Minimum Wage Philosopher Two: The Sequel

Two really good questions

2009-08-21T07:12:00.001-07:00

How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?

'Nuff said.

Right wingers get a pass

2009-08-14T07:07:00.001-07:00

clipped from digbysblog.blogspot.com

The Villagers have spent the last 30 years chasing phantom hippies and black panthers.

They have not cared about or even noticed the radicalism on the right, which doesn't fit their picture of scary political terrorists because right wingers look like what they think of as Real Americans. How in the world can these nice, white middle aged and elderly people possibly be so crazy?

Every editor in the country should assign all of his reporters and spokesmodels to listen to Limbaugh, beck savage, an d the rest for a solid week. Then they might not be so surprised to find out that the people who listen to them are paranoid, racist, hysterical, narcissistic and stupid. And there are a lot of them. And they aren't wearing headbands or tie-dyed t-shirts. They look just like David Broder and Cokie Roberts.

Jim Kunstler: Get ready for a much lower standard of living

2009-08-10T10:35:00.001-07:00

clipped from economicedge.blogspot.com

The number problems we face are now hopeless. America will never be able to cover its current outstanding debt. We're effectively finished at all three levels: household, corporate, and government. Who, for instance, can really comprehend what to do about the number problems infesting Fannie Mae and the mortgages associated with her? There's really only one way out of this predicament: to get ready for a much lower standard of living and much different daily living arrangements. We can't wrap our minds around this, so the exercise du jour is to play games with numbers to persuade ourselves that we don't have to face reality. We're entertaining ourselves with shell games, musical chairs, Chinese fire drills, Ponzi schemes, and Polish blanket tricks (where, to make your blanket longer, you cut twelve inches off the top and sew it onto the bottom).

The unanswered questions about the US economy

2009-08-07T10:02:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

How does an economy based heavily on consumer spending recover when so many high-value-added jobs, and the GDP and payroll tax revenues associated with them, have been moved offshore and when consumers have no more assets to leverage in order to increase their spending?

How does the US pay for its imports if the dollar is no longer used as reserve currency?

These are the unanswered questions.

The truth about the USAmerican economy .... with car smashing!

2009-07-31T14:21:00.001-07:00

How come this working class guy gets the whole bailout scam, but the talking heads on TV don't?

Oh right. Because he's actually probably feeling the bite instead of just yammering about it in his $10,000 made-for-TV hairdo.

This is the MOST ENTERTAINING list of depressing facts about our economy that I've ever seen.

Doesn't free speech mean you can ask a cop for his name and badge number?

2009-07-30T09:26:00.001-07:00

I think the press has focused on the race angle in the Gates debacle to the detriment of the more salient issue, i.e., that we are expected to treat police with deference at all times and that doing otherwise is a punishable crime. To equate being upset with a cop with a crime is plain wrong and has no place in a free society. Draw the obvious conclusions about just how free our society is...

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

“You don’t argue with a police officer,” Colin Powell told Larry King, commenting on the Gates episode and his own personal history.

But why not argue, if anyone in this society is supposed to believe it’s a free one? Why should arguing with a cop, or just demanding his name and badge---after he’s walked into your house---get you get you arrested for “disorderly conduct”? Why should he have the right to do that to you---as a Black man or as anybody else---just because he’s a cop?

A cop’s someone supposed to be doing a job protecting the public. Isn’t that the idea? Instead he or she is given impunity to bust people he/she finds personally uppity. This is a system problem.

Authoritarianism, not racism, is the elephant in the Gates-Crowley room

2009-07-27T11:30:00.001-07:00

Have Americans really lost the suspicion of authority that Jefferson seemed to think was indispensable in a free country? Seems like the answer to that is a resounding yes.

clipped from digbysblog.blogspot.com

Sure, we should treat the cops with respect and society shouldn't encourage people to be reflexively hostile to police. They have a tough job, and we should all be properly respectful of people who are doing a dangerous and necessary job for the community. But when a citizen doesn't behave well, if not illegally, as will happen in a free society, it is incumbent upon the police, the ones with the tasers and the handcuffs and the guns, to exercise discretion wisely and professionally. And when they don't, we shouldn't make excuses for them. It's far more corrosive to society to allow authority figures to abuse their power than the other way around.

Max Keiser tells the truth about Goldman Sachs

2009-07-17T11:14:00.001-07:00

Wow. That gave me a stiffy.

Our only chance as a country is to be attacked by terrorists?

2009-07-02T12:13:00.001-07:00

Is the point to have us demand as much violence as is necessary? Wow. These right-wing dudes are even worse than I'd imagined, and that's saying something.

clipped from crooksandliars.com

Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

We don't really think about it.

2009-04-27T08:23:00.001-07:00

Bob Herbert meant for the following quote to describe the USAmerican attitude toward gun violence, but I think it accurately describes the USAmerican attitude toward just about everything pressing, important, and horrifying.

We don't think.

We go through the motions.

We never really do anything about it.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Actually, that’s our problem. We don’t really think about it. If the crime is horrible enough, we’ll go through the motions of public anguish but we never really do anything about it. Americans are as blasé as can be about this relentless slaughter that keeps the culture soaked in blood.

Marijuana "more dangerous" than alcohol or tobacco, US Attorney blows smoke up law students' asses

2009-04-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

Of course, US Attorney Russoniello is right, marijuana is far more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, but not for any reasons that are given.

It is more dangerous for the simple fact that once you've tried pot and seen how absolutely un-dangerous it is, you realize that the US government lies to you.

And if it is willing to lie to you about something as relatively insignificant as the health implications of the occasional toke, how much more is the state willing to lie to you in matters of real importance --- like bailing out Wall Street banks with tax payer monies, invading countries that haven't threatened us, or pretending that carbon caps and trading will have any real effect on global warming.

Once you realize you can't trust the government, you start to wonder about your church and the local Chamber of Commerce. And then all hell breaks lose...

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

Joe Russoniello, US Attorney for the Northern District of California (a Bush appointee), says at a Hastings Law School forum that all medical marijuana dispensaries are profiteering operations in violaton of state law and therefore “fair game” for DEA raiders. He asserts that marijuana is “a more dangerous substance” than alcohol or tobacco... Dispensary operators who draw “reasonable compensation” and who only obtain their cannabis from and sell it to collective members hope they can be distinguished from “egregious offenders.”

We need to create a new culture

2009-04-14T07:28:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

To reverse what is happening, we must create strong alternative ideas and hardy alternative institutions and communities, a counter culture that rejects the myths of Washington and Wall Street just as, in the 1960s, a generation put the establishment on the defensive or in the closet.

In any case, we need to act, but independent of those responsible for the mess, those exculpating them, those offering remedies that are mere manipulated shadows of the failure, and those engaged in misleading or misguided organizing on their behalf even if with purportedly noble intent.

The collapse of American culture was an inside job. Its cure is to be found on the outside, in a counter culture that is clear and worthy in its goals, eclectic in its alliances, and which builds community, recovers integrity and helps us to sing again. If we can't save our culture, we can at least create a new one.

Banksters: We need $2 trillion, but we're solvent

2009-04-07T13:14:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.pbs.org

Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.

Global currency? Global bank?

2009-04-07T11:07:00.001-07:00

Of course conspiracy theorists (as opposed to coincidence theorists, I guess) will "love" this, since it is precisely what "they" have been suggesting is in the works for some time.

I always thought that the prime measure of a theory's merit was how accurately it made predictions. Seems to me that the prognostications of the "conspiracy theorists" have been a lot more accurate than those put forward by the coincidence theorists in the MSM, especially lately.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk

In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and
begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting
a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any
sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.

Lula tells it like it is; Brown looks mildly uncomfortable

2009-03-27T07:02:00.001-07:00

We white folks really are funny. We get so embarrassed at the wrong stuff. We're ashamed of being called out on crashing the world economy (e.g., Lula's "outburst"), but we aren't ashamed of crashing it in the first place. Can't have "fuck" written on the canisters of napalm we use to incinerate women and kids, after all.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

"This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person," Lula said after talks with the prime minister in Brasilia to discuss next week's G20 summit in London.

"This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics."

You go to a shopping mall and you are filmed. You go to the airport and you are watched. I can't imagine that only the financial system has no surveillance at all."

Brown looked mildly uncomfortable during Lula's outburst.

Promise and perils of the growing public anger

2009-03-20T10:03:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.regressiveantidote.net

There is a growing public anger out there, anger that is long overdue. People are finally beginning to wake up, however foggily, to who is the real enemy of America’s interests and who is the real predator with its fingers rifling their pocketbooks. If this populist rage is properly directed, we could get some sort of healthy outcome, like a reprise of the New Deal social safety net and a badly needed robust regulatory apparatus. If it is not, it might instead be miraculously used to breathe political life back into the very corpses of those who brought this storm down on all of us.

"Reality has entered the house of America without knocking."

2009-03-20T07:35:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

FDR got his pressure from the left; Obama gets his from the right thanks to the unwillingness of progressives to push him. FDR could take action without a gang of media manipulators telling him to be careful. There wasn't an inordinate pyramid of bureaucracy chipping away at every decision before it went into action. Liberals had more passion than status and really cared about those at the bottom of the American heap.

Are we trapped forever in this contemporary paradigm? Or can we face what has happened to us and start to change it? Can liberals once again represent the ordinary American or can such Americans only expect a few nods in their direction? Can we condemn a whole class of citizens because of what we fear some rightwing Republicans will say if we do something real to help them?

This is a time when status, style and semantics won't save us. Reality has entered the house of America without knocking. It can't be spun away. And time is running out.

Judges who imprison kids for kickbacks deserve a shivving in the pokey

2009-03-02T11:54:00.001-08:00

These judges, and all others like them, need to be publicly executed, along with the cocksuckers who gave them the kickbacks. Let's hope that the noble felons with whom these douchebags will be incarcerated give them the sharpened-spoon-to-the-throat treatment.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

Earlier this month, two Luzerne County, Pa., judges--Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan--pled guilty to taking $2.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for throwing juveniles into two for-profit private detention centers, PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care. Under a plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and be disbarred.

It's the lack of jobs, not the lack of lending

2009-02-27T08:38:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

What is needed to fix this crisis is job security, and the only way to create that is by creating jobs.

If the president really wanted to kick-start the economy, he would have announced a government program to directly hire the unemployed, by both the federal government and state and local governments (through block grants to the states), which would put people to work right now as teachers’ aides, park workers, school crossing guards, library assistants, companions for the elderly, city and rural clean-up crews, housing renovation project workers, mural painters, etc.

Millions of out-of-work people could be put productively to work with far fewer dollars than what is about to be shoveled out to contractors to construct or repair bridges and highways a year or more from now.

Clean coal harnesses the awesome power of the word "clean"

2009-02-26T12:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Coen Brothers for harnessing their awesome powers for good.

Popular explosions are inevitable

2009-02-25T09:52:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.commondreams.org

Given a global situation in which one startling, often unexpected development follows another, prediction is perilous. At a popular level, however, the basic picture is clear enough: continued economic decline combined with a pervasive sense that existing systems and institutions are incapable of setting things right is already producing a potentially lethal brew of anxiety, fear, and rage. Popular explosions of one sort or another are inevitable.

"What has Wall Street given up?"

2009-02-24T11:33:00.001-08:00

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, MI, deserves every working person's support and kudos for calling it like it is on national television. On Faux "News" even!

When asked another loaded question about what unions are willing to give up, Mr. Bernero "snaps" and calls the interviewer out on the assumptions built into his question. "Why do working Americans always have to be the ones who make concessions?" he asks. "What has Wall Street given up?" Indeed.

Send him a note of support here: http://www.lansingmi.gov/mayor/contact_us.jsp

clipped from redstaterebels.org

The bloated, Blagojevich-esque Faux "newsman" tries to maintain "decorum" (the same decorum that cringes when the word "fuck" is painted on the napalm we plan to drop on women and kids) by steering the mayor back to his loaded question about salaries, and the mayor will have none of it. Good for him.

No more playing nice guys, folks. The people on Wall Street need to feel the extent of our pain. I suggest we help them come to an understanding by eating their livers with a nice chianti.

Welcome to the Casino at the End of the World

2009-02-24T11:30:00.001-08:00

This is the best explanation for all the quasi-magical economic terminology that's been flying around for the last couple of years. Too bad it all boils down to bad gambling debts that we get to pay off.

clipped from dandelionsalad.wordpress.com

So welcome to the Casino at the End of the World. Where you’re now backing every remaining wager and paying off the winners. In bailout bucks.

Why, instead of doling out trillions of taxpayer dollars through the Fed and Treasury Department, didn’t our government simply nullify these crazy bets that never should have been made — thereby averting the present crisis? It can’t be that contracts are really all that sacrosanct. Credit card companies change terms on us all the time.

The people in power are either nitwits or manipulating an opportunity to profit further

2009-02-24T11:20:00.001-08:00

My money, such as it is, isn't on them being nitwits.

clipped from www.counterpunch.com

Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector.

"The average American used to be able to borrow to buy a home, send their kids to a good school... A lot of that is gone."

2009-02-23T14:53:00.001-08:00

clipped from finance.yahoo.com

But "the worst is yet to come," according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, who believes American's standard of living is undergoing a "permanent change" - and not for the better as a result of:
An $8 trillion negative wealth effect from declining home values.
A $10 trillion negative wealth effect from weakened capital markets.
A $14 trillion consumer debt load amid "exploding unemployment", leading to "exploding bankruptcies."
"The average American used to be able to borrow to buy a home, send their kids to a good school [and] buy a car," Davidowitz says. "A lot of that is gone."
Going forward, the veteran retail industry consultant foresees higher savings rate and people trading down in both the goods and services they buy - as well as their aspirations.

The end of rampant consumerism is ultimately a good thing, he says, but the unraveling of an economy built on debt-fueled spending will be painful for years to come.

Olympian toker's gold medals dispel drug war mythology

2009-02-23T10:19:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com

“If 14 gold medals aren’t enough to prove that marijuana users can achieve success and shouldn't be scrutinized, what will it take to break the stigma?”

“The situation reeks of hypocrisy,” the petition states. “More than one hundred million Americans have smoked marijuana at least once in their lives (including the president, former presidents, members of Congress and justices on the Supreme Court). Smoking marijuana is not unusual behavior and you shouldn't hold Phelps to a higher standard.”

Bingo!

Obama's no-brainer: Reduce the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy

2009-02-23T10:12:00.001-08:00

Let people making more than a quarter of a million dollars pay their fair share.

clipped from www.washingtonmonthly.com

Obama also seeks to increase tax collections, mainly by making good on his promise to eliminate some of the temporary tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. While the budget would keep the breaks that benefit middle-income families, it would eliminate them for wealthy taxpayers, defined as families earning more than $250,000 a year. Those tax breaks would be permitted to expire on schedule in 2011. That means the top tax rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, the tax on capital gains would jump to 20 percent from 15 percent for wealthy filers and the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million would be maintained at the current rate of 45 percent.

The big question: What will the near future look like, and what will be its impact on the long-term viability of H. sapiens?

2009-02-23T09:28:00.001-08:00

clipped from keyecommentary.blogspot.com

Ultimately, it is a question of whether the great depth of our Madness will carry us into a final conflict with biophysical reality – a madman flaying at imaginary demons while being tormented by a disinterested reality to which he is blind – or will we come again into the wind and the rain, into the seasons, cycles and other realities of earthly existence?

My sensible reason answers that the Madness will dominate the final days of this iteration of my species, that over the next 30 to 80 years we will cling to the most misguided and defeating self-referenced notions of reality until an enraged environment indiscriminately smites the living world – and we will still behave badly even in the ruins of our world.

But my capacity of imagination and wonder believes, in the way that the consciousness order designs impossible ‘possibilities,’ that we can come to see the madness and demand its retreat; the way that smokers now have to hide next to the dumpster in the back of the building.

Disarm the police, not the citizens

2009-02-23T09:23:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

Police seldom, if ever, prevent a crime. Their job is to appear after a crime is committed and to investigate with a view to identifying the perpetrator. A large number of careful studies show that private gun ownership prevents far more crimes than police ever solve. Criminals are routinely deterred, apprehended, and sometimes killed, by armed private citizens.

In contrast, police, especially the notorious SWAT teams, accidentally kill more law abiding citizens than they do criminals. If anyone should be disarmed, it is the police. When police become militarized, as they increasingly are in the US, their attitude toward the public changes from protective to hostile. Militarized SWAT teams have established a record of showing up at the wrong address.

Associating a chimp with a black man isn't racist, and only a nigger would think so

2009-02-20T14:13:00.001-08:00

Of course this cartoon has no racist overtones. And neither did this one. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.

clipped from image.examiner.com

"The rate will be determined by adding 26.15% to the Prime rate."

2009-02-20T13:18:00.001-08:00

Dear money-grubbing cocksuckers (aka Wall Street financiers),

Please explain:

Why unilaterally changing our "agreement" is kosher,
How this is a positive sign for "the economy,"
What happens when millions of newly jobless people default on these credit cards,
How you plan to live after your head has been placed on a pike.

clipped from www.consumertrap.com

“Too big to fail” should mean “too big to exist.”

2009-02-19T12:17:00.001-08:00

Remember all the ancient history from high school about antitrust laws? Did any of you remember these history lessons when Paulson said that some companies are just "too big to fail"? Probably not, since the business-owned "culture" in the US assists us in forgetting this history and subsequently condemns us to repeat it.

So for the record: When they are too big to fail, enforce already existing antitrust legislation to break 'em into manageable, not-too-big-to-fail pieces.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

The country is being dragged down by monstrous businesses, all of which, we’re told, are just “too big to fail.” As a consequence of this, the nation’s taxpayers, and their progeny born and yet unborn, are having trillions of dollars sucked away to prop up these giant rotting corporate corpses.

Zombie banks, zombie automakers, zombie insurance companies, all bigger than nation states, and all on life-support.

There is a simple answer to this problem. Bust them up.

Follow-up: Last night on MSNBC, Jim Cramer specifically mentioned the size and complexity of these banks as reason #1 for why they should not be de jure) nationalized. (I say de jure since the banks have already been de facto nationalized, seeing as how they are running purely on taxpayer money.) To my way of thinking, that is precisely why they need to be smashed into dozens of smaller banks.

Economic patriotism?

2009-02-19T12:13:00.001-08:00

Do the people responsible for this rape of thought and language (not to mention of the planet and humanity) really believe the shit that comes out of their mouths? Supporting foreign workers while Americans lose their jobs, homes, and futures is patriotic?

It is particularly ironic that the same "conservatives" who are now behind the "economic patriotism" (i.e., the "fuck Americans") doctrine were the rabid supporters of WalMart's "Made in the USA" campaign of the 1980s.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said that buying abroad was “economic patriotism.”

Debts that can't be paid, won't be

2009-02-18T13:18:00.001-08:00

This summarizes why I think Obama's "stimulus" is a sham. At best, all it will do is postpone the inevitable economic contraction.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

The U.S. economy cannot “inflate its way out of debt,” because this would collapse the dollar and end its dreams of global empire by forcing foreign countries to go their own way. There is too little manufacturing to make the economy more “competitive,” given its high housing costs, transportation, debt and tax overhead.

The aim is to re-inflate property markets to enable owners to pay the banks, not to help the public sector break even.

One would think that politicians would be willing to do the math and realize that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be. But the debts are being kept on the books, continuing to extract interest to pay the creditors that have made the bad loans. The resulting debt deflation threatens to keep the economy in depression until a radical shift in policy occurs – a shift to save the “real” economy, not just the financial sector and the wealthiest 10 per cent of American families.

Christianists take note: "We are no longer a Christian nation, if we ever were."

2009-02-18T10:49:00.001-08:00

While the rest of the Western world wrestles with substantive issues like global warming and economic collapse, some USAmerican Christians are still wrestling with the First Amendment and the secular nature of the US government.

When will these shitheads learn that just because an "overwhelming majority of Americans identify as Christians" does not mean that the US is a Christian country? The entire purpose of the First Amendment is to protect minority dissenters (like TJ the deist) from the tyranny of a Christianist majority.

clipped from news.aol.com

Not everyone was happy with President Barack Obama's nod to nonbelievers and non-Christians in his inaugural address.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers."

With that one line, the president "seems to be trying to redefine American culture, which is distinctively Christian," said’ Bishop E.W. Jackson of the Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va. "The overwhelming majority of Americans identify as Christians, and what disturbs me is that he seems to be trying to redefine who we are.’"

Jackson said he and others have no problem acknowledging that "this country is one in which everybody has the freedom to think what they want.’" Yet Obama crossed the line, in his view, in suggesting that all faiths (and none) were different roads to the same destination: "He made similar remarks in the campaign, and said, 'We are no longer a Christian nation, if we ever were. We are a Jewish, Hindu and non-believing nation.'"

The Bonus Army - 1932

2009-02-14T09:12:00.000-08:00

The past won't repeat itself precisely, but...

Latin American commission: The War on (Some) Drugs is a failure

2009-02-13T10:48:00.001-08:00

I wonder when we'll finally start basing drug policy on evidence, rather than molding evidence to fit drug policy.

clipped from online.wsj.com

As drug violence spirals out of control in Mexico, a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point.

"The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war," said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. "We have to move from this approach to another one."

The choice we face

2009-02-11T12:08:00.001-08:00

clipped from keyecommentary.blogspot.com

We have come to the moment when the Officer (the biophysical reality) is demanding that we choose between our present values and beliefs and others with which we are less familiar or comfortable, but which offer the possibility of sustaining the present designs of our living planet. Much of what we know and love (in my view, pathologically) will have to go. Much that is new and difficult will have to be confronted. Making a choice that does not doom us will be the trick.

Credit expansion can't replace good working class incomes

2009-02-11T11:39:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.consumertrap.com

The Reagan Revolution /Great Restoration/New Democrats strategy of relying on credit expansion to fill the demand hole caused by heightened fucking of the working class is now at its final — and completely logical — end. Either we start to reverse the basic class-fuck from above, or this depression continues to deepen.

Mother of fourteen perfect mirror of national delusions

2009-02-10T11:41:00.001-08:00

clipped from today.msnbc.msn.com

“People feel, you know, this woman is being completely irresponsible and selfish to bring these children in the world without a clear source of income and enough help to raise them,” Curry told Nadya Suleman in a segment that aired Friday on TODAY. “The world outside is saying, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

“I know I'll be able to afford them when I'm done with my schooling,” the 33-year-old single mom replied. Calm, poised and articulate in the glare of the media spotlight, Suleman added: “If I was just sitting down watching TV and not being as determined as I am to succeed and provide a better future for my children, I believe that would be considered, to a certain degree, selfish.”

Have you actually watched the interview with this woman? She is USAmerican delusion condensed into a single human form --- thinking that if she just "believes" enough and "applies" herself enough that she can manage to support FOURTEEN children on ONE income --- at exactly the same time that the US economy has decided to sublimate.

Synchronicity is amazing, isn't it? At exactly the same time that our unsustainable national delusions (e.g., shop your way to savings) have begun to collapse around (and on top) of us, we see in the mirror of our national consciousness a single person who embodies the profligacy and thoughtlessness of the herd.

What particularly irks me is that, instead of using inadvertent public figures like her as a mirror for the national unconscious, we pillory them and pat ourselves on the back for how much better we are.

Folks, if you supported Bush's policies of the last eight years or persist in the belief that permanent growth is beneficial, or even possible, then you are little different from Ms. Suleman in fundamental matters. Reality is reality, regardless of what we believe or wish to be true. One cannot spend one's way to savings, cut taxes while increasing spending, or regard having fourteen children as a "risk" one has to take to follow one's dreams.

Her mental illness is our culture.

Higher education increasingly unaffordable

2009-02-10T09:57:00.001-08:00

Increased access to higher education was responsible for lifting many post-WWII working class folks into the newly minted "middle" class. Of course it is only a coincidence that the same policies that rewarded the ultra-rich over the last 30+ years and eroded the real income of everyone else would now lead to the increasing lack of affordability in higher education and thus to the erosion of opportunities for the middle class.

Yep. Just a coincidence.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

"The nation's colleges and universities have become less affordable for students and their families since the early 1990s," said the report. "This year continues the trend in deteriorating college affordability in the majority of states."

Decrease in real income, culture of militarism underly USAmerican economic woes

2009-02-10T09:53:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

US policymakers have ignored the fact that consumer demand in the 21st century has been driven, not by increases in real income, but by increased consumer indebtedness. This fact makes it pointless to try to stimulate the economy by bailing out banks so that they can lend more to consumers. The American consumers have no more capacity to borrow.

Unless US corporations can be required to use American labor to produce the goods and services that they sell in American markets, there is no hope for the US economy. No one in the Obama administration has the wits to address this problem. Thus, the economy will continue to implode.

The unreality in which he US government operates is beyond belief. A bankrupt government that cannot pay its bills without printing money is rushing headlong into wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

Electronic run on the banks

2009-02-10T09:46:00.001-08:00

"The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed."

"It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it."

clipped from www.youtube.com

Comparison of job losses --- WTF

2009-02-09T12:43:00.001-08:00

Holy shit is how I'd describe this graphic. Of course, the fundamentals of our economy are strong, etc. etc. etc.

clipped from www.boingboing.net

Bruce Sterling's prediction for '09: A planetary hostage situation

2009-01-30T10:38:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.seedmagazine.com

So 2009 will be a squalid year, a planetary hostage situation surpassing any mere financial crisis, where the invisible hand of the market, a good servant turned a homicidal master, periodically wanders through a miserable set of hand-tied, blindfolded, feebly struggling institutions, corporations, bureaucracies, professions, and academies, and briskly blows one's brains out for no sane reason.

Wes Jackson on sustainability and being realistic

2009-01-30T08:31:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

RJ: It’s also likely that many people reading this will dismiss you as idealistic, as unrealistic. How would you answer that?

WJ: These are the same people who believe it’s realistic to continue practices they know to be unsustainable. The basic choice is simple: Do we want to work at coming up with a system that can produce healthful food and healthy communities, one that is economically and ecologically viable? Or do we want to continue to contaminate our soil and water, as we watch that soil continue to be eroded by that water? That contamination and erosion are both material reality and metaphor for our cultural and economic condition.

Working Americans bail out the corpos; now the corpos seek to shaft working Americans

2009-01-29T07:59:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

"Bank of America is now not only getting bailout money. They are lending their name to participate in a campaign to stop workers from having a majority sign up [provision]," said Stephen Lerner, Director of the Private Equity Project at SEIU. "The biggest corporations who have created the problem are, at the very time, asking us to bail them out and then using that money to stop workers from improving their lives."

The co-founder of Home Despot wants to use the money you were forced to give him as part of the corporate "bailout" to keep you from joining a union and working together to improve your own finances and prospects. To do otherwise would be "the demise of a civilization." (Which only goes to show that to these cocksuckers "civilization" is synonymous with "serfdom.")

He, the CEO of Bank America, and all their ilk really need to be forced on to the Robespierre weight loss plan. Lose ten to twenty pounds of useless weight instantly!

If you doubt me, here is the audio of these douchebags conspiring to fuck working class people over even more than they already do.

What "reaching out" really means

2009-01-28T14:28:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.foxnews.com

As you know, the president was up on Capitol Hill meeting with Republican leaders in the House and Senate. He definitely wants to reach out. Republican leaders we have talked to say, well, he might want to reach out. He's not accepting our ideas, so all of this is essentially for show.

Evidently, according to Congressional Republicans, President Obama only "reaches out" to them if he accepts their ideas.

Last time I checked, reaching out meant including someone else in the discussion, not giving them sole decision-making power.

That's because I'm not a Republican. Silly me. I should have known.

When a Republican is in power, reaching out means that the Democrats do what the Republicans want.

And when a Democrat is in power, reaching out means that the Democrats do what the Republicans want.

The truth about the truth in the US

2009-01-27T07:42:00.001-08:00

The crises facing us right now demand an unprecedented amount of national (and international) re-envisioning, and yet we still have a hard time speaking the truth when it really matters. This combination does not bode well in these times.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

Obama would have to take risks that opportunistic politicians never take in order for the US to become a nation of law instead of a nation in which the agendas of special interests override the law.

Truth cannot be spoken in America. It cannot be spoken in universities. It cannot be spoken in the media. It cannot be spoken in courts, which is why defendants and defense attorneys have given up on trials and cop pleas to lesser offenses that never occurred.

The War on Some Drugs and the burgeoning US prison population

2009-01-14T10:09:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.buffalobeast.com

Regardless of where Obama's appointees stand and how much, if any, political capital he is willing to spend on drug-policy reform, the need to turn his campaign slogan into reality has never been greater. Last week, the Justice Department released numbers showing that 1 in every 100 Americans is now in prison, and 1 in every 31 is either behind bars, on parole or on probation. For this grotesquerie we can thank the war on drugs. More than half of federal
prisoners (95,000 people) are behind bars for drug-law violations -- a record. Nationally, around half a million people are in prison on nonviolent drug charges. The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that this is a tenfold increase since 1980, totaling more than the entire prison population of Western Europe.

Priceless, if tragic

2009-01-14T09:59:00.001-08:00

clipped from harpers.org

Date on which the White House announced it had stopped looking for WMDs in Iraq: 1/12/05

Years since his acquittal that O. J. Simpson has said he is still looking for his wife’s “real killers”: 13

Progressive in America: taming rage, living with grief, and digging in for the long haul

2009-01-14T07:22:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

[T]o work against the U.S. empire is to dig in for the long haul. Our task is not to play to Americans’ sense of being special, but to help this country come to realize that if there is to be a decent future for anyone -- indeed, if there is to be a future at all -- the United States has to step back from its position of arrogance and affluence. We must imagine what it would be like to live as one nation in the world, not as an arrogant nation that attempts to dominate the world. We must imagine what a good life would look like if we were to give up our commitment to affluence and work toward a just and sustainable world at the end of the high-energy/high-technology era.

With that analysis, there is the possibility of authentic solidarity. And that solidarity is our only way to tame the rage, our only way to live with the grief.

Finkelstein on Gaza

2009-01-14T07:18:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

Every year, the United Nations General Assembly votes on a resolution entitled “Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question.” And every year the vote is the same: it’s the whole world on one side; Israel, the United States and some South Sea atolls and Australia on the other side. The vote this past year was 164-to-7. Every year since 1989—in 1989, the vote was 151-to-3, the whole world on one side, the United States, Israel and the island state of Dominica on the other side.

The one and only obstacle is Israel, backed by the United States. That’s the problem.

Mr. Obama has to level with the American people. He has to be honest about what is the main obstacle to resolving the conflict. It’s not Palestinian rejectionism. It’s the refusal of Israel, backed by the United States government, to abide by international law, to abide by the opinion of the international community.

And the main challenge for all of us as Americans is to see through the lies.

My Second Life takes as much energy as your first life

2009-01-14T07:15:00.001-08:00

Our obsession with entertainment and virtual reality while the world collapses around us reminds me of Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned.

clipped from technology.timesonline.co.uk

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.
“It’s not an unreasonable comparison,” said Liam Newcombe, an expert on data centres at the British Computer Society. “It tells us how much energy westerners use on entertainment versus the energy poverty in some countries.”

2009-01-13T18:22:00.001-08:00

Killer cops: Where intention is never the issue

2009-01-13T08:28:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

If a young black or Latino male pulls a gun and someone winds up dead, intention is never the issue, and first-degree murder charges are on the agenda, as well as likely murder charges for anyone of the wrong color standing nearby. If we reverse the current situation, and the gun is in Oscar Grant’s hand, then racist voices would be squealing for the death penalty regardless of intention. And yet when it’s a cop pulling the trigger, all the media and public opinion resources are deployed to justify, understand, and empathize with this unconscionable act. One side is automatically condemned; the other automatically excused.

Pollution and hormonal disruption: excessive yang becomes yin

2009-01-05T10:41:00.001-08:00

Scary stuff, but maybe good in the long run. After all, I can’t help but think that it was the males of species who drove us into the cul-de-sac in which we currently find ourselves. I remember reading about something similar in Benjamin Hoff’s (otherwise dreadful) Te of Piglet --- at some point, excessive yang (i.e., masculine) energy spontaneously converts into yin (i.e., feminine) energy. So maybe we boys are putting ourselves out to pasture.

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com

The report found that male fish in British lowland rivers develop eggs in their testes, 40 percent of male cane toads have become hermaphrodites in areas of Australia, male alligators in Florida suffer from lowered testosterone and higher estrogen levels, and baby boys who have been exposed to chemicals in pregnancy are being born with smaller penises and feminized genitals.

Martial law "not impossible" in face of economic collapse, civic unrest

2008-12-22T10:09:00.001-08:00

clipped from phoenix.bizjournals.com

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

Nick Dranias, director of constitutional government at the libertarian Goldwater Institute, said a declaration of marital law would be an extraordinary event and give military control over civilian authorities and institutions.

Dranias said such an emergency declaration could worsen the economic situation and doubts extreme measures will been taken. “I don’t think it’s likely. But it’s not impossible,” he said.

Obama's con: Makes me wanna holler

2008-12-19T10:43:00.001-08:00

clipped from prorev.com

To get a sense of how substantial the deception was, liberals should ask themselves this question: would you - on principle and not personality - have voted for someone who promised to appoint as secretary of agriculture an ethanol booster and ally of Monsanto, an education secretary who would continue the war on public education, an energy secretary who is pro nuke and pro Yucca Mountain, a defense secretary who has been part of the Iraq disaster, a budget director who favors cutting Social Security for those under 59, an attorney general who helped increase the prison time served by young blacks on minor drug offenses, a secretary of state involved in numerous scandals, a transportation secretary who is an extreme conservative and knows little about the field, a staff stuffed with a team of revivals form the Clinton years, and an inaugural preacher who treats gays and women as lesser beings much as others once did to blacks?

USAmerican lexicon: Ideological

2008-12-19T09:55:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

In late November, corporate media outlets began to credit Barack Obama with making supposedly non-ideological Cabinet picks. The New York Times front page reported that his choices “suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.” Conservative Times columnist David Brooks praised the picks as “not ideological” and the economic nominees as “moderate and thoughtful Democrats.” USA Today reported that Obama’s selections had “records that display more pragmatism than ideology.” In mediaspeak, if you thought invading Iraq and signing the NAFTA trade pact were good ideas, you’re a pragmatist. If not, you’re an ideologue.

USAmerican lexicon: Politically fraught

2008-12-19T09:54:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

Note here that for the Times, and for the rest of the conventional thinkers who have reduced corporate journalism to such thin gruel that no one bothers with it any more, “politically fraught” refers exclusively to the idea that the Right will supposedly be riled up at any effort to prosecute war criminals in the outgoing administration. If people on the Left, or even the center, large numbers of whom believe strongly that the current administration should be held accountable for its crimes, get upset because there is no effort to prosecute them, that doesn’t count as “politically fraught.”

This is why I'm anti-war

2008-12-19T09:13:00.001-08:00

I've been reading an older issue of <i>What is Enlightenment? </i> magazine, the theme of which is whether pacifism and nonviolence are appropriate, or even possible, in the post-9/11 world.

While we can argue the right and wrong of war in the abstract until we are blue in the face, and also argue whether "the world" substantively changed on 9/11, we all need to face the simple fact that when wars are fought, the main casualties of these wars are innocent women and kids like the one seen below.

"When elephants fight, it is always the grass that gets trampled."

clipped from www.boston.com

How indeed

2008-12-18T08:28:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

How can one maintain a free market system when financial institutions are not allowed to fail? And how can such a system function properly without stop signs, guard rails, speed limits or rules that determine what side of the road one can drive?

Our economy was a house of cards, comfort zones increasingly hard to find

2008-12-17T08:32:00.001-08:00

The son of man has no place to lay his head
And bodhisattvas have no privacy

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com

Our economy was a house of cards, based on the extraordinary premise that ever-expanding debt was a desirable product, and it is now falling down upon us.

We are facing a time of great change and spiritual challenge. Those of us who have undergone a process of awakening and initiation during the last decades will be called upon to act as truth-tellers, leaders and compassionate caretakers for the multitudes that have been duped and deluded by the system. We may have to abandon our comfort zones and personal ambitions to be of service to the situation as it unfolds.

Stop treating presidents like royalty - heave a shoe once in a while

2008-12-16T07:58:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

It’s time for the press corps to stop treating presidents like royalty. If he accomplished anything at all in eight years in office, President Bush has demonstrated that, to the contrary, the president is a very ordinary—and in his case a rather less than ordinary—man. The office of president deserves no more respect than that of the mayor of Detroit, or of Wasilla.

Bleed the World

2008-12-15T12:22:00.001-08:00

Appalling survey shows USAmericans woefully ignorant of history and civics

2008-12-10T09:47:00.001-08:00

My classroom experience bears these numbers out.

clipped from blog.au.org

I thought of Bishop England last week when I heard the results of the latest First Amendment Center survey on Americans’ understanding of their First Amendment rights.

In contrast to his enlightened views, 55 percent of Americans told pollsters that “the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation.” Only 39 percent disagreed.

On a similar note, 63 percent of respondents thought “the nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation.” Only 32 disagreed.

These are absolutely appalling results. Are our public schools really doing that bad a job of teaching history and civics? Are Americans really that ignorant of our nation’s heritage of church-state separation and individual freedom?

One person's religion is another's superstition

2008-12-10T09:32:00.001-08:00

clipped from fleasnobbery.blogspot.com

Pat Boone should stick to singing

2008-12-10T08:28:00.001-08:00

He's definitely not a political scientist or historian:

clipped from www.worldnetdaily.com

There never were any "rights" granted or designated to those who dissented with the will of the majority, other than the same rights all citizens have to work through the democratic process to accomplish their purposes. No "rights" were ever granted to citizens on the basis of their sexual habits or lifestyle. There simply are no such "rights."
Slavery was abolished, blacks and women obtained the rights to vote, and these true rights were not obtained by threats and violent demonstrations and civil disruption (though these things did occur, of course), but by due process, congressional deliberations and appropriate ratification. This was democracy in action, not mob rule. As noted journalist Thomas Sowell has said, there never was "a right to win." In America, at least the America we've known till now, rights are earned and won in a deliberative, legal way – at the polls.

Arguably the US Constitution does provide for the right to gay marriage insofar as it makes all citizens equal under the law. The case can be made that denying the privileges of legal marriage to same-sex couples while affording them to hetero couples violates this equal protection. So that's one place that gay marriage advocates find their "right" to marriage,Pat.

But when you say "there never were any "rights" granted or designated to those who dissented with the will of the majority," Pat, you reveal yourself to be a fool. The entire raison d'etre of the Bill of Rights was to protect those whose views and ideas dissented with the will of the majority, those accused of crimes, etc. Sounds to me like you're advocating for a tyranny of the majority, Pat.

And in other news, slavery was indeed abolished in part because of the "violent demonstrations and civil disruption" that we know as the Civil War.

Stick to singing, Pat.

Opposition to gay marriage: It's about personal discomfort and not the Bible

2008-12-10T08:19:00.001-08:00

From a very thoughtful piece in Newsweek:

clipped from www.newsweek.com

If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about?

Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument).

Torture still illegal, but only when performed by non-USAmericans

2008-12-09T09:31:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

The Washington Post writes that Chuckie’s conviction is “the first test of an American law that gives prosecutors the power to bring charges for acts of torture committed in foreign lands.” In other words, US law against torture applies to the entire world, to every other country except the United States. The hubris is unimaginable--no country can torture except the US.

Isn’t it great to be an American! Our laws don’t apply to us, only to every other nation. This is what it means to be the moral light of the world, the unipower, the salt of the earth.

If only American laws applied to the American government. Then the criminals who have been in charge for 8 years could be prosecuted for their extreme violation of United States laws. But, of course, the great moral American government is far above the law. American law only applies to dispensable nations. America is not answerable to law, not to its own law and not to international law.

Chicago sit-down strike: "We're doing this for the other working people in the country."

2008-12-09T09:28:00.001-08:00

Capitalism's clock is ticking down.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

Some 200 UE members at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago have sat-down and occupied their plant until they win the compensation they are owed. The peaceful occupation began Friday on the last day of the plant’s scheduled operations before closure.

Ron Bender, a striker with 14 years at the company, put it poignantly to the AFP news wire: “We're doing this for the other working people in the country.”

Amen. The UE strikers occupying their plant are sending a message to all workers that the corporations care nothing for your life and the lives of your family members. They will come for your job at some point either to take it away from you or to degrade it. But with organizing and action we can fight back and win.

When the state has neither the resources nor the will to intervene

2008-12-06T09:00:00.001-08:00

What's particularly chilling is that the last sentence could just as easily apply to New Orleans in the wake of Katrina as it does to Zimbabwe.

clipped from blogs.thetimes.co.za

Zimbabwe’s failed Robert Mugabe state is entering its final days and they are going to be bitter, violent and deadly.
Yesterday all water supplies were switched off to Harare in the throes of a killer cholera epidemic. People are dying in the streets and the state has neither the resources nor the will to intervene.

Next year to resemble hell, says Nobel prize-winning economist

2008-12-06T08:44:00.001-08:00

clipped from politiken.dk

Krugman in US doomsday prophecy

The world's largest economy - the U.S. - is contracting at an 'alarming rate' according to Paul Krugman, who has won this year's Nobel Economics Prize.

"At a rough guess, the annual growth rate in the U.S. is currently minus 4-5 percent and unemployment is growing with almost 500,000 people each month."

"This will mean that 12 million Americans will be shoved under the poverty level," said Krugman as he foresaw current developments leading to 10 percent unemployment.

"I estimate that public spending will have to be increased by 600 billion dollars next year. This is some four percent of American GDP," he said adding that the financial crisis would be lengthy.

"Next year resembles hell. As does 2010. But hopefully, with good leadership, things will look better in 5 years time," he says.

Hopefully...

With good leadership...

Any of you holding your breath?

Can we end this "war" too?

2008-12-05T09:29:00.001-08:00

We need to work on ending not only our "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan but also the War on (Some) Drugs. Here's another good reason:

clipped from blog.thehill.com

The number of U.S. adults who smoke has dropped below 20 percent for the first time on record, Reuters reported. This is less than half the percentage (42 percent) of Americans who smoked cigarettes during the 1960s.

Imagine that; in the past 40 years tens of millions of Americans have voluntarily quit smoking a legal, yet highly addictive intoxicant. Millions of others have refused to initiate the habit. And they’ve all made this decision without ever once being threatened with criminal prosecution and arrest, imprisonment, probation, and drug testing.

If federal lawmakers truly wished to address marijuana use, they would take a page from their successful campaign to reduce the use of cigarettes. This would include taxing and regulating cannabis with the drug’s sale and use restricted to specific markets and consumers.

All your monetary worth are belong to us

2008-12-03T07:03:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.boingboing.net

The Visigoths are knocking down the gates of Rome ... from the inside

2008-12-01T08:21:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.nydailynews.com

"His body was a stepping bag with so much disregard for human life," Ernst Damour, 37, said. "There has to be some accountability."

Roughly 2,000 people gathered outside the Wal-Mart's doors in the predawn darkness.

Chanting "push the doors in," the crowd pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening.

Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers.

It didn't work.

The mob barreled in and overwhelmed workers.

"They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door,"

Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like "savages."

clipped from www.nydailynews.com

Fleming said criminal charges were possible but that it would be difficult to identify individual shoppers in surveillance videos.

"I look at these people's faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him," said one employee. "How could you take a man's life to save $20 on a TV?"

How indeed? It seems that, once again, we've met the barbarians, and they are us.

I pray that the people responsible for this are crushed beneath their toppling big screen TVs while playing Guitar Hero.

USAmericans have always been "a people so self-centered that we are willing to [fill in the blanks]"

2008-11-30T15:31:00.001-08:00

Bob Scheffer almost sums it up in regard to the poor working stiff trampled to death by rabid shopping-bots last Friday morning. I say almost because he assumes these are the people we've become.

clipped from www.cbsnews.com

When store officials ordered the mob out of the store because someone had died, many called it unfair, because they said they had been waiting hours to shop....If we have become a people so self-centered that we are willing to step over a lifeless body to get a bargain, we have problems that go beyond terrorists, a credit crunch and bad mortgages.

In many really important respects, we USAmericans have always been that self-centered.

I can't help but notice a mentality akin to that of these shoppers writ large in our history of Manifest Destiny. After all, weren't entire nations of people trampled to death in the (predominantly white) USAmerican self-centered stampede for the "bargain" of their conquered lands?

One fish = lunch; the whole school working together = victory

2008-11-18T06:55:00.001-08:00

Cool story that provides us a metaphor for how we get Obama to be the great president we know he can be --- by acting together for common purposes.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk

Aren't you glad we invaded Iraq?

2008-11-17T14:34:00.001-08:00

I'm really glad we invaded Iraq. If we hadn't we wouldn't have found all those WMDs and this little girl wouldn't have been killed by suicide bombers.

The next time any cocksuckers call for war, whether Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, remember this picture.

And then tell them to fuck themselves.

clipped from pierretristam.com

Capitalist Conspiracy?

2008-10-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

Here's Why I'm Voting Obama

2008-10-28T20:08:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com

A black president of the United States who had been a community organizer in poor neighborhoods, married into a working-class black family, advocating that government do more to provide jobs, better education and health care while calling for black parents to do more to help their children succeed.

It would be phenomenal.

"This is a man who understands those problems, although we have to understand that he doesn't have a magic wand. All he can really do is help to steer this country to a better place."

Socialism: Hanging together rather than hanging separately

2008-10-28T06:49:00.001-07:00

Last night Mom and I got onto the topic of socialism. Change is indeed in the air.

If you're reading this, Mom, the paragraph below pretty much sums up "socialism." Not a bad idea, huh?

clipped from www.buffalobeast.com

Now, if you’re a wealthy person, then it is, perhaps, in your own self-interest to oppose socialism. Then again, there are rich Swedes, too.
But if you want to know what socialism means to the average American, it means not having to fret constantly about how to afford health insurance, only to find that you are not covered when you actually need it.
It means you can go to college without getting stuck with a huge, ever-expanding ball of debt you can never actually pay.
It means getting too old to work doesn’t doom you to spend your remaining years in shameful poverty.
It means you don’t have to step over old men in the street, feigning deafness to their pathetic pleas.
It means, in real, non-metaphorical terms, a better life for all of us, with less worry, less fear, less dread that any day, for reasons beyond your control, a stroke of fate can cause your whole life to fall apart.

Change is in the air: Telemarketers walk rather than slime Obama!

2008-10-28T06:45:00.001-07:00

We all need to learn from their lesson. Repeat after me: general strike, general strike, general strike...

clipped from tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

"They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day."

An Obama assassination plot: Just the beginning?

2008-10-27T13:56:00.001-07:00

No surprise, sadly. The rest of the world definitely has its problems, but the US seems constitutionally (no pun intended) incapable of dealing with its disastrous racial history. That we are still dealing with this shit in the age of global warming says a lot about this place and the idiots who populate it.

clipped from news.yahoo.com

Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the ATF said Monday.

Wassup? Change

2008-10-27T10:58:00.001-07:00

Take it from Opie and Andy, Richie and the Fonz: We need change

2008-10-27T10:37:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

Bizzaro world commentary on Obama

2008-10-27T10:29:00.001-07:00

What planet is this writer from? He's only now seeing Americans abandon rationality? What does he call "Orange Alerts" and "free speech zones"? He can be forgiven for his idiocy, though. He's a "die-hard conservative," which translates into English as "brain dead."

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com

I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places.

Secession? A new civil war?

2008-10-23T08:39:00.001-07:00

I've long thought that the "Culture Wars" in the US would more appropriately be called the "Cold Civil War." While we shouldn't put too much stock (ok, any stock) in what one blog commentator says, it still chills me that this sentiment is floating around.

If Obama wins, what are all these incredibly disaffected reactionary theocrats going to do? Secede? Assassinate? Or just undermine?

Part of me wishes they would secede. At least then the rest of us could get along with the business of the 21st century, while these medieval morons burn the non-Bibles, grow their cotton and tobacco, and salivate contemplating all the hell-bound.

clipped from suzieqq.wordpress.com

Thank you for making the suggestion that the Southern States should secede and form our own country again. Exactly as I as a Southerner was thinking. This campaign is almost exactly the way it was in 1861. Everyone in the South always is saying we shall rise again. Well now is our time. We would be a flourishing, happy and agreeing country lead by a great military hero as John Mccain is and helped by Sarah Palin, a truly devoted and smart woman. Let us stand up against the liberals in Washington and make Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and all the honorable Confederate soldiers proud of us today for standing up for God, what is right, and our beliefs. We have been held captive by the yankee liberals of the North far too long. It is time we form the Confederacy again. We would all agree politicly and not one ounce of our Southern Soil will be tainted by the foot of a liberal like Osama A.K.A. Obama.

It's also fun to remember that the "yankee liberals of the North" hold the South "in captivity" by supporting them with our tax dollars. Statistics show time and again that we, the liberal yankees, are the ones who pay taxes, get educations, have functioning marriages, etc. I guess this poster defines "flourishing" differently than do we damnyankees with our liberal, high-falutin' dictionaries.

(And yes, I know that many in the South don't share this poster's perspective from the shallow end of the gene pool, but come on, start repudiating these turds loud and clear.)

Supporting the economy by buying $150,000 wardrobes on the Republican party dime

2008-10-23T08:07:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.rockymountainnews.com

Who knew looking like a hockey mom was this darned expensive?

Certainly not Wanda Routier, a proud hockey mom in Hewitt, Wis., who spends her time in sweat pants, turtlenecks, ankle boots and heavy coats.

She was dismayed to hear Wednesday that the Republican Party had spent $150,000 on clothes, hair styling and accessories for Sarah Palin and her family from such upscale stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nieman Marcus.

"I was put off by it," Routier said. "I mean, I know they have an image to project, but that's a lot of money when we're talking about the economy the way it is! And the burden on ordinary Americans."

Some people, i.e., those with real jobs who actually work for a living, will (hopefully) be very put off by this extravagance, particularly since it comes at the same time that they're bailing out other extravagant cocksuckers with their tax dollars.

Others, like the Connecticut bitch (referred to in the story, but not quoted above) for whom L.L. Bean is too gauche to be worn in public (and whose husband is most likely employed in screwing working people over), will find no problem at all with this story.

And it sounds like even some Republicans are upset about this one. (They must be closet Democrats, blame the media, hey look a terrorist, etc.)

clipped from marcambinder.theatlantic.com

There is already an attempt to blame the media -- as in, the liberal media would have looked askance at Palin if she wasn't clad in Neiman Marcus, but this won't wash. Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures.

This sort of spending is without precedent -- the closest approximation for any campaign I've ever covered is make-up expenses for television interviews and commercial shoots -- , and Schmitt's weakly defensive response tonight indicates that the campaign is deeply embarrassed by it and has nothing to say in their defense. Spokespeople have clammed up, a sure sign that they're trying to figure out who authorized the expenses and who knew about them.

clipped from dyn.politico.com

“As a Republican Eagle and a maxed-out contributor to McCain’s general campaign, I’d like my money back – he can still have my vote,” complained one irate donor on Wednesday.

“I’m not one who says a candidate shouldn’t wear fine clothes,” he added. “I’d just like to think they were successful enough in the private sector to have afforded their wardrobe with their own money, not the party’s or the campaign’s, which is really our money as contributors.”

But hey, it might not be illegal, although there is a "gray area" involved. For people who talk black-and-white, Republicans sure like to hang out in the gray areas these days.

Palin values family, Alaska pays for them

2008-10-23T07:58:00.001-07:00

I guess "family values" now includes getting the state to pay for your kids' airfare. What boggles my mind is that Palin's supporters will have no problem justifying this, but would be the first in line to denounce employer- or publicly-funded daycare and vacation time.

I guess helping (i.e., with money) people spend more time with their kids only works when those people are Republican politicians.

clipped from news.yahoo.com

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor's schedule.

But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend.

Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children.

Global Warming - Suspected since at least 1958

2008-10-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

This video simply proves that we liberals are so insidious that we've mastered time travel just to make it look like the credible threat of global warming predates the 60s counter-culture. Wooohahahahahahaha!!!

What Wall Street means by "transparency"

2008-10-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

I think what Paulson and his cronies call "transparency" is referred to by the rest of the world as "black Sharpie."

clipped from bailoutsleuth.com

"My fellow prisoners"

2008-10-22T11:18:00.001-07:00

clipped from firstread.msnbc.msn.com

"You and I together will confront the ten trillion dollar debt that the federal government has run up and balance the federal budget by the end of my term in office," McCain began, making his way to pork barrel spending. "Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners and the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."

What?

Palin and Bachmann: Beavis and Butthead

2008-10-22T09:40:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

Michele Bachmann: Deer in the headlights

2008-10-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

Wow. This woman is an absolute f*ckwit. She's a vacuum personified.

I'm willing to bet that IQs across the nation dropped by several points as her vacant cranium siphoned off the energy needed to power her gazing, deer-like orbs. Hopefully she'll have her ass handed to her in the upcoming Congressional elections.

Adventures in electronic voting

2008-10-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

Is this really the best that we can do to ensure that our votes are all recorded correctly?

And to those who say "it's just a coincidence" that the votes switched from Obama to McCain, you folks certainly believe in a hell of a lot of coincidences. The last eight years have been filled with so many coincidences that I'm beginning to suspect that word doesn't mean what we think it means. Perhaps it should be spelled "conspiracy."

But of course it is the voter's fault, according to the County Clerk's office. Most people voted without a problem, he said. But how do you know if you voted without a problem if you don't catch the computer switching the votes?

clipped from www.wvgazette.com

At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win.

Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney, who lives in Kenna.

When she reported the problem, she said, the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

"Why didn't she [the polling clerk] tell me before I even used the machine that might happen? And how many people, especially my age, didn't notice that?

The coming collapse and our lack of a roadmap

2008-10-22T07:50:00.001-07:00

Of course the author of this piece advocates using psychedelics as an adjunct to spiritual practice, and so he can be dismissed out of hand. I wonder what happens, though, when we try to dismiss the grim reality that he notes is unfolding around us.

Mother Nature bats last.

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com

At best, we may have a year or 18 months before the system fails us entirely. After that, money, in its current form, may have no value at all, as basic trust in our institutions evaporates.

If the global financial system goes down, what will have value, and how will value be exchanged? How will we maintain the inextricably complex support systems that sustain billions of human lives in our globalized world?

Put in the simplest terms, then, our global society is going to have to undergo a rapid – almost instant – transition from competitive and possessive behavior to cooperation and sharing if we want our species to survive, let alone thrive, into the future. Considering the ecological crisis of species extinction and climate change and the fragility of our support systems, this change has to happen in an extraordinarily compressed timeframe. What we don’t have yet is a realistic plan of action that gets us from here to there.

"Values" voters and inconsistency

2008-10-22T07:43:00.001-07:00

Alas, I don't think that too many "values" voters have a problem with cognitive dissonance, and so feel no need to have these inconsistencies pointed out (let alone clarified) to be taken seriously.

clipped from www.realitysandwich.com

[T[he typical "values" perspective -- which usually implies some form of cultural conservatism -- has to clear up its inconsistencies if it is to deserve to be taken seriously. What does it mean to be "pro-life" when you are scouring the map for the next country to invade? What does it mean to preen yourself on your Christianity when you show nothing but contempt for Christ's commands to help the poor? What does it mean to sacralize the American flag when you are trampling on the freedoms it stands for?

Pavlovian politics

2008-10-22T07:31:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

[I]t doesn’t require much analysis to understand why John McCain and Sarah Palin resort to buzzwords such as: Ayers, terrorist, Rev. Wright, Socialist. It’s because the issues that most concern voters are the very issues that have been broken by arguably America’s most unready-to-lead President, George Bush. Consequently, rather than being Plan B, their approach is actually Plan A.

And if McCain and Palin win, this approach will become a template for future electioneering. Why go to the expense and trouble of presenting a plan for the future? Why tell voters what you will do in office to make the US and the world a better place? Much easier to degrade and debase the other by using simple words, akin to “sit,” “heel,” “attack.” And watch the voters salivate.

Watch the voters salivate. Indeed. Too many Americans have been reduced to (or were never really more than) well-trained attack dogs who bare their teeth at the mention of certain words (e.g., socialism, liberal, Muslim, etc.) without actually understanding what those words mean.

That said, one thing the author does not mention is that the word "socialism" might not be the curse word for folks of my generation that it is for our predecessors. After all, we came of age when the Berlin Wall was falling and with it communism/socialism. So it was "OK" in college and in life to learn about the vanquished monster; what many of us learned is that socialism isn't worse than capitalism, and that for most of us, it might actually provide a more humane mode of existence.

So I'm interested in seeing how the "Obama is a socialist" meme plays out with the under-40 crowd. I think it might bring in voters, rather than dissuade them.