that the FBI did not kill Ray.

I don't know what Stokes said, but he must have found the right words.

The Hillary vote

2012-01-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

Everyone paid so much attention to the New Hampshire Republican primary that the Democratic contest -- if we may call it that -- has been ignored. Turns out Hillary won ten percent, which is pretty good when you consider that all of those votes were write-ins, and she has explicitly said that she does not want the nomination.

Don't jump to conclusions about Obama's vulnerability. Since the winner of the "contest" was a foregone conclusion, only 60,000 people showed up to vote for Obama. Thus, a write-in campaign engineered by die-hard Clinton fans scared up 6000 ballots. That sounds reasonable.

Too bad she didn't get, say, 30% of the vote. Things would really start to get fun.

"Patriots," Paul, plutocracy and pseudo-progressives

2012-01-10T16:53:00.001-08:00

Consider this post a follow-up to the one below.

The message reproduced to the right comes from Zero Hedge. One can, of course, find many similarly inane comments scattered throughout blogland.

This particular example of inanity stands out because the outrageous contradiction on display here illustrates a much larger problem. This fellow considers himself a "Born Patriot" yet identifies himself with an image of the Confederate flag.

Ron Paul has, at times, spoken in favor of secession. If ever he were to provide "aid and comfort" to any serious attempt to bring about secession, he should be tried and executed under Article Three, section 3 of the United States Constitution. Yet his supporters label themselves patriots.

At this writing, Paul will probably win second place in the New Hampshire primary. I don't expect much from the Republicans -- but is it really too much to ask the party of Lincoln to favor the concept of maintaining the union under any and all circumstances? Apparently so. (As we shall see, some alleged "liberals" also have no problem rationalizing Paul's treasonous instincts.)

What have we come to? What would Honest Abe think about Paul's popularity?

Modern conservatives are a contradictory bunch: They continually threaten to upend the very ideals they claim to cherish.

A few days ago, we looked at the ultra-conservative wing of the Catholic church. We noted that the people who bray loudest about their loyalty to the papacy are also the ones who, if they don't get their way, are the likeliest to join a schismatic movement. Similarly, the tea partiers proclaim their loyalty to the founding fathers even as they continually threaten to take up arms against an elected government, should that government do things unapproved by the libertarians. Sometimes the baggers make that threat in a sly and subtle fashion; sometimes (as in the case of Sharron Angle), they can be overt. But the threat remains, always there, lingering in the air.

Let's give this threat its proper name: Fascism.

The Confederacy -- revered by the Paulites -- was the first attempt at a fascist government: A one-party plutocracy founded on slavery and fueled by appeals to the most irrational aspects of the human psyche. The libertarians who molded Ron Paul's thinking admired fascists like Mussolini and Pinochet. These ideologues also tend to admire Joe McCarthy, who came to prominence by defending the Nazi perpetrators of the Malmedy massacre, and whose political mentors had pre-war records as fascist sympathizers.

Yet libertarian propagandists try to convince naive youngsters that FDR was pro-fascist...!

On the left side of the aisle, the situation is almost as bad. I loathe and decry the recent attempts by Glenn Greenwald, Matt Stoller and others to make Ron Paul palatable to liberals. Stoller is a particularly vile revisionist historian:

As the New Deal era model sheds the last trappings of anything resembling social justice or equity for what used to be called the middle class (a process which Tom Ferguson has been relentlessly documenting since the early 1980s), the breakdown will become impossible to ignore.

My god. What an absurdity. What indefensible and ludicrous propaganda.

FDR, following in the footsteps of the preceding generation's progressive movement, created the middle class. You can't hold the New Deal responsible for the attacks on the middle class that began only after Reaganites did everything they could to dismantle the New Deal. That's like blaming Sharon Tate for the Manson family murders.

Stoller claims that the New Deal was based on "warmongering." Back in FDR's day, that idea would have made sense only to someone like Robert McCormack. Or to William Randolph Hearst. Or to the Bund. Or to the fascist sympathizers who later went on to found the John Birch Society. Yes, Naked Capitalism is flirting with Birchism, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. Even as he extols the virtues of Paul, the young and ambitious Stoller (who was, of course, a fervent Obot just three short years ago) trashes the memories of Lincoln, FDR and Woodrow Wilson in terms that would make sense only to a Glenn Beck aficionado.

Stoller blames World War II on Roosevelt and the Civil War on Lincoln. Not so long ago, one would have encountered these sentiments only in pro-fascist fringe periodicals. How much distance separates Stoller from, say, William Dudley Pelley? Or George Lincoln Rockwell? Or Eustace Mullins (who also wanted to end the Fed)? Or the folks who gave us The Thunderbolt and Angriff Press? Stoller may not be a racist, but his penchant for fascist-friendly historical revisionism places him in evil company.

Hell, even The Spotlight played it more coy. Perhaps I should revise my "flirting with Birchism" remark: Comparisons to the JBS are too soft to describe what Stoller is up to. I've read some back issues of American Opinion. Absurd as they were, they weren't this absurd.

Yet this guy gets published in The Nation...!

It is true that one wing of the fractured libertarian movement denounced Bush's atrocious war in Iraq. That factor explains why so many lefties have come to sympathize with Paul. But even in 2004 and 2005, I warned anti-war liberals against making common cause with the libertarians. What the followers of Ludwig von Mises want to do to the U.S. (and to the rest of the world) would make Dubya's attack on Baghdad seem comparatively gentle and kind.

Too many alleged leftists claim to be "too liberal for Obama" while simultaneously attacking the New Deal or offering rationalizations for libertarianism (which is just another word for plutocracy). Just like our friend "Born Patriot," these people have twisted themselves into living contradictions.

Fakelore

2012-01-10T12:58:00.000-08:00

These days, saddled as we are with a lousy president who calls himself a Democrat, I find it hard to come up with reasons to call myself a Democrat.

Perhaps my motivation for continuing to use that label comes down to this: Most Democrats still feel comfortable in the real world. If you talk to a Democrat about an Obama policy you find detestable -- the refusal to renegotiate NAFTA, the continuation of a hopeless war in Afghanistan -- your verbal sparring partner will probably accept your premise, even if he or she does not agree with you. The two of you will share a foundational reality.

Moreover, your verbal sparring partner probably will not attempt to distract you with myths, anti-issues and hallucinated pseudo-problems. A blinkered Obama supporter (yes, there are a few left) may make you grit your teeth and clench your fist, but at least he won't start talking about a war on Christmas.

By contrast, consider these words from Skydancing:

Yes, it’s that time of year when Republicans try to convince us that everything old, disproved, and thrown out is shiny, patriotic and new again. Angry sky gods, debunked scientific hypotheses, and myth trump rule of law, science, and reason.

The Economist must feel that we are so confused about the role of religion in the founding of our country, that they must to show us and the rest of the world that our founding fathers weren’t fundamentalist crusaders. They have a special Religion in America section up about how the founders were trying to avoid having Rick Santorum moments.

Modern fundamentalists are rewriting history in the same way they like rewriting science. They place dinosaurs and modern people in their garden of Eden panoramas. Some now argue that the founders didn’t like “Darwinism” which wasn’t even around at that time Of course, that doesn’t stop Texas putting that kind’ve nonsense in textbooks. This also explains Michelle Bachmann’s odd notion that the founding fathers fought against slavery.

Well put. (Except for that "kind've.")

Another example of reheated nonsense popping up in the current Republican primaries is Ron Paul’s obsession This is a completely debunked set of economic philosophies and musings roughly associated with Fredich Hayek who had a few good ideas about the pricing mechanisms of the market that were completely contorted by some fascists. If you ever hear any one say anything about Mises, cover your ears. It’s basically akin to learning astrophysics from a flat earther who denies the theory of gravity. No amount of historical data deters these people.

...in all my years of education, I would never believe that so much debunked tripe would form the central arguments of so many people running for president.

Since we're on tripe alert, take a look at the video I embedded at the top of this post. What we have here is a 2007 Romney commercial with a laugh track added. The guffaws help us to understand that the Mittster was lying out of his ass when he warned us about the great plot to install a "caliphate" that would rule the entire globe. The claim flies in the face of all evidence, and he knew it.

Although Bin Laden was an evil bastard, you can't point to a single authentic text, audio or video in which Bin Laden says: "Here's what we're fighting for: The establishment of a caliphate in the United States." Bin Laden's goals were always pretty clear. He didn't like Israel, he didn't like the American bases in Saudi Arabia, he considered the Saudis and other Arab potentates to be corrupt lackeys of the west, and he wanted to turn existing Islamic nations into salafist nightmares (just as Christian dominionists want to establish a fundamentalist nightmare in the U.S.). But to the best of my knowledge, Bin Laden never talked about establishing a caliphate in the U.S. or in any other non-Islamic country. If Bin Laden had said such a thing, the quote would have been repeated endlessly.

Alas, the "caliphate" myth has established a hammerlock on the right-wing imagination. Millions of people believe it to this day.

That 2007 campaign commercial isn't the point of this post, because even Republicans know by now that Mitt is an insincere opportunist who will say pretty much anything to get elected. (He's the Mormon Obama.) The ad is, however, symptomatic of a larger problem. Democracy can't work if half the country insists on battling ghosts and leprechauns. Democracy can't work if the facts of history, science and economics must do continual battle with fairy tales and fakelore.

PROMPTERGATE 2! (Added note)

2012-01-09T11:17:00.000-08:00

The "Bush bulge" controversy/mystery/national running gag of 2004 began on this very blog. Although I never took the matter very seriously, this site spent an enormous amount of time talking about the whatzit on Bush's back. How could I resist? The whole thing was just too much fun.

Times have changed, and the world situation keeps finding new ways to become dire. In 2012, focusing attention on such an issue seems downright silly and irresponsible.

But...what the hell. In times like these, we need some fun.

I've embedded a TPM-produced video of the Republican debate in 100 seconds. It offers a couple of telling Mitt Romney moments. In particular:

"I understand that President Obama and people of his political persuasion would like to take more money. From the American people."

Mitt delivers the line in exactly that fashion: He inserts a period into the sentence prematurely, then opens it up again for the remaining bit. (Dubya used to do that sort of thing all the. Time.) A similar oddity crops up when Romney recounts his father's advice.

(Added note: Is it permissible to address the substance of Romney's hilariously fractured statement? Obama's much-misunderstood stimulus package cut taxes for 95 percent. Of the American people. Since tax cuts were the largest item in that package, those who say that the stimulus didn't work are also saying that tax cuts don't work. I'd like Romney to name the occasion when Obama has taken money. From the American people.)

Back in 2008, various writers accused Romney of using an earpiece. I didn't pay much attention to the brouhaha because the Mittster clearly wasn't going anywhere and my attention was on Obama. Nevertheless, the stories floating around at that time were intriguing.

Everything hinges on how you interpret this video clip. Somehow, a debate mic picked up the whispered words "He raised taxes" just before Mitt said something similar. NBC later explained that their microphone actually caught someone in the audience. That excuse is ridiculous: You never hear such whispers when game shows and sitcoms are taped in front of a live audience.

Armchair investigators posited a number of alternative theories, summarized here.

(The person who uploaded the above-linked YouTube video says that Mitt was protected by a communist conspiracy. If people consider Mitt Romney a bolshie, then this nation really has gone loony.)

Directly after that 2008, this appeared:

A blogger at Red State says that on another occasion Romney's staff said to him that Romney wears an earpiece that his staff uses to talk to him...
During Gov. Romney’s speech, one of his handlers mentioned to one of our staff people that any time Gov. Romney needed to wrap things up, he would be happy to let Gov. Romney know through the ear-piece that he wore.

The quote links to a bygone Redstate post which has disappeared from the net. Fortunately, what I presume to be the bulk of that post is preserved here. The person making the claim was Jerry Zandstra, chair of Americans for Prosperity of Michigan. Zandstra goes on to say:

Being unfamiliar with whether or not presidential candidates wear Jack Bauer-like ear pieces, I simply assumed this was common practice.

Zandstra seems sincere enough. I don't know if he had any affiliation with a competing campaign.

We can't have a post on such a topic without a good, old-fashioned "back bulge" shot for everyone to examine and squabble over. Oddly, it is not easy to find dorsal images of Mitt Romney via Google images. However, we do have this, from which I have extracted the accompanying enlargement. I have not adjusted or sharpened the picture. Is that a rectangular something on his back? You be the judge. It's very subtle -- but to my eyes, something seems amiss.

The possibility of a Romney earpiece places this story from a few days ago in a new perspective:

Mitt Romney aides made a sudden decision to remove teleprompters from the hall at his Des Moines victory party because the candidate wanted to "speak from his heart," said Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior Romney official.

We even know the brand of teleprompter Romney prefers. When he doesn't use one, he tends to look like a slightly mis-programmed version of a Disneyland robot pirate.

It's pretty clear that Obama uses an earpiece as well. The following clip puts that claim in cement:

As this writer puts it:

Actually, both candidates' hesitancy and quick changes of topic, often within the same sentence, are consistent with their being whispered to. I challenge you to sound coherent when someone's talking to you and you have to not repeat what they say but reformulate it into something that sounds good, while they're still talking.

Iran and the plot to wreck the world's economy

2012-01-09T04:20:00.000-08:00

The neocons are resurgent, and they're going after Iran. Right now, the weapons are economic. Alas, that weapon could just as easily destroy us. This brilliant article explains how a needless confrontation with Iran could destroy our delicate recovery.

A key amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act signed by United States President Barack Obama on the last day of 2011 - when no one was paying attention - imposes sanctions on any countries or companies that buy Iranian oil and pay for it through Iran's central bank. Starting this summer, anybody who does it is prevented from doing business with the US.

Once again displaying a matchless capacity to shoot themselves in their Ferragamo-clad feet, governments in the European Union (EU) are debating whether or not to buy oil from Iran anymore. The existential doubt is should we start now or wait for a few months. Inevitably, like death and taxes, the result has been - what else - oil prices soaring. Brent crude is now hovering around $114, and the only way is up.

Add to it Tehran's threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, thus preventing one-sixth of the world's oil and 70% of OPEC's exports from reaching the market; no wonder oil traders are falling over themselves to lock up as much crude as they can.

Forget about oil at an accessible $50 or even $75 a barrel. The price of oil may be destined to soon reach $120 a barrel and even $150 a barrel by summer, just as in crisis-hit 2008. OPEC, by the way, is pumping more oil than at any time since late 2008.

Even if you manage to get a job, will you be able to afford transportation to the workplace?

Welcome to the new economy. Cars are now for living in, not for driving.

Obama's parents and the CIA

2012-01-07T15:46:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, this blog ran a series a few years back on Obama's possible family connections to the CIA. Wayne Madsen -- a writer untrusted by many -- took up my research leads (without crediting me) and came up with new material. Some of his finds are genuinely intriguing, while other parts...well, I don't know what to make of it all. That's Madsen for you.

Yesterday, a friend to this blog directed my attention to this review of two new books: Sally Jacobs' biography of our president's father, titled The Other Barack, and A Singular Woman, Janny Scott's biography of Stanley Ann Dunham. As it happens, I have both books. (Well, sort of: Library card + scanner = free pdfs. Is a poor person allowed to do this?)

Neither book addresses the CIA allegations directly, but both are worth reading. So is the afore-linked piece from the London Review of Books, which offers a good summary of both volumes.

Sally Jacobs' work left me with a genuine admiration for Barack Obama Sr. -- in fact, I probably like him better than Jacobs does. True, Obama had serious problems with alcohol, and he mistreated the women in his life. Many readers will, on those grounds, consider the man beyond redemption.

I disagree.

The elder Obama simultaneously justified and ruined his life when he took a principled stand. To be specific: He wrote an influential article which called for African economic independence. In that piece, Obama clearly hoped to set the economic course for all of post-colonial Africa, not just for Kenya.

Alas, his recipe was NOT what the Americans wanted to hear. His insistence on Africa-for-the-Africans helped to insure that the CIA would eventually choose the autocratic and corrupt Jomo Kenyatta over Tom Mboya, Obama's patron. Up until 1968 (or thereabouts), the Agency preferred Mboya, who was more stable and more popular; Kenyatta was considered erratic.

After that fateful article came out, BO Sr. was -- not to put too fine a point on it -- fucked. He lost his huge-paying job, his big car and his impressive home. In short: He made a headlong plunge into schlub-hood. He always remained an arrogant schlub, to be sure, but he became a schlub nonetheless. Although he had started drinking heavily in college, the problem became much worse as his prospects dimmed.

The above-linked reviewer does not see fit to mention that Barack Obama Sr. witnessed the assassination of Mboya. Had Obama identified the killer, he probably would have been killed himself. The man was brave but not stupid.

There are still those in Kenya who insist that the elder Obama was murdered. True, he had previously established a record of drunk driving incidents, a couple of which which had put him in the hospital. Not long before that final, fatal one-car accident -- a collision with a tree -- he gave his wife a rather morbid harangue on how best to raise the children in the event of his death. Make of that what you will.

We can interpret the elder Obama's life as a lesson in what happens when you play along versus what happens when you rock the boat. I think that our president learned this lesson pretty well.

Did the CIA ever directly approach Barack Obama Sr.? Probably not -- at least, not in any noticeable way. I don't think there was ever an occasion when someone in a crisp dark suit sidled up to the barstool next to Obama and said: "Hi, I represent Certain Interested Americans. We want to pay you X amount of money to perform the following services..."

Nevertheless, there are plenty of indications that, early on, the Company kept tabs on him. They would have been idiots not to. Obama was, arguably, the most brilliant economist in post-colonial Africa, and he came very close to charting a course for the entire continent. Though not a communist, he had a degree of guarded sympathy for the USSR; he even studied Russian. Of course the CIA would have opened a file on a guy like that; that's what the taxpayers paid the Agency to do.

Although Obama gave himself the title "Doctor" on his return to Africa, the State Department had (unfairly) kicked him out just before he could complete his PhD. Harvard never allowed him to acquire that degree. There's an argument to be made that The Powers That Be gave him the bum's rush when they realized that this impulsive, brash and domineering young man had an independent streak beyond their ability to tame.

Janny Scott's book about Stanley Ann Dunham is more difficult to assess. To be candid, a small part of me suspects that it was written in bad faith, or at least with one eye blind. The allegations that the CIA recruited our president's mother have, by this point, received sufficient publicity to justify at least some sort of response, if only a sneering one. Yet Scott never mentions those allegations.

A later post will offer a fuller reaction to A Singular Woman. For now, let me simply state that nothing in this volume has quelled my suspicions that Stanley Ann Dunham was spookier than Caspar.

Both of the men she married turned out to be people whom the CIA would have wanted watched and, if at all possible, brought on board. Happenstance? Well...maybe. But how often does such a thing happen in your family?

Dunham took lessons in Russian at a time and in a school where intelligence recruits often studied that language. She worked for AID and the Ford Foundation, both notorious for offering CIA cover. She became an anthropologist and a world traveler, always visiting political hot spots. No one can deny that the CIA made a special effort to enlist the aid of anthropologists. (Google the words CIA and anthropology. All sorts of interesting stuff will turn up.)

Some researchers (Madsen in particular) have even linked Ann Dunham's parents to the intelligence services. Of particular interest is the photo above, which shows Barack Obama Sr. receiving the traditional lei upon his entry into Hawaii. Also in the photo: Stanley Ann's father, Stanley Armour Dunham -- very recognizable from other images. He allegedly served in an intelligence capacity during his military service, which, I admit, does not mean a whole lot. At the time this photo was taken, he was supposed to be on the mainland, selling furniture. Yet here he is in Hawaii, standing next to his future son-in-law, well before Stanley Ann met the young African up-and-comer.

Yeah, that is intriguing. Don't pretend otherwise.

Madsen and others have alleged that our president's grandmother -- the woman who actually raised our president -- had some connection to the Rewald scandal. If you don't know about Rewald -- well, it's a very long story which I once knew in detail but now can recall only hazily. Short version: It was a CIA money thing. Alas, the allegations tying Madelyn Dunham to Rewald are iffy and vague. If Madsen has evidence, he has been very coy about making it public.

Unfortunately, most of the websites discussing CIA ties to the Dunham clan are wacky right-wing "birther" joints. Not for the first or last time, conspiracy-crazed sickos have worked hard to decredibilize legitimate research into the intelligence community.

These reactionary pseudoresearchers seem convinced that the elder Obama was brought into the United States by a cabal of Marxist fifth columnists masterminded by -- get this! -- the Unitarian Church. And how do they know that the Unitarians were in league with Moscow? Because the Unitarian Church decried racism in the 1950s and '60s. (That's why the Birchers never liked the Unitarians.) Yes, folks, we're dealing with the dreaded Unitarian conspiracy!

I'm not kidding: That's their argument.

They also think that Barack Obama's mother is still alive.

And there you have it. Whenever someone tries to look into what the intelligence agencies may or may not be up to, the audience soon divides into two camps:

1. The nothing-to-see-here camp. These are the insufferably arrogant and dull conformists who insist that you must never bring up such topics, lest they regale you with ever-so-clever references to tin foil chapeaus.

2. The raving loony camp. These are the frothing-at-the-mouth paranoids who never shut up about birth certificates, controlled demolitions, flying saucers at Roswell, the third secret of Fatima, the Illuminati, and god-knows-what-else.

I think that -- on occasion -- the truth lies in a no-man's land situated between those two camps. Only a few dare to explore that territory.

Wanna come with...?

Santorum and the abortion controversy

2012-01-07T13:41:00.000-08:00

Although he probably won't be able to overtake Romney, Rick Santorum is making headlines again by pushing the gay marriage button. He did this in front of ninth graders. I don't have kids, but if I did, I'm not sure I would want a political candidate to come to my child's school and encourage a discussion of gay sex. Guess that makes me a fuddy-duddy.

Speaking at a college, Santorum conjured up the image of a marriage involving five people. I'm trying to imagine what the bedroom must look like: Do they push together two king-sized beds? Who sleeps in the middle? Thank you, Rick Santorum, for giving us that visual.

Quite a few denizens of blogland have been debating the question: Did Rick Santorum's wife Karen abort a doomed child to save the life of the mother? I am persuaded by this view, offered by Blue Lyon, a sometime friend to this blog, and no admirer of Santorum's politics. She argues that one cannot apply the term "abortion" to what happened on that occasion.

Bostonboomer, at Skydancing, offers a somewhat different take. I guess the controversy all comes down to the Pitocin injection. Does the administration of this drug to speed labor constitute "abortion" in any meaningful sense of the term? I don't believe so.

I think part of the squeamishness that I feel -- and I’m probably not alone -- is that the Santorums chose to share their experience with the public.

The squeamishness is understandable. Call me old school, but I prefer to keep certain very personal matters outside the realm of public discussion. The only decision made by Karen Santorum which I would -- very tentatively -- call into question was her decision to write a book about her sad experience.

Happy 600th birthday

2012-01-06T19:19:00.001-08:00

Today is the 600th birthday of one of the many French lasses who have captured my heart over the years: Jeanne d'Arc -- Joan of Arc to you.

Like Mark Twain (who wrote a gushing but accurate biographical novel about her), I have long considered Joan the most admirable creature produced by the human race during the past thousand years. She is the only non-artist of my trio of personal heroes -- Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Mahler and Joan of Arc.

Then again, maybe she was an artist. Her medium was kicking ass.

When I was young, I read every English-language biography of Joan, and even some of the French material, back when my French was a lot better. I even came across (in the recesses of a UCLA library) an exact photographic reproduction of her trial transcript, which the notaries had verified with cool red bloodstains.

The best of the bios (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise) remains the one written by Vita Sackville-West. Although superbly written, the book has made many enemies over the years because Sackville-West -- the lover of Virginia Woolf -- implies, but never states, that she recognizes something in Joan that transgressed then-current sexual norms.

The evidence is intriguing, though hardly conclusive. There was a boy in Joan's life early on: He sued her for breach of promise, she won her case, and that's pretty much all we know about the matter. Joan wore male clothing throughout her career, and not just to go into battle -- most people forget that she spent many frustrating months on inactive status in the court of Charles VII. (Her costumes were costly, and she owned more horses than did the king. All saints have their weaknesses.) She slept with women whenever possible. Her male comrades-in-arms reported that she was comely and had nicely-shaped breasts (which they just happened to notice), yet she never aroused any sexual feelings. One soldier did try to cop a feel. You can guess her reaction.

Interpret all of that as you will. Shaw called her "the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages," and I suspect that he was right in more ways than he knew.

Joan's life teaches us that it is possible for anyone -- absolutely anyone, however unlikely -- to act in this world. She teaches us that it is possible to couple a genuine humility with an almost-infuriating level of self-confidence. Had she not lived, the Hundred Years' War would have turned out differently.

Neither arrogance nor self-regard had any place in her heart; she was pure action. She specialized in deeds, not reflection. I once hoped to be like her in that. Reflection, alas, can be the worst of habits.

I still don't know how she did what she did. The uncrowned King -- properly called the Dauphin -- granted her an audience mostly as an amusement. Speaking in private, she told him a Big Secret. Neither party ever revealed that Big Secret. Whatever it was, it convinced "Charlie-boy" (as Shaw called him) to give her control of the entire French army.

On a feminist note: Arguably, we should call her not Jeanne d'Arc but Jeanne Romée. The rules of nomenclature were still in flux; in her part of Europe, women retained the matronymic. Her mother Isabelle was named Romée, indicating that she had made a pilgrimage to Rome at some point.

Joan never referred to herself as Jeanne d'Arc; later writers gifted her with her father's name. The father may have come from Arc. We can't even be sure what his name was: Various documents from the time give it as Darc and Tart and Day and Dare and several other variations.

Joan always referred to herself as La Pucelle -- the Maid -- which was her nomme-de-guerre. Sort of like Bruce Wayne calling himself Batman.

In fact, she may be the closest thing to a comic book superhero that real life has ever offered. She had a cool name (cool by the standards of her day), a costume (the "white" armor, which wasn't really white), a putatively magic ring (sort of like the Green Lantern) and allegedly spooky powers. Although many feats of what we would now call ESP have been attributed to her, I can't offer hard proof that she ever did anything truly supernatural.

But she did once take a 70-foot fall out of a tower window -- and survived. Didn't even break a bone. So, like, there's that.

The finest modern Johannaphile writing in English is the famed medievalist Bonnie Wheeler; anything she has to say is worth your time. You may also want to look up an old book by Guy Endore, who also wrote Werewolf of London. The biographical chapters are pedestrian, but the 100 page "Discussion" at the end addresses the many bizarre rumors that Joan's legend has inspired over the years, and it is all great weird fun. W. S. Scott's bio is also worth reading.

Finally: I doubt that January 6 (the feast of the Epiphany) is her real birthday. The document which gives that date is filled with romanticized silliness. But tradition is tradition. Of all the onscreen Joans, the actress who most resembles the real thing is probably Jane Wiedlin, who played her in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. She was also in the Go-Gos.

Santorum's weird religion

2012-01-05T19:00:00.001-08:00

This is the best piece I've seen on our new Republican superstar. As you might have guessed, Rick Santorum has a history of corruption as long and rich as that of any other politician.

I can guess your two-word response: Ho and hum. You expected as much.

Still, check out the article. I think you'll learn about scandals previously unfamiliar to you -- fake charities, misappropriations of funds, livin' large off the taxpayer teat, the K Street project, and all of the rest of it. Like most other Republicans, Santorum seems to define "morality" purely in terms of how one should and should not use one's wee-wee. Ethicists have no business talking about money.

The following paragraph deserves special attention:

Santorum has frequently insisted that his political values are guided by his religious values, and that John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 speech describing a separtion between the two had done "much harm" in America. But despite inviting such scrutiny, there's been little discussion of Santorum's ties to ultra-conservative movements within the Roman Catholic Church Santorum's comments about JFK were made in Rome in 2002 when he spoke at a 100th birthday event for Jose Maria Escrivade Balaguer, founder of the secretive group within the church known as Opus Dei. Although Santorum says he is not a member of Opus Dei -- which has been criticized by some for alleged cult-like qualities and ties to ultra-conservative regimes around the world -- he did receive written permission to attend the ultra-conservative St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Va., where Mass is still conducted in Latin and a long-time priest and many parishioners are members of Opus Dei, mingling with political conservatives like Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and former FBI director Louis Freeh.

Time for a long digression. I promise to bring this post back to Santorum eventually. Until then, bear with me.

Many view the Catholic Church as a monolith. Most Americans think that Catholics are Robots From Rome who all think, act and worship in the same way.

Nonsense. There is far, far greater room for variety, even creativity, within Roman Catholicism than you'll find within, say, the Southern Baptist tradition. True, Rome tries to keep its worldwide flock on the same page concerning the most basic issues of theology. But I think it's a losing battle.

Take, for example, the issue of keeping abortion legal: Within American Catholicism, opinion is split almost 50-50, a division which roughly mirrors the divergence besetting the country as a whole, give or take a few percentage points. By contrast, roughly 90 percent of Baptists insist on reversing Roe vs. Wade.

You'll never see the equivalent of a Karl Rahner or an Archbishop Romero within any fundamentalist or evangelical Protestant denomination. There are many Catholics who question the literal truth of the Bible, and some even view the Gospel story itself as a kind of divine metaphor. Even a conservative Catholic scholar like Luke Timothy Johnson can admit, grudgingly, that the New Testament contains contradictions, historically problematic material, and iffy Greek grammar. Evangelicals never allow themselves to state that obvious fact.

Politically, there have been communist Catholics and Nazi Catholics and everything-in-between Catholics. This country has Catholics who call themselves Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Any political ism you can think of will have at least a few Cat-lick representatives.

But the fact that Catholicism contains both liberal and conservative wings should not blind us to the fact that the Church's conservative faction is freaky. And scary.

Alas, the ultra-conservatives have learned that they can get their way by continually threatening to leave the Church -- a threat they mutter under their breath while braying about their devotion to the papacy.

Most of you have not heard of the sedevacantist movement. Those of you who know the word probably learned about it from profiles of Mel Gibson, the world's most famous sedevacantist.

That impressive-sounding Latin term means "vacant seat." Sedevacantists think that the seat of St. Peter has been vacant since Vatican II, and possibly since the election of John XXIII. (The splitters differ on just when the rot set in.) What about those popes we've seen in recent decades? They're really anti-popes. False leaders. Freemasonic conspirators. Maybe even outright Devil worshipers.

I'm not kidding. That's what sedevacantists like Mel Gibson believe.

(Does Gibson still think this way? I heard that he has been going through some weird shit lately. Something about a Russian woman. I haven't been keeping up.)

Bill O'Reilly made me giggle when he interviewed Gibson around the time The Passion of the Christ came out. O'Reilly kept going on and on about how much the Pope (supposedly) loved the movie, while Gibson kept squirming and trying to change the topic. The director didn't want to harm boxoffice receipts by saying anything about the Pope being a freemasonic diabolist. For those in the know, O'Reilly's display of cluelessness was freakin' hilarious.

Here's the really funny part: Sedevacantists like Gibson broke from the Church because they disagreed with the Vatican II ruling that non-Catholics can go to heaven. The schismatics have many other complaints, especially concerning the Latin Mass. But what the ultra-conservatives really demand is a "No Prots allowed" sign over the gates to paradise.

(Also "No Jews Allowed." But that goes without saying.)

The protestant fundamentalists who made Gibson wealthy still don't understand that Mel Gibson thinks they're going to hell. He broke with Rome because Rome declared that protestants are not going to hell, at least not necessarily. Sedevacantists will not tolerate tolerance.

High Weirdness abounds in the realm of the schismatics. Like protestant fundamentalists, they love miracle stories and conspiracy theories. For example, the schismatics think that Vatican conspirators killed Fatima visionary Lucia dos Santos in 1959 and replaced her with an imposter. Spain has a rather impressive schismatic movement known as the Palmarian Catholic Church, run by Pope Gregory XVIII, who speaks with Jesus and the Virgin Mary on a regular basis. The Palmarians don't call themselves sedevacantists, since they believe that the seat has been re-occupied.

You may now be wondering: What does all of this have to do with Santorum? Is he a sedewhatzit?

No. But here's the thing: The schismatic movement, though numerically small, wields great power as a lingering threat. Conservative Catholics never come right out and say to the pontiff: "Any more of this liberalization crap and we will schism so fast your little white beanie will spin." But the possibility is always there.

That's why the Vatican puts up with behavior which once would have been considered beyond the pale. Rome does not want to see further schisms. The threat of a widening breakaway movement is the primary reason why we cannot expect to see any changes regarding, say, the ordination of women. Not within our lifetime.

The traditionalist parish of St. Catherine of Siena, in Great Falls, insists on a Latin Mass, as do the schismatics and the Lefebvrists. Opus Dei members are not necessarily traditionalists -- that is, many of them will attend Mass in the vernacular. Nevertheless, there is enormous overlap between Opus Dei and the traditionalist movement.

Opus Dei members are not schismatic -- indeed, they would claim to be the Pope's most fervent defenders. Moreover, sedevacantists are as paranoid about Opus Dei as they are about everything else.

Nevertheless, all of these strains -- Opus Dei, the Lefebvrists, the traditionalists, the sedevacantists, the Palmarians -- arose out of the mondo bizarro weltanschauung of Catholic ultraconservatism. Although these groups and subgroups bicker among themselves, they resemble each other more than their adherents may care to admit.

An unnerving strain of anti-Semitism occasionally surfaces within the traditionalist community. For example, traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson was excommunicated after he declared that the Holocaust never happened. In 2009, Williamson was reinstated -- a show of leniency which, I suspect, owes much to the threat of schism.

Williamson belongs to the Lefebvrist faction, known as SSPX (Society of St. Pius X). This is the best-known traditionalist group. There is some debate as to whether Archbishop Lefebvre effected a proper schism, but he did state that Rome had "lost the faith." Pope Benedict has tried to bring SSPX back within the fold:

The answer, of course, is that Benedict and his associates simply misjudged the degree of extremism and manic conspiracy theory circulating in the SSPX. The sect's eccentricity went further than simply holding quirky or reactionary views. Lefebvre and his immediate circle reacted radically and fundamentally to the Vatican's 1960s reformism. Theirs was not simply suspicion of modern decadence, but rather a fundamental belief in the evil forces subverting the modern world -- which included the Jews.

Pope Benedict erred in seeing the Lefebvrists as simple traditionalists or reactionaries whose views slotted into the right wing of the acceptable European political spectrum. Some, at least, were far more extreme, and the Vatican's attempted embrace of them will probably cause lasting damage both inside the church, and in relations with other faiths.

Some Lefebvrists consider Opus Dei too squishy-secular and modernistic -- a view which will surprise those observers who consider members of Opus Dei (yes, the same folks you read about in The Da Vinci Code) to be downright medieval in their thinking.

When Rick Santorum decried the separation of church and state, he spoke at a function honoring Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei. (I refuse to call him a saint, although the Church has canonized him, mostly as a sop to the far right.) Many writers have alleged that Escrivá favored the fascist dictators Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, although some Escrivá apologists now claim that Franco mounted fierce attacks on the Opus Dei movement. (Both statements may be true.) From Wikipedia:

During Escrivá's beatification process, Monsignor Vladimir Felzmann, who had been Escrivá's personal assistant before Felzmann left Opus Dei and became a priest in the Archdiocese of Westminster and an aide to Basil Cardinal Hume, sent several letters to Fr. Flavio Capucci, the postulator (i.e., chief promoter) of Escrivá's cause. In his letters, Msgr. Felzmann claimed to have personally witnessed Escrivá make controversial statements in defense of Adolf Hitler. The alleged statements by Escrivá include: "Vlad, Hitler couldn't have been such a bad person. He couldn't have killed six million. It couldn't have been more than four million", and "Hitler against the Jews, Hitler against the Slavs, this means Hitler against communism"... Msgr. Felzmann claimed that Escrivá made those remarks to him in 1967 or 1968, in Rome, during the intermission to a World War II-themed movie. Felzmann has also said that these remarks should be put in the context of Catholic anti-communism in Spain, and said that all of the male members of Opus Dei (who then numbered about fifty) volunteered in 1941 to join the "Blue Division", a group of Spanish and Portuguese volunteers who joined the German forces in their fight against the Soviet Army, along the eastern front.

Although Opus Dei denies that Escrivá ever said these words, I can't think of any reason for Felzmann to have lied.

Is there really that much difference between Rick Santorum and Bishop Williamson?

Michele Bachmann, victim of sexism?

2012-01-05T17:14:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting story indicating that Michele Bachmann was undone by sexism.

I know what you're thinking: No, she was undone by her own nuttiness, and by the bad publicity generated by her insane statements. Yes (says the author of the aforelinked piece), she was indeed wacko, but the Republican voter of today wants wacko. Craziness is no longer considered a disqualifier -- in fact, crazy makes you popular.

Ownership of a vagina is, on the other hand, a genuine problem.

It’s tempting, then, to think that part of what finally defeated Bachmann was sexism. There have been plenty of hints that some on the right were uncomfortable with the notion of a female president. “I’ve noticed that when her name is mentioned sometimes that there’s a lot of men that wouldn’t vote for a woman,” one Iowa county GOP chair told the Associated Press on Monday. Patricia Murphy also quoted Iowans who liked Bachmann but wanted a male candidate. One woman told her she’d initially been for Bachmann, “But then I just started thinking about being presidential and I don’t know that we’re ready for a woman for president.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that the Christian right’s patriarchs, many of whom explicitly preach female submission, felt the same way.

Good lord. Have we really come to this? In the 1980s, Republicans could not praise Margaret Thatcher highly enough. Now, it seems that they want women to return to housecleaning.

There was a dust-up back in August when a journalist had the temerity to inquiry whether Bachmann's run for the presidency conflicted with fundamentalist teachings on female submission. At the time, the question was considered rude; now, it seems germane.

Here's what Julie Ingersoll said in August:

After all, in the conservative Christian world there is a spectrum of views on how these texts are to be read. Evangelical feminists argue that the Bible actually teaches mutual submission between men and women. But Reconstructionists, some of whom have influenced Bachmann, have suggested that, given the biblical order for families, women probably shouldn’t be voting. I wrote about Reconstructionist biblical patriarchy here.

While Christians traditionally hold that God is beyond gender (even while often using masculine language for God), in “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy,” Doug Phillips asserts that God is male, and explicitly not female; that the human male is the “image and glory of God in terms of authority, while the woman is the glory of man.” That is, men are in the image of God in terms of authority over their households; women are created in God’s image in a decidedly different way, sometimes called “reflected glory.”

And here's a view from a "Biblical" blogger:

Women should submit to their husbands. Michele Bachmann should submit to hers. Submissive wives probably won't get to be president.

The world mocks the Bible. It mocks God's design for the family. Heaven and earth will pass away, but God's Words will not pass away. The Bible will stand. God's design will stand. Submission does not demean women. Perversion of God's Word is not a better way. Whatever mess we're in is because we haven't paid attention to Him. And if we allow someone who says she is a Christian to get away with it, it's not going to make it better. It's going to get worse.

Bachmann, you may recall, once said that she became a tax lawyer -- a job she professed to loathe -- because her husband ordered her to do so.

Well. That's one good thing about being the bottom: You always have someone to blame. I believe that in the BDSM world, that's called Topping from below.

Will Republicans turn against the Citizens United ruling?

2012-01-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

An interesting email popped into my box. It came from these people; they want an amendment which would overturn the Citizens United ruling which grants corporations unlimited rights to donate money to political candidates.

According to an NBC News-Marist poll, at the beginning of December, Newt Gingrich was the GOP front-runner in Iowa, with 26% of likely voters. However, after the Super PAC, Restore Our Future, spent $2.8 million on negative ads attacking Gingrich in Iowa, Gingrich’s Iowa support was cut in half to 13% percent by the end of the month, contributing to Gingrich’s lackluster fourth place finish in this week’s Iowa caucuses.

“By spending millions and millions of dollars without any form of accountability, Super PACs are now capable of completely changing the dynamic of our elections, shifting even more power to a wealthy elite and away from the voting public,” said John Bonifaz, director of Free Speech For People. “The GOP campaigns in Iowa present a clear example of the damage done by Super PACs, and they further demonstrate how important it is to overturn the Citizens United ruling and restore democracy to the people.”

“Who is funding these Super-PACs?” adds Bonifaz. “Who decides to "take out" a candidate and for what reasons? In the Citizens United world we all live in now, we're not allowed to know. All we can do is look ahead to New Hampshire and wonder how a few more million dollars worth of negative ads will effect the field.”

The counterargument is obvious: This is Newt Gingrich we're talking about here; he did himself in by...well, by being Newt Gingrich.

But Newt really is not the point, is he? The point is this: It is clear the Republican leadership wants Romney and that the rank and file wants someone, anyone else. So the leadership is willing to spend an agonizing amount of money to convince the hoi polloi to behave. Trouble is, these efforts are rather obvious, and they are bound to piss off a lot of people.

This issue goes way beyond Newt, and even beyond this particular election. We're talking about the possibility of bipartisan pressure to amend the Constitution.

And that possibility, my friends, is intriguing.

Fun fact: Did you know that the better-funded candidate wins 94% of the time? Everyone pretends to mistrust and dislike the media, yet everyone is far more open to media manipulation than they like to think. Our minds are clay sculpted by advertising. I'd like to see a new attitude take hold in this country: A vote for the underfunded candidate should convey an aura of cool.

Of course, if that view had held sway three-plus years ago, John McCain would be president.

The same batch of email also brought me a message from Free Press, which wants transparency in identifying attack ads.

These ads will swallow up more air time in 2012 than campaign coverage on local television newscasts. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashed countless millions of corporate dollars for spending on campaign ads. But broadcasters aren’t using this newfound revenue to beef up news operations and ensure in-depth coverage of candidates and election-year issues.

Instead, companies like News Corp., Viacom and the Sinclair Broadcast Group are lining their pockets with ad money from benevolent-sounding front groups like Concerned Taxpayers of America, Make Us Great Again and Citizens for a Responsible Government. And they rarely inform viewers about the wealthy individuals and corporations that fund these groups.

The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to make this financial information available online. But the agency won’t act unless it hears from you:

The FCC already requires broadcasters to keep information about political advertising in "public inspection files" that people can examine. These files contain the names of groups that purchase political advertising time, the cost involved and the names of executives at these organizations. But these files are often tucked away in dusty cabinets at news stations and are difficult for the public to access. The FCC is now weighing whether to make broadcasters transfer this information to the Internet, where anyone can find the data.

Media companies are projected to rake in more than $3 billion in revenues from political ads in 2012. But they are reluctant to take this basic step toward transparency.1

In a recently filed comment to the FCC, the National Association of Broadcasters urged the agency to drop its effort to make it easy for the public to ferret out this information online. Another group of broadcasters warned the FCC against any effort “to stimulate such examinations” of public files...

In the past, before Citizens United, some Republicans offered a trade: Unlimited corporate and private donations in exchange for transparency regarding the donors. I always presumed that transparency did not offer much of a threat, because only political junkies would care about who funded what.

Maybe we're all political junkies these days...?

Mystery in Japan (Added note)

2012-01-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

Uemura Yasuhiro was an official in the small rural town of Kowaura in the Mie Prefecture. (News stories incorrectly say that he came from a city called Kowaura Minamiise Machi Mie.) After Fukushima, he became an anti-nuke activist. On January 3, around 10:30 in the morning, he drove out to his farm, bringing along a shotgun to scare some crows -- or so we are told. He was found in the car, his chest blown out, and the shotgun outside the vehicle.

A lot of people are questioning how that can happen. Physically, the tableau doesn't seem very likely.

If you check out the area on Google Earth, you'll see that the town is surrounded by trees and hills. Plenty of places for a sniper to hide -- and a subsequent shotgun blast would disguise an entrance wound made by a rifle. Of course, for this scenario to work, the killer would need to know ahead of time that the target was going to bring that convenient shotgun to the scene.

So far, I've seen no indication that Uemura Yasuhiro was important enough justify the effort, expense and risk of hiring a hit man. Yes, he lectured against nuclear power -- but so do others. Was he having a massive impact on the national dialogue?

Added note: Temps are in the 30s in the Mei Prefecture right now. How likely is it that the victim would drive around with an open window?

Perhaps he opened the window to speak to someone. In which case, I'm no longer thinking in terms of a sniper but a small handgun at close range. What about footprints? We need to know if the car was on a paved surface.

Would a man intent on suicide by shotgun sit in the car, twist his torso, and hold the gun out the window?

A brief word on Iowa

2012-01-04T07:19:00.000-08:00

Iowa does not really pick the winner -- McCain did not even campaign there in 2008 -- so why the excitement? Ron Paul is too creepy to have a chance. (Greenwald's sorta-pro-Paul argument was one of that writer's few false moves.) Perry is more or less out, Bachmann is also heading toward the exit door, Newt is fading. So it all comes down Romney versus Santorum.

I like what Paul Begala said:

You gotta love a party in which Mitt Romney can do no better than virtually tie with the guy who compared gays to "man on dog" sex and thinks contraception is evil.

I should consider Santorum the lesser of these two evils, given his working class Eye-talian background. On social issues, his old school Catholicism will outrage many progressives, but I can't take his rhetoric seriously. It's just rhetoric; the country will go on as it has been.

What counts is Santorum's attitude toward war.

The guy is itching to go after Iran. Conservatives have increased their war-cries, even though, at this writing, Iran has done nothing to us, and has been at peace for many years. The good folks at Judicial Watch sent me an email broadside yesterday which made the shameless recommendation to "nuke Iran." Frightening stuff.

The Republicans would have to be foolish to allow the main issue of 2012 to become war or peace with Iran. Americans are sick of war. We've ruined our economy paying for two needless conflicts. Deep down, we did not want war with Iran even in 1980; we certainly aren't screaming for blood now.

If Santorum runs as The War Guy while Obama runs as The Peace Guy, Obama will win.

We still haven't finished cleaning up after Dubya's bloody mess. It's too early for the GOP to think of running another neocon.

The more interesting question: How will the party's power elite react?

I've long said that the real behind-the-scenes battle in this country is between those who want to save America through military Keynesianism and those who want to profit from strip-mining the country's assets. Santorum represents the former; Romney represents the latter.

A moral question

2012-01-03T14:10:00.000-08:00

You probably want to read about the Iowa caucus results right now. God knows why; the whole business strikes me as rather less significant than the pundits pretend.

Right now, I'd like you to chew on a moral conundrum which may or may not have political implications.

The video featured in the post below inspired me to visit various web sites in order to scoop up "Alan Moore stuff." As you probably know, Moore has been engaged in a decades-long battle with DC comics over the rights to his most famous work, Watchmen, which he never wanted to see adapted as a film. DC now wants to churn out sequels and action figures and god-knows-what-else, all to be created by hirelings.

In the interview here, Moore reveals that he might have earned a couple of million dollars had he signed over all rights to Watchmen.

His refusal of this rather impressive offer strikes me as an honorable decision. Downright saintly.

Then again: What would be the saintly decision?

Think of the families living in cars who might be able to get into homes if that money were put to charitable purposes. Think of people who need medical treatment...

On the other hand: If all artists refused to take a stand for integrity, then the entire world of art would become like that nightmarish town in China (I forget the name) where thousands of "artists" working under slave-like conditions produce fake Old Master canvasses for Israeli "students" (wink) to sell in America.

In the interview, Moore details how he allowed a friend of his named Steve Moore (no relation) to write a computer game version of Watchmen. He gave his assent only because Steve Moore needed the work and his brother had a serious medical condition. Basically, the company used the friendship between the two Moores to perform a rather obvious bit of emotional blackmail. It all ended badly, of course.

Now, I think that Alan Moore has made the correct decision in not taking that two million dollar payoff. Correct for him.

The existentialists -- remember them? -- used to place great weight on the concept of authenticity. Situations often arise in which one cannot hope to perform the morally correct action, because any choice will have a serious downside. Under certain circumstances, one can only act in an authentic fashion -- that is, according to a personal code. Think of Bogie at the end of The Maltese Falcon.

The classic example goes back to World War II. You're a young man working on a farm in France; your father is dead, your mother is old, your sister is quite young. The Nazis invade. A friend asks you to join the Resistance. Do you go underground?

If you do, your mother and sister will endure enormous hardship. They may not survive. But when you offer this excuse, your friend sneers: If everyone refused to fight the Nazis on such grounds, the Resistance would not exist.

There is no morally correct choice. There is no holy book which tells you "Under circumstance X, perform action Y." There can be only an authentic decision. A decision that is right for you but not necessarily for the next person.

So. Let's say that you are a talented writer. You have created a novel or a comic book or -- how I hate this word! -- a property that Hollywood wants to adapt. They offer a million bucks. You have every reason to believe that, no matter how cleverly you try to structure the deal, they will rape your work bloody in every conceivable hole.

On the other hand: Think of the good deeds you can do with that money.

(For the purposes of this thought experiment, you are not just a talented writer but a saint, or at least an incredibly wonderful person.)

What is the morally correct thing to do?

If you can't answer that question -- and I doubt that you can -- then try this: What would be the authentic thing for you to do?

Alan Moore's Thought for the Day

2012-01-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

"Thought for the Day" runs on British radio. Usually, a conventional cleric takes this time spot to say some rather conventional things. On New Year's Eve, the thought came from Alan Moore.

After hearing this brief but potent disquisition, I decided that it was the Single Greatest Thing Ever. I will hold to that opinion steadfastly for at least another hour or two. I was so impressed that I felt compelled to use Moore's statement of faith as the basis for this video.

For some reason, religion has become a popular topic on the blogs I read. Well...top this.

Reality check

2012-01-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

Steve Benen offers a fascinating response to a 60 Minutes profile of Eric Cantor, who -- on camera -- absolutely refused to believe that Ronald Reagan raised taxes to combat a recession. Even though Reagan did just that; his tax raise was massive. I recall it well; people like Richard Viguerie thought Reagan had turned commie. (Incidentally, Jimmy Carter lowered taxes, a move which did much to create that recession.)

Why do Cantor, his press secretary, and Republicans everywhere deny what is plainly true? Because reality is terribly inconvenient: the GOP demi-god rejected the right-wing line on always opposing tax increases; he willingly compromised with Democrats on revenue; and the economy soared after Reagan raised taxes, disproving the Republican assumption that tax increases always push the nation towards recessions.

It gets worse than that. The top tax rate was lowered as Reagan left office, which led to the recession that assailed Bush the elder. Clinton raised the top tax rate; not only did that move get our government out of the red (remember when the big issue was how to spend the surplus?), it initiated the longest period of prosperity we've known during the past five decades.

Here's another reality check: When you ask conservatives to defend the ludicrous notion that Obama is a socialist, they invariably will point to the stimulus package. But by far the largest item in that package was tax cuts.

If you say that the stim package did not work, you're saying that tax cuts don't work.

To make that admission is libertarian thoughtcrime. Many people prefer to rewrite history, to rewrite their own memories.

Libertarian theology is the constant triumph of hallucination over experience. Libertarians are stage magicians who keep thrusting their hands into an empty hat because their beloved theory -- which they can never allow themselves to question -- demands that a rabbit must be in there somewhere.

To be fair, though, this old-school libertarian was willing, back in 1987, to tell a few important truths about Reagan -- truths which modern conservatives like Cantor prefer to wish away.

Benen's article evinced a comment worth repeating, and even savoring.

I'm seeing the denial of reality in recent history, too. In response to the news that GM and Chrysler are planning to invest nearly $1BN in new plants and equipment in Ohio as the US auto industry rebounds, people are still trying to claim the bailout was a bad thing.

In particular, I'm hearing "if GM was such a good gamble, why didn't the private market loan them the money?" Which made me livid - these jack@sses have already forgotten that their precious markets were horribly, frighteningly broken lo those three years ago.

In all the "Obama is a Wall Street hating soshulist" garbage is one of the biggest real-time rewritings of history: the Kenyan communist saved capitalism's sorry butt. Big time.

But that cannot be the national narrative. Democrats must always be the party of government and Republicans the party of markets, even if the facts utterly support the opposite.

Where I stand on conspiracism

2012-01-01T12:37:00.001-08:00

Not long ago, Crooks and Liars published a good piece on those now-notorious Ron Paul newsletters. Even though Paul profited from those publications, he now disavows all knowledge of their content. C&L author David Neiwert correctly notes that Ron Paul's proposed new order of libertarian "freedom" would translate into the removal of governmental protections that stop the affluent few from enslaving the impoverished many.

Everyone is talking about the racist content of those old newsletters, which I suppose is a natural response: Slavery and genocide are the foundational sins of this country. But I prefer to focus on the paranoia.

Conspiracism has become this nation's second-most popular religion. When you question that religion, its adherents always counter: "So, you're saying that conspiracies don't exist?" No. I'm saying that what passes for argument in the conspiracy theorist subculture is often risible.

To illustrate the point, let's have a look at this page from one of those long-ago newsletters. Judging from the internal evidence, these words were published in late 1991. The subject is the Trilateral Commission.

The real goal of the Trilateral Commission is to merge the U.S., Japan and Europe into one centralized Megastate.

Wow. Quite a sweeping statement. Since this article follows a quasi-scholarly format, one would expect the author to back up this bold assertion with, say, a quote from a Trilateralist publication. Something like this: "Hey-diddly-ho, my fellow Trilateroonies! You know what would be a really good idea? One centralized Megastate!"

Instead, the author (who was not Ron Paul -- honest Injun, not him, blame someone else, anyone but Ron Paul) gives us the following proof for this Megastate thing:

Their 1977 report "Toward a Renovated International System" argues that "premise of a separation between the political and realm" should be made "obsolete" (Trilateral Task Force Report, 1977). Such a global corporate state would be a monster and a death blow to our liberty.

Wait a consarned minute here, Mr. Not-Ron-Paul! You have not established that the Trilateral Commission wants a global state. You have offered a gerrymandered quote which speaks to something else. I'm not sure what the author of our quote-within-a-quote means when he talks about the separation of the political and economic. (Some of us feel that such a separation was always an artificial construct -- hence the traditional term "political economy.") But one thing is certain: The quote-within-a-quote tells us nothing about any plans to create a Dreadful One World Gummint.

And yet, for that generation of conspiracy believers, the existence of Trilateralist plans to create a D1WG became an article of faith.

I'm not against research into possible conspiracies. I'm against poor argumentation. I'm against anyone who applies insanely low standards of evidence to important questions. I'm against people who draw 5X worth of inference from 1X worth of data. I'm against writers who make statements when they should ask questions. I'm against researchers who put conclusions at the beginning of an investigation instead of saving them for the end. I don't mind speculation -- even outlandish speculation -- but I mistrust those who fudge the distinction between the posited and the proven.

The world being what it is, I can't blame anyone who feels paranoid. But let's have paranoia with standards.

Side note: So who did write those newsletters? Lew Rockwell has been mentioned. But I would note that in this same time period, Ron Paul had on his staff a conspiracy-oriented lecturer named Craig Hulet, who operated under the name K.C. DePass. Under that name, he got a lot of play on KPFK, which is part of the left-wing Pacifica radio network. I heard his rap. Near as I could tell, he was no racist -- but he was kind of off-the-wall. He taught me that the sneakier libertarians know how to clamber over the walls and scamper around LeftyLand.

Wonder what he's up to these days?

New Year's in Baltimore

2011-12-31T21:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have to admit -- New Year's Eve in Balmer is pretty damned impressive. Some fireworks are legal here, but even the ones that are not are beyond the power of the cops to impede. We're not talking sparklers -- we're talking full-on skyrockets, of the sort normally seen at professionally-run shows, zooming out of backyards and alleyways. It's bizarre. Unrestricted. A little frightening. Airborne insanity.

Sssissssshhhhh fpop Ka-POW! fizzle fizzle fizzle.

We found a "high ground" position and had a spectacular 360 degree shock-and-awe view. I can't say I approve. But...but...DAMN!

It sounded like the British were attacking Fort McHenry again.

Other than that, 2012 has been rather dull so far.

Taxing Romney

2011-12-31T12:24:00.000-08:00

Josh Marshall delves into the question of why Romney won't release his tax returns. He thinks that the issue may have to do with the infuriatingly small amount his pays. A week ago, I offered the same thought. It has been estimated that Romney, though super-wealthy, pays only about 14% in taxes.

But there is another possibility. Romney is a Mormon, although some have questioned whether he is serious about his Mormonism. He is supposed to tithe to his church. Do you really think that's happening?

The issue won't go away. The DNC has made Romney's tax returns the topic of a video. Romney's son got into trouble when he said his father would release his tax returns when Obama released his grades and birth certificate. This has been derided as a "birther" joke, one which made Mitt look bad, but the college transcript business is a rather different matter. Some have questioned whether Obama even went to Columbia.

Legal Insurrection proclaims "“Tax returns for college transcripts” will not work." Maybe not, but we can't be sure until we give it a chance.

Mitt refuses to go along with his fellow Republicans on getting rid of the capital gains tax. If that conservative desideratum were achieved, the people -- yes, even the dim-bulb American people -- would learn that our rulers often live off of capital gains, and thus would pay no taxes. As the Washington Post noted...

Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.

“The way you get rich in this world is not by working hard,” said Marty Sullivan, an economist and a contributing editor to Tax Analysts. “It’s by owning large amounts of assets and having those things appreciate in value.”

Releasing Romney's returns would debag that cat.

AGAIN with the Biden/Clinton thing...?

2011-12-31T04:51:00.000-08:00

BooMan, the masochistic froggie whom I've swatted in the past, has responded to Robert Reich's prediction that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden will switch gigs.

The last president to willingly switch vice-presidents was Franklin Roosevelt, who did it twice. But Joe Biden is no Henry Wallace, nor is he under indictment like Spiro Agnew. So, why does Reich think Obama will demote the vice-president?

To which lambert at Corrente responds:

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Joe Biden's no Henry Wallace? Yeah, and Obama's no FDR, Booman. You "startlingly dumb" Fuck.

BO definitely is no FDR, but that doesn't invalidate BooMan's point. Henry Wallace said and did many admirable things -- for example, he denounced racial injustice at a time when very few others in the Democratic party were willing to do so. He came close to the presidency even though he took a stance well to the left of FDR. But Wallace also had a New Age nitwit side which made him a political liability. (The "Guru letters" did not become public until 1947, but they were known to insiders well before.)

So far, BooMan, not lambert, is the one who has it right. But then our addled amphibian gives us a nice, steaming pile of froggie poop...

Do any of you see any indicators that the president is about to lose his reelection bid? Have you seen any recent, reputable polls that show him losing to any of the clowns running for the Republican nomination? There appears to be no current 'need' for riling up the base. Maybe Reich believes such a need will arise. The future is uncertain, and it's better to have a motivated base than a "disillusioned" one. Of course, Robert Reich doesn't seem to know who constitutes the Democratic base. He seems to think its made up of Jane Hamsher, Matt Stoller, Arianna Huffington, Cornel West. and the people Reich dines with on weekends. Would those malcontents be excited by Hillary Clinton on the ticket? Do malcontents get excited?

Obama's real base is made up of the people who helped him beat Hillary Clinton, presumably (at least, in part) because there was something about Clintonism and DLC politics that they didn't like.

Oh jeez. This shit again? I thought Arianna and the gang were the crew who gave us Obama.

I see plenty of indicators that Obama is likely to lose his reelection bid. Have you seen the latest? 43% approval, 48% disapproval -- and the 43% is about as enthusiastic as a four-year-old facing a plate of badly-cooked brussel sprouts. The issue Americans care about right now is the economy, which sucks and will soon suck harder. (Don't let anyone tell you otherwise; the fundamentals are frightening.)

BO has been a terrible president, an embarrassment to the party, and he's infinitely more vulnerable than Clinton would have been at this point, had she won the office in 2008. BooMan neglects the polls which indicate that Hillary Clinton is about a zillion times more popular than Obama right now.

The seeming Republican disarray is temporary; the GOP leadership always knows how to unite the party when crunch time comes. Those guys know how to engineer a Yeltsin-on-a-tank moment for Romney, should the need arise.

(Sudden thought: Suppose a new terror incident were to hit. Would the country unite around Obama the way it united around Dubya? I don't think so. Quite the opposite: The propagandists would sound the "He didn't protect us" propaganda line incessantly.)

Take a long-term view and you'll see that today's Republican in-fighting works to the Democratic party's disadvantage. Instead of primarying Obama (as they damned well should be doing), the Dems have fallen prey to ruinous delusions about their chances.

No-one outside the masochistic frog community truly likes Obama these days. At best, Democrats consider him marginally preferable to the Republican opposition. I see no-one running toward Obama, although quite a few people are running away from Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich and Paul.

As for the DLC bogeyman: Come off it, froggie. It's hard to demonize the DLC (which is out of business, and which never had any real power) after Obama has spent the past three years espousing an agenda well to the right of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Get a clue:

“I am a New Democrat,” declared President Obama, firmly identifying himself with the brand and philosophy, though not necessarily with the organization of the Democratic Leadership Council.

The major criticism progressives launched against the DLC was the group's endorsement of NAFTA. Guess what? Not only did Obama lie about his NAFTA stance on the campaign trail, not only has he refused to renegotiate the treaty (despite his pledges), he has gone around the world seeking more free trade agreements with Asia. That's the great untold story of the Obama years.

BooMan may be the last frog in America still high on all that Axelrod-brand junk he injected into his little green veins back in 2008. May I offer this small reminder from 2009...?

Americans Elect: The Rothschild factor

2011-12-30T16:19:00.000-08:00

I'm still not sure what to make of this Americans Elect thing.

So far, the group is not on the radar of most citizens. Yet the movers and shakers who made AE come into being are seriously rich and seriously spooked up. After our previous post on this topic, a reader contributed the following:

Americans Elect is run by Lynn Forester de Rothschild. They have already picked Huntsman as their candidate, go to Irregular Times, they have a whole bunch of articles.

As some of you may have noticed, I now link to IT, even though they're trying to drum up enthusiasm for Obama's re-election, while I'd rather vote for Huckleberry Hound. (Come to think of it, they're both blue dogs...)

IT has indeed been looking into the Rothschild connection. Don't misunderstand: I'm not one of those conspiracy nuts who goes into rage-gasm every time he sees the Rothschild name. But let's face it -- even among the one percenters, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is, at the very least, a ten percenter. Her idea of a grassroots movement would be Occupy Tiffany's.

This story from 2007 pegs her as a big supporter of Hillary Clinton -- and yet for some reason, I can't bring myself to like her. Why? Oh, I dunno. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she has been known to say stuff like this:

Back when John [TV/wireless mogul and gagillionaire Kluge] sold to Southwest Bell I said "Boy, you know, I want a net worth of $40 million. Because I just thought that was more money than I could ever imagine. I thought I would die and go to heaven if I ever had $40 million. And John gave me the best advice I've ever gotten in one sentence. He said, "Stop. Don't think at all about the net worth you're creating. Think about your vision for what you're creating, and that you wake up every day and you love it. The money will follow." And it was sort of so profound, and this rush came over me of "Oh my God, of course," and then I just went on from there. And that made a huge difference to me.

Ponder those words while you stock the shelves at WallyWorld. Y'know why you're stuck in that job? You just don't have the right attitude. So change your mind-set. Chuck your job, stop paying the rent and do what you love. Very soon, forty million smackers will fall from the heavens right into your outstretched hands -- because this is America, goddammit, and getting your mitts around that kind of cash has nothing to do with being named Rothschild or marrying British nobility. Really, it's all a matter of positive thinking.

Don't you just hate people like that?

As Barbara Ehrenreich documents, affluent positive thinkers have pretty much ruined the world. I swear, there are moments when I think that Citoyen Robespierre may have had the right idea...

What freaks me out is the strong pro-Hillary vibe emanating from AE-land. That ought to be a point in their favor, what with my pro-Clinton history and all. But...well, in the first place, Hillary won't run. Just won't happen. In the second place, if Lady Lynn's writings give us any indication as to what to expect from a Hillary administration, then perhaps the time has come to regroup and reconsider.

Here's Lynn:

In an environment of unprecedented political gridlock in Washington and broad-based dissatisfaction with the leading candidates of both parties, 2012 may finally be the year when an independent candidate becomes president of the United States. For the first time in our nation's history, popular dissatisfaction with both parties is reinforced by the existence of serious bipartisan organizations that will facilitate the effort of a non-aligned national figure to become president. Because of these two factors, the opportunity to mobilize what Tom Friedman calls "the radical center" has never been greater. Indeed, "some revelation is at hand".

Oy. If her idea of a wise old bird is Tom Freakin' Friedman, count me out. I don't want any more of that Wall-Street-enabling, job-outsourcing, America-destroying "world is flat" shit. Lynn's millions wouldn't bug me at all if her reference points went to Ha-Joon Chang or Joseph Stiglitz -- but Tom "free trade" Friedman? No way.

I want a New Deal revival, not New Age claptrap.

The problem isn't that both parties are radicalized. The problem is that the Republicans are ultra-radicalized (Ron Paul and Rick Perry have even flirted with the idea of secession, fer chrissakes!), while the Dems -- well, too many Dems, starting with our current president -- are ultra-wimpified. Lots of Dems have already bought into this "world is flat" mindset. Extreme? Hell, they hardly even count as an alternative.

If Lynn can't see so obvious a fact, then let's not pretend that she has any kind of a solution to offer. She may claim to be above partisan bickering, but she still represents the Reaganite Old Deal.

Has Hillary really climbed into bed (metaphorically speaking) with Lady Lynn de Lucre? Yeesh. What a depressing image. It was a lot more pleasant to think about Huma.

Can this Gallup poll be correct?

2011-12-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

According to the latest Gallup poll, most Americans view Barack Obama as an extremist.

The poll says that most Americans view John Huntsman, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul (!) as closest to their own ideology. Obama is the most distant. (And make no mistake: They view Obama as a liberal. An extreme liberal.) Even Michelle Bachmann is perceived as a less radical figure.

What a triumph of propaganda!

So misinformed a citizenry will never act in its own best interests, and will always fall for the latest lie told by the Wall Street media.

I know what some of you are about to say: Gallup is biased; polls are meaningless. Whistle whatever tune you please; you can't change the fact that you're walking past a graveyard.

Against Americans Elect

2011-12-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

A lot of people seem to favor the Americans Elect approach. I'm wary. Very wary.

Even if the group's ticket doesn't win, its impact will force Democrats and Republicans in the nation's capital to start bridging their cavernous ideological divide.

Are they nuts? Obama has accommodated the Republicans to a ludicrous degree. Whenever Obama meets a Republican, his first response is to turn around, drop his shorts, point to his butt and shout: "Here! Here! Stick it in here!"

Any movement based on the ludicrous notion that Obama is some sort of radical -- any movement that plays into the "There are extremists on both sides" narrative -- is bad news. Bad news.

Check out the power players behind Americans Elect...

Its leadership includes former New Jersey GOP Gov. Christine Todd Whitman; former Clinton administration strategist Doug Schoen; former National Intelligence Director Adm. Dennis Blair; former FBI and CIA Director William Webster; and former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, among others.

Webster? Jeez, it's almost as if the planners said to themselves: "Hey, we need the conspiracy theorist subculture to give us some free publicity. Y'think we could get someone like Webster or Woolsey on board?"

Let's not forget that Webster pushed the Obama administration to quash a probe into CIA torture. Webster was one of the behind-the-scenes movers-and-shakers who made sure that the criminal Dubya gang got off scot free. Nearly everyone has forgotten that Webster refused to testify before Congress about the allegations of CIA involvement in the S&L scandal. (Pete Brewton's book, which you probably haven't read, documents that involvement beyond the point of rational debate.)

Blair, who oversaw the entire intelligence community (until recently), may be even more questionable. It's true that he belatedly came out against the drone war in Pakistan -- but only after he had let that self-defeating approach "drone" on and on for years. Blair is a big defender of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

Incidentally, Blair's dismissal appears to have had something to do with a reciprocal spying agreement with the French -- an agreement that Blair liked and Obama didn't. The details are sketchy, but the sketch does look troubling. The deal concerned French access to a "secure intelligence data and retrieval exchange system." Although Wikipedia's summary does not name the system, the link wittily goes to this article on the Global Trade Exchange, or GTX. That's a project developed by Homeland Security for the purposes of spying on business.

Touted by senior U.S. officials and Congress in 2007 as an anti-terrorism database for tracking long-haul shipping containers, the Global Trade Exchange's principal focus appears to have a different focus, notably advance trade-finance information for market-making purposes.

We're starting to learn some interesting things about the motives of these "Americans Elect" folk, are we not? They don't work for the one percent. They work for the top ten percent of that one percent.

This brings us to former CFR chair Carla Hills, who held her position under Poppy. She is a huge proponent of free trade -- in fact, she was the main force behind NAFTA and GATT. Right now, she's a leading light of the U.S.-China Business Council. I think you get the picture. If outsourcing erased your job, thank Carla before you thank anyone else.

Whitman ran the EPA for George Bush. She's the one who, after 9/11, declared the air over New York to be safe, even though it wasn't.

Doug Schoen is interesting. He works for FOX these days. He co-authored the much-ballyhooed "Hillary Moment" article with Pat Caddell. There's a good chance that he's behind the pro-Hillary robocalls. Although he's a staunch opponent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, he has much greater respect for the teabaggers. (I haven't read his book about the Tea Party, but I'll betcha that he doesn't talk about the Wall Street funders of the movement.) Apparently, populism is a bad thing only when lefties do it.

From Wikipedia:

He believes that the protesters represent “an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence,” and that their common bond is “a deep commitment to left-wing policies.”... Schoen believes that the Democratic Party should not appeal to voters who support taxing oil companies and the rich, but rather to voters in the middle who want lower taxes.

I am no fan of Obama, but that doesn't mean I have any tolerance for those ninnies who think Obama leans too far to the left. And the Democratic Party doesn't need any more advice from "friends" who think that "left wing" is a term of opprobrium.

Here's a bit more on the folks behind Americans Elect:

The National Journal noted last week that President Barack Obama's top political strategist David Axelrod criticized the fact that candidates chosen at the online convention must be approved by a Candidate Certification Committee. "It's like uber-democracy meets backroom bosses," Axelrod said.

The members of the committee are Larry Diamond, a Democrat who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank; James Thomson, an independent who was president of the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank...

The Salon piece was more harsh than Axelrod. "It's fueled by millions of dollars of secret money, there is a group of wealthy, well-connected board members who have control over Americans Elect's nominating process, and the group has myriad links to Wall Street."

Yes, Axelrod is an asshole. That fact doesn't make him wrong on this score.

So the real question is: Why does Americans Elect -- which I think we may fairly label an innately conspiratorial organization -- even exist? Are they really afraid that Barack Obama or the Republican nominee might pursue policies which could in some small way inconvenience the Wall Streeters who plan to sell off this nation piece by piece?

For reasons I cannot fathom, the Street genuinely seems to despise Obama, even though he has allowed Street boys like Summers and Geithner to run the economy.

Romney? He made his millions by destroying companies and laying off workers -- "screwing people for money," in the words of Richard Gere's character in Pretty Woman. (Gere pretty much played Romney in that movie.) I don't think the Street fears him. Romney is down with the plan to sell off the country piece by piece.

Gingrich? Ron Paul? "And the rest"?

Maybe Blair and Webster know something about those candidates that we do not.

At any rate, if Americans Elect do field a candidate, I think it will be Forbes.

Fraudism

2011-12-26T16:10:00.001-08:00

I normally write about politics, not art. But I care about art. I've been drawing and painting all my life, and I helped my ladyfriend attain her degree in Art History.

Crap like this has been bugging me for years. Is there anyone out there who genuinely considers Paula Scher to be an artist? She can't draw. She doesn't display any awareness of color theory. Her calligraphy is primitive and ugly. Her work shows no craftsmanship, no talent.

Nevertheless, her "map" paintings have received wide publicity -- and I feel certain that they fetch high sales prices. Why? Because of their literary content.

Too many people who should have become English majors went in other directions because it is not very easy to make large sums of money in the book business. They wandered into Art History because that's where the cash is. People pay tens of millions of dollars for paintings; there's gold in them thar galleries.

In most universities, you can get an Art History degree without taking any studio classes. These students never learn what it feels like to use pencil or charcoal to make marks on paper. They don't know what artists know.

As a result, we have had several generations of so-called art critics who place little or no value on composition, color, draftsmanship or any of the other things that I care about. They cannot discern the difference between the beautiful and the ugly. All they care about are ideas.

These poseurs discuss painting purely in terms of literary content. And they have, in turn, produced a generation of artists who are not artists at all.

Call them Fraudists. (My ladyfriend invented that term.)

Imagine if we discussed, say, Beethoven's Symphony #6 in purely literary terms. Imagine if songs or operas or cantatas or oratorios were judged by their lyrics.

Imagine what would happen if we allowed all conversation about music to be commandeered by people who don't know C major from E flat -- and who sneered at anyone who suggested that such knowledge might be beneficial.

In the world of painting, we've seen just such a transvaluation of values. As a result, millions of dollars have been spent on vomitous canvases emitted by hoaxers whose only talents lie in the area of self-promotion.

One measure of the corruption of art criticism is its reliance on lit-crit terminology. Any poseur who talks about how to "read" a painting deserves to have turps poured down his throat and #9 bristle brushes stuck into his eye sockets.

The ultimate example of art-reduced-to-literature must be the vile Ward Shelly. You have to see this shit to believe it. In his "History of Science Fiction," Shelly neglects the visual altogether, filling his canvas with words, words, words. Even his calligraphy stinks. (He could have used an old-school Ames guide. They're still on sale.) Worse, critics discuss his "paintings" in purely literary terms, even though these works don't have the literary value one should expect from a high school essay.

Painting is for painters. Subject matter is the least important aspect of any work of visual art.

Only poseurs and Misplaced English Majors discuss art in terms of ideas. They refuse to learn anything about the craft -- and yet, like all lazy people, they are very clever when forced to come up with rationalizations for their laziness.

Consider, for example, this extraordinary masterpiece (on the left) by Matthias Gruenewald -- a work that changed the life of French writer and art critic J.K. Huysmans. In terms of purely literary content, how does the Gruenewald differ from my ultra-crude drawing on the right?

True, I've cut out a few figures, and my dog Bella has been cast as the lamb of God. Still, from an Misplaced English Major's point of view, the two images are pretty much the same. They convey the same idea. Therefore, one is as good as the other -- if you are a litterateur.

But if you are a painter, or if you care about painting, you will come to a different conclusion.

Because the barbarian hordes of Misplaced English Majors have commandeered all discussion of art, we have produced a generation of artists who simply do not possess the skills necessary to produce a work like the Gruenewald. Nobody encourages a young artist to learn how to make a painting like that. Those few who make the attempt encounter only derision.

Suppose a modern artist attempted to create a work similar to the Gruenewald. What would happen? In all likelihood, the painting would be judged purely on the basis of its religious or literary content -- as though anyone should give a shit about that. The painting's beauty, or lack of beauty, would be ignored.

Over the years, a lot of crap has been written about what the Mona Lisa "means." The most famous, most crap-filled essay on this theme begins with the words "She is as old as the rocks on which she sits..." People have written entire books about how that one image has been variously interpreted over the years.

Let me clue you in. Let me tell you how an artist sees that work.

It's just a picture of a lady. Beyond that, it has no meaning whatsoever.

And yet it is the greatest portrait ever painted -- because of how it was done.

Art is not what but how.

The people who tell you otherwise can mount endlessly polysyllabic defenses and attacks. But that doesn't make them anything other than a parade of nude emperors.

If you have a purely intellectual idea to convey, do what I do nearly every damned day: Write an essay.

Ideas are for word people.

If you want ideas, GO TO THE FUCKING LIBRARY.

Go to a literary symposium. Go to the bookstore. Contribute to the New York Review of Books.

Stay out of the museums and galleries; those places are not for you.

Today, the money and the accolades go to notorious Fraudists like Damien Hirst and Jeffrey Koons. These poseurs have cashed in on the art racket.

It is true that Koons produces paintings that display actual skill. Koons hires other (better) artists to do the parts that require talent. Koons' job is to stand in front of the cameras and explain the ideas behind the works which bear his signature. He does this in a very ingratiating fashion; you can't help but like him. Still, he is nothing more than an idea man, a literary figure. He is not an artist.

Koons and Hirst are hucksters conning the tackiest residents of OnePercentLand.

Last year, I read a book called The Rape of the Masters, by Roger Kimball. Although his high-Tory political stance does not resemble my own viewpoint, I certainly agree with Kimball's disdain for the litterateurs who have disfigured art criticism.

One of the Amazon reviewers offers an instructive summary of one section of Kimball's book:

The chapter on John Singer Sargent's 1882 painting, "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" gave me belly laughs galore as leading Sargent expert Professor David M. Lubin of Wake University, subjects a painting of four upper crust little girls at the turn of the century into a critique of sexual oppression and perversion. Playing on the French version of Mr. Boit's name ( i.e. boite, meaning box) Professor Lubin contends 'the Female Child is enclosed within [an]ideological and biological box'. If this is not absurd enough, Kimball shows us how Lubin's reasoning in analyzing the painting in sexual/gender terms depends upon such things as the circumflexed 'i' in 'boite' (remember the Frenchified version of the girls' father's name) as a receptacle into which the 'i' phallus plunges. In addition the word 'boite' the good Professor tells us also means 'house of prostitution'. From this he concludes that the little girls represent the father's (remember Dad doesn't appear in Sargent's picture) harem.

One could laugh one's head off if it wasn't so frightening to consider this is what young people are subjected to in universities across America.

Lubin is a literary critic, even if he pretends otherwise. Not once does he discuss the work in terms that would make sense to an artist: Composition, color, draftsmanship, brushwork, light, glazing, quality of rendering and so forth. All of the aspects of painting that the few remaining real artists spend years trying to master are absolutely invisible to the poseurs who affect to tell us what art is and is not.

When a Misplaced English Major stands in front of a 19th century painting, he tends to make up imaginative stories about the figures depicted: Who are these people and what are they thinking? That's a favorite pastime of the litterateurs. It's an exercise which may have some (slight) value in an introductory creative writing class -- but everywhere else, it is pure Fraudism.

In contradistinction to an endlessly eplanatory Fraudist like Koons, Gustav Mahler had two favorite maxims: "My music begins where words end" and "Perish all programs." In other words: To hell with anyone who tries to turn music into literature. Although Mahler was a well-read intellectual, the ineffable appeal of his complex, radiant, incredibly moving symphonies stems from their resistance to verbalization. If he had wanted to write an essay, he would have written an essay.

Our painters should take a similar stance.

Oddly enough, English majors do care about craftsmanship -- but only when the topic turns to literature. Visit a bookstore, look for the shelf filled with "how to write" books, and you'll find much discussion of elegance and style. Many people seek to give budding writers advice regarding adverbs, paragraph length, alliteration, metaphor and so forth. An author who expresses himself with the crudeness of an eight year old won't get published.

By contrast, modern critics and teachers never encourage young artists to learn the basics of drawing the human form. Today's artists are not taught about the extraordinary effects they can achieve by mixing small brushstrokes of cool and warm colors of similar value. An artist who draws like an eight year old can earn millions.

Artists are now taught Damien Hirst's maxim: Only ideas matter. Intellectual ideas. Literary ideas.

Visualize two boxes: One is labeled "How to write" and the other is labeled "How to paint." Our corrupt society has decreed that craftsmanship belongs in the first box and intellectual content belongs in the second.

I believe that we've been putting the wrong things in these two boxes. What would happen if we collectively said: "Strike that; reverse it"? What if we put ideas in the "writing" box and beauty in the "painting" box?

The result might be a new Renaissance.

The world's most depressing Christmas Carols

2011-12-24T14:54:00.000-08:00

Let's face it -- the best, most haunting Christmas Carols have a tinge of melancholy. They reach for a beauty that human beings can't touch.

"Balulalow" by Benjamin Britten, from his 1942 "Ceremony of Carols." Look, even if you can't stand the classics, just listen to this one. (It's short.) If the sheer beauty of the thing doesn't make your hair stand endwise, you must not have any hair.

The Coventry Carol, here performed gorgeously by Hayley Westenra. My favorite Christmas Carol ever -- and one of the most depressing songs ever written. If you go to Google Video and type in "Christmas Carol depressing," nearly all of the results will point to the Coventry Carol.

The most depressing opening to a children's Christmas show imaginable.

I always thought that "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" had a decidedly non-merry tone to it. This version is by some fellow named Ferras, previously unknown to me. His singing is far too pop-oriented and unrestrained for my classically-oriented tastes. But: He gets it.

I just discovered this. Gorgeous. Both the song and the singers. Gorgeous.

After "The Coventry Carol," this must be the most haunting of all Christmas songs, even though it's really an Easter song.

If you're curious about the background of this beautiful piece of music, I have just the video for you...

Happy Holidays! (I phrased it that way to depress our friends in the red states.)

Political cliches

2011-12-24T06:27:00.001-08:00

Political arguments quickly prove tiresome because original thought is so rare. Why invite people to bash you over the head with a bag of cliches? After hearing "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" the first 238 times, I ran out of fresh responses -- and that was back in 1987. Hell, I'm even annoyed by my own bag of cliches, by the phrases which express my deepest political convictions.

As some French dude -- or was it some Russian dude? -- once put it: Astonish me!

(Or has that phrase itself become inexcusably familiar? Well, I'm not surprised.)

In everyday English parlance, most cliches butt up against an equal and opposite cliche: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" meets "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." This page contains numerous examples of contradictory cliches.

In the political realm, these contradictions are both common and unnoticed. Take, for example, this USA Today story about the rising number of independent voters. Scan the reader comments -- which, inevitably, are filled with cliches. I draw your attention to two.

Cliche 1: (Concerning the two major parties) "To obtain a majority, each must appeal to their respective extremes. From the extremes there is no way to compromise... In the middle, there is the possibility of compromise. 'Left' and 'right' cannot compromise."

Cliche 2: "The R's and D's are the fundraising wings of the same vulture. They have shared power for 150 years and are equally responsible for arriving at this point in governmental history."

Am I the first person to notice that these two oft-heard sentiments are in direct opposition? Either the two parties are extreme and irreconcilable, or they are as alike as makes no difference. You can't have it both ways.

(Yes, I know that "you can't have it both ways" is a cliche. I don't care.)

What bothers me is not that people resort to familiar thoughts and phrases. Human beings do that. We're not as astonishing as we like to think.

What bothers me is that the same person can nod his head in agreement when he hears cliche 1 and cliche 2.

Political concepts are not Schroedinger's cat. You can't say X and then say not-X. If people can think two contradictory thoughts at the same time, then when Adam and Eve (or Adam and Steve) stand before the Justice of the Peace, what do they really mean when they say "I do"?

STEPHEN COLBERT FOR PRESIDENT!

2011-12-23T19:10:00.000-08:00

Think about it. If he makes a late entry into the Republican nomination sweepstakes, he is bound to have at least one or two weeks as the frontrunner. After all -- he's not Mitt Romney.

Colbert has his own PAC. He has money. You know damned well that donations will come flying in. And the title of his book -- "I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU!)" -- is a perfect Republican campaign slogan. If that's too wordy, consider the slogan in my poster: ME.

That's it. The entire GOP philosophy summed up in two letters.

If Colbert runs as a Republican, Trump runs as an Independent, and Obama runs as an alleged Democrat -- well, now we're getting somewhere!

(Click on the image to bask in the glorious detail. I think it's not bad, considering that I had decided not to do any, y'know, actual drawing.)

Big lies, hidden taxes, war and more

2011-12-23T01:06:00.000-08:00

Big lies. Politifact trumpets its bold nonpartisanship in choosing as their "lie of the year" the Democratic claim that Paul Ryan's plan, if enacted, would end Medicare. Politifact says that this claim is bullshit.

But the accusation of bullshittiness is itself bullshit. Of course the Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it. A different plan with the same name is still a different plan. If I replace my Havanese Hell-Hound Bella with a Pit Bull, it would be a different dog even if I were to give it the same name as the old one.

Politifact, alas, can't see that obvious point.

The most over-the-top response (was it tongue-in-cheek?) was a rant from Jim Newell in Gawker under the headline "Why PolitiFact is bad for you." He conveniently ignored the fact that our fact-checks are based on hours of journalistic research and portrayed them as the work of rogue bloggers with a gimmicky meter.

"PolitiFact is dangerous," he said.

Really? It's dangerous to put independently researched information in the hands of the citizenry?

No. It's dangerous to give the citizenry misleading crap and then label it "independently researched information." Newell's piece actually make a lot of sense: Politifact is really just a blog run by some people at the St. Petersburg Times, and is therefore no more authoritative than is any other blog.

My choice for the most outrageous newsfib (as heard endlessly on Fox News): "Obama is a Socialist." If CBS were to report that Godzilla has flattened Manhattan while wearing a tuxedo and top hat, the "Obama as Socialist" canard would still rank as the Unbeatable Lie.

What does Mitt Romney have to hide? He won't release his tax returns. I'm of two minds about this: On one hand, I don't think candidates should be required to do so. Actually, they aren't -- we're talking about a matter of tradition, not legal necessity. But the tradition is so firmly set, and the violation so unusual, that one can't help but suspect that a secret abides at the heart of Romney's decision.

Perhaps the answer concerns his church. Romney -- an obscenely wealthy vulture capitalist of the sort immortalized by Richard Gere in Pretty Woman -- may not be tithing. Republicans already have a difficult time accepting the idea of voting for a Mormon; voting for an insincere Mormon would ramp up the religion problem.

Alternate theory: Maybe he pays an infuriatingly small amount in taxes.

A Beginner's Guide to the European Debt Crisis. Why haven't I linked to this before? It's terrific!

War with Iran? At this point, the warnings of a potential war with Iran have developed unfortunate overtones of Lucy-and-the-football. But we must continue to sound those alarms. Why? Because we keep getting pieces like this in places like Foreign Affairs.

Time to Attack Iran
Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option

But skeptics of military action fail to appreciate the true danger that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond. And their grim forecasts assume that the cure would be worse than the disease -- that is, that the consequences of a U.S. assault on Iran would be as bad as or worse than those of Iran achieving its nuclear ambitions. But that is a faulty assumption. The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States.

Isn't that what the Bushites said when we invaded Iraq?

Fortunately, Stephen M. Walt -- one of the few remaining honest foreign policy analysts -- is here to slather a white frosting of reason on the Red Velvet cake of stark raving bonkers:

He also declares, "With atomic power behind it, Iran could threaten any U.S. political or military initiative in the Middle East with nuclear war." Huh? If this bizarre fantasy were true, why couldn't the former Soviet Union do similar things during the Cold War, and why can't other nuclear powers make similar threats today when they don't like a particular American initiative? The simple reason is that threatening nuclear war against the United States is not credible unless one is willing to commit national suicide, and even Kroenig concedes that Tehran is not suicidal. Nuclear weapons are good for deterring attacks on one's own territory (and perhaps the territory of very close allies), but that's about it.

Bingo.

So who objects so strenuously to the idea of Iran having the bomb? Only those who don't want Iran to be able to defend itself. And who wants that country to remain vulnerable? Those who hope, one day, to attack it on some pretext or other. And why do they hope to attack it on some pretext or other? The answer, methinks, has to do with a certain black liquid which may soon be in short supply.

Yes, Iran is run by a horrid government. So are lots of other countries. But Iran has oil. That makes all the difference.

The great cyberbully subculture

2011-12-22T10:24:00.000-08:00

Thank god I don't use Twitter. If you tweet, stop. If you don't tweet, don't start.

No less a personage than John Dean -- yes, the Watergate guy -- has written a remarkable and insightful article on the dangers of cyberbullying. It's surprising that a person of his generation would be so wise in the ways of the online world; we usually presume that anyone born before 1970 must be a Luddite who uses quill pens and parchment to communicate.

But Dean knows his stuff:

The anonymous cyberbully has the distinction of being the most despicable of all bullies, because of his or her anonymity (or pseudonymity), which marks the bully as particularly craven and spineless in the refusal to take any responsibility for his or her behavior. Everyone knows who the playground or boardroom bully is. But the cyberbully’s identity is known only on rare occasions, and often only to confederates in his or her bullying.

Anonymity makes the cyberbully a new breed of uber coward, a bully who may feel empowered because he or she sees himself or herself (incorrectly) as unencumbered by personal responsibility or accountability for his or her actions. The cyberbully believes he or she can wreak havoc and inflict pain on others invisibly, and without personal consequences.

Unlike the schoolyard bully or the workplace bully, who has limited access to a target, technology enables the cyberbully to go after his or her online target(s) 24/7, and to play to a larger audience when spreading cruel rumors, lies, or false information; or, on occasion, releasing personal and private information—all typical cyberbully tactics. In short, the cyberbully can do far more harm, with less effort, and all with little personal exposure, than the real-world bully (at least, one who does not resort to violence) can. On many occasions, the victim of the cyberbully will not even know who is attacking them, or why they are being attacked, and the victim almost never knows the true evil behind the undertaking.

In short, the cyberbully, like those found tweeting pseudonymously on Twitter, are uniquely disquieting, and deserving of more than a special loathing.

Dean's remarks about the psychology of bullying strike me as very astute:

Like most all our traits and proclivities, bullies are a product of both nature and nurture. Bullies are predominately males, and many perceive themselves to be socially, intellectually, or politically superior to their target(s)—when, in fact, the opposite is the case. They often see themselves as rivals of those whom they target as their victims.

Bullies usually have high-self esteem, which can too easily result in unstable self-evaluation. People with unstable high self-esteem can become aggressive in response to even seemingly minor or trivial threats to self-esteem, researchers note, thus resulting in bullying. The bully is often a socially ineffectual person, lacking the emotional competence needed to detect, understand, and respond to the feelings of others. The bully has no empathy and could care less about his or her lack of it, for he or she lacks the ability for self-reflection and the skill to appreciate another’s perspective.

Dean's analysis is excellent, but incomplete. A few additional observations:

1. In the world of online politics, cyberbullying is a phenomenon of both the right and the left. The worst miscreants, in my not-unbiased view, skew right. But make no mistake: Plenty of lefties get involved. We saw numerous examples during the great Obama/Hillary online wars of 2008.

There are subdivisions within subdivisions. Left-wing cyberbullies will stalk other left-wingers. I imagine that something similar occurs on the right.

2. Political cyberbullies often use pseudonyms and fake identities. They will go undercover to ingratiate themselves into a perceived enemy camp. In short, the cyberbully often functions as a spy. As a result, politically active people with robust online lives may never know whom to trust.

3. The people who play these debauched games tend to be ultra-paranoid. They justify their underhanded actions by presuming their enemies to be just as underhanded. Paradoxically, sworn enemies who exist within this subculture form a sort of brotherhood: They focus so closely on each other that they lose all cognizance of the outside world.

I have a personal reason for this post. Consider these words a kind of shot across the bow.

Years ago, there was a fellow who used to contribute to this blog. This fellow, who considered himself a cyber-sleuth par excellence, never formally posted an article under his own byline. Still, he commented often, and some of my writings used his information. He operated under a name that the above-referenced John Dean might find very recognizable. For that reason, let's call him JD.

Although this personage did some worthwhile investigative work (especially on the Brent Wilkes scandal), I always kept him at arm's length.

The last time he played a role in this blog was here. JD had caused a huge stink on the HillBuzz site (a GOP ratfuck operation posing as a pro-Hillary blog) by revealing the real name of one of the people involved. When that happened, the HillBuzz crew went mega-postal, accusing all of their perceived enemies -- including yours truly -- of being in the pay of the Evil Soros Conspiracy. (The Hillbuzzers found that embracing victimhood can be a useful fundraising tool.)

By that point, I had long since disallowed JD from having a voice here. He had pissed off a lot of other lefty bloggers with his paranoia, his conclusion-hopping, and his strange cyberstalking antics. Occasionally, he would attempt to participate here under a new identity (he has even been known to adopt a female pose), but his disjointed writing style always gave the game away.

I have reason to suspect that JD -- who, after an anti-Obama phase, became rabidly pro-Obama -- was the scoundrel who revealed the real-world name of a blogger I happen to like.

Here's where it gets very strange.

In the wake of Weinergate, JD got in contact with me again, using another name. For a while, I was fooled.

Apparently, he is now involved in an impossibly complex twilight battle with his right-wing counterparts in the world of hacking and sockpuppetry and whatnot. I've tried to follow what is going on in that universe, and lemme tell ya -- it's nearly impossible to tell who is on which side. After spending a day or so trying to keep track of all the names and accusations and counter-accusations, I've decided that the game simply is not worth the candle.

Suffice it to say that the effort against Anthony Weiner -- and the even stranger mindfuck op directed against Tommy Christopher of Mediaite, who was investigating the Weiner scandal -- sprang out of this cyberbully subculture. (Feel free to supply your own pun based on the word "sprang.")

I could send you links to their various microblogs -- but why bother? Right, left, and in-between, what we are dealing with here is a bunch of paranoid drama queens, endlessly bitching about who tweeted what to whom under their numerous fake identities. JD participated in those covert wars using various disguises, most of which were pretty easy to see through.

Yet these attention-famished creeps will keep finding ways to poke into the "real" world. L'affaire Weiner was but one example. There will be others.

The right-wing cyberbullies gravitate toward Breitbart's sites, while the left-wing cyberstalkers operate on the fringes of Kos-World. A pox on both their houses.

One of these days, the denizens of this subculture will find a way to do some real damage. As the old saying has it: There ain't much culture, but it sure is sub.

(Sorry if parts of this post seem unnecessarily cryptic. As I said: It's a shot across the bow.)

Some thoughts about Hillary, propaganda, 2012 and related matters... (UPDATED: A lying ratfucker stands exposed))

2011-12-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

My previous two pieces on the pro-Hillary robocalls have evinced a larger-than-usual number of responses, some of them quite angry. I wrote an early version of this post in a reply comment, but perhaps it would be as well to expand upon those thoughts here.

One piece of hate mail ran thus:

"I hate to tell you, but MOST PUMAs have never even heard of your site. Today is the first day I heard of it, and I never hear anyone discussing it."

Well, throughout 2008, this site got a lot of traffic -- and a lot of hate mail, including death threats.

This is not bragging. I usually do not do the things that other bloggers do to increase visibility. To the contrary: In that same period, I asked other sites (including Raw Story) to de-list Cannonfire from their blog rolls.

Why? Because Obama-loving clowns would often write in and accuse me of being in it for the money. To which the obvious response was: What money?

At that time, everyone knew that I was not a huge Hillary fan. Quite a few anti-Obots belonged in the "Hillary supporter by default" category.

Let us, with a sigh and a roll of the eyes toward heaven, give the rap one last time...

I never thought that Hillary Clinton would be a bad president. But the idea of dynasty has an obnoxious reek, and when the wife of a two-term president runs for president herself -- well, it seems too much like a cheap attempt at a constitutionally-forbidden third term. Also, the Clinton name seemed damaged: The anti-Clinton barrage of the 1990s, unfair though it was, had inflicted some genuine wounds.

In short, Hillary's ability to win in the general election was open to question.

Thus, in 2007, I took an ABC -- Anyone But Clinton -- attitude. I even supported the little-known Obama, even though he aroused my suspicion.

Then came the "darkened video" smear on Kos. This site mounted a detailed technical rebuttal to that canard. Many people read and discussed that particular post. Nobody attempted to refute the argument (which I had run past an old friend who edits video professionally) -- at least, not on technical grounds. But the Obama supporters nevertheless reacted with a level of mindless outrage and vitriol that reminded me of the Free Republic crowd at its most bloodthirsty.

That's when I understood that a kind of madness had overtaken progressive circles. Anyone who criticized Obama was slammed as a racist.

Hero worship is always to be disdained.

So this blog switched allegiance to Edwards. A mistake, yes, but at the time, we did not know what we know now. The populist stances he took on the campaign trail still deserve admiration.

I supported Hillary only when she was the last thing standing between Obama and the nomination. As the campaign progressed, her sheer resilience commanded respect.

PUMA sprang up. It was, arguably, necessary. But...well, let's just put it this way: No joiner I.

Do not count me among those worship Saint Hillary. There's a difference between respect and worship.

Frankly, my former respect for Hillary has diminished to a considerable degree. She has done things (perhaps has had to do things) as Secretary of State that deserve heavy criticism. She would have done better had she remained a senator.

To repeat: Hero worship is always to be disdained.

There apparently is a residual PUMA underground which maintains an altar dedicated to Saint Hillary. It's a cult of sorts. The cult no doubt receives covert funding from the Republican party, just as Democrats used to toss a little money each year at the Libertarian party (which siphoned votes from the Republicans).

At any rate, most of these cultists get, and merit, little attention.

Any hint of libertarian rhetoric makes my eyes turn bloodshot. That rhetoric -- sometimes blatant, sometimes subtle -- glides in and out of the pseudo-PUMA sites.

I prefer Corrente's "too liberal for Obama" stance, although lambert's puerile fantasy of a third party also pisses me off. My preferred strategy has been consistent: Let's take over the Democratic party and transform it into an anti-libertarian powerhouse.

As the earlier post pointed out, there were always two PUMAs. One was a genuine grassroots attempt to topple Obama, while the other was a GOP ratfucking operation. These days, the ratfuckers seem to be in control.

One of the remarkable aspects of the real PUMA movement is that it attracted some remarkably gifted writers. In particular, Dakinkat and Riverdaughter are born talents -- and I say that even though I doubt that RD even likes me. (Those two ladies don't get along these days. Not sure why. Not my affair.) If one of the pseudo-PUMA sites publishes wordsmithing of that caliber, let me know.

Whenever a previously unknown commenter, usually anonymous, drives by and thoughtlessly insists that we all must vote against Obama, I smile in recognition. Just another ratfucker.

Ratfuckers are always easy to spot. They don't do nuance. They don't do subtlety. They don't mount careful arguments of the "on the one hand X, but on the other hand Y" variety. No, their business is propaganda, pure and simple.

You know why propaganda works?

Some years back, a psychologist did an experiment. The subject was given a card bearing a line two inches long. Then he was given a second card with three lines printed on it: The top one was one and 3/4 inches long, the middle one was two inches, the third one was longer. Which line (he was asked) best matched the line on the first card?

When left to his own devices, a subject will say "The middle line." Every time.

But if you put the subject in a room filled with people -- all actors, placed there as part of the experiment -- who insist that the top line is two inches long, then the subject will pick the top line. Not always, but almost always.

It's part of human nature. We simply do not want to be outcasts.

The drive-by commenters who invade various blogs to push a propaganda line are fulfilling the same role as the actors in that experiment.

We saw a lot of pro-Obama "actors" in 2008. They were pretty obvious. We later learned that there are internet services which can artificially create public opinion using blog comments. David Axelrod, Obama's campaign chieftain, runs one such "astroturf" firm. If you study the comments appended to just about any 2008 post, on any Democratic-leaning blog, you'll easily spot the "Ax" brigade at work.

But Axelrod is not the only one. There are plenty of astroturfers out there, and many of them are employed by the GOP.

Do your own thinking. Don't let a crowd talk you into an answer that does not match the evidence of your eyes.

Mistrust simple statements. (Yes, I recognize that the preceding sentence contradicts itself. Isn't that cute?) The more complex and thoughtful arguments deserve greater consideration.

Here are my thoughts on 2012.

Back in 2008, the Republican candidate was John McCain, a fundamentally decent man who holds to views I don't like. In the end, I could not vote for him. Yet I still think the country would have been, in some ways, better off had he won. Although we probably would still be in an economic downturn, at least the bad times would have redounded to the discredit of the Republican brand name.

Let's face it -- by this point, the recession belongs to Obama. He didn't create it, but it was his to fix. And he hasn't fixed it.

Had McCain won in 2008, the way would be clear now for a truly progressive Democrat to effect radical change.

But now we have the problem posed by the tea party, an obnoxious conflation of libertarianism and Christian fundamentalism, the two most dangerous trends in American pseudothought. This movement pretends to revere the founders, yet it wants an end to democracy. Many of them favor secession and Dominionism. Newt Ginginch has always favored "nonlethal" means of crowd control -- which means that he has anticipated the insurrection that must necessarily accompany the transition to outright oligarchy.

Any Republican candidate too heavily stained with tea must be opposed. The country can survive four more bad years under Obama; the country can't survive insane fools like Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry -- or Ron Paul. Libertarianism is a destroyer of nations. By intent. By definition.

Obama is a terrible president. A sell-out. But he is not insane and he is not a fool. The genuine hatred he arouses in libertarians remains a point in his favor.

Romney...? I'm simply not sure. We shall study; we shall see. Right now, he looks like a Mormon version of Obama.

As a general rule: If forced to choose between Horrible and Horribler, I'll go for Horrible. And if you try to force me into a different stance by hitting me over the head with your bag of cliches...

...hm. Is that rat I smell?

UPDATE: Speaking of rat, the following comes from Hillaryis44:

This Kook [the link goes to this very Cannonfire post] who is attacking us as “Republican ratf*ckers” is a self confessed Obama fan and Hillary hater. He says “I was not a hugeHillary fan…. I didn’t like the idea of dynasty… I simply thought that the Clinton name was damaged… I took at that time an ABC — Anyone But Clinton — attitude. I even supported Obama.” And this fool is preaching to us????

Quotation can be slander if you gerrymander. Is this lying idiot seriously trying to convince people that I am a "self-confessed Obama fan" and a "Hillary hater"? Does that characterization bear any resemblance to the previous posts on this site? Does the pseudoquotation as given here bear any resemblance to what I originally wrote? (And I never wrote a post attacking Hillaryis44 -- until here and now.)

Here's how to spot a Republican ratfucker: LYING. Ratfuckers LIE.

From the same post -- and note that this bit is not gerrymandered or taken out of context:

It’s like Hillary supporters who reject Obama but still support what was once the “Democratic Party”.

That group includes the Clintons themselves, of course. Also:

Matt Damon who attacks Palin and others as stupid, we have called stupid.

Wow. What writing! Worthy of a C.B. DeMille screenplay. Maybe the text sounds less stilted in the original Akkadian.

Obviously, the people behind Hillaryis44 are hoping for a Republican senate. That is the purpose of the site.

More about those pro-Hillary robocalls

2011-12-20T10:18:00.000-08:00

Riverdaughter has offered an interesting response to the mystery of the pro-Hillary robocalls, which we discussed in our previous post.

Cannon calls it a “ratfucking” operation and I would have to agree. ”the 99%” don’t endorse candidates and their occupation is based on the immorality of economic and social inequality. As far as it being a PUMA operation, I really couldn’t say because as far as this site is concerned, we stopped being PUMAs after the 2008 election. Yep, you can go back and check our attempts to organize. Pretty early on we discovered that the acronym PUMA had been poisoned by both sides of the aisle and we decided that evolution is a good thing. A group that fails to adapt to its environment doesn’t last very long. The environment was over the top Obama triumphalism. Now that the truth is out and lefties are recovering from their psychogenic fugue, we face an altogether different environment than three years ago and we must adjust accordingly.

I love this bit:

But the small evil group that is currently in charge of the Democratic party is being hand fed by the wealthy and well connected to do its bidding and one of the things this group is charged with doing is poisoning the memory and history of the Clinton era. It’s gotten so bad that every lefty media outlet has to genuflect to the idea that Clinton was a terrible president because of NAFTA, welfare reform and the repeal of Glass-Steagall. There’s very little balance or accuracy or even a soupcon of reflection. Yes, every one from Mark Schmitt to Sam Seder has to make the Clinton Presidency Disclaimer. But you know, people who were around to see it happen don’t buy that shit. It’s only the people who have some kind of investment in group dynamics who do. And the small evil group who runs the Democratic party knows how to yank that chain. What surprises me is even after those same people know how badly they were played in 2008, they are still willing to be played yet again as useful idiots for 2012 in order to not lose the love.

Damned straight. The revisionist bastards can't change the fact that the Clinton years were peaceful and prosperous while both Bush and Obama made things worse and worse and worse.

(Begin rant.)

Misleading revisionism has become a blight on this nation's intellectual life. Newt now tries to argue that it was the Republicans, not Clinton, who brought about prosperity. Similarly, Glenn Beck argues that Woodrow Wilson was a fiend from Hell. Christian fundamentalists claim that the founders of our nation were Christian fundamentalists, even though most of them were Deists and freethinkers. For generations, we've been told that the Civil War was fought for issues other than slavery. Even on the left, I keep running into oddballs who think that George H.W. Bush headed up the conspiracy to kill JFK -- a proposition for which there is no evidence whatsoever. There are many people who think that TARP was initiated by Obama, that 9/11 happened under Clinton, that Reagan responded to his recession by lowering taxes, that McCarthy was right all along, and that FDR engineered Pearl Harbor.

Worst of all, the people who believe this nonsense consider themselves hip. American politics has become a series of triumphs of comforting hallucinations over memory and the written record. One day, even Holocaust revisionism may be taught in college courses. When history turns into Silly Putty, anything is possible.

(End rant.)

Let's get back to what Riverdaughter has to say about the robocalls...

Anyway, I have no idea who is making the robocalls but think of it this way, robocalling is not cheap. And whoever is doing it is trying to tie Hillary to the Occupation, which will steadfastly resist being associated with any politician. Those of us who are political junkies know that Hillary is human and a politician, not some ethereal magical person who makes promises she has no intention or capability of keeping. That’s Obama’s thing, not Hillary’s. So, either this is a terribly misguided group with a lot of online donations who is highjacking the Occupation’s logo for its own benefit or it’s one or both of the two parties up to no good.

A writer for World Net Daily not only gives the robocalls publicity, he ties it to the Occupy movement.

Occupy's next move: Hillary in 2012?

The pro-Clinton campaign may not be tied to Occupy at all. It's possible Clinton supporters are utilizing Occupy ideology to call attention to their own cause.

Note the question-begging: The writer presumes that Clinton supporters are behind the robocalls, even though that's the very point in dispute. Petitio principii is the handmaiden of propaganda. For all we know, the robocalls could be the handiwork of the same folks who give us World Net Daily.

The robocalls have spread all across the country: Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Maryland. Robocalls within California are illegal, but they keep occurring there nonetheless.

This is turning into the sort of weirdness that John Keel used to write about.

Meanwhile, Patrick Caddell (via Fox News and Politico) is pushing for a "draft Hillary" write-in campaign...

We argued in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that President Barack Obama should stand down and let Secretary of State Hillary Clinton run as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2012.

We are now calling on Democratic voters nationally — particularly in New Hampshire — to organize a write-in campaign for Clinton. This is something that New Hampshire voters have a long history of doing.

We advocate this Draft Hillary movement not because of the desire to make political mischief — but to put the country on the right course.

A day ago, my knee-jerk response would have been "Right on!" But the robocall mystery, which reeks of Republican ratfucking, forces me to think twice. Thrice.

Right-wing media sources have pushed the robocall story: Fox, WND, Politico, Forbes. Middle-of-the-road journalists have largely ignored it. The rightwingers want their readers to believe that the robocalls are the work of die-hard Hillary supporters -- yet the PUMA campaigners of 2008 seem utterly baffled by runhillary2012.net. Hillary's "ground crew" stands accused of masterminding an effort which they know nothing about.

Hillary? For real...? (Updated)

2011-12-19T18:20:00.000-08:00

An email from Howard Rodman, vice president of the Writers Guild West, popped into my Yahoo account today. Good news about that Aleister Crowley biopic I wrote? Nope. That one went straight into some of the finest round files in town, and it never escaped.

Instead, Rodman spoke about something far more intriguing.

Today I got a robocall (!) telling me that the banksters would be in jail and unemployment ended and college would be affordable if Hillary were President. It directed me to runhillary2012.net

The site is minimal; and whois didn't tell me anything of note. The site says it's from "the 99%."

Perhaps you can find out more? For whatever reason -- and I could be very wrong -- this seems to me more like ratfucking than like a genuine Hillary campaign.

Well, here it is. The graphic looks familiar. Is this adapted from an image used on one of the right-wing pro-Hillary sites back in 2008?

I can see why the Republicans would want to stir up dissent in Democratic ranks.

To be frank, the remarks about affordable college and full employment sound over-the-top to me. The real Hillary supporters -- people like Riverdaughter and Dakinkat and so forth -- don't use such unrealistic terminology. They know that a Hillary presidency would not have been a paradise on earth (although I feel certain that the past three years would have been easier had she won).

Ratfucking operations are usually pretty obvious, because the people behind them never learned the virtues of subtlety. Robocalls are expensive to engineer and annoying to receive. I find it hard to believe that a shoestring operation run by genuine Clinton fans would go down that path.

I can't trust any website which goes to such lengths to keep its proprietors hidden. Starting a political campaign is not like playing Batman: If you want to keep your identity secret, find another way to spend your time.

Internic tells us nothing about the owner except that runhillary2012.net was registered via GoDaddy on November 18, 2011. All of the extant messages on the chat boards seem to have been created within the past 24 hours; most of them are hostile to the very concept of a runhillary2012 site.

So...the whole operation looks like a fake to me. But whodunnit? That graphic may be our only clue. I feel sure that I've seen it, or something much like it, before.

Update: The image comes from Hillaryis44.org. I never really trusted that site. Are they behind the robocall effort? Where's the money coming from?

Politico has given some publicity to the pro-Hillary robocalls. Since Politico leans right -- well, make of it what you will.

Sam Stein at Huffington Post has also taken notice of the robocalls.

The PUMAs are back.

A group of vocal Hillary Clinton supporters whose mantra during the 2008 election was "Party Unity My Ass" morphed into time into diehards who wanted the Secretary of State to either be elevated to vice president or consider another run for the White House...

Shows what you know, Sam.

If this is a PUMA thing, then why didn't Riverdaughter know about it? She started the damned movement. If runHillary2012 were legit, she'd have been part of it from the beginning.

Let's rephrase: If this were a PUMA thing, why didn't I know about it until just now? Granted, this site does not have the most impressive stats in the world, and I never officially joined the PUMA movement. (Or any other: To us curmudgeons, all movements are bowel movements). Even so, PUMA activists tended to frequent Cannonfire; this site is known to that community. If, during the past month, something like this had been in the wind, I would have gotten a whiff weeks ago.

If it were legit.

Of course, there were -- in a sense -- two PUMAs. One was a genuine cry of outrage from disaffected Democrats who did not appreciate being called racists simply because they knew before the rest of the world that Obama was a fake. The other PUMA -- the pseudo-PUMA movement, if you will -- was a GOP "split the enemy" operation. If you run into someone who claims to love Hillary yet who also tries to convince you that Obama is a socialist (or an enemy of Israel, a line we've been hearing with increasing frequency of late), you're dealing with a pseudo-PUMA.

The robocalls have been heard in New York, North Carolina, Florida and California. This is a genuine mystery.

Erin on the air

2011-12-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

Erin Brockavich, whom I admire, will be appearing on George Noori's show tonight. This should be fun: She's a famed environmental activist, while Noori's audience includes...oh, let's just say a sprinkling of right-wing fundamentalist nitwits. But you're not going to get your message out if you speak only to the like-minded, are you?

Did I ever tell you about the time I met her? I had spent two days away from home, painting unicorns and other cute stuff on the walls of a "kid's room" of a gym. Frankly, I was unshowered and gloriously messy. Early in the morning, a very attractive lady (who looked not at all like Julia Roberts) came into the gym to pump iron. She started telling the gym's owner about a toxic waste problem near a high school. Being a buttinsky, I butted in:

"You know who you ought to tell about this? Erin Brockavich."

A long, embarrassing pause. Finally, she said: "Uh...I'm Erin."

Even though I had previously seen her on television, I had not recognized (until that moment) the woman doing butterfly curls before me. Fittingly enough, I was painting a picture of a horse's ass.

Another dictator down

2011-12-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate insane North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il on his recent death. This accomplishment, though tardy, is most welcome. Official North Korean sources say that...

...Kim died due to "overwork" after "dedicating his life to the people."

Huh. I wonder who he was fucking?

(Apologies. That was a very crude statement. I should have said "whom.")

Kim Jong Il's successor will probably be his son, Kim Jong Un, pictured here. Not much is known about him -- not even his exact age. He's a computer nerd and a four-star General -- a rare combination. Maybe he achieved his rank by kicking ass at Doom. He studied (under a pseudonym) at an English-language school in Switzerland, the International School of Berne. I seem to recall that this school has CIA links, but I haven't been able to find any verification.

Kim Jong Un has an older brother, Kim Jong Chul, who was deemed "too feminine" to take over. As you can see from the photo, Kim Jong Un is really butch.

Ayn gets Gored

2011-12-18T19:22:00.000-08:00

"Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. . . . To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil."

— Gore Vidal

How to spot a fake lefty: A quick and certain test

2011-12-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

I did not want to write about Hitchens again, but you really must check out what Greenwald and Finkelstein have to say. I think Greenwald is onto something: The "eulogy hoopla" surrounding Hitchens resembles the propaganda campaign that inundated the public after Reagan died. Both are attempts to sanctify the damnable. Both are utterly ersatz. The Mighty Wurlitzer can belt out a mean Requiem.

Finkelstein annoys me (slightly) only once:

He [Hitchens] assails French President Jacques Chirac, in a masterful turn of phrase, as a "balding Joan of Arc in drag..."

Not masterful: Confusing. Jeanne spent her entire career in drag, even during her off-hours. (And her en ronde hairdo was kind of skinheaddish, now that I think about it.)

Zoom out. Let's take in a wider view of this terrain.

The Hitchens debate is being framed -- even by people who can't stand Hitchens -- in terms of Marxism versus conservatism, as though there were no third choice. Mistake. If we allow this or any other political argument to be reduced to a false dichotomy, if we pretend that history comes down to an arm wrestling match between Karl and Ayn, then the anti-Marxists will win the public's affection every time.

The eulogies and critiques have driven home one point that was already clear to many of us: Left and Right stand united in their hatred of FDR, the most despised American president in our history. Hitchens the leftie considered FDR a traitor to the proletarian class; Hitchens the post-leftie considered him a traitor to the patrician class. FDR's true sin, the one for which he will never be shriven, was creating the middle class.

The problems of false dichtomization and historical revisionism go way beyond the sorry case of one perpetually schnockered typist-for-hire. For decades, no admirer of Franklin Roosevelt, JFK or Bill Clinton has been allowed a voice within America's left-wing journals. Thought control ain't just a conservative thang.

Among the writers who claim to speak on behalf of the working class, there are many poseurs. How to spot the phonies? Simple. Ask 'em what they think of FDR. (While you're at it, take note of how well they dress and eat.)

All of which makes me redouble my cry for a new New Deal.

(By the way: I note that Stephen Fry -- writing for the same journal that published Gerry "Company Man" Posner -- considered Hitchens a friend. In V, Fry plays a man murdered by the state in part because he owns a rare and illegal copy of the Koran. Were he a citizen of the V dystopia, Hitchens no doubt would have approved of the killing. For me, Fry has lost his charm.)

Don't they make a cute couple?

2011-12-17T15:52:00.000-08:00

I want them to fuck.

Even in his grave, he's still finding people to lie to

2011-12-17T06:08:00.000-08:00

The brief, sneering post below this one contains all I had hoped to say about Christopher Hitchens. But I woke up this morning to find that numerous websites had published yet more accolades -- including one from Stephen Fry, whom I used to admire.

Understand one thing: If Hitchens had not supported Bush's wretched war, and if he had not aided the right's anti-Clinton jihad, the tributes to his wit and wisdom would have appeared in but a handful of ill-frequented online journals. So let's not pretend that this damburst of sentimental glop has anything to do with the man's wordsmithing abilities.

(Numerous eulogies have included a Hitchens quote in which he confesses that battling cancer can lead to solipsism. Since we're talking about a man who dated Anna Wintour, I must concede his expertise on the subject of solipsism.)

As a counterweight, I would like to present a Counter Punch article from June 15, 1999. The text made quite an impression on me at the time, even though the author is Alexander Cockburn, another famed lefty whom I find annoying. (Many thanks to Edgeofforever, a friend to this blog, for bringing this forgotten article to our attention.) This must not have been an easy piece for Cockburn to co-write, since his own Clinton Derangement Syndrome had reached a degree of pathology normally associated with Marvel supervillains. I publish it here, sans permission, because the original has formatting problems which injure readability.

* * *

Hitch the Snitch
by Alexander Cockburn And Jeffrey St. Clair

“‘Okay,’ I said, giving him a chance to rationalize his snitching, which all informants have to do when they start out.”
-- J. Wambaugh, Blue Night

Many people go through life rehearsing a role they feel that the fates have in store for them, and we’ve long thought that Christopher Hitchens has been asking himself for years how it would feel to plant the Judas kiss. Indeed an attempted physical embrace has often been part of the rehearsal. Many’s the time male friends have had to push Hitchens’ mouth, fragrant with martinis away, as, amid the welcomes and good-byes, he seeks their cheek or lips.

And now, as a Judas and a snitch, Hitchens has made the big time. On February 5, amid the embers of the impeachment trial, he trotted along to Congress and swore out an affidavit that he and his wife, Carol Blue, had lunch with White House aide Sidney Blumenthal last March 19 and that Blumenthal had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. Since Blumenthal had just claimed in his deposition to the House impeachment managers that he had no idea how this linking of the White House stalker stories had started, Hitchens’ affidavit was about as flat a statement as anyone could want that Blumenthal has perjured himself, thus exposing himself to a sentence of up to five years in prison. At the very least, Hitchens has probably cost Blumenthal about $100,000 in fresh legal expenses on top of the $200,000 tab he’s already facing. Some friend.

And we are indeed talking about friendship here. They’ve been pals for years and Hitchens has not been shy about trumpeting the fact. Last spring, when it looked as though Blumenthal was going to be subpoenaed by prosecutor Starr for his journalistic contacts, Hitchens blared his readiness to stand shoulder to shoulder with his comrade: “...together we have soldiered against the neoconservative ratbags,” Hitchens wrote in The Nation last spring. “Our life a deux has been, and remains an open book. Do your worst. Nothing will prevent me from gnawing a future bone at his table or, I trust, him from gnawing in return.” This was in an edition of The Nation dated March 30, 1998, a fact which means — given The Nation’s scheduling practices– that Hitchens just writing these loyal lines immediately before the lunch — Hitchens now says he thinks it was on March 17, at the Occidental Restaurant near the White House — whose conversational menu Hitchens would be sharing with these same neo-conservative, right-wing ratbags ten months later.

The surest way to get a secret into mass circulation is to tell it to Hitchens, swearing him to silence as one does so. His friends have known this for years. As a compulsive tattler and gossip Hitchens gets a frisson we’d guess to be quasi-sexual in psychological orientation out of the act of tattling or betrayal.

This brings us to Hitchens’ snitch psychology, and the years of psychic preparation that launched him into the affidavit against his friend Blumenthal. Like those who question themselves about the imagined future role — “would I really leap through fire to save my friend”, “would I stay silent if threatened with torture” — Hitchens has, we feel certain, brooded constantly about the conditions under which he might snitch, or inform. A good many years ago we were discussing the German Baader-Meinhof gang, some of whose members were on the run at the time. Hitchens, as is his wont, stirred himself into a grand little typhoon of moral outrage against the gang, whose reckless ultra-leftism was, he said, only doing good to the right. “If one of them came to my front door seeking shelter,” Hitchens cried, “I would call the police in an instant and turn him in!” Would you just, we remember thinking at the time. We’ve often thought about that outburst since, and whether in fact Christopher was at some level already in the snitch business.

Over the past couple of years the matter of George Orwell’s snitching has been a public issue. Orwell, in the dawn days of the cold war and not long before his own death, compiled a snitch list of Commies and fellow travelers and turned them over to Cynthia Kirwan, a woman for whom he’d had the hots and who worked for the British secret police. Now, Orwell is Hitchens’ idol, and he lost no time in defending Orwell’s snitch list in Vanity Fair and The Nation. Finally, Counter Punch co-editor Alexander Cockburn wrote a Nation column giving the anti-Orwell point of view, taking the line that the list was mostly idle gossip, patently racist and anti-Semitic,part and parcel of McCarthyism. Bottom line snitching to the secret police wouldn’t do. Hitchens seemed genuinely surprised by our basic position that snitching is a dirty business, to be shunned by all decent people.

Then, in the middle of last week, he snitched on Sidney. Why did he do it? We didn’t see him with Tim Russert on Meet The Press, but apparently he looked ratty, his physical demeanor not enhanced by a new beard. We have read the transcript where, as we anticipated, Hitchens says he simply couldn’t let the Clinton White House get away with denials that they had been in the business of slandering women dangerous to them, like Monica, or Kathleen Willey.

There were couple of moments of echt Hitchens. Unlike Blumenthal, Hitchens said, “I don’t have a lawyer.” Only Hitchens could charge someone with perjury and then sneer that the object of his accusations was contemptible for having a legal representative. And only Hitchens could publicly declare Blumenthal to have lied to Congress and then with his next breath affirm in a voice quivering with all the gallantry of loyal friendship that “I would rather be held in contempt of court” than to testify in any separate court action brought against Blumenthal.

Did Hitchens really think things through when he told the House impeachment people towards the end of last week he was willing to swear out an affidavit on the matter of the famous March lunch? Does he think that with this affidavit he “reverse the whole impeachment tide, bring Clinton down? Or is he, as Joan Bingham told Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post, merely trying to promote a forthcoming book? A woman who knows Hitchens well and who is inclined to forgive, has suggested that the booze has finally got to him and that his behavior exhibits all the symptoms of chronic alcoholism: an impulsive act, dramatically embarked upon and, in the aftermath, only vaguely apprehended by the perp.

It’s true, Hitchens does drink a staggering amount with, as all acquaintances will agree, a truly amazing capacity to pull himself together and declaim in a coherent manner while pint of alcohol and gallons of wine are coursing through his bloodstream. But he does indeed seem only vaguely to understand what he has done to Sidney. On Sunday February 7, he was telling one journalist that he still thought his friendship with Sidney could be saved. By Tuesday,he was filing a Nation column, once again reiterating his friendship for Blumenthal, intimating he’d done him a big favor, blaming Clinton for everything he, Hitchens, was doing to Blumenthal and concluding with a truly revolting whine of self-pity that the whole affair would probably end with he, Hitchens,being cited for contempt of court.

Perhaps more zealously than most, Hitchens has always liked to have it both ways, identifying himself as a man of the left while, in fact being ,as was his hero Orwell particularly towards the end of his life, a man of the right. “I dare say I’ll be cut and shunned,” he told the Washington Post and we had the sense of a halo being tried for size, with Hitchens measuring himself for martyrdom as the only leftist who can truly think through the moral consequences of Clintonism and take appropriate action.

But the problem is that even though Chris Buckley, also quoted by Lloyd Grove in the Washington Post, tried to dress up the affair with the historical dignity of return of the duel between Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers, this is a footnote to history, costly though the footnote will be costly to Blumenthal at least in lawyers’ fees. The worst price Hitchens will have to pay will be in terms of Georgetown party invitations. In Georgetown, as Buckley also told Grove in The Washington Post, it is “a tectonic event for our crowd.”

There is the final question: is Hitchens making it all up, about the March 17 lunch? Blumenthal says he has no recollection, and adds, as all agree, that there had already been hundreds of references in the press to Monica being a stalker, and he may just have repeated to Hitchens and Blue what he’d read in the papers. It was a month, remember, when the White House was being very careful in what it was saying about Monica because they were uncertain which way she would jump and didn’t want to piss her off. Joe Conason of The New York Observer, certainly an eager recipient of White House slants at the time, says he spoke to Blumenthal in that period and Blumenthal refused to talk about Lewinsky at all. It’s true, Hitchens can be a terrific fibber, but, short of willful misrepresentation, maybe, amidst his insensate hatred for Clinton he’s remembered the conversation the way he deems it to have taken place rather than the way it actually happened.In his own affidavit Hitchens did not say that Blumenthal had directly cited Clinton as describing Lewinsky as a stalker and on CNN he tagged only Blumenthal as describing Monica thus. Yet, in her affidavit, filed after her husband’s from the west coast where she has been staying, Carol Blue said that Blumenthal had indeed cited Clinton has describing Lewinsky as a stalker and also as crazy. It seems extraordinary that Hitchens and Blue couldn’t get their affidavits straight, and it seems that Blue’s affidavit was filed purely with the intention of further damaging Blumenthal–which indeed it has.

We think Hitchens has done something utterly despicable. It wasn’t so long ago that he was confiding to a Nation colleague, in solemn tones, that for him the most disgusting aspect of the White House’s overall disgusting behavior was “what they have done to my friend Sidney”. He’s probably still saying it. Hitchens always could cobble up a moral posture out of the most unpromising material. CP

Hitchens

2011-12-16T09:17:00.001-08:00

I see no reason to say anything good about Christopher Hitchens on the occasion of his passing. Had you or I come to his notice, he probably would not have said anything good about us. Two observations:

1. The gloppiest eulogies have come from right-wingers like Michelle Malkin. Quite an accomplishment for a former Nation contributor.

2. I hated Hitchens before hating Hitchens was cool. Back in the 1980s, I let my subscription to The Nation lapse and swore never to purchase another copy as long as Hitchens and Cockburn remained on staff.

(Is Cockburn still there?)

If George Orwell (another writer who made an ethically dubious rightward shift) were alive -- and if he had returned to his older, better self -- he would advise you not to mourn Chris Hitchens. Mourn the 1,500,000 Iraqis who died in the evil war that Hitchens championed.

Update: Anna Wintour -- dropping enough names to overload even a king-sized push broom -- eulogizes her friend "Hitch" here. The problem with the left is that, for far too long, its intellectual leaders have been writers who feel comfortable hanging out with debauched, arrogant one-percenters like Anna Wintour. That is over.

Can Obama win?

2011-12-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

The numbers aren't looking good:

For the first time, the poll found that a majority of adults, 52 percent, said Obama should be voted out of office while 43 percent said he deserves another term. The numbers mark a reversal since last May, when 53 percent said Obama should be re-elected while 43 percent said he didn't deserve four more years.

Obama's overall job approval stands at a new low: 44 percent approve while 54 percent disapprove. The president's standing among independents is worse: 38 percent approve while 59 percent disapprove.

With numbers like these, Obama can't win and the Dems know it.

Right now, the best they can hope for is not a Democratic win but a Republican loss. The conservative base has fallen out of love with the various Republican candidates; the general electorate will probably do the sighing eye-roll when the eventual nominee is announced.

To independent voters, only Romney is likely to seem non-annoying, or at least not-so-very-frightening. That's why the party's leadership wants to clear everyone else out of the way. But the rank-n-filers -- who know full well that Romney is all make-up and no face -- insist on someone else.

Unless and until a suitable "someone else" shows up, the Dems are going to think that they have a chance. Obama can't win, but maybe Gingrinch will lose; maybe the public will hate the Republican candidates even more than they hate Obama. So goes the Democratic thinking.

The Republicans' short-term disarray gives them a long-run advantage. If the GOP could field another Reagan -- a genuinely popular leader who stands out from the rest of the crowd -- the Dems would understand that they have no choice but to switch horses.

I still dream of a new horse. Hillary may be too tainted by her service with Obama. Wesley Clark...?

Nasty Satanic Americans

2011-12-15T20:01:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun game. Take the word "ILLUMINATI." Spell it backwards. You'll get itanimulli. Then make a URL of it...www.itanimulli.com. Type that URL into your browser's address thingee. Where does it take you...?

MooJuice: Moron?

2011-12-15T18:54:00.000-08:00

I've been tweaking the nose of Farhad MooJuice for years -- and now, everyone else wants to get in on the act.

A few days ago, he wrote a piece advising readers to shop for books at Amazon, not in bookshops, which (he says) deserve to die. This article soon became the single most widely reviled internet artifact of recent times, with the possible exception of Rick Perry's anti-gay "War on Christmas" ad.

No less a personage than Salman Rushdie called MooJuice a "moron."

Usually, MooJuice writes about tech stuff -- and usually, he is dead wrong. For example, he has called for an end to broadband plans offering unlimited data, even though an increasing number of people have been forced by our rotten economy to give up cable -- they rely on Hulu and other internet sites for televised entertainment, and those sites depend on unlimited broadband. MooJuice has also applauded the push to move away from traditional computing to cloud computing. That transition would, of course, give Uncle access to a vast amount of new terrain for their dataminers to mine.

And he embraces Facebook. In his view, only paranoids worry about the privacy issues.

During the 2008 campaign, he insisted that McCain was a big fat liar while Obama was (more or less) a truth teller. I challenged him: If MooJuice could come up with three important issues on which Obama had neither lied nor changed positions, I would fork over $100.

No response. Neither did I get any germane responses from other Obots. None of them even tried to grab that C-note. (Nevertheless, a number of Obots offered angry commentary, which now makes for hilarious reading.)

Jeb Bush: Putting the nasty in Dynasty?

2011-12-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

Someone has paid for a poll designed to see if there is any enthusiasm for a Jeb Bush run against Barack Obama in 2012.

Here's more:

After all, it would be too late for Bush to enter the race, right? Everyone has been told that the field is set. And indeed, in several primary states qualifying has closed. But New Hampshire allows voters to write-in any name they choose. And most party caucuses either don’t have a ballot or have a pretty open write-in policy. Don’t forget, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. won a surprise write-in victory in New Hampshire without ever declaring himself a candidate for President in 1964.

There is still time. In fact, if Jeb was interested in seeking the party’s nomination, this might be his smoothest path to victory.

I can see why some in the GOP leadership might be intrigued by this idea. The base simply does not care for Romney. Newt probably can't win in the general. Ron Paul is a sincere libertarian -- no TARP for him, thank you -- and thus will never be allowed to get near the nomination.

The Bush name appeals to the Tea Party cranks and to the Establishment -- in other words, to the third of the country who remained stalwart Dubya supporters to the very end. However, I don't think the name has much appeal to anyone outside that 33 percent.

Jeb's spokesperson has denied that he has anything to do with the poll. However, there was a Florida poll in April matching Obama against Jeb Bush. Bush won handily, and even attracted a surprising amount of Democratic support.

My favorite response comes from a towering intellect named bigdave:

NO WAY! Not another Bush LIBERAL! Even LIBERALS hate BUSH LIBERALS!!! They do not fool anyone, cept idiot liberals! we NEED/MUST HAVE/GOTTA HAVE if we are to survive the evil left, A STRONG WILLED, HEAVY FISTED CONSERVATIVE, WHO IS WILLING TO ROUND UP ALL SUBVERSIVES, ALL LIBERALS, ALL UNION THUGS, THE ACLU, ALL COMMIES AND SOCIALISTS, EVEN GOING AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION(OBAMA DOES IT EVERY DAY!!!), YES, ROUND THEM ALL UP AND SEND THEM TO THE SOCIALIST COUNTRY OF THEIR CHOICE! AND WITH THE COMMUNISTS IN HOLLYWOOD WHO WANT COMMUNISM FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT THEMSELVES OF COURSE, GIVE IT TO THEM FULL FORCE! TAKE THEIR PROPERTY AND GIVE IT TO THE POOREST, MOVE THESE FOOLS INTO GOVERNMENT HOUSING, AND WHEN THEY GET $20 MILLION FOR A MOVIE, TAKE $19 MILLION AND PUT IT IN THE TREASURY(EXACTLY WHAT COMMUNISTS WOULD DO!), WE WILL SEE HOW LONG THEY BLOW THEIR COMMUNIST HORNS! THIS IS OUR ONLY WAY OUT. OBAMA THE COMMUNIST IS DOING THE EXACT OPPOSITE TO US RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND, PLOTTING TO DESTROY THIS COUNTRY. WTFU!!

Ah, yes. Yes indeed. It's people like bigdave who help us understand the true American spirit.

Fox does it again! (Look closely)

2011-12-14T18:32:00.000-08:00

They did it purely by accident, of course. Purely by accident.

That image works on so many levels...

11/22/63

2011-12-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

In case you're curious: Stephen King's novel about the JFK assassination takes the "lone nut" position, and ends with the suggestion that the world would have been worse off had Kennedy lived. (His unsuccessful second term leads to the election of President George Wallace and Vice President Curtis LeMay. Funny, funny stuff.)

In an afterword, King confesses that he relied on Gerry Posner's notorious Case Closed for most of his research. Very amusing. Since the publication of that book, Gerry has given the world whole bunches of evidence that he was always what the JFK assassination researchers accused him of being: A scribbler for a Certain Interesting Agency.

(There was plenty of evidence beforehand, actually. You should look up Gerry's testimony on Mengele, given before a congressional subcommittee. Then compare what he said there to the very different tale told in his Mengele book, published not many months later.)

As some of you will recall, Greg G., a contributor to Cannonfire, more or less ended Posner's career by exposing his serial plagiarisms. Although Greg's work was summarized in Salon, his most damning evidence appeared on this site. Since Case Closed reads like a made-by-committee work, one must wonder who provided the raw material that Gerry used for his well-paid typing exercise.

Actually, I think the answer should be pretty obvious.

As for King: I haven't read very much of his work, but what I have read, I like. His short story "The Jaunt" scares me crapless every time memory of the thing creeps into my cranium. You should check out On Writing, the most useful guide of its kind written during the past fifty years. Moreover...

(Shall I say it? Hell. Why not? A little paranoia never hurt anyone.)

Moreover, I hope that his little tax problem, or whatever else the issue might have been, has now been resolved. Perhaps King and Dan Moldea can trade stories over beers.

Taxes

2011-12-14T08:17:00.000-08:00

We often hear Republicans argue in favor of lowering American corporate taxes. It's true that our corporate tax rate is quite high. What they don't tell you is the fact that loopholes and accounting "tricknology" give major corporations the chance to reduce or eliminate their burden.

Many of our biggest companies pay more to lobby lawmakers than they do in taxes.

Of the 30 companies analyzed in the report, which include corporate giants such as General Electric, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo (WFC), Mattel (MAT) and Boeing (BA), 29 of them managed to pay no federal taxes from 2008 to 2010. Only FedEx, which raked in about $4.2 billion in profits during that period, paid a three-year tax rate of 1 percent -- totaling $37 million -- far less than the statutory federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

Citizens for Tax Justice, the sister organization to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, reports that 68 of the 265 most consistently profitable Fortune 500 companies did not pay a state corporate income tax during at least one year between 2008 and 2010, while 20 of them paid no taxes at all during that period.

"Our report shows these corporations raked in a combined $1.33 trillion in profits in the last three years, and far too many have managed to shelter half or more of their profits from state taxes," Matthew Gardner, Executive Director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the report's co-author, said in a statement. "They're so busy avoiding taxes, it's no wonder they're not creating any new jobs."

Even while dodging most of their state and federal taxes between 2008 and 2010, Verizon (VZ) laid off more than 21,000 U.S. employees, while Boeing, Wells Fargo, General Electric, American Electric Power, and FedEx also let go of thousands of workers.

Moreover, as it was laying off employees, General Electric gave their top executives a 27 percent pay raise between 2008 and 2010 -- executives received more than $75 million in compensation in 2010. Wells Fargo increased executive pay by a whopping 180 percent, upping executive compensation from $17.8 million in 2008 to almost $50 million in 2010, while Boeing, FedEx and American Electric Power also instituted lavish executive pay raises while laying off thousands of lower-level workers.

In fact, 2010 year was a record year for executive compensation...

So what was this crap we were hearing about Obama wanting to redistribute wealth? The redistribution has all gone to the affluent. Back in the 1980s, Jesse Jackson accused Ronald Reagan of being a "reverse Robin Hood." That appellation more properly belongs to Barack Obama. And I bet you could get Jackson to admit it, if you could get a private parlay with him.

Pretty soon, they'll be trying to convince us that the Dubya years were the Good Old Days. In response, lay this figure on 'em:

Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the median household income fell $3,719 between 2000 and 2010, when measured in 2010 dollars.

This just in from Wackyland: I caught a glimpse of a cable news show -- Fox, I think -- which reported on a poll in which respondents fingered the greatest problem facing the country today. Eight percent said "Big Labor."

Eight percent? Okay, that's not a huge number. But still -- if you meet twelve people today, chances are that one of those people will think that most of our problems can be traced to those all-powerful unions.

Who are these people?

The payroll tax cut. Fox News also portrayed the payroll tax cut extension in line with their standard meme: "Republicans stand for lower taxes." They didn't remind their audience that most of the House Republicans didn't want to vote for the cuts originally. They did so only when wrangled into position by John Boehner. Boehner wanted to pass to bill not because of the cuts per se, but because of a lot of other crap injected into the legislation:

In particular, Democrats and the White House oppose a number of GOP-backed provisions: a measure forcing the Obama administration to expedite its decision about whether to green light construction the Keystone XL pipeline; out-year spending caps that could further reduce funding to key federal programs; and other restrictions including one that would allow states to drug test unemployment applicants.

The GOP bill also includes a steep increase in Medicare costs for middle class and upper class beneficiaries to help offset the cost of the payroll holiday.

Because of that additional crap -- and not the cuts themselves -- the bill is dead in the Senate and Obama has threatened to veto. Whether Obama will be as good as his word remains to be seen. The whole mess threatens to devolve into a government shutdown. By my count, this constitutes the third time this year we have come close to that precipice.

Obviously, this bill was crafted to make it appear that the Democrats hate tax cuts. In fact, they are concerned with Medicare and unemployment benefits.

This maneuver will go a long ways toward erasing public memory of one difficult-to-forget fact: Most or all of the candidates running for the GOP nomination have spoken out in favor of increasing federal taxes on lower-income people while decreasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Bin Laden, Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia, and John Brennan

2011-12-13T08:25:00.000-08:00

On August 8, the New Yorker published a lengthy piece by Nicholas Schmidle which purported to tell the full story of the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden. This allegedly authoritative account made no reference the numerous published reports that Pakistan's military gave the Americans covert aid during this operation.

We've discussed Pakistan's hush-hush operational role in a couple of earlier posts; see, for example, here.

Schmidle, as noted in a previous post, is an interesting character in his own right.

His father is Robert E. "Rooster" Schmidle, Jr., "a former general in special operations and is now a Lt. General serving as deputy commander of Cyber Command." Schmidle the younger is funded by the Institute of Current World Affairs and New America Foundation, both long suspected of having intelligence links.

Not only does the NAF often host talks by former and currently serving CIA personnel (see also here), they are huge supporters of the drone attacks in Pakistan. NAF actually keeps tallies on every single drone attack and fatality.

Russ Baker takes a close look at both Schmidle and this very mysterious raid. (Fallout from the operation seems to have seriously wounded American/Pakistani relations, already rather iffy). Baker's piece is long, meaty, and definitely worth your while.

Yet as Paul Farhi, a Washington Post reporter, noted, that narrative was misleading in the extreme, because the New Yorker reporter never actually spoke to James—nor to a single one of James’s fellow SEALs (who have never been identified or photographed–even from behind–to protect their identity.) Instead, every word of Schmidle’s narrative was provided to him by people who were not present at the raid. Complains Farhi:
...a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.

Schmidle's primary source -- perhaps his only source -- was Obama's counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. (Obama was going to name Brennan director of the CIA, but dropped that plan due to controversy over Brennan's pro-torture public comments.)

As Baker documents, this same Brennan initially gave an account of the Bin Laden which differs in most details from the narrative now considered "authoritative."

Who exactly wanted bin Laden shot rather than taken alive and interrogated—and why? There’s been much discussion about the purported reasons for terminating him on sight, but the fact remains that he would have been a source of tremendous intelligence of real value to the safety of Americans and others.

Yet, early in the piece, Schmidle writes:
If all went according to plan, the SEALs would drop from the helicopters into the compound, overpower bin Laden’s guards, shoot and kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan.
That was the plan? Whose plan? We’ve never been explicitly told by the White House that such a decision had been made. In fact, we’d previously been informed that the president was glad to have the master plotter taken alive if he was unarmed and did not resist.

Was the Bin Laden raid an act of justice -- or was it undertaken to silence someone who knew too much?

According to Schmidle's piece, the decision to dump the body into the sea was not impromptu. Brennan came up with that plan before the raid, after consultation with the Saudis. Baker:

Is it just me, or does this sound preposterous? Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser is just winging it with key aspects of one of America’s most important, complex and risky operations? And the Saudi government is the one deciding to discard the remains of a man from one of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful families, before the public could receive proper proof of the identity of the body? A regime with a great deal at stake and perhaps plenty to hide.

Also please consider this important caveat: As we noted in a previous article, the claim that the body had already been positively identified via DNA has been disputed by a DNA expert who said that insufficient time had elapsed before the sea burial to complete such tests.

In a previous Cannonfire post (August 9, 2011), we discussed the Saudi link. That article cites a Firedoglake post written by a spooked up lady named R.J. Hillhouse, who confirms what we already knew from other sources -- that ISI worked closely with the Americans on the raid. (I find the Hillhouse account more persuasive than Schmidle's.)

Moreover,

Next they approached the chiefs of the Pakistani military and the ISI. The US was going to come in with or without them. The CIA offered them a deal they couldn’t refuse: they would double what the Saudis were paying them to keep bin Laden if they cooperated with the US. Or they could refuse the deal and live with the consequences: the Saudis would stop paying and there would be the international embarrassment...

So let's put it all together: The Saudis knew Bin Laden was in Pakistan (and probably knew the exact location). They paid the Pakistanis to keep him alive and comfortable. Apparently, the Americans found out about this arrangement and quietly pressured the Saudis to change their ways. Or -- and perhaps more likely -- Americans knew all along about Saudi Arabia's protection of Bin Laden. The Saudis accepted the American plan to kill Bin Laden because dead men tell no tales.

If so, then why did Obama make the sudden decision to kill Bin Laden? Perhaps the president simply wanted to shore up his sagging approval numbers.

Or perhaps Bin Laden was threatening to spill certain beans.

Let's take another look at John Brennan. In 2008, while serving as Obama's chief foreign policy and intelligence adviser, Brennan also headed up something called The Analysis Corporation. Some of you may recall that Brennan's company played a role in a passport scandal which briefly flared up at that time...

On Friday, the department revealed that Obama's passport file was improperly accessed three times this year, and the security of passport files of the two other major presidential candidates -- Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain -- had also been breached.

When this story broke, the Kos Krowd made an abortive and inane attempt to point fingers at Hillary. In fact, she had nothing to do with the matter. Brennan did. And that means Obama did.

Three contract employees are accused in the wrongdoing, including the one who works for Analysis Corp. and who was disciplined. That contract employee accessed McCain's file in addition to Obama's. None of the contract employees was identified.

The Washington Times, which broke the story Thursday night that Obama's records had been improperly accessed, reported Saturday that the State Department inquiry is focusing on the Analysis Corp. employee.

The moment the evidence pointed toward Obama, the Kos Kids dropped the story. Alas, the damned birthers soon grabbed hold of the tale, rendering the whole matter toxic. Not for the first or last time, our nation's hordes of moronic right-wing conspiracy-mongers fulfilled their role of deflecting media attention away from an important investigation.

We're left with two questions:

1. What prompted this clandestine peek into those passport records? Personally, I have little doubt that Brennan directed the operation. (The Analysis Corporation pretty much is the CIA, operating under a very thin covering.) It's worth noting that, shortly before the passport imbroglio, the tale of Obama's mystery trip to Pakistan came out. As I've noted in previous posts, he probably made this trip with an Indonesian passport.

2. Why was a high-ranking career CIA guy such a close adviser to Barack Obama's campaign? When Brennan joined the team, Obama was a long shot; everyone considered Hillary a shoo-in.

Incidentally, The Analysis Corporation is now called Sotera Defense. Isn't that cute?

The "Arab Spring" revolt they won't tell you about

2011-12-13T07:42:00.000-08:00

You know about the revolutions in Libya, Egypt, and Syria. But did you hear about...Saudi Arabia?

In the case of the mother of all petro-allies, Saudi Arabia, however, protests have been met with near silence by the media and no expressions of sympathy for the dissenters by Western governments.

Here’s the background: On November 21, government troops opened fire on demonstrators in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, killing at least four and injuring more. Given the general paucity of demonstrations in a country where dissent is dealt with fiercely, the unrest and violence seemed a highly newsworthy development.

The next day, the Middle-East-based Al Jazeera English, the “best” Western source of news from the region, punted. Instead of getting direct eyewitness accounts that might anger the Saudi leadership (close allies of the Emir of Qatar, who owns Al Jazeera), the network used an old trick. It quoted a Western news agency, the French outfit Agence France Press, which merely reported the Saudi government’s version of events.

We heard a lot of glop about Al Jazeera during the first Egyptian uprising. That network has an angle, just as Fox News does.

More news from wackyland: Is Obama redistributing wealth?

2011-12-11T11:55:00.001-08:00

Madness. Our ongoing political dialogue is mired in madness.

It's one thing when Fox News and Rick Perry argue that Obama has engaged in a war against Christmas. It's quite another when CBS' 60 Minutes makes Obama defend himself against charges of wanting to redistribute wealth.

In a sense, it's a fair cop: Over the past few years, wealth has indeed been shifted, from the have-nots to the haves. Obama has simply allowed the continuance of a trend that began with Reagan.

But that's not the charge against him. CBS actually seems to think that the money has gone the other way -- that Obama has robbed the deserving rich to feed the undeserving poor. They want the president to defend himself on that score.

Just look around you: If wealth redistribution were, like, a thing, then why aren't you and and I doing better? Wouldn't the pay gap between management and workers be shrinking instead of growing?

Half the country believes that Obama is a socialist, even though his government has handed out more pink slips than any other in modern memory. Even sillier: Fox News and a whole army of right-wing conspiracy wackos have actually convinced millions of people that the biggest problem facing us now is inflation.

Inflation will be a serious issue when both your wages and the price of your home go up. Has that happened?

We have scads of serious problems, yet we continue to fight hallucinations.

I'm told that the military cooperated with the makers of Battle: Los Angeles because films like that serve as a recruitment tool. Apparently, there are ill-educated kids in the audience who think that we may actually have to do battle against invading aliens.

Yeah. Right. We need to keep the military budget high because of the alien threat. Also, you never know when Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil or Chessie (the Chesapeake Bay monster) are going to get out of line. And the big problem with Obama is that he's a Marxist who has spent the past few years robbing the rich and paying the poor. He's part of the great Bolshevik conspiracy -- along with the Muppets.

This country has gone mad.

Corporate personhood

2011-12-11T06:38:00.000-08:00

Support a doomed cause. Support S.J.Res. 33, even though it has no practical chance of passage. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a Constitutional amendment to end the concept of corporate personhood. If this proposal does not succeed in changing the way this country is run, it will at least initiate a much-needed debate. It's a debate we should welcome, a debate which we may not win in the short win but must win in the end.

Sanders's amendment, S.J.Res. 33, would state that corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as persons, that corporations are subject to regulation, that corporations may not make campaign contributions and that Congress has the power to regulate campaign finance.

While the Citizens United case affected corporations, unions and other entities, the Sanders amendment focuses only on "for-profit corporations, limited liability companies or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests."

Sanders said he has never proposed an amendment to the Constitution before, but said he sees no other alternative to reversing the Citizens United decision.

"In my view, corporations should not be able to go into their treasuries and spend millions and millions of dollars on a campaign in order to buy elections," he said. "I do not believe that is what American democracy is supposed to be about."

This past summer, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said "corporations are people," when fielding a question about whether taxes should be raised in order to increase federal revenues, which drew sharp reactions from Democrats.

The Sanders amendment is co-sponsored by Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), and a similar amendment has been proposed in the House by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.).

These proposals have little chance of moving forward in the House and Senate, as they would need the support of two-thirds of both chambers to pass.

What's the point (you may ask) of supporting an amendment that won't pass? It serves as a way of reminding us who the good guys are. It's a flag around which we can rally.

Look at it this way: Fifteen years ago, legalized gay marriage was unthinkable. Now, the idea has (according to some polls) majority backing.

Getting rid of corporate personhood will be a more difficult battle, because private lives are one thing but money is money. Still, even at this early stage, we have two senators and one representative on board. This proposal will provide an instant litmus test to indicate which politicians are honest.

OWS protesters: Here is your cause, or at least one of your causes -- and it's a much better goal than is the foolish strategy of shutting down ports. You can feel the country moving in this direction. As a side benefit, the Republicans (and the more easily purchased Democrats) will no doubt say some uninentionally hilarious things as they try to defend the indefensible notion of corporate personhood. Won't that be fun?

Filibuster

2011-12-10T20:01:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the Richard Cordray imbroglio, we've heard many calls to get rid of the filibuster. Don't be so hasty: Pretty soon, the filibuster threat may be the only weapon Democrats have left. In the case of the Cordray nomination, I would prefer to see a real filibuster; the sheer drama of the thing would be enormous fun, as would the spectacle of watching the Republicans defend an indefensible position 24 hours a day.

Just imagine what Colbert and Stewart could do with that.

As I have mentioned in several previous posts, the Dems have had the ability to get rid of the filibuster all along. That's right: Just as Dorothy always was able to go back to Kansas, the Dems could have changed the Senate rules back in 2010 or 2009. After 2012, the Republicans (if they have a majority) will probably pull off the same trick described here.

And no, I'm not talking about the so-called nuclear option. This isn't a job for OWS; it's a job for the Senate.

Want to know how to do it? Allow a bit of self-quotation from a 2010 post:

* * *

Remember, the entire point of a filibuster is to make life miserable for the opposing party. Sure, the person doing the actual filibuster must talk non-stop under physically challenging circumstances. We've all seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But in order to keep the show going, a quorum must be present, which means that all members of the opposing party have to stay in the room, or at least nearby.

Of course, those guys can be more comfy. They don't have to stand up. They can bring in cots. They can eat and drink. They can set up laptops with internet connections and play Farmville.

Harry Reid can force the Dems to to stay in the building by force of arms. Yes, he has that authority.

Once a filibuster has started, the rules governing how the Senate operates can be changed easily.

Unfortunately, both the pundits and the senators themselves seem unaware of the actual wording of the Senate rules. I've posted the relevant section before. The subject here is cloture:

...he [the Senate Majority Leader] shall lay the motion before the Senate and direct that the clerk call the roll, and upon the ascertainment that a quorum is present, the Presiding Officer shall, without debate, submit to the Senate by a yea-and-nay vote the question:

"Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?" And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn -- except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting -- then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.

Read the words in boldface again and again until the implications sink in.

To change the rules, you don't need two-thirds of all Senators. You need only two-thirds of the Senators present. That's a key difference.

As I said, the whole point of a filibuster by a Republican is to force all the Democratic senators to stay in the damned room. But the Republicans will be free to go. And they will. That means most of the people in the room will be Democrats.

They can vote to change the Senate rules. That means that they can end the entire concept of the filibuster...

Alex Jones: He's shrill, and he's a shill

2011-12-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

Here's a fascinating, well-written expose on America's favorite conspiracy blowhard, Alex Jones of Texas:

Turns out, to my dismay, he’s actually a con man the whole way down. Plastered all over infowars.com and repeated over and over on his radio program are gold advertisements, as seen in this youtube video, for Midas Resources. In fact, on infowars itself there is a whole section dedicated to Midas. That alone doesn’t seem to be particularly surprising as the American crazy has always had an affinity for that shiny post-apocalyptic bargaining chip. Belief in the imminent collapse of society, which Alex Jones spouts and spouts and spouts, goes hand in hand with buying up large quantities of something that supposedly will always have value.

Midas Resources is owned by a Mr. Ted Anderson… who also happens to be the President of Genesis Communications Network. In fact, in Midas Resources’s own About Us page it states clear as day
Midas Resources was founded in 1996 by Ted Anderson. Mr. Anderson spent many years as a precious metals broker working for large corporations before striking out on his own. In 1998, he launched the Genesis Communications Network (GCN) to promote the importance of investing in precious metals.
How much more blatant can you get? GCN was founded with the sole purpose, along with Alex Jones, to shill gold.

Midas wasn't the only con. As we noted in an earlier post, Little Alex and his droogies promoted the National Inflation Association, another hoax perpetrated by notorious pump-and-dumper Jonathan Lebed. Basically, those guys sold fear stories about inflation -- yeah, inflation, as though that's the big problem in this economy -- and then pumped up the stocks in various mining ventures. This was no small-time con: Fox News was a huge promoter of that crap.

I did a nice little video expose of Lebed's scheme here. (I may include the video at the end of this post.)

So...does Alex really believe in the conspiracies he promotes? Maybe. But fear has been lucrative for him, so I don't think he's particularly careful about what he does and does not choose to believe.

Whenever a real covert action goes down, there are always three layers:

1. The version given to the mainstream press.

2. The wackyland conspiracy version, which is heavily pushed by some well-funded fear-peddlers, and which is designed to discredit the truth; and finally...

3. The truth.

Alex Jones is a guy you can count on to give you Number Two.

Tragedy, then farce

2011-12-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

Most of you know these famous words written by one K. Marx:

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle.

I'm sure you get the basic idea, even if some of the references to 19th century French politics escape you. (The uncle and the nephew are Napoleon I and Napoleon III; the "Mountain" was a left-wing political party; Louis Blanc was a politician and writer for whom I might have voted had I been alive then.)

Can we translate this "tragedy to farce" thing out of French and into American terms?

Seems to me that Rick Perry -- who thinks that he can achieve high office by spreading paranoid stories about how much Obama hates Baby Jesus -- is the farce version of George W. Bush. Dubya seems, at first blush, to be a rather farcical creature in his own right -- until you think of the lives lost in his foolish war, and of the surplus he turned into a horrifying debt. Absurd as that man was and is, his presidency was the greatest tragedy in this country's history.

And then there's Obama. Tragedy or farce? If the latter, then the tragic figure who preceded him was Jimmy Carter -- the man who made the Reagan revolution possible. On the other hand, if Obama is himself the tragedy, then perhaps Romney (Obama's GOP dopplegaenger) will turn out to be the farce.

Art and filth

2011-12-09T21:08:00.000-08:00

A few people have asked me why I never sought to become a "fine" artist. For the answer, first see this article, where we learn the startling news that six members of the Walton family have more money than the bottom 30 percent of all Americans. Yet Wal-Mart can't afford to give its employees a living wage or medical benefits.

Next, see this New Yorker profile of Alice Walton, who is setting up an art museum in Arkansas. Naturally, lots of people in the art world are practicing their puckering in anticipation of the day when their lips get in range of her ass. She successfully lobbied the state to let her buy a $35 painting by Asher Durand without paying $3 million in taxes.

Here's Alice:

“I know the price of lettuce. You need to understand price and value. You buy the best lettuce you can at the best price you can.”

Next, check out Rebecca Solnit's piece on Alice's little project:

It might not even be, as Wal-MartWatch.com points out, that the price of the painting equals what the state of Arkansas spends every two years providing for Wal-Mart's 3,971 employees on public assistance; or that the average Wal-Mart cashier makes $7.92 an hour and, since Wal Mart likes to keep people on less than full-time schedules, works only 29 hours a week for an annual income of $11,948--so a Wal-Mart cashier would have to work a little under 3,000 years to earn the price of the painting without taking any salary out for food, housing, or other expenses (and a few hundred more years to pay the taxes, if the state legislature didn't exempt our semi-immortal worker).

The trouble lies in what the painting means and what Alice Walton and her $18 billion mean. Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering, a pretty public face for fortunes made in uglier ways. The superb Rockefeller folk art collections in several American museums don't include paintings of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre of miners in Colorado, carried out by Rockefeller goons, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles doesn't say a thing about oil. But something about Wal-Mart and Kindred Spirits is more peculiar than all the robber barons and their chapels, galleries, and collections ever were, perhaps because, more than most works of art, Durand's painting is a touchstone for a set of American ideals that Wal-Mart has been savaging.

I have always believed that museums love artists the way taxidermists love deer. Perhaps Alice Walton is, in some sense, stuffing and mounting what is best about American culture -- best and fading.

For me, the problem with Walton's purchase of the Durand is not the work's status as a piece of classic Americana. What bugs me is that this is a painting about transcendence -- about the elevation of the spirit. If Walton actually cared about the spiritual, she'd make sure that Wal-Mart employees got fairer treatment.

Wal-Mart could easily -- easily -- pay its employees $12 an hour. (Most workers at WallyWorld earn less than $8 an hour.) Instead, Wal-Mart is rolling back health benefits even further:

# The New York Times reports that starting in 2012 all future part-time Walmart employees who work less than 24 hours a week on average will no longer qualify for health insurance plans.
# Walmart is also cutting its contributions to employees’ health savings accounts by 50 percent, and premium increases range from 17 to 61 percent.

I wonder if Alice, with her billions, will ever get her claws on my favorite Durand? It's called God's Judgment Upon Gog. It's an apocalyptic work, somewhat in the John Martin vein. This image depicts a scene from the 39th chapter of Ezekiel, in which vultures and ferocious beasts swoop down on the kings of this earth. Those kings thought they would always be be protected by their armies and their wealth. Here's where they get their comeuppance.

If you click on the link, you'll get a much better view of this painting. I know you'll want to savor the details, such as the lions and tigers who tear into the mighty and the proud. There are lots and lots of these big cats. They're hungry. And they're not in a mood to show mercy.

OWS vs. Unions?

2011-12-09T14:19:00.001-08:00

Frankly, this worries me. The protesters should bend over backwards to ally themselves with union members.

The lesser of two evils

2011-12-09T09:06:00.000-08:00

Dakinkat dares to say something that has been on my mind as well:

There’s also continued filibusters from Mitch McConnell of anything that could remotely help the unemployed, families hurt by recession, and anything that looks like it might have gone near the President. I can’t believe all this belligerence is a winning strategy for them, but only time will tell. As much as I’ve had problems with Obama, McConnell’s got me so hopping mad and the clown set running for the Republican nomination have me more distressed. I’ve never seen a bunch of more mean-spirited, ignorant, hateful, religious fanatics in my life. In this situation, Obama is definitely the lesser of evils. This is an election that will bring the definition of evil to a new nadir. There’s not a woman- or child-friendly politician to be had any where.

Obama is the worst Democratic president in modern history. Romney would be worse still. Still, I can easily see how a secret meeting between the two might segue into that familiar movie scene where the bad guy mouths the "We're not so different, you and I" speech. (I wonder which of the two men would give that speech?)

But...Newt? Feakin' Newt?

Back in 2000, I could reconcile myself to John McCain. McCain is a decent man who espouses some policies I don't like. But...Newt?

The foreclosure crisis

2011-12-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama sounded a strong populist note in his Kansas speech, but he can't change his own history: His HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) was helped very few people keep their homes. Congressman Dennis Cardoza of California -- soon to retire, alas -- has been aggressively pushing another plan: Renegotiate all mortgages on "underwater" houses and extend payments to 40 years. This morning, he told Cenk Uyger of the Young Turks that this program would be the equivalent of an $85 billion tax cut. (I'll post that interview if it becomes available; the one above, also valuable, is from the end of October.)

The Obama administration has not exactly laughed in Cardoza's face, but they did everything short of that.

Cardoza tries to meet with members of the Obama Administration regularly to talk about what can be done with the housing crisis, but he says his efforts have largely fallen on deaf ears. In early October, he met with Edward DeMarco, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and DeMarco conceded that he had never met with a person who had been foreclosed upon, Cardoza says. “These people don’t live in the real world,” Cardoza says. “They don’t see the pain in people’s faces. It’s just an absolute outrage.”

Some of my readers will sneer at Cardoza, who calls himself a Blue Dog. But the Central Valley of California is a rather conservative place, and he is likely to be replaced by a Republican.

By the way: I am continually stunned by the way Republicans spin the growing discontent with Obama as a populist rejection of "liberalism" or even "socialism." Look, for example, at this absurd piece of right-wing histrionics:

Cardoza made multiple pleas for Obama to tour the Central Valley with him so he could see the devastation created by failed liberal government policies.

No. Cardoza made clear, when talking to Cenk, that he wanted Obama to see the devastation caused by failed pro-Wall Street policies. In fact, Cardoza used language that would have made any OWS protester proud when he condemned Tim Geithner as a creature wholly controlled by the big banks.

This speaks to a larger issue. Every time someone castigates this administration for its failures, the rightists try to spin that critique to their own benefit. The right even tried to hijack the OWS movement in its initial stages. It's a thin line we trod: On one hand, we must damn Obama; on the other, we must damn those who damn Obama.

The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.

The war over war

2011-12-08T08:42:00.000-08:00

Terry Jones is my favorite former Python. (He doesn't list himself as "former," which indicates that, on some level, Python is Forever.) His recent piece on the possibility of war with Iran may be the best thing he's done since the Dirty Vicar sketch (which offers a fairly accurate view of what I was like throughout my 20s).

In 2003 Blackwater won a $US27 million no-bid contract for guarding Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. For protecting officials in conflict zones since 2004, the company has received more than $US320 million. This year the Obama government contracted to pay Xe Services a quarter of a billion dollars for security work in Afghanistan. This is just one of many companies making its profits out of warfare.

In 2000 the Project for the New American Century published a report, Rebuilding America's Defenses, whose declared aim was to increase the spending on defence from 3 per cent to 3.5 per cent or 3.8 per cent of American gross domestic product. In fact it is now running at 4.7 per cent of GDP.

In 1989 I picked up an in-house magazine for the arms industry. Its editorial was headed "Thank God for Saddam". It explained that, since the collapse of communism and end of the Cold War, the order books of the arms industry had been empty. But now there was a new enemy, the industry could look forward to a bonanza. The invasion of Iraq was built around a lie: Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, but the defence industry needed an enemy, and the politicians duly supplied one.

And now the same war drums, encouraged by the storming of the British embassy last week, are beating for an attack on Iran.

In a post that appeared just before this blog's longest hiatus, I wrote about the business end of war. That post notes that...

...the Republicans are going to have to repair the economy -- at least to some degree -- once they get back into office. The only ideologically permissible jobs program will involve military Keynesianism, funded by yet more massive debt. That's how Reagan did it.

Of course, the right will need to prepare the way for that course of action with a propaganda barrage designed to portray America as militarily weak. A similar barrage flooded the media starting in 1977-1978.

If my suspicions are correct, then you should expect the new barrage to hit at some point during 2010 and 2011. The propaganda blitz will start with a flurry of alarming reports from the Army War College and similar institutions. These reports will pretend that the American infantry is still using muskets, the Air Force is still flying King Kong-style bi-planes, and the Navy is still sailing three-masted frigates. "And that's why we need to double our investment in weapons development now now now."

Or so we will be told. Watch it happen.

I watched. It didn't happen. Not for the first or last time, a Cannon prediction went bust.

But why didn't it happen that way? The answer, I think, has to do with a split within our elite class -- a struggle largely (but not entirely) fought within the Republican party.

On one side, you have the neocons. These are the people who brought you the Iraq debacle and who now want to create similar carnage in Iran. They believe that war can fix the economy.

On the other side, you have the hard-core libertarian ideologues. The most honest libertarians understand that the war business will always be a socialistic enterprise, no matter how much of it you Blackwater-ize.

These two sides have clashed for years. Call it the war over war.

The libertarian ideologues don't really care if war creates jobs. Although they will never so admit in public, the followers of Ayn and Milton have given up on America. America is, formally, a democracy, and libertarians do not like democracy. (Just ask Milton Friedman's grandson.) They prefer to see this nation strip-mined. As the United States slides into an ideologically pure state of barbarism, misery and filth, the elitists will retreat to their palatial chalets in Gstaad -- or perhaps to those floating man-made island enclaves you've read about.

The neocons are, in their own sick way, patriots. They don't mind inflicting violence and madness on millions of non-Americans in order to perpetuate American dominance. Obviously, any sane person will find that position indefensible and odious. But you can say this for the neocons: At least they care about whether this country has a future. The libertarians, for whom psychopathic greed is the only virtue, don't really care about anything except personal gain.

If you wake up one morning to find that all the talking heads on your teevee are talking about some ginned-up casus belli -- a porta-nuke on the Chicago river would do the trick -- and why this outrage against all human decency means that Tehran must be destroyed, you'll know which side won the war over over war.

If the United States continues to slide into third world status, if millions of people are reduced to living in cars, if people with MAs feel lucky to get jobs making burgers for Wendys, if secession becomes the topic du jour, if the financial center of the world starts to shift away from New York, you'll know that the other side won the war over war.

As Woody Allen once said:

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose wisely."

Seventy years ago today

2011-12-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of myths about the Pearl Harbor attack -- chief among them being the pernicious idea that FDR allowed it happen. That lie, which originated with post-war American fascists, has gained a lot of traction through sheer repetition. Rather than engage in a point-by-point refutation of that myth and other fables, I'd like to provide a few links.

This page from 1996 -- a vestige of the "old" internet -- offers a lot of useful, detailed information.

Slate's piece "Who Lost Pearl Harbor?" from 2000 is excellent (if you can ignore the last line). It must never be forgotten that the people who originated this conspiracy theory were enemies of the New Deal -- and, too often, apologists for Hitler.

The motivations were at least threefold. First, the GOP, then as now, disliked the principle of civilian control of the military, and many were convinced that higher-ups in Washington were scapegoating honorable fighting men. Second, the right's ideological hatred of Roosevelt ran deep—conservatives, refusing to use FDR's name, called him "That Man in the White House"—and Pearl Harbor presented another emotion-filled occasion for partisan attack. Third, many on the right remained defiantly isolationist even after the war began, and they believed that the American people would never have licensed entry into the battle had Roosevelt not hoodwinked them.

From 2008: "Pear Harbor warning tale debunked."

...historians for the National Security Agency concluded in a history released last week that decoded messages buried in Japanese-language weather reports, meant to alert Japanese diplomats to destroy codes, did not reach U.S. officials prior to the attack.

Here's more.

Peal Harbor and 9/11. A good piece by a self-proclaimed "independent historian." One comment is worth quoting:

The conspiracy theory about FDR and Pearl Harbor doesn't even make sense on the face of it.

Even if he had known about the attack and known exactly when it would occur, Roosevelt would have scrambled the American military and fended it off. The U.S. ould thenceforth be at war with Japan--and FDR would look like a hero.

So, even if FDR knew, there would be no need to let us get clobbered.

Revisionists and wacko conspiracists will nevertheless continue to push their lies. They know that they can win minds by never standing down, never rethinking, never conceding territory, never admitting the possibility of error. That's how Reagan created the "welfare queen" myth; that's how the fundamentalists have convinced half the nation that Creationism is science; that's how so many young idiots were duped into the belief that the mythical "Illuminati" controls rock music. The people who spread these myths don't have facts on their side, but they do have inexhaustible energy.

Added note. Here's a little-known fact about Pearl Harbor that the right-wingers prefer not to discuss: Japan was controlled by the zaibatsu, monopolistic financial cliques which were usually family-owned. We were, in short, attacked by corporatism.

Barack and Teddy

2011-12-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

Is there a new Obama? Robert Reich seems to think so. He quotes Obama's recent Kansas speech, which certainly hit some of the right notes...

We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or sometimes even understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets - and huge bonuses - made with other people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all.

It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs, homes, and the basic security of millions - innocent, hard-working Americans who had met their responsibilities, but were still left holding the bag.

To which Reich responds:

Precisely – and it’s about time he used the term “wrong” to describe Wall Street’s antics, and the abject failure of regulators (led by Alan Greenspan and the Fed) to stop what was going on. But these “wrongs” were only the proximate cause of the economic crisis. The underlying cause was, as the President said before, the breaking of the basic bargain linking pay to productivity.

In this speech, Obama used Teddy Roosevelt as his touchstone. Unlike (I suspect) many of you, I admire TR a great deal -- although we must always be careful to stipulate which TR we're talking about. If ever a man contained multitudes, he did.

Obama's speech references TR the trust-buster and corporation-tamer. Karl Rove, by contrast, is famed for his admiration of TR the imperialist world-beater and empire-builder -- the guy with the Big Stick. That's the Roosevelt I don't care for.

Imperialist Teddy never bothered me too much, because he manifested himself primarily in speeches, not in practical action. As President, Roosevelt didn't start wars, although he did negotiate the end of one, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in the process.

Which brings me to my point. Speech and action are two different things.

That's why I -- unlike Reich, unlike Steve Kornacki -- remain unimpressed. Obama may have decided to shore up the Democratic base by talking like TR the corporation-tamer, but speech is speech, action is action, and that man in the White House can't hide the fact that has had three years to do something about Wall Street perfidy. The "malefactors of great wealth" are still malefacting.

If we look at actions, not words, we see that what Obama has really given us a modern version of Imperial Teddy. Actually, that assessment is not fair: Obama has done things that Roosevelt, even in his silliest fits of macho hallucination, would never had dared. Obama has maintained two unpopular wars and involved himself in a third. He has threatened Iran with covert actions and rattling sabers. Gitmo remains ongoing. Surveillance has worsened. The U.S. has alienated Pakistan.

Obama is no Theodore Roosevelt. TR talked like a warrior but delivered reform. Obama talks like a reformer and, so far, has given us nothing but war.

Kornacki references Obama's 2004 speech to the DNC, but refuses to note the most significant thing about it: Obama (unlike Kerry or Clinton -- and yes, I looked up their speeches) refused, on that occasion, to condemn the invasion of Iraq. I seem to be the only person who has ever noticed that omission. Everyone else who heard that speech presumed that he said words which he did not actually utter. Throughout 2003-2006, Obama refused to say that the invasion was a bad idea. He did not speak at anti-war rallies; he did not write anti-war opinion pieces. Yet in 2008, he ran as a war opponent.

This experience taught me not just to mistrust Obama's words; I rarely trust the words of any politician. More importantly, I learned not to trust the way Democrats interpret his words. The "want to believe" factor clouds judgment.

Sorry, Mr. Reich. But too much time has passed; too much has happened -- and not happened -- since the election of 2008. Remember, we're dealing with the same politician who told Ohio voters that he would renegotiate NAFTA. Not only has he refused to renegotiate, he has gone around the world to promote even worse sell-outs of American workers. Barack Obama is, in short, a proven liar. Just because he says the right words doesn't mean he is the right man.

Added note: There's a lot of talk about TR in pundit-land these days. Krugman likes to point out that today's Republicans aren't content with reversing the New Deal -- they want to go back to the era before Progressive reforms. We can't get back to "Eisenhower normal" if half this country operates under the ludicrous delusion that America was doing just fine until guys like Teddy screwed up everything.

In the news...

2011-12-06T07:32:00.000-08:00

More at The Real News

The Occupy movement is heading to Congress. This could be fun...

After arriving at the Capitol, marchers say they intend to fan out for meetings with representatives and "occupy" Congressional offices until closure.

For more, visit Progressive Maryland.

Republicans who dislike both Romney and Gingrich. Apparently, some movers-n-shakers behind the scenes in GOP-land want an alternative to both of the front-runners. Taylor Marsh -- boy, when was the last time I cited her? -- asks:

The question remains, with the momentum Newt Gingrich has today, how do Republicans stop him?

Only a flood of negative ads against Newt in Iowa, but especially South Carolina, will get it done. But someone better pull that trigger fast.

Personally, I think support for Gingrich is one of those mile-wide-inch-deep things. Everyone understands his negatives and few really like the guy. Besides, the hardcore libertarian ideologues mistrust him. That's why I've always presumed that his surge won't last.

That said, there is definitely a space in place for a new face this race. (And if you ever see me write a sentence like that again, shoot me.) Steve Forbes? I've been mulling over that possibility for some time. Forbes endorsed Rick Perry, and thus cannot enter the contest until the Texas Titan formally calls it a day.

More "job creator" bullshit. Here's another opportunistic, deceptive and manipulative libertarian propaganda piece on CNN designed to convince us that the jobs crisis results from over-regulation. Are people really so dimwitted as to believe that regulations are vastly more onerous today than they were in (say) 1998? Are we really supposed to believe that there are fewer regulations here than in Germany, which is taking over Europe?

Regulation isn't killing jobs. What's killing jobs is the lack of demand. People don't have money to spend.

The above-cited piece was written by the CEO of the parent company that owns Red Lobster. These days, who can afford lobster?

Speaking of Germany... Here's Ian Welsh on the new German dominance of Europe...

It is true that the Euro requires fiscal union. It always did, shared currencies don’t work without union. However, if fiscal union is to occur, then it should occur with each member state’s population voting for it, especially as this fiscal union’s purpose is to impose corporate friendly austerity measure’s on the populations of countries that would almost certainly vote against them.

I will note that this is not going to redound to Germany’s favor in the not-very long run. Permanent European depression is not to Germany’s advantage. Who, exactly, they think is going to buy their high-end goods is beyond me. They shouldn’t expect India and China to play along, those countries are creating their own auto industries and do not intend to be dumping grounds for Western goods.

Bringing the drones back home: Glenn Greenwald reports that the drone weaponry which has made us so beloved in Muslim countries is now going to be used on the domestic scene:

Employing them for domestic police actions is following the model quickly being implemented in surveillance-happy Britain, where drones are used for “the ’routine’ monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.”

Even leaving aside the issue of weaponization (police officials now openly talk about equipping drones with “nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun”), the use of drones for domestic surveillance raises all sorts of extremely serious privacy concerns and other issues of potential abuse. Their ability to hover in the air undetected for long periods of time along with their comparatively cheap cost enables a type of broad, sustained societal surveillance that is now impractical, while equipping them with infra-red or heat-seeking detectors and high-powered cameras can provide extremely invasive imagery. The holes eaten into the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections by the Drug War and the War on Terror means there are few Constitutional limits on how this technology can be used, and there are no real statutory or regulatory restrictions limiting their use.

They're going to justify all of this surveillance as part of the ongoing war against crime, which is nonsense. Non-lethal weaponry has always been political.

There is no question that domestic political unrest is a major concern of law enforcement officials at every level. A new report released today by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development documents that “the gap between rich and poor in OECD countries has reached its highest level for over over 30 years,” and, as an OECD official said, “the social contract is starting to unravel in many countries. . . Without a comprehensive strategy for inclusive growth, inequality will continue to rise.” As The Wasington Post said today: the report “comes as rising dissatisfaction with economic inequality has spilled over into street protests in dozens of cities around the world.” Moreover, “the United States, Turkey and Israel have among the largest ratios between the incomes of those at the top and the bottom, roughly 14 to 1. ”

Drone technology is but the latest War on Terror weapon to be imported onto U.S. soil, and the dangers should be manifest. One article prominently touted on AeroVironment’s website hails the “Switchblade,” which the author excitingly describes as “an ingenious, miniature unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is also a weapon” and “the leading edge of what is likely to be the broader, even wholesale, weaponization of unmanned systems. ”

Alan Moore on OWS

2011-12-05T15:46:00.000-08:00

A short while ago, we discussed comic book writer/artist (and alleged representative of Hollywood) Frank Miller and his scabrous remarks on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Annoying as his views are, what really bugs me is his prose style. Everything he says nowadays sounds like a bad imitation of Frank Miller. This guy probably can't even write down a recipe for potato soup without resorting to unimaginative tough guy patois: "All right, scumbags -- peel the spuds right or I'll use your guts in my next cassoulet. What, are you retarded or something? I'm the goddamned entremetier!"

A reader directs our attention to a new interview with Alan Moore -- the other big name to emerge out of the comics world in the 1980s. Right now, he's working on a book called Jerusalem, which I eagerly await. (And I'll be very pleased if this book does not have a long opening chapter written in caveman-ese.) A few highlights:

Well, Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years. I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided. I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time. Since I don’t have anything to do with the comics industry, I don’t have anything to do with the people in it. I heard about the latest outpourings regarding the Occupy movement. It’s about what I’d expect from him. It’s always seemed to me that the majority of the comics field, if you had to place them politically, you’d have to say centre-right. That would be as far towards the liberal end of the spectrum as they would go. I’ve never been in any way, I don’t even know if I’m centre-left. I’ve been outspoken about that since the beginning of my career. So yes I think it would be fair to say that me and Frank Miller have diametrically opposing views upon all sorts of things, but certainly upon the Occupy movement.

The characterization of comics professionals as right-wingers goes against the reports I've heard from others. Perhaps those reports are out of date.

As far as I can see, the Occupy movement is just ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it; they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it.

"Very intelligent"? Not always. There were many missteps at first. The protesters were wrong to insist on consensus democracy, and wrong to distrust of the very idea of leadership. Worse, too many of the OWS-ers were -- and are -- attracted by libertarian solutions, which would only make things much worse. But the strategic errors proved unimportant; the country simply needs a movement like this one.

Obviously, the emphasis on non-violence is something we should all applaud.

When asked what aspects of our current system need to be changed, Moore responded:

Everything. I believe that what’s needed is a radical solution, by which I mean from the roots upwards. Our entire political thinking seems to me to be based upon medieval precepts. These things, they didn’t work particularly well five or six hundred years ago. Their slightly modified forms are not adequate at all for the rapidly changing territory of the 21st Century.

We need to overhaul the way that we think about money, we need to overhaul the way that we think about who’s running the show. As an anarchist, I believe that power should be given to the people, to the people whose lives this is actually affecting. It’s no longer good enough to have a group of people who are controlling our destinies. The only reason they have the power is because they control the currency. They have no moral authority and, indeed, they show the opposite of moral authority.

I can't agree. Neither, for that matter, do most of the OWS protesters. In a previous post, I mentioned a poll which revealed that more protesters favor a flat tax (Rick Perry's big idea) than favor a radical revamping of the entire economic system. The numbers were five percent versus four percent, if I recall aright.

I don't believe in anarchism. We need a return to the "New Deal normal" that held sway during this country's most prosperous years -- the decades between Roosevelt and Reagan. Those policies created our middle class.

Moore would probably find my stance naive, bourgeois, perhaps even reactionary. Many Americans, however, would consider me a radical socialist. In the U.K., the political center is located in a very different place.

JFK, the USSR, and the moon

2011-12-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, I saw a television documentary which replayed that famous clip of JFK proposing to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. That declaration was presented (as it is always presented) as an example of the American "can do" spirit. In short: The clip is used to engender nationalism.

Here is the part of the story that they never tell you: JFK wanted the US and the USSR to go on a joint mission to the moon -- an exercise in cooperation which would have done much to end or to mitigate the cold war. Just ten days before he died, JFK codified this approach with National Security Action Memorandum 271, which you can read here.

He also gave a speech to the UN on September 20 on this topic. I don't know if footage of the speech exists -- if it does, the people who produce television documentaries are either unaware of it or prefer to keep it hidden.

"...Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity -- in the field of space -- there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon."

"Space offers no problem of sovereignty; by resolution of this assembly, the members of the United Nations have forsworn any claims to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply."

"Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of natural competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research construction and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries -- indeed of all the world -- cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending some day in this decade to the moon, not the representatives of a single nations, but the representatives of all of our countries."

This blog usually concentrates on current events. But in this era of historical revisionism, we should occasionally try to educate today's young people about what actually happened. JFK's dream was not fulfilled; his course was changed.

The law

2011-12-04T11:49:00.001-08:00

From time to time, you still hear people argue that what the banksters did (in the run-up to the great unpleasantness of 2008) was legal. No, it wasn't. In this fine piece on the secret $7.7 trillion loan to Wall Street, writer Cynthia Kouril lays down the law:

And then there is this excerpt from NY GBS §352-c:
6. Any person, partnership, corporation, company, trust or association, or any agent or employee thereof who intentionally engages in fraud, deception, concealment, suppression, false pretense or fictitious or pretended purchase or sale, or who makes any material false representation or statement with intent to deceive or defraud, while engaged in inducing or promoting the issuance, distribution, exchange, sale, negotiation or purchase within or from this state of any securities or commodities, as defined in this article, and thereby wrongfully obtains property of a value in excess of two hundred fifty dollars, shall be guilty of a class E felony.

Seems to me that this wording applies to anyone who sells shady, snakey financial instruments that have been mis-rated AAA even though they were based on crap mortgages. The wording applies to Moodys and the other rating agencies, and to the Wall Street firms that told the rating agencies what to do.

Stop the Cain bullshit

2011-12-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

Slate, on the end of Cain:

What did him in was sloppiness, in how he responded to those stories and how he bumbled other ones.

Oh, just stop it. What did him in was sex. What did him in was the fact that our dimwitted electorate, which cannot force itself to care about anything other than sex, became convinced that Cain had inserted his penis into a woman other than his wife.

Carrier IQ, smartphone spying, and the CIA connection

2011-12-03T08:15:00.000-08:00

(Note: This post contains original research into the links between Carrier IQ and the CIA. If you're impatient to get to that stuff, scroll down. Then spread the news.)

If there's one thing I cannot abide, it's knee-jerk defeatism when it comes to questions of cyber-privacy. "Oh well -- that's the world we live in. Nothing we can do. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about..."

Bullshit. There's a lot we can do. And just because you're a law-abiding citizen doesn't mean you should put up with snoops who trample on your rights.

(If you're not doing anything wrong, why not let me install a video camera in your bedroom? Why not let me plant mics in your home and car? Why wear clothing? Are you hiding something?)

I strongly urge you to read this and this. Yes, I just linked to a piece by Farhad MooJuice, who is often wrong on tech issues and obnoxiously complacent about the threat of cyber-spying. If Mr. Passive is worried, then it's time for a nationwide panic reaction.

The culprit is a piece of software called Carrier IQ, which installs a rootkit on your smartphone. It can track your location, your apps, your texts, your every keystroke.

For more on the controversy, see here and here. Predictably, CBS News has come to the defense of Carrier IQ -- which may be all the evidence you need to understand that the software is no damned good.

The Information Week piece (written in the second person, addressed to Carrier IQ) is particularly helpful:

Eckhart has two big concerns: First, your app appears to be seeing everything he does, from HTTPS strings in the browser to actual keystrokes. He wonders if the app logs this sensitive data, or transmits any of it to your servers? Second, he's concerned that the data being tracked by your servers could easily identify individual handset users. Accordingly, "I would like to know exactly who has seen this data, what data has been recorded, and who has recorded it. This data should also be subject to some clear privacy policy," Eckhart says. Without that clarification, he argues, the software is simply a rootkit: unwanted, hidden, hard to delete, but running with root-level access.

But instead of embracing the spirit of full disclosure, you send Eckhart a draconian cease and desist letter, threatening him with $150,000 per count of copyright violation (for the manuals) and warning that unless he bends over backwards to take back everything he's said about your company, you'll make him pay--big time.

If Carrier IQ weren't spying on users, they would never have responded in that fashion.

Allegedly, this software exists to "serve you better."

Bullshit. This is Uncle. He's spying on you, on all of us.

I own a tiny old cell phone which is used to make and to receive phone calls -- nothing else. (You can send me a text message, but don't expect me to text back.) Even if cost were not a factor, I would never "upgrade" to an Android or iPhone. It's not that I'm a Luddite or a technophobe -- I've repaired iPhones (on a modest scale), even though I would never own one of the damned things.

Why? Because you can't remove the battery of an iPhone, at least not easily. The iPhone was designed this way because governmental agencies can use your phone to track and triangulate your location every moment of every day. The only sure way to defeat GPS is to take out the battery.

Can "they" track you in other ways? Perhaps. But why make life easy for the people trying to spy on you? I say we should toss sand in their eyes whenever we can.

In truth, I live a rather innocuous life. But purely as a matter of principle, Americans should defend their privacy to the greatest degree possible. Even if you're a soccer mom and the president of your local PTA, live like a fugitive when you go online.

If that prescription seems excessive, then the least you can do is to support Al Franken's efforts to investigate CarrierIQ.

DO NOT BELIEVE the software and hardware providers when they say that they will not misuse the information they gather. They are lying. They can never, ever be trusted.

Only laws -- combined with much greater operational transparency -- will stop them. In their press statement, Carrier IQ tells the public that they are operating within the laws. They don't tell you that current law is woefully insufficient.

The CIA connection: Here are the executive officers for Carrier IQ. And now it's time for Cannonfire readers to play one of our favorite games: Spot the Spook.

Let's start with CEO Larry Lenhart. Hmm. How does this resume sound...?

Before his CEO experiences, Larry was a managing partner at Deloitte Consulting and at AT Kearny, where he provided strategic and operational expertise across the globe with such clients as EDS, AT&T, New Jersey Bell, E-Trade, Novell, Federal Express, GM, Saudi Aramco, Bank of South Africa, DuPont, and many others.

I must say, this was a particularly quick game of Spot the Spook. Almost too quick; I wanted more of a challenge.

Deloitte Consulting, eh? All righty, then. The question before us comes down to this: Is Deloitte a spooked up company? Are we dealing with one of those oh-so-special "private" firms which just happens to be plugged directly into our nation's intel community?

You betcha.

One of their senior managers was recently appointed Inspector General of the CIA. The IG is not a position for outsiders; the job usually goes to a "good old boy" veteran of the intelligence world -- someone who can be depended on not to rock too many boats.

Also see here. Carmen Medina of Deloitte (she's the nice lady in the photo reproduced above) also served as the director of the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. If you're trying to come up with an innocent explanation as to how such a thing might happen -- save your breath. And grow the fuck up.

Also read this:

Of Deloitte’s 45,000 employees worldwide, more than 5,700 work in this federal practice. They provide solutions regarding business strategy, operations, technology, risk management and human capital. The division works with a host of government contractors and agencies such as the FBI and CIA.

And this, from Deloitte's website:

Federal agencies trust Deloitte to address their most critical information and technology challenges -- and we deliver by providing measurable business value through IT.

With deep Federal and commercial industry knowledge, Deloitte is well positioned to support the FBI by leveraging our extensive IT experience in hardware, software, operations, maintenance, and technical and development services. Deloitte's Federal technology professionals offer a broad range of implementation and advisory services to support the FBI in its efforts to better manage critical business information and support mission objectives.

Our FBI service team is led by professionals who possess broad technical and consulting experience coupled with deep knowledge of the Federal law enforcement environment

Deloitte has the experience and professional knowledge to support the FBI's needs under the IT SSS contract. This includes:
* A deep bench of practitioners with active security clearances and extensive project management certifications
* Demonstrated performance and experience through the FBI Program Management and Support Services (PMSS) contract vehicle as well as other large vehicles with the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense

Deloitte is obviously thisclose to the intelligence/security apparat.

And that means we should be pretty damned scared when we learn that a former Deloitte head honcho suddenly got the funding needed (from In-Q-Tel, perhaps?) to start up a company which just happens to plant a "spy on everything" rootkit in smartphones everywhere.

Back in the '70s, nobody would have put up with that kind of shit. I fear that today's Americans are far more passive.

Cain

2011-12-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

I guess a few words about the end of the Cain campaign are in order. What annoys me is not Cain's sexual history, which is not my business. I'm annoyed at my fellow Americans for caring about this man's private life.

Not many years ago, Americans used to kid themselves whenever a sex scandal erupted. Because we did not want to seem puritanical or prurient, we relied on a familiar euphemism. "It's not the sex that bothers me; it's the poor judgment." Remember that one? It was very popular during Monicagate and the Gary Hart affair.

Nowadays we are more honest. It is the sex. Nothing else. We are completely unashamed about our lurid and indefensible interest in what a candidate does with his weewee.

(Please understand that my sentiments here are directed at news accounts of political figures involved in consensual affairs. Allegations of sexual abuse belong in a different category. Such charges are a legal matter, and their veracity should be determined by a court of law, not by a cable news host. In the past, some feminists have become very angry at me for pointing out that a man is innocent until proven guilty.)

I don't care whether Cain had an affair, and neither should you. Only his political beliefs -- which I personally find odious -- should matter.

The intriguing question is why the alleged mistress came forward at this time. What was her motive? Clearly, Cain felt that he could depend upon her silence, or he would never have dared to run in the first place. It is telling that her story broke on Fox News -- which would never have pursued the story if the Republican party leadership wanted Cain to be the nominee.

"O must GO" -- The Image

2011-12-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

(Click on the image to enlarge.) Y'know, I never want to lead the various movements that this site either endorses or tries to get off the ground. I'm no leader; by nature, I'm a sidelines grumbler. But fiddling with the graphics is fun. What do you think? This is meant to look a bit like a 1969 issue of The New York Review of Books.

Added note: I just wrote the following in an email to a friend...

2012 will be a revised version of Mort Sahl's best joke. Sahl said: "Reagan won because he ran against Carter. If Reagan had run unopposed, he would have lost." Reagan = Romney; Carter = Obama.

"O must GO!": Is such a movement even possible?

2011-12-01T05:46:00.000-08:00

The "Hillary for VP" post below -- it's really an "Obama must go" post -- evinced some pretty strong responses, both public and private. Now I'm thinking: Is it possible? Can we really allow ourselves to think this way?

We would have all of one month, maybe a little more, to do it -- to mount a "Dump Obama" movement within the Democratic party.

The tipping point for me was this story about former Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson of Ohio (no relation to the guy who inspired the movie Charlie Wilson's War). He's trying for a comeback. His opponent is the man who bested him in 2010, Republican Bill Johnson.

What startled me was his method of attack: Wilson, the Democrat, attacked Johnson, the Republican, for supporting Barack Obama. The support concerned the issue of free trade. (Obama's under-discussed policies in that area will, in the end, do far more harm to this country than will the alleged political sins that Republicans prefer to talk about.)

"I am disappointed that Congressman Johnson supported President Obama's free trade agenda this year. These agreements will ship even more of our jobs overseas," Wilson told WTRF-TV.

In conservative-leaning districts like Johnson's, Democrats will have to increasingly distance themselves from the president if they want a chance to win. We've started to see that with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., retiring Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif, and a handful of other Democratic elected officeholders. But expect that trickle to become a stream if the president's approval ratings don't tick upwards.

They won't tick upward. The economy will likely get worse -- soon -- due to the strains in the Eurozone. Obama simply cannot win. Whether you like or dislike him is immaterial: He can't win.

(Romney and Obama are statistically tied in the polls -- but those polls don't take into account the strange dynamics of the electoral college, which gives an advantage to the red states. Romney's numbers will rise once the party makes a firm decision that he's the guy.)

And yet the Republicans have become so unbelievably vile that this country cannot reward them with control of the House, the Senate and the White House -- an outcome which now seems likely. In the comments section of the afore-linked story, one reader notes that Wilson's opponent, Congressman Johnson, went on a right-wing talk show and claimed -- insanely -- that Democrats are "not only hostile to the Christian faith, they’re hostile to America, period." (Other readers supported Johnson's absurdity.) That's but one example; one could cite a million more.

A form of political rabies has infected the GOP. The choice between Democrat and Republican has become a choice between a bad dog and a mad dog.

At this time, we can improve this situation only if we insist on a new top dog.

I propose a sudden, serious "O must GO!" movement.

Even if it fails, as it very well might, an attack on Obama from the left would help to rewrite this country's political narrative. Right now, the Republicans want the country to believe that Obama's alleged "socialism" has alienated the public. We must undo that bizarre ideological framing. Creating a new narrative is even more important than is making sure that Barack Obama does not have another four years to sully the Democratic brand name.

So I'm asking readers for ideas:

How can we convince the Democratic leadership to call on Barack Obama to step down from the 2012 race?

I want practical suggestions; further complaints about Obama's failed presidency are unnecessary (though understandable). We really need to find a way to bell this cat. So far, here's what I can come up with:

1. We need a mailing list. A BIG one. Right now, I know nothing about compiling such a thing. Do you?

2. We need an "O must GO!" web site.

3. We need a presence at Occupy Wall Street protests. The two movements -- "O must GO" and OWS -- cannot and should not become too closely linked: There will always be OWSers who still support this president, and there will be anti-Obama Dems who believe the propaganda about "smelly hippies." (For example, I imagine that quite a few Dems in Charlie Wilson's neck of the woods think that way.) Still, some linkage would certainly be helpful.

4. This must be a movement -- a rebellion, if you will -- within the Democratic party. All third party fantasists will only alienate the party movers-and-shakers whom we are trying to reach. If all you want to do is bellyache about how much you hate Democrats ("They're all in the pay of Wall Street!"), don't bother commenting at all. This is no place for you.

5. This must NOT be a "Draft Hillary" movement. Sorry, but many foolish Dems still despise the Clintons; the stench of the 2008 propaganda campaign lingers. Right now, the movement must be identified as anti-Obama, not pro-SomebodyElse.

That said, Hillary supporters will understand that she can have a chance to step in only if Obama does the same honorable thing that LBJ did. The Dems can't win without the working class in places like Pennsylvania; right now they hate Obama and love Hillary.

6. Unpleasant thought: We would have to make nice with the Kos Kids and the D.U. crowd, even though they will never apologize for their abominable behavior in 2008. Yes, they screwed up royally -- but by this point, most of them have seen Obama for what he truly is.

You don't form a movement by turning people away at the door.

Aldous Taylor for President...?

2011-11-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a Corrente writer, I have learned that there is another Democrat on the New Hampshire ballot for president: Aldous Taylor. Here's his page. I like what I see -- on that page.

Looking a little closer at the guy, I...well, I'm not sure what to think! He doesn't seem ever to have held elective office -- in fact, he has spent much of his adult life working for Kinkos. If you say "So what?" -- remember that, back in 2008, we scored Obama for his inexperience.

At any rate, he seems to be a reasonably well-spoken chubby, long-haired pagan. His birth name was Christopher Anton Cloyd. "Anton" was the rather puckish choice of a friend of his mother's -- and yes, he was named after none other than Anton LaVey! But we can hardly hold that against him. As for his chosen name (he legally changed it in 2008), "Aldous" means "elvish" (or so he says here) and "Tyler" is a term derived from Freemasonry. Cool by me, though I'm not sure all of this will go over very well in the south.

I like this guy. I can even see myself voting for him -- for something a bit lower down on the political hierarchy. Nothing wrong with starting with the state legislature, is there...?

OWS: Here's the REAL bad news

2011-11-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

Occupation protesters were kicked out of their encampments in L.A. and Philly today. That's bad news, but not THE bad news. Here's the truly bad news, by way of CNN:

Both the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements identify with the values of just under a third of the country, according to a survey released Thursday.

Twenty-nine percent of Americans say the Occupy Wall Street movement shares their values, the same proportion who say Tea Party shares their values, the survey found.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said the the Tea Party does not share their values, compared to a statistically equal 56% of respondents who indicated the same about the Occupy movement.

Not long ago, over half of the country thought highly of the Occupy movement.

Sorry, but there is no way to spin this or to dismiss this or to rationalize this. Please don't kid yourselves, and don't try to kid me.

The media's ongoing smear campaign -- which has been relentless and ruthlessly unfair -- has worked. When OWS commanded 50% support, politicians wanted to identify themselves with the movement. If only 29% support the movement, any association with the ideas driving OWS will be seen as politically poisonous.

The comparison to the Tea Party is instructive. It now seems that none of the tea-stained GOP presidential candidates will get the nomination. Romney -- unbeloved and uninspiring, but not a dweller on the fringe -- will probably win the nomination. Even in 2010, when the Tea Party was fresher and somewhat more popular, the most robustly tea-flavored candidates -- Sharron Angle, Carl Paladino, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell -- could not attain victories in their races. Angle lost even though she ran against a weakened Harry Reid, who probably could have been bested by my dog Bella.

Some will argue: "The Occupy movement is about changing consciousness, not about electoral politics." Yeah, yeah. I've heard the rap. First: In a democracy, everything ultimately comes down to electoral politics. Second: If you're losing support, if nearly twice as many people hate you as admire you, then you're not changing the way people think. So just what is it that you hope to accomplish?

OWS needs a new strategy, and quick. My suggestion: Books and videos -- lots of them. Occupy YouTube. And do not fear the emergence of articulate and engaging leaders. New faces, preferably.

Hillary for Veep...? NO!

2011-11-29T14:45:00.000-08:00

(Late added note: Corrente is back!)

U.S. News and World Report claims that Obama's low job approval rating (43% -- a worse number than that earned by any previous president at this stage) -- might tempt him to ask Hillary Clinton to take Joe Biden's place as Vice President.

I find that suggestion hilarious: Four years ago, the Obots embarked on a propaganda barrage designed to convince voters that the Clintons are evil racists. Now the Obama team wants Hillary to bail out our sorry failure of a president. Well, it won't work.

People are angry about many things right now, but Joe Biden is not one of them. Switching him out would be like putting a new paint job on an exploding Pinto.

Besides, the choice of running mate has little impact on the voters' feelings about the man at the top of the ticket. Look at Quayle in 1988. Look at Cheney in 2004. Hell, how many people truly liked Bush back in 1980 and 1984...?

A veep switch now will simply make Obama look desperate and weak. Biden is not terribly beloved, but neither is he despised. If he gets the sack, everyone will understand that Obama is flailing like a de-ponded trout.

I don't think that the Republicans will be silly enough to choose Newt. If they make so hideous an error, Obama may yet win re-election. The GOP base dislikes Romney, but Republicans will eventually reconcile themselves to him: They need someone who can win.

If the Dems want a chance, the leaders of the party need to plead with Obama to step down. At the same time, they must plead with Hillary to step up.

I'm not a blinkered Hillary supporter -- frankly, I'm still angry at her -- but the situation is what it is. Only Hillary Clinton can galvanize what we might call the "99 percent" vote. Only she can bring back the sense of optimism and enthusiasm that was foolishly wasted on the Obama campaign in 2008.

Even if her campaign failed, she could return the party to its New Deal ideals -- and subsequent opposition to a President Romney would not be mired in a pointless defense of Barack Obama's pointless presidency.

(Who should be Hillary's veep? Now there's a fun thought experiment...! I'd like John Conyers.)

Iran

2011-11-29T06:35:00.000-08:00

The storming of the British embassy in Iran conjures up hideous memories. If you're as old as I am, you'll recall that the nightly drama of "America held hostage" was the single greatest force pushing this country to the right. The sheer humiliation of seeing our sovereignty trampled turned many middle-of-the-roaders into Reaganites. In a sense, the Ayatollah Khomeini was the best friend American reactionaries ever had.

In the current situation, six staffers were taken hostage -- or so says one report. British or Iranian? We don't yet know. (Update: Apparently, the six were British; the cops secured their release.)

Iranian riot police have stepped in to quell the "student" protesters. (Always and forever, we see that label "student." How many units do you think they're taking?) The fact that Iran's government stepped in to restore order indicates that this incident probably won't segue into the kind of nightmare that marred Carter's last year.

Still, this paragraph from the BBC report jumped out at me...

An unconfirmed report from the official Irna news agency said a separate group of protesters broke into another British embassy compound in the north of the city and seized "classified documents".

It is possible, I suppose, that the Iranians permitted -- briefly -- the main embassy attack in order to provide cover for the theft of those documents. There is some indication that the Iranian government, or a faction of it, encouraged the attack. Yes, the riot police stepped in -- but only after the attackers had been at work for a full hour.

The motive remains a bit unclear, at least to me. At the back of it all, we run into the long-simmering dispute over Iranian nukes:

For its part, the UK Treasury imposed sanctions on Iranian banks, accusing them of facilitating the country's nuclear programme

That decision followed a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that suggested Iran was working towards acquiring a nuclear weapon.

In response to the British sanctions, the Iranian parliament voted to downgrade diplomatic relations with the U.K.

Would a downgrade in relations cause "students" to take such rash action? In 1979, the cause was much more emotional -- much sexier, if you will: The United States gave protection and medical treatment to the deposed Shah of Iran (who really was a vicious tyrant), while the Iranians wanted him tried on their soil. I can see how violence might arise out of that.

But I'm surprised to learn that sanctions can have a similarly electrifying effect. After the revolution, the Iranians accepted -- almost invited -- economic sanctions and political isolation. Are things so very different now?

Nukes: The basic issue comes down to the question of Iranian nukes, and whether Israel -- or the U.S., acting on Israel's behalf -- should launch a strike against Iran in order to take out the weapons. There have been warnings of imminent war for so long that the tableau has begun to take on a Lucy-and-the-football quality.

Clearly, a mad dog faction of the American establishment would love to drop bombs on Iran. (That faction is led by a crafty fellow named Michael Ledeen, about whom I've written much.) It is also clear that such an attack would probably end up doing as much damage to this country as to Iran. Maybe more damage.

My own view is simple and unpopular: By what right can we prevent the Iranians from joining the nuclear club? We did not prevent Israel. We did not prevent South Africa. We did not prevent India and Pakistan. True, the current regime in Iran is, in many ways, quite obnoxious. But that government has been at peace with its neighbors since the Iran-Iraq war, which was initiated by Saddam Hussein (then an American semi-ally). We cannot say the same about Israel.

Obviously, most Americans won't share my view.

So the question comes down to this: Are the Iranians building bombs? The IAEA report is less clear than the afore-linked BBC report would have you believe. See here:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says in the leaked report by Director-General Yukiya Amano that it "has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program."

Amano says "the information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device."

The report says that while some of the suspected secret nuclear work by Iran can have peaceful purposes, "others are specific to nuclear weapons." The document says those activities may be continuing.

Signaling frustration at Iranian officials' dealings so far on crucial topics, the report "requests" that Iran "engage substantively with the Agency without delay for the purpose of providing clarifications regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program."

The report's summary says that since "Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation, including by not implementing its Additional Protocol [to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], the Agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

Excuse me, but -- haven't we already seen this movie?

Iraq. Remember? We were told that Saddam Hussein was not cooperating sufficiently with inspectors -- therefore (the Bush administration concluded) the Iraqi dictator must have been stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, he was doing no such thing.

We can't allow thousands -- perhaps millions -- to die simply because someone at the IAEA complained of insufficient cooperation.

Hypocritically, some Israelis are calling for an Iran strike on the basis of the IAEA report. Israel itself, a member of the IAEA since 1957, possesses 200 nuclear warheads -- and unlike Iran, Israel refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspections at the Dimona facilty.

Rush Limbaugh is giving the idea of war with Iran the hard-sell treatment. Since Rush is the voice of the Republican party, we should take his words as a warning. Something bad is brewing.

Obama admits he has "screwed up"

2011-11-28T14:47:00.001-08:00

Here's a telling quote:

As Mr. Obama recently told a group of supporters in the deflated liberal bastion of San Francisco, “The Hope poster is kind of faded and a little dog-eared.”

And here's a telling admission:

Obama has admitted that he’s “screwed up,” is “frustrated” and might only deserve one term in the White House. He’s acknowledged that he hasn’t fulfilled campaign promises and has admitted that the change he vowed to bring to Washington hasn’t arrived.

My suggestion: Quit. Don't run in 2012.

Hillary or Al Gore would surely accept the nomination, if Obama did the decent thing and bowed out. Both would stand a better chance against Romney.

How we got here

2011-11-28T04:23:00.000-08:00

Today's great worry is the European debt crisis and the possible collapse of the EUropean monetary union. The NYT tells us that Moodys and the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have both offered dire warnings of a massive new recession:

The credit agency warning that the problems may lead multiple countries to default on their debts or exit the euro, which would threaten the credit standing of all 17 countries in the currency union.

Our friend Dakinikat -- incidentally, that's Dr. Dakinikat to you; she now has her PhD. -- offers a sharp overview of the situation:

Reports from AFP show that the IMF may be planning a 600 billion Euro rescue plan for Italy. Italy is the world’s 8th largest economy. It’s the 4th largest in Europe. Needless to say, this is highly irregular.

It will be hard for our libertarian propagandists to argue that Italy has been run by socialists and libruls in recent years, but they will make that argument nonetheless.

So how did we get into this situation? The latest issue of Lobster offers some excellent historical perspective. (Please note that, as of this issue, you can't download the entire magazine at once; you must select individual articles, which open up in pdf.) You'll want Robin Ramsey's piece "The Crisis," which elaborates on the Labor Party's subservience to the City. All of this translates nicely into American terms: "The City" is equivalent to Wall Street and the Labor Party equals the Dems. (Obama = Blair? Yeah, that's about right.)

Sitting in the pub, a friend of mine said he couldn’t understand what was going on in the Labour Party at the moment. I said something to the effect that they had a problem: almost everything they believed about economic policy for the past 25 years was wrong; and imagine how difficult this makes things for the current leadership. They cannot say, ‘We’re terribly sorry: we’ve been wrong for the last 25 years. We plumped for the City and ignored the manufacturing base.’ Politicians don’t do this. Political parties not seeking election – e.g. the Communist Party of Great Britain – can say such things (and the CPGB did circa 1990). But for parties engaged in electoral politics this is impossible. Or is perceived as impossible. They are forced to change their policies while pretending all was well when they were in office. (Or almost well: they may acknowledge little things they did get wrong...)

Not that this problem is unique to Labour. As the coalition government talks about ‘rebalancing the economy’, away from the City towards manufacturing, they have the same problem. They also chose to bank on the City. The British political class and its attendant media made a huge mistake in the 1980s when, with North Sea oil revenues to spend, they chose to copy America and not Germany or Sweden.

My guess would be that the group around Kinnock wanted to get elected more than they cared about the state of the British economy or the fate of its citizens; and having lost two general elections, decided that the bankers were too powerful to challenge. By this time – 1988/9 – the City had been largely sold off to American banks in the so-called big bang of 1986 and was well on its way to being an extension of Wall Street; and thus to be anti-City of London increasingly meant being perceived as anti-American.

There are even voices within the City starting to ask if the ‘Big Bang’ of 1986, selling off most of the City to American banks, was a good idea:
‘Viewed from the perspective of the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s.....Terry Smith, the Tullet Prebon chief executive, now reckons Big Bang was a “colossal mistake”. Peter Meinertzhagen, the former chairman of Hoare Govett, says: “It’s absolutely not something to celebrate. Everything that went wrong in the City went wrong because of Big Bang – greed, nobody knowing their counterparties, and good firms getting taken over and wrecked.”’

This gets us back to one of this blog's recurrent themes: We've all been bamboozled into seeing the financial world in terms of capitalism vs. socialism, when the real dichotomy has been between finance capitalism and industrial capitalism. Industry (that is, makin' stuff) is the heart that pumps blood into our economy; finance capitalism is a vampire out to suck us dry.

I can't resist one further quotation (and a quote within a quote):

It is slowly dawning on the political class that the last 30 years, the whole services/knowledge economy thing has been a detour, funded by oil and then debt. With this come some interesting shifts. Here’s Charles Moore, former editor of The Spectator, the Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph.
‘It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.’

A few fantasy writers have attempted to solve a problem underlying the vampire myth: If vampires ran the world, what would happen when they ran out of victims?

I think Europe -- and America -- are about to find out.

White phosphorus weaponry: The legacy

2011-11-28T02:19:00.000-08:00

In previous posts, we've looked at the appalling use of white phosphorous as a weapon in Fallujah and elsewhere. You may not know that these weapons, along with depleted uranium shells, can create horrendous birth defects. Go here -- but I warn you, you will not be able to look at the images for more than a second.

Children's hair in Gaza and Falluhja was shown to have a high metal load with at least 10 metals being detected in various amounts and combinations. These metals have toxic, carcinogenic and teratogenic action as shown by scientific research, and confirmed by the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) classification...

The fact that these metals remain in the environment and accumulate in the human body makes their effects potentially more dangerous for the population with the passage of time, particularly given their ongoing consumption and absorption from the environment and atmosphere, as well as through metal-contaminated food and water.

These defects are also present in residential areas located near testing grounds for modern weaponry.

Miller time

2011-11-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

A few words are in order concerning this absurd piece by Rick Moody of The Guardian on Hollywood's inherent "cryptofascism." He takes his argument from some inane anti-OWS commentary offered by comic book writer/artist Frank Miller.

I'm old enough to recall when Miller was just a kid who lucked into a gig drawing Daredevil, which he did very well. It's rather odd to think that he's now in a position where newspaper editorialists take his pronouncements seriously.

Moody judges the entire industry by the example of one man who barely counts as being in that industry. The studios allowed Miller to direct just one feature, The Spirit, a commercial and artistic failure. I doubt that he'll ever get a similar chance again. In the comics world, he's considered both a giant and a has-been. (He recently wrote a how-Batman-met-Robin series which was widely derided as a train wreck.)

The story of this man's political evolution is simple and familiar. Miller used to be somewhere on the left. His Dark Knight Returns functions as a critique of Reaganism; both Batman and (especially) Green Arrow are pictured as mad-yet-noble anarchists who make the OWS protesters seem like boy scouts. Batman: Year One portrays the capitalist power structure as hopelessly corrupt. (The recent animated film based on this series may be the best Batman movie ever made.) Give Me Liberty and Ronin offer dystopian views of an America destroyed by corporatism.

Miller's first forays into screenwriting are the second and third Robocop films. These are the only mainstream movies known to me which use the word "capitalist" as an insult.

Then came 9/11 -- and Miller, like Christopher Hitchens, became a convert to reaction. Ever since, he has been saying some rather obnoxious things. Frank Miller and Dennis Miller have more in common than a surname: They are both thought to have lost much of their talent when they made a hard right turn.

Right now, Frank Miller complains that the OWSers take drugs and have bad hygeine habits. I find this assessment hilarious: In every photo I've ever seen of him, Miller seems like the guy you wouldn't want to sit next to on the bus. Does he have a lifelong history of complete sobriety? I dunno. But...hell, just look at him!

(In case you're wondering: I do have a history of sobriety -- but you definitely wouldn't want to sit next to me on the bus.)

My point is simple. Moody thinks that Miller's instantly-notorious anti-OWS commentary indicates that Hollywood is a haven for "fascism." But when Miller was stridently anti-capitalist, Hollywood invited him in to write big movies. Now that Miller has turned into a weirdo inhabitant of Glenn Beckistan (or maybe Pam Gellerland), once-open doors appear to have shut.

Did those doors close because of his politics? Not necessarily. I think the studios lost interest in the man when The Spirit tanked. That's capitalism for you!

But it is also the case that the industry likes people who are likable. This is something rarely understood by people who grew up outside of Los Angeles: In Hollywood, you get points for being nice, or at least for being able to fake nice; a good attitude goes a long way. Every anecdote I've ever heard about Miller, especially the post 9/11 Miller, has conveyed the same impression one gets from his work: The guy is an angry ferret. He radiates cynicism. For him, every day is Resentment Day.

Don't misunderstand: A large part of me admires his ultra-captious worldview. At least he has a worldview. But that doesn't mean I admire the inane things he said about OWS.

The news

2011-11-26T18:57:00.000-08:00

Some of you may recall Angela, the lovely lass who posed for my Chalice drawings -- and I will get back to that project, just as soon as my life is not so horrendously insecure. She is now an au pair girl in Germany. She writes:

I've learned more about the world in one hour of news here in Germany than during one week in the states. People need to know about the bigger picture, not about the cat stuck in a tree for 3 days.

To illustrate the point, she offers this graphic comparison (click to enlarge):

Obama IS Obama

2011-11-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

Steve Kornacki has written an interesting post about liberal disenchantment with Obama and its parallels to the (largely forgotten) disenchantment many conservatives once felt toward Reagan. Kornacki does not remind us of the phrase "Let Reagan be Reagan" -- which arose (around 1982, wasn't it?) as a sort of war-cry among the conservatives who argued that Reagan's presidency was not fulfilling their wet dreams.

There is a difference between those days and these days: No-one now says "Let Obama be Obama."

Okay, a few people have used the phrase -- mostly ironically. For the most part, though, liberals and moderates have congealed around the view that the Obama we see now is, god help us, the real guy. As Politico points out, as far back as 2004 Obama talked about playing footsie with Republicans. The result was entirely predictable.

Let's get back to Kornacki's piece:

What Chait doesn’t acknowledge is that of the three Democratic presidents elected since 1976, only one – Obama – can accurately be described as the choice of his party’s base. The other two, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, were viewed with suspicion by liberals from the earliest days of their campaigns, and for good reason.

I'm old enough to recall liberal suspicion of Carter, which was indeed palpable and deep. Democrats nevertheless made their peace -- at first -- with the idea of a Carter presidency, if only because everyone thought that a moderate leader might be what the country needed after a period of turmoil.

What happened, of course, is that the Republicans erected a formidable propaganda machine to demonize Carter as a socialist/Marxist/ultra-liberal/conspiratorial monster. Meanwhile, Carter kept pandering to the right, leaving his foreign policy in the hands of people like the vile Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Is the phrase "proto-neo-con" permissible? In his case, perhaps.)

This dynamic set the pattern for all Democratic presidencies to come: The Dems, scrambling for moderate votes, would find the most conservative candidate that the base could tolerate. Meanwhile, the Republicans would convince the country that Mr. Conservative Dem was actually Karl Marx Reborn.

I would question, though, Kornacki's claim that Obama was the choice of "the base" in 2008. On most issues, Hillary ran to his left -- and she got the majority of working class Democratic votes. In fact, she got the majority of Democratic votes period; Obama won by gaming the caucuses. Alas, throughout 2008 there was an inane propaganda campaign which tried to convince the country that working class racism drove the Hillary vote. I thought then -- and I think now -- that workers simply saw Obama for what he was: The Democratic Romney. He's a slick, value-free front man without convictions and without a clue.

Hillary, by contrast, was a fighter.

In rejecting her, the Democratic leadership made the same miscalculation they've been making since the days of Jimmy Carter. Independent voters don't respect mushy moderate candidates who allow themselves to wear the bootprints of blood enemies. Americans respect warriors willing to battle for principle.

As for the Republican base and its occasional disaffection for its leadership: This is a real phenomenon, albeit one that remains invisible to most liberals, because the fights are mostly kept private. Richard Viguerie, who hoped to mount a challenge to Reagan, has more recently threatened to lead the Tea Partiers away from the GOP and toward an (unspecified) independent candidate.

But he didn't do it. He will never do it. Nobody holding a position analogous to Viguerie's will actually go so far. You may see a baring of fangs and you may hear a few growls -- but nothing further will occur.

There will never be a conservative Ralph Nader.

Have a pissy Resentment Day!

2011-11-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

This is Resentment Day, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I am unhappy to report that this newly-christened antiholiday has taken off like an ordure-filled ICBM. Even though I will get none of the credit -- and isn't that typical? -- you can hear expressions of resentment everywhere you go. Just take a walk to the local convenience store: I guarantee that you'll run into someone who resents you mightily.

Here's one thing I resent: People who insist that Thanksgiving turkey is too dry and flavorless.

Year after year, everyone registers that complaint -- yet everyone demands the breast meat, ignoring the wonderful juicy stuff around the thighs. I'm reminded of the guy who insists on sitting in the very last row of the movie theater and then complains that the screen is too small.

Turkey isn't flavorless -- not if you cook it right. And no, you don't need to go for those expensive Butterballs. Just cook low and slow (225 degrees) for at least nine hours, preceded and ended by fifteen-minute bursts of high heat (425). Cooking upside-down certainly helps. (That is: Turn the bird upside down; if you try to cook with your feet on the ceiling, things may not go as planned.) The turkey, like any other resentment-filled creature, likes to stew in its own juices.

So no more complaints about this holiday tradition, or I'll resent the hell out of you.

They're spooking you

2011-11-25T05:51:00.001-08:00

The Wall Street Journal has a good piece up on "legal" vendors of computer surveillance products. One of the tactics described involves fake updates to programs that nearly everyone uses, such as Adobe Flash.

The only way to combat this tactic (near as I can see) is to download updates from the vendor sites -- that is, if you think you need to update Flash, go to Adobe. You may also want to go to Start Menu/MSCONFIG to make sure that no automatic updater modules are among your startup programs.

Whatever you do, don't give in to defeatism: "Oh, there is no privacy on the internet anyway. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about." That attitude is sheepish -- even swinish.

Resentment Day

2011-11-24T06:12:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving? Why on earth should you be thankful? The Powers-That-Be have burgled every hope you ever stored in your hope chest, and now they expect you to give thanks for the dust bunnies they've left behind.

I propose a better, more honest, more American holiday, to be celebrated the Saturday after Thanksgiving: Resentment Day.

(Why Saturday? Because that's the day you really start to resent leftover turkey.)

If you studied hard for your MA and now must work extra hours at Wal-Mart to pay off your student loans, Resentment Day is your day. If you find yourself in your fifties working for some twerp in his twenties who treats you like a dullard, Resentment Day is your day. If every film, novel, painting and pop song leaves you convinced that you could do better, Resentment Day is your day. If you won't ride a rollercoaster because you know that if you spent five minutes studying the plans for the thing you'd find the fatal engineering flaw, Resentment Day is your day.

If you're pissed off at Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton and every other celebrity who has done nothing to earn their celebrity, Resentment Day is your day. If you are pissed off at celebrities who (unlike you) actually do have a few genuine accomplishments under their belts, Resentment Day is your day.

If you coulda been a contenduh, Resentment Day is your day.

If you're infuriated by members of your family -- the thanaterotic teenaged girl, the sullen son, the spouse who seems always on the edge of a violent outburst, the uncle who can't stop talking about his wealth and accomplishments, the parent who always makes you feel five years old -- Resentment Day is your day.

If absolutely nothing in the realm of politics gives you any reason for cheer or approval, Resentment Day is your day. If you wake up every day seething at Barack Obama -- or at the Republicans who hope to unseat Obama -- or both -- or all -- Resentment Day is your day.

If you scoff at conspiracy theories yet secretly presume that "They" really are out to get you, Resentment Day is your day.

If you want to bomb France, Resentment Day is your day.

If life seems too short, Resentment Day is your day. If life seems too long, Resentment Day is your day.

If history is a nightmare from which you seek to escape, Resentment Day is your day. If the present is a nightmare from which you try to escape by reading about the "good old days," Resentment Day is your day.

If you think that every major piece of architecture erected since 1947 was constructed just to annoy you, Resentment Day is your day.

Holiday fun. You're probably wondering how you too can get in on the Resentment Day festivities. Just what is it that you are supposed to do on this occasion?

Well, first and foremost, you and your despised relatives can partake of the traditional Resentment Day meal. It's a stew, simmered for several hours in your own juices, delicately flavored with bile and vitriol. Dinnertime conversation must include recrimination and guilt. If someone leaves the table in tears, you have achieved a successful Resentment Day. If that same person commits suicide, consider it the best Resentment Day ever. (But always remember that it's all your fault.)

Don't forget to send out your Resentment Day cards. These can be unsigned, unaddressed post cards bearing the words "I know what you did." Email will work, as long as you know how to disguise your own address.

Alternatively, you can send out cards with pictures of Schopenhauer, along with appropriate quotations:

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

If a book and a head collide and a hollow sound results, is it the fault of the book?

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come. (Incorrectly attributed to Nietzsche.)

The basic Resentment Day activity is to make someone's life miserable -- including and especially your own. Call a long-lost friend and remind him of money owed. Tell your sister or father what you really think.

The internet carries plenty of opportunity for Resentment Day fun. Wander from site to site, insulting both posters and commenters. Stir up disagreements over tiny issues, especially issues of grammar. If any website owner posts a picture of himself or herself, do not hesitate to critique what you see. Find one of those erotic blogs where some insecure young lady brags about her prowess as a fellatrice; make her feel like an unlovable hag. Accuse writers of being anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic, using the flimsiest of pretexts. Make innocuous observations that sound inflammatory -- such as: "The president is black!" or "There are lots of Jews in Hollywood!" Then sit back and watch the fun.

Go to a dumbass fanboy website and remind everyone there that Greedo shot first. Then make them feel idiotic for treating 10 frames of film as the single most important event in the history of civilization.

Submit a piece to Rigorous Intuition or Prison Planet in which you reveal that Joseph Cannon is a covert operative working for the CIA/Illuminati/Skull and Bones.

In short: Inflate the hate. That's the Resentment Day way.

Remember: Resentment is of enormous value. If man did not envy the birds, he would never have flown.

What's that? You say that this holiday is unnecessary? You say that most Americans treat every day as Resentment Day?

Typical. You would say that. There you go again, spoiling another Resentment Day. I hope you're happy.