The Cretin Constituency
Perversely attacking the virtues rather than the vulnerabilities of an opponent is considered to be a Karl Rove speciality. So if Karl was backing Jughead against Einstein, the latter would be mocked as a moron.
This rancid ruse worked wonderfully in depicting war hero John Kerry as a quivering clone of the cowardly lion. It’s being rolled out again to torpedo the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
The good judge topped her class at Princeton and Yale Law. No high court designee in the last century has served as much time on the bench. And no one has ever accused her of prejudice in her decisions or deportment. So naturally the Rovistas have indicted her for stupidity, inexperience and racism.
The success of this strategy is based on the existence of a cretin constituency in America. This consists of millions of people eager to entertain nonsense and stupid enough to take it seriously. It’s an audience that craves simple and malevolent accounts of events that can be easily blamed on pre-selected scapegoats.
The emphasis here is on ‘easily blamed.’ Given the paucity of thought in this cohort, they don't spew elaborate critiques or conspiracy theories about their targets. Single word pejoratives are about all they can manage. These are endlessly barked with all the logic and zeal of a dog chasing its tail. “Socialist.” “Communist.” “Terrorist.” “French.” Blah blah blah. Not one in a hundred in these choirs of calumny could give you anything approaching a dictionary definition of the words they’re shrieking.
So why then don’t they match their mouthings to their mentalities and simply insult people whose politics they don’t like with banal billingsgate like “jerks,” “a-holes,” or the ever popular “your mother!”
Because it’s about politics and they want to sound smart. If you call someone a socialist, it implies that you know what the word means. In other words, the right wing is intellectually pretentious. Not enough, of course, to crack a book, but at least enough to try to divert from the evidence of flatlining brain waves.
The world is a complex place full of simple people. We Americans are no dumber than most. What makes us unique is that we have reserved a large slice of our political discourse for free use by these head bangers, lip bubblers and noddies.
Whenever I happen to ingest the yahoospeak of Cheney, Limbaugh, Gingrich, Hannity, etc., what turns me off is not their lies or cruelty but their inanity. Just inhale the inimitable imbecility of the oft repeated assertion by GOP chairman Michael Steele that the government has never created a single job. Imagine hearing that while delivering the U.S. Mail, squatting in a bunker in Iraq, or chasing a nubile page around your congressional office?
Not only are we are bombarded by such dog do, but there’s no one apart from Bill Maher, John Stewart, Steven Colbert and a precious few others to mock the shit it is. Nothing demeans the deservedly dying news media as much as the license and sponsorship it has reserved for the lowest of the low and the basest of the base.
Of course, there's method behind this mindlessness. The dumb and docile are easy to bamboozle. We would have probably long since had a decent health scheme if the word "Canada" didn't connote communism among the clueless.
Excuse me now, I have to go back to watching an in-depth Judy Woodruff interview with Jughead on The News Hour.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
It's a Fabulist Love Story
Mendacious Media Cuddles
With Deceitful Dick
It’s nasty work and no one has to do it, so let’s all drop trou and collectively moon the god awful pack of media satraps and stenos who have subjected us to the preposturies of Dick Cheney for the last few weeks.
At the least, his ample appearances give the lie to the old adage that you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. Indeed you can--and all the way down the garden path from Fox News to NPR and back again.
These Cheney deceitathons conjure up Baron Munchausen and Pinocchio doing the dozens on each other. Conventional wisdom characterizes them as attacks on Obama, a bid for yahoo leadership, an effort to regain/maintain control of national security policies, or defenses in anticipation of Cheney being indicted. Whatever, they amount to joint assaults on logic, reason and mental health by Cheney and his media castrati enablers.
The only thing interesting about these shows is how at variance they are with the zeitgeist. Cheney now rates with Darth Vader, Dracula and the devil himself in the almanac of evil. He’s on his way to replacing witches on Holloween costumes. Comic Wanda Sykes told the White House press dinner that she counseled her kids that if two cars pulled up to their school and Dick Cheney was in one, they should go instead with the scary-looking stranger. So the reporters and pundits who take him seriously are only advertising their remove from the rest of us.
Either they don’t know or they don’t care. The sacred duty of the American mainstream media is to give credibility to the incredible by repeating the lies of our rulers. They never stop assuring us that the emperor has all his clothes on even when he's nakedly screwing us.
If there are any among the the media who cling to a residual shred of reality, they could easily hold up a crucifix to Cheney and send him back to his crypt in the nether world simply by posing the following questions to him:
1. For those of us who believe that the Bush administration started on January 20 and not September 11, 2001, wouldn’t it be fair to apportion a good deal of blame for 9/11 on those who ignored 52 warnings and treated terrorism as a minor matter?
2. According to you, we have been winning the Iraq war for more than twice as long as it took to win the second world war. How many more years--or decades--do you expect the lethal victory parade to last?
3. If torture works, it’s reasonable to assume that one of your waterboardees would have given up Osama bin Laden by now. So where is he?
Any such questions would signify a return of journalism, which we as all know is currently undergoing rendition at an unknown location.
With Deceitful Dick
It’s nasty work and no one has to do it, so let’s all drop trou and collectively moon the god awful pack of media satraps and stenos who have subjected us to the preposturies of Dick Cheney for the last few weeks.
At the least, his ample appearances give the lie to the old adage that you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. Indeed you can--and all the way down the garden path from Fox News to NPR and back again.
These Cheney deceitathons conjure up Baron Munchausen and Pinocchio doing the dozens on each other. Conventional wisdom characterizes them as attacks on Obama, a bid for yahoo leadership, an effort to regain/maintain control of national security policies, or defenses in anticipation of Cheney being indicted. Whatever, they amount to joint assaults on logic, reason and mental health by Cheney and his media castrati enablers.
The only thing interesting about these shows is how at variance they are with the zeitgeist. Cheney now rates with Darth Vader, Dracula and the devil himself in the almanac of evil. He’s on his way to replacing witches on Holloween costumes. Comic Wanda Sykes told the White House press dinner that she counseled her kids that if two cars pulled up to their school and Dick Cheney was in one, they should go instead with the scary-looking stranger. So the reporters and pundits who take him seriously are only advertising their remove from the rest of us.
Either they don’t know or they don’t care. The sacred duty of the American mainstream media is to give credibility to the incredible by repeating the lies of our rulers. They never stop assuring us that the emperor has all his clothes on even when he's nakedly screwing us.
If there are any among the the media who cling to a residual shred of reality, they could easily hold up a crucifix to Cheney and send him back to his crypt in the nether world simply by posing the following questions to him:
1. For those of us who believe that the Bush administration started on January 20 and not September 11, 2001, wouldn’t it be fair to apportion a good deal of blame for 9/11 on those who ignored 52 warnings and treated terrorism as a minor matter?
2. According to you, we have been winning the Iraq war for more than twice as long as it took to win the second world war. How many more years--or decades--do you expect the lethal victory parade to last?
3. If torture works, it’s reasonable to assume that one of your waterboardees would have given up Osama bin Laden by now. So where is he?
Any such questions would signify a return of journalism, which we as all know is currently undergoing rendition at an unknown location.
Friday, May 22, 2009
We Weren't Alway Terrorized
You Choose: Cowardly or Gutless?
It’s amazing how far our leaders have slithered down the scale of human dignity since I was a little kid in World War II.
Our Astoria neighbor Sal Domenico came home from the service brimming with war stories--though not quite heroic tales of combat. He supervised the repair of army trucks in Texas. His workers were German and Italian prisoners. “Weren’t you scared of them, Sal,” I asked? “Nah,” he said, “they were regular guys. If one of them got out of line, I whacked him with a stilson wrench.”
Converted luxury liners ferried millions of our troops to battle in Europe. On the way back, they carried the losers in those battles--hundreds of thousands of German, Italian and Austrian POWs. When Rommel’s elite Afrika Corps surrendered en masse, its ranks were sent to sit out the war here in America. Another huge bunch came in after D Day. In all, we took in four hundred thousand prisoners--lots of them nasty and murderous Nazi fanatics--by V.E. Day.
High school gyms, fairgrounds and race tracks, including Santa Anita in LA, were turned into prison camps. Some POWs lived on farms, others in rooming houses. They worked in our factories and fields. They did KP for our troops. They fixed our trucks in Texas, occasionally smarting from one of Sal’s love taps. In a notorious incident in Mississippi, black American soldiers were obliged to leave a train to make way for white German POWs because of Jim Crow law.
In any event, we weren’t afraid of the Nazis; they were afraid of us.
How low we’ve sunk since then. Just about the whole U.S. Senate (90 to 6) voted against closing the Gitmo gulag because of their shamelessly slobbering fear of its couple of hundred tortured and broken survivors. They fretted that jihadist fanatics would outfox us, somehow slip out of our grasp and repeat 9/11 outrages from Fresno to Framingham. Apparently, that's how much they think of our antiterrorism efforts.
Pathetic!
(For a a full and fascinating history of the above check out Nazi Prisoners of War in America by Arnold Krammer)
It’s amazing how far our leaders have slithered down the scale of human dignity since I was a little kid in World War II.
Our Astoria neighbor Sal Domenico came home from the service brimming with war stories--though not quite heroic tales of combat. He supervised the repair of army trucks in Texas. His workers were German and Italian prisoners. “Weren’t you scared of them, Sal,” I asked? “Nah,” he said, “they were regular guys. If one of them got out of line, I whacked him with a stilson wrench.”
Converted luxury liners ferried millions of our troops to battle in Europe. On the way back, they carried the losers in those battles--hundreds of thousands of German, Italian and Austrian POWs. When Rommel’s elite Afrika Corps surrendered en masse, its ranks were sent to sit out the war here in America. Another huge bunch came in after D Day. In all, we took in four hundred thousand prisoners--lots of them nasty and murderous Nazi fanatics--by V.E. Day.
High school gyms, fairgrounds and race tracks, including Santa Anita in LA, were turned into prison camps. Some POWs lived on farms, others in rooming houses. They worked in our factories and fields. They did KP for our troops. They fixed our trucks in Texas, occasionally smarting from one of Sal’s love taps. In a notorious incident in Mississippi, black American soldiers were obliged to leave a train to make way for white German POWs because of Jim Crow law.
In any event, we weren’t afraid of the Nazis; they were afraid of us.
How low we’ve sunk since then. Just about the whole U.S. Senate (90 to 6) voted against closing the Gitmo gulag because of their shamelessly slobbering fear of its couple of hundred tortured and broken survivors. They fretted that jihadist fanatics would outfox us, somehow slip out of our grasp and repeat 9/11 outrages from Fresno to Framingham. Apparently, that's how much they think of our antiterrorism efforts.
Pathetic!
(For a a full and fascinating history of the above check out Nazi Prisoners of War in America by Arnold Krammer)
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
How We Got There
The Gitmo Gulag
There’s a high school not far from me in the old silverware city of Meriden, Connecticut, named for a powerful U.S. senator who is far more famous (infamous, really) in Cuba than in his home state. His name is Orville Platt and he served from 1879 to 1905. He was a classic reactionary, anti-labor and pro-imperialist. Cubans learn about him in school because he sponsored the Platt Amendment, which subjugated their country and robbed them of one of the best natural harbors in the Caribbean.
The 1901 Platt Amendment settled the Cuban part of the Spanish-American War in which we gobbled up Spain’s fading empire and added Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to our rising one. For various economic reasons, we decided not to rule Cuba as a pure colony like the others. Rather, we granted the Cubans nominal independence. But Platt made certain that they had to get Washington’s okay for anything more important than street sweeping and dog catching.
Article VII of the amendment declared that “Cuba will sell or lease to the U.S. lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, and for no other purpose” The U.S. offered payment of $2,000 a year in gold. Outraged and humiliated, the Cuban congress repeatedly rejected what amounted to their serfage to a nation claiming to have liberated them. But their ballots were no match for the bullets of the U.S. occupation troops. They eventually gave in to an offer they couldn’t refuse.
In 1934, the liberal Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the Good Neighbor Policy. Henceforth we would at least pretend to treat the nations of Latin America as sovereign rather than subservient. FDR's gesture to Havana was to eliminate the provisions of Platt allowing the U.S. to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs and to raise rent payments for Gitmo to $4,000 a year..
When he came to power in 1959, Fidel Castro quickly demanded the return of Guantanamo. The U.S. refused, citing the provision in the Platt Amendment that both parties must agree to any change in its status. In other words, Guantanamo was subject to U.S. writ regardless of the will and laws of its host country. What truer example of imperialist reality could you get?
Without the military strength to take back the base the same way the U.S. seized it, Castro settled for stopping Cubans from working there and refusing to cash the rent checks. The issue hung fire for the next half century.
In the meanwhile, the U.S. treated Platt as toilet paper. It blatantly violated the “no other purpose” provision. Gitmo was transformed into a combination naval base, air field, beach resort, shopping center, spy den and prison camp. It served as an HQ for Washington’s 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and a hangout for CIA types looking to kill Castro and overthrow the revolution. It housed thousands of Cuban refugees. And then, with the Iraq war, it become the world’s most notorious gulag. That word is defined by Amnesty International as a place where those who enter have no rights and can simply disappear.
The Bushies believed themselves clever for using Cuban territory to get away with violating U.S. laws to fight terrorism. But the world viewed it another way. They saw a ruthless empire using stolen territory to torture and kill those who resisted its domination. The few images released from Gitmo, mostly of broken creatures being dragged from cage to cage by hulking warders, only made things worse.
An image-conscious Obama administration came into office promising to “shut down” Guantanamo. It’s assumed this means closing the gulag and scattering its human dregs amongst our allies. Lately, Washington has been waffling on even this initiative.
As far as I know, no one of influence on this side of the Florida Straits has suggested that we really “shut down” Gitmo, lock, stock and barrel, and return it to its rightful owners. Those of you who recall the yahoo outrage at Jimmy Carter’s transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama (“We stole it fair and square,” they yelled) can anticipate ten times the accusations of treason should Obama even consider such a course.
So, if the Obamists do prove serious, Gitmo will at least stop being a symbol of nightmarish torture and revert to being example of daylight robbery.
There’s a high school not far from me in the old silverware city of Meriden, Connecticut, named for a powerful U.S. senator who is far more famous (infamous, really) in Cuba than in his home state. His name is Orville Platt and he served from 1879 to 1905. He was a classic reactionary, anti-labor and pro-imperialist. Cubans learn about him in school because he sponsored the Platt Amendment, which subjugated their country and robbed them of one of the best natural harbors in the Caribbean.
The 1901 Platt Amendment settled the Cuban part of the Spanish-American War in which we gobbled up Spain’s fading empire and added Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to our rising one. For various economic reasons, we decided not to rule Cuba as a pure colony like the others. Rather, we granted the Cubans nominal independence. But Platt made certain that they had to get Washington’s okay for anything more important than street sweeping and dog catching.
Article VII of the amendment declared that “Cuba will sell or lease to the U.S. lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, and for no other purpose” The U.S. offered payment of $2,000 a year in gold. Outraged and humiliated, the Cuban congress repeatedly rejected what amounted to their serfage to a nation claiming to have liberated them. But their ballots were no match for the bullets of the U.S. occupation troops. They eventually gave in to an offer they couldn’t refuse.
In 1934, the liberal Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the Good Neighbor Policy. Henceforth we would at least pretend to treat the nations of Latin America as sovereign rather than subservient. FDR's gesture to Havana was to eliminate the provisions of Platt allowing the U.S. to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs and to raise rent payments for Gitmo to $4,000 a year..
When he came to power in 1959, Fidel Castro quickly demanded the return of Guantanamo. The U.S. refused, citing the provision in the Platt Amendment that both parties must agree to any change in its status. In other words, Guantanamo was subject to U.S. writ regardless of the will and laws of its host country. What truer example of imperialist reality could you get?
Without the military strength to take back the base the same way the U.S. seized it, Castro settled for stopping Cubans from working there and refusing to cash the rent checks. The issue hung fire for the next half century.
In the meanwhile, the U.S. treated Platt as toilet paper. It blatantly violated the “no other purpose” provision. Gitmo was transformed into a combination naval base, air field, beach resort, shopping center, spy den and prison camp. It served as an HQ for Washington’s 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and a hangout for CIA types looking to kill Castro and overthrow the revolution. It housed thousands of Cuban refugees. And then, with the Iraq war, it become the world’s most notorious gulag. That word is defined by Amnesty International as a place where those who enter have no rights and can simply disappear.
The Bushies believed themselves clever for using Cuban territory to get away with violating U.S. laws to fight terrorism. But the world viewed it another way. They saw a ruthless empire using stolen territory to torture and kill those who resisted its domination. The few images released from Gitmo, mostly of broken creatures being dragged from cage to cage by hulking warders, only made things worse.
An image-conscious Obama administration came into office promising to “shut down” Guantanamo. It’s assumed this means closing the gulag and scattering its human dregs amongst our allies. Lately, Washington has been waffling on even this initiative.
As far as I know, no one of influence on this side of the Florida Straits has suggested that we really “shut down” Gitmo, lock, stock and barrel, and return it to its rightful owners. Those of you who recall the yahoo outrage at Jimmy Carter’s transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama (“We stole it fair and square,” they yelled) can anticipate ten times the accusations of treason should Obama even consider such a course.
So, if the Obamists do prove serious, Gitmo will at least stop being a symbol of nightmarish torture and revert to being example of daylight robbery.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
So Let's Raise Hell
Wall Street Died And Went to Heaven
Rodney Spoilt, a charmer and a cheat, went broke one day when several of his buncos blew up in his face. No problemo. He went to fabulously rich uncle Chauncey Cashcow and took out a “loan” to tide him over. Don’t worry, Unc said, there’s plenty more where that came from. So just go about your business, whatever it may be. And don’t forget to quaff plenty of La Tache and Margaux while you’re at it.
That’s the Vanity Fair version of the happy circumstances on Wall Street at the moment. Whatever pecuniary problems you may have, rest assured that you don’t have to worry a whit about the masters of the universe. They’ve attained nirvana. There has never been a more perfect time on the planet for the big buck boys.
The government gives them gobs of money. They invest some and keep the rest. How much? No one’s really counting. If the investments pay, they keep the proceeds. If they tank, the government covers their losses and gives them more spondulicks with which to speculate.
This ‘crisis” stopgap is supposed to be “regulated” at some time in the future. But then again it may not be--at least, not seriously so. Some Dems and virtually all Reps believe that the free market goose must be indulged, even if it now devours golden eggs instead of laying them. To do otherwise would be “socialistic.”
So it’s like Bonnie and Clyde being told that they will no longer have to rob banks because an ATM will be reserved for them to make withdrawals whenever the fancy strikes.
They say the great unwashed are seething at this scheme. Every poll and survey rates the great bank bailout as about as popular as swine flu. But Barack Obama, the guy who approved it, still tops the hit parade of politicians. And there are naught but scattered protests out in the heartland. When do folks really start putting their (dearth of) money where their mouth is?
A Depression baby, I was raised on tales of people who were poor but politicized. Their activism was the sunlight glinting through the gray clouds of misery. Everyone was marching, picketing, sitting in, throwing rent parties, planting veggie gardens, joining movements. When families were dispossessed hundreds showed up to defy the sheriff and move the furniture back into the house. It was all very social, if not to say socialistic.
Now it seems everyone is having their own private little depression alone at home. The jobless and foreclosed are mistakenly blaming themselves instead of the system. Or they think a rising stock market is a sign of recovery. Or they’re hoping that Obama, Geithner, Summers, Goldman and Sachs will make everything okay again. Or, worst of all, they’re paying attention to yahoo magpies like Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity who will only lead them deeper into the slough of stupidity. Come on, people. The least you can do is rent the Grapes of Wrath and get a bit worked up.
Rodney Spoilt, a charmer and a cheat, went broke one day when several of his buncos blew up in his face. No problemo. He went to fabulously rich uncle Chauncey Cashcow and took out a “loan” to tide him over. Don’t worry, Unc said, there’s plenty more where that came from. So just go about your business, whatever it may be. And don’t forget to quaff plenty of La Tache and Margaux while you’re at it.
That’s the Vanity Fair version of the happy circumstances on Wall Street at the moment. Whatever pecuniary problems you may have, rest assured that you don’t have to worry a whit about the masters of the universe. They’ve attained nirvana. There has never been a more perfect time on the planet for the big buck boys.
The government gives them gobs of money. They invest some and keep the rest. How much? No one’s really counting. If the investments pay, they keep the proceeds. If they tank, the government covers their losses and gives them more spondulicks with which to speculate.
This ‘crisis” stopgap is supposed to be “regulated” at some time in the future. But then again it may not be--at least, not seriously so. Some Dems and virtually all Reps believe that the free market goose must be indulged, even if it now devours golden eggs instead of laying them. To do otherwise would be “socialistic.”
So it’s like Bonnie and Clyde being told that they will no longer have to rob banks because an ATM will be reserved for them to make withdrawals whenever the fancy strikes.
They say the great unwashed are seething at this scheme. Every poll and survey rates the great bank bailout as about as popular as swine flu. But Barack Obama, the guy who approved it, still tops the hit parade of politicians. And there are naught but scattered protests out in the heartland. When do folks really start putting their (dearth of) money where their mouth is?
A Depression baby, I was raised on tales of people who were poor but politicized. Their activism was the sunlight glinting through the gray clouds of misery. Everyone was marching, picketing, sitting in, throwing rent parties, planting veggie gardens, joining movements. When families were dispossessed hundreds showed up to defy the sheriff and move the furniture back into the house. It was all very social, if not to say socialistic.
Now it seems everyone is having their own private little depression alone at home. The jobless and foreclosed are mistakenly blaming themselves instead of the system. Or they think a rising stock market is a sign of recovery. Or they’re hoping that Obama, Geithner, Summers, Goldman and Sachs will make everything okay again. Or, worst of all, they’re paying attention to yahoo magpies like Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity who will only lead them deeper into the slough of stupidity. Come on, people. The least you can do is rent the Grapes of Wrath and get a bit worked up.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Hail the Philadelphia Lawyer
Great ExSpecterations
For decades lefties like me were told by our liberal friends that we should “work inside” the Democratic party rather than start third parties that can’t win but only “spoil” Dem chances for electoral success.
The part they always forgot to mention is that the Dems, faithful servants of business as usual, maintain a highly effective internal system for weeding out lefties, reformers and other such troublemakers seeking to stir their stasis. Accordingly, you don’t see the Dems giving anything more than lip service to progressive policies. And you certainly don’t get any budding Herbert Lehmans, Bill Moyers or Ralph Naders on Dem tickets. No, the Dems are far more comfortable with tired old tories like Arlen Specter, who, facing ouster by the yahoos who took over the Reps in Pennsylvania, jumped the fading GOP and joined the flourishing Dems
While the numerically determinist among the Dems cheered because they had presumably gained a veto-proof 60 vote Senate, Specter himself warned his new party not to count on it. He said he’d be his own man as he was with the Reps, where he artfully combined black-hearted reaction with yellow-bellied moderation.
At his press conference that night, Obama said the same thing. He didn’t expect a rubber stamp congress, he offered, because independent thinkers like Specter must be free to go their own way. The Reps, along with thousands of other parliamentarians from Ottawa to Oslo must have fallen off their well-polished seats.
The whole idea of party politics, as invented and refined by the Brits four hundred years ago, was to whip members into line to get the party’s program passed. This is exactly how the Reps, under the ruthless Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, ran congress in the Bush years.
Obama said that because the Dems have no actual need for such discipline. That’s because they don’t really have a program to pass. As I never get tired of noting, the Reps stand for business and the Dems for as usual.
Take a close gander and you’ll see that Obama’s domestic initiatives, with the exception of his gift to Wall Street that keeps on giving, are, in the words of the immortal Billy Dannreuther in Beat the Devil, more pomp than circumstance. And even these proposed “changes,” as we are constantly reminded, are subject to Obama’s exquisitely pragmatic sensibilities (Google pragmatism and Obama and you’ll get a half million results).
So the sere Specter should fit in just fine with the Dems. And if Obama ever needs a shamelessly implausible alibi, excuse or cover story, recall that Specter authored the preposturous “magic bullet” theory in the JFK killing.
For decades lefties like me were told by our liberal friends that we should “work inside” the Democratic party rather than start third parties that can’t win but only “spoil” Dem chances for electoral success.
The part they always forgot to mention is that the Dems, faithful servants of business as usual, maintain a highly effective internal system for weeding out lefties, reformers and other such troublemakers seeking to stir their stasis. Accordingly, you don’t see the Dems giving anything more than lip service to progressive policies. And you certainly don’t get any budding Herbert Lehmans, Bill Moyers or Ralph Naders on Dem tickets. No, the Dems are far more comfortable with tired old tories like Arlen Specter, who, facing ouster by the yahoos who took over the Reps in Pennsylvania, jumped the fading GOP and joined the flourishing Dems
While the numerically determinist among the Dems cheered because they had presumably gained a veto-proof 60 vote Senate, Specter himself warned his new party not to count on it. He said he’d be his own man as he was with the Reps, where he artfully combined black-hearted reaction with yellow-bellied moderation.
At his press conference that night, Obama said the same thing. He didn’t expect a rubber stamp congress, he offered, because independent thinkers like Specter must be free to go their own way. The Reps, along with thousands of other parliamentarians from Ottawa to Oslo must have fallen off their well-polished seats.
The whole idea of party politics, as invented and refined by the Brits four hundred years ago, was to whip members into line to get the party’s program passed. This is exactly how the Reps, under the ruthless Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, ran congress in the Bush years.
Obama said that because the Dems have no actual need for such discipline. That’s because they don’t really have a program to pass. As I never get tired of noting, the Reps stand for business and the Dems for as usual.
Take a close gander and you’ll see that Obama’s domestic initiatives, with the exception of his gift to Wall Street that keeps on giving, are, in the words of the immortal Billy Dannreuther in Beat the Devil, more pomp than circumstance. And even these proposed “changes,” as we are constantly reminded, are subject to Obama’s exquisitely pragmatic sensibilities (Google pragmatism and Obama and you’ll get a half million results).
So the sere Specter should fit in just fine with the Dems. And if Obama ever needs a shamelessly implausible alibi, excuse or cover story, recall that Specter authored the preposturous “magic bullet” theory in the JFK killing.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
I Barely Understood the Old One
They've Changed The System Again
If you’ve noticed, the stock market is soaring while the economy is sinking. Every bit of bad news on Main Street is treated as good news on Wall Street. Today’s announcement of a six percent annual decline in business brought a triple digit bounce in the Dow.
This is the celebration of what East German kids used to learn in Marxism-Leninism class as the triumph of state monopoly capitalism, or what Mussolini-era Italians knew as the corporate state. Don’t confuse it with socialism. That's when the state takes over business. This is business taking over the state. Or, more accurately, a merger of business and the state--in business’ favor, of course.
The nation’s few ideological free marketeers are shocked and appalled. But Wall Street is pleased and the public, as usual, is parked on a dead end road between ignoramia and oblivia. I market at a Stop&Shop and gas up at a Citgo. I ask and ask, but few, if any, at the former know or care that the store is owned by a Dutch conglomerate or at the latter that the station is franchised by Hugo Chavez and the good people of Venezuela. Why in blazes should they give a hoot that the nation’s investment banking has been turned over from Goldman Sachs to its graduates at the Fed and Treasury?
It’s much easier this way. Up until the great fall, the banksters had a job of it writing weird paper like credit default swaps and peddling it to other banksters, pension funds, school boards and your aunt Millie’s supposedly safe and sound bond fund. That took work and nail biting because no one understood the products.
Now, under state monopoly capitalism, Washington gives zillions to Wall Street, which smartly uses it to buy stocks rather than stupidly lending it to losers. It doesn’t matter if the stocks are dogs: the rising tide of fed bucks floats even garbage scows. Sure, this bubble will again burst, and probably soon. But the banksters will have pocketed their profits and left us to pay for the clean-up yet again.
What’s happened is that Obama and company have so far successfully life-boated the banksters off the foundering U.S.S Economy. Only the life boat is an ocean-going yacht and the rescued are enjoying drinks on the sun deck watching the Economy sink and giggling at the awful screams of the passengers. But not to worry. Treasure ports in China and the Persian Gulf are beckoning. The sinking of the U.S.S. Economy will soon fade into another old sailor's tale.
If you’ve noticed, the stock market is soaring while the economy is sinking. Every bit of bad news on Main Street is treated as good news on Wall Street. Today’s announcement of a six percent annual decline in business brought a triple digit bounce in the Dow.
This is the celebration of what East German kids used to learn in Marxism-Leninism class as the triumph of state monopoly capitalism, or what Mussolini-era Italians knew as the corporate state. Don’t confuse it with socialism. That's when the state takes over business. This is business taking over the state. Or, more accurately, a merger of business and the state--in business’ favor, of course.
The nation’s few ideological free marketeers are shocked and appalled. But Wall Street is pleased and the public, as usual, is parked on a dead end road between ignoramia and oblivia. I market at a Stop&Shop and gas up at a Citgo. I ask and ask, but few, if any, at the former know or care that the store is owned by a Dutch conglomerate or at the latter that the station is franchised by Hugo Chavez and the good people of Venezuela. Why in blazes should they give a hoot that the nation’s investment banking has been turned over from Goldman Sachs to its graduates at the Fed and Treasury?
It’s much easier this way. Up until the great fall, the banksters had a job of it writing weird paper like credit default swaps and peddling it to other banksters, pension funds, school boards and your aunt Millie’s supposedly safe and sound bond fund. That took work and nail biting because no one understood the products.
Now, under state monopoly capitalism, Washington gives zillions to Wall Street, which smartly uses it to buy stocks rather than stupidly lending it to losers. It doesn’t matter if the stocks are dogs: the rising tide of fed bucks floats even garbage scows. Sure, this bubble will again burst, and probably soon. But the banksters will have pocketed their profits and left us to pay for the clean-up yet again.
What’s happened is that Obama and company have so far successfully life-boated the banksters off the foundering U.S.S Economy. Only the life boat is an ocean-going yacht and the rescued are enjoying drinks on the sun deck watching the Economy sink and giggling at the awful screams of the passengers. But not to worry. Treasure ports in China and the Persian Gulf are beckoning. The sinking of the U.S.S. Economy will soon fade into another old sailor's tale.
Monday, April 27, 2009
I'm On The Waitlist
No, That's The Picnic Button!
I’ve been waiting, lo these many decades, for the times for recrimination and panic. Whenever they seem to be nigh, as with the current fallout from ignominy in Mesopotamia and influenza in Mexico, I am told by bigshots that they are not quite here yet--again!
I’m hopeful they’ll finally arrive before I join the great majority. I would love to recriminate all over Dick Cheney, George Bush, Condi Rice and company, preferably in the new Yankee Stadium with full bore coverage by HBO, so I can curse.
I would also enjoy a good panic, so long as I didn’t get trampled by other panickers. I live on a fairly quiet street. I imagine I could simply run aimlessly up and down it for a bit, my arms aflail, while I intoned incoherent imprecations. I would hope then that an attractive neighbor would take me in her embrace and endeavor to calm me down.
A newsreader on public radio just told me that rather than simply panicking I should plan. I take that to mean that I should devise a panic scenario for use when the time comes. Maybe I could ride a unicycle around antically and aflail, annoying the neighborhood dogs. Meanwhile, Pres. Obama has added that "there is no cause for alarm." If there's no alarm, how are people going to know when to panic? I'd like to recriminate with him about that.
I’ve been waiting, lo these many decades, for the times for recrimination and panic. Whenever they seem to be nigh, as with the current fallout from ignominy in Mesopotamia and influenza in Mexico, I am told by bigshots that they are not quite here yet--again!
I’m hopeful they’ll finally arrive before I join the great majority. I would love to recriminate all over Dick Cheney, George Bush, Condi Rice and company, preferably in the new Yankee Stadium with full bore coverage by HBO, so I can curse.
I would also enjoy a good panic, so long as I didn’t get trampled by other panickers. I live on a fairly quiet street. I imagine I could simply run aimlessly up and down it for a bit, my arms aflail, while I intoned incoherent imprecations. I would hope then that an attractive neighbor would take me in her embrace and endeavor to calm me down.
A newsreader on public radio just told me that rather than simply panicking I should plan. I take that to mean that I should devise a panic scenario for use when the time comes. Maybe I could ride a unicycle around antically and aflail, annoying the neighborhood dogs. Meanwhile, Pres. Obama has added that "there is no cause for alarm." If there's no alarm, how are people going to know when to panic? I'd like to recriminate with him about that.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Geithner’s Gobbledygook
Obama Almost Like FDR
Tuning to the temporizing tergiversations by Tim today at the Senate reinforced my notion about the slight difference between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama. FDR was willing to sacrifice the banks and brokers to save the system. Obama is willing to sacrifice the system to save the banks and brokers.
Tuning to the temporizing tergiversations by Tim today at the Senate reinforced my notion about the slight difference between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama. FDR was willing to sacrifice the banks and brokers to save the system. Obama is willing to sacrifice the system to save the banks and brokers.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Idioms for Idiots
Translate This!
In a fast-moving world like ours where busy people don’t have the time to absorb facts and think logically, the media are there with an assortment of stupid cliches specifically shaped to bamboozle the already bewildered. One of these idiotisms was cranked up in recent days to peculiarize populist participants at the 34 nation Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. It was the old standby “anti-American.”
As used by our pols and pundits, it has not the slightest thing to do with anyone’s opinion of America or things American. It is simply, and at all times, a euphemism for disobedience. Thus, if Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is described on the evening news as “anti-American,” all it means is that he does not obey the rules and regs of the empire.
By the same token, Chavez would not have to do anything “pro-American” to absolve himself of the charge. Since our empire is multinational, he could turn his country’s oil wealth over to British Petroleum, its secret police over to the Israeli Mossad, its auto business to Toyota and its entertainment sector to Sony and be considered as red, white and blue as Siegfried and Roy.
In a fast-moving world like ours where busy people don’t have the time to absorb facts and think logically, the media are there with an assortment of stupid cliches specifically shaped to bamboozle the already bewildered. One of these idiotisms was cranked up in recent days to peculiarize populist participants at the 34 nation Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. It was the old standby “anti-American.”
As used by our pols and pundits, it has not the slightest thing to do with anyone’s opinion of America or things American. It is simply, and at all times, a euphemism for disobedience. Thus, if Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is described on the evening news as “anti-American,” all it means is that he does not obey the rules and regs of the empire.
By the same token, Chavez would not have to do anything “pro-American” to absolve himself of the charge. Since our empire is multinational, he could turn his country’s oil wealth over to British Petroleum, its secret police over to the Israeli Mossad, its auto business to Toyota and its entertainment sector to Sony and be considered as red, white and blue as Siegfried and Roy.
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