Monday, 10 January 2011
I'm not gonna talk about the thing everyone is talking about
Jay Ackroyd got turned on by Fishgrease's micro-broadcasting project and decided to get us all to make little statements of what we believe in as liberals, which he and Stuart Zechman introduced on BTR on a VS Saturday episode. You can find that here. (And since I was unable to be online at the time, I was highly entertained when I listened later and heard that gratifying bit at the end.)
Marcy Wheeler, fascinated by Scalia's ruminations on whether the Constitution protects us from discrimination (he says no), suggests he has clearly just killed corporate personhood: "If the Fourteenth Amendment shouldn't be applied to women and gays, then it sure as hell shouldn't be applied to railroads, right?" Ah, but I don't think she really believes that: "Is there something more going on (and I'm sure there are a lot of you out there that will explain this to me)? I'm wondering whether, in anticipation of severely reversing the application of the Fourteenth Amendment (perhaps in anticipation of a gay rights case, perhaps to support conservative efforts to overturn birthright citizenship), Scalia is laying the basis for corporate protections elsewhere? After all, in Citizens United, Scalia very carefully rooted his concurrence in the First Amendment alone, not the Fourteenth. But note how he very carefully takes the opposite approach to the First Amendment that he does with the Fourteenth Amendment: that in spite of the dissent's extensive description of the founding fathers' caution about corporations, so long as they didn't explicitly exclude any speakers, they must be assumed to have included corporations - incorporated associations - in their intent." (Also: "CIA Doesn't Want You To Know It Gave Iran Nuclear Blueprints.")
Bruce Schneier, "Close the Washington Monument [...] The empty monument would symbolize our war on the unexpected, -- our overreaction to anything different or unusual -- our harassment of photographers, and our probing of airline passengers. It would symbolize our "show me your papers" society, rife with ID checks and security cameras. As long as we're willing to sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety, we should keep the Washington Monument empty."
Kucinich: "Due to the new census figures, Ohio will lose two seats in Congress. The Ohio Legislature (Republican) will redraw the map with 16 instead of 18 districts for the 2012 Election. Speculation nationally, and more importantly, in Ohio is that my district may be eliminated, absorbed into parts of other districts. Keep in mind, given the early Ohio primary, the filing deadline could be only a year away."
Ruth notes that Bernanke can't find a reason to do for the states (and therefore the United States) what he did for Wall Street, and bmaz notes a similar problem at the DOJ: "Eric Holder and the DOJ cannot possibly find jurisdiction to charge American contractors who torture and murder people in the course and scope of their employment by the US Government abroad, and cannot charge CIA supervisors and OLC lawyers who patently admit to destruction of evidence and conspiracy to commit war crimes; however, the same DOJ is now suddenly able to be so legally creative as to find a path to charging a person under the Espionage Act who is not a US citizen, owed the US no duty under citizenship and treason provisions, committed no act within the jurisdiction of the US and who is a member within the general definition of 'press' and who only published purported whistleblower leaks given to him. It is amazing how the DOJ is willing to go out on that 'limb' when it wants to, but can never so travel when the interests of justice really demand it to." All via another linky post at Pruning Shears, where I was shocked, shocked, to learn that Cameron's government is "blocking investigation into allegations of UK involvement in torture and rendition" despite their claims that they want to get to the bottom of it.
Marion in Savannah has the op-ed pages covered (so I don't have to).
You know how I love them, but even I was amazed to discover that someone had built a fully functional replica of the Antikythera Mechanism out of Legos.
HEROIC ACTS OF HEROISM BY HEROES!!!!!!!!!!!
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01:01 GMT
Saturday, 08 January 2011
I don't like the way that you talk to me
Bra of the Week, since Ruth was missing it so much.
A little meme to inject into your family dinner conversations: A society decides to do one of two things: to create a system in which people who don't have money can make money, or to create a system that primarily protects the ability of the wealthy and powerful to keep most of the money - and power - to themselves. You really can't have both. Most (but not all) of the Founding Fathers believed in the former. And whether you take the Bible as a religious document or a historical one, it's hard to get past the fact that societies that did the latter had a tendency to either get smote by God or bring on their own destruction. My list of the top ten things to do to avoid getting smote by God includes raising the top marginal rate.
I've always thought Atrios was right to remain anonymous when he started blogging, especially after I found out he was an economics prof at a university - academics being a favorite target of right-wing bloggers, and also of "serious" liberal academics who wanted to differentiate themselves from anyone who wasn't the image of academic perfection. Anyone who doubts that he would have been, as he says, "Dixie Chicked", should give a great deal of thought to the fact that the current target is not just some old Ward Churchill clone, but Jane Mayer after - aha! - she wrote that piece in The New Yorker about the people who fund so many of those "grass roots" right-wing activists and organizations (and, ultimately, bloggers, not to mention the "centrists" and - oh, but I repeat myself): the Koch brothers.
Apparently, Egyptian Muslims are smarter than American Christians, because they are doing something that once would have been regarded as both the Christian thing to do and as American as apple pie: standing up to protect the religious freedom of believers in other faiths. (Also, I wonder how many hours a day Mary Matilan thinks Gibbs works that $172K amounts to "minimum wage". And, you know, it's a bit of a joke for Republicans to be complaining about "job-killing" legislation.)
So, what, is Pelosi saying she's proud of having helped conservatives wreck the country? Great.
Well, there had to be some good news: "Veteran reporter Helen Thomas returns to the press, with little fanfare [...] "...Thomas returned to the media with a scathing indictment of Republican efforts to privatize Social Security. Her new column appeared exclusively in The Falls Church News-Press, a small Virginia publication with a circulation around 30,000."
"Obama urges end to "symbolic battles" in Congress." I'm starting to feel the same way about Obama's utterances as I did about Bush's - he's embarrassing and he should STFU.
Roger Hickey learns that the only "advice" to Obama that The Washington Post publishes is bad advice. Meanwhile, more and more people are pointing out that the GOP does not have Obama and the Dems over a barrel on their deficit bluff (I mean, when even Krauthammer is admitting it , you gotta know), which means he's got less and less cover for his next big giveaway.
WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal secret US Subpoenas: "WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter to secretly hand over details of accounts on the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange." Meanwhile, Sammy did a little WikiLeaks review on Friday's show.
Fairy Tales of the Coming State of the Union: We Can Only Raise Money By Taxing or Borrowing: "I've already examined the fairy tale that the Government of the United States can involuntarily run out of money, or is in the process of involuntarily running out of money. This post examines the second fairy tale in the narrative, namely the idea that the Government can only raise money to spend by either taxing or borrowing. How many times have we heard that the Government can only get US Dollars to spend by either taxing or borrowing?" Of course, as Atrios keeps reminding us, the mechanism for solving these problems has existed in the US since its inception: print money and pay people to do things that need doing. That means jobs are created, things get done, people have money to spend, and that's what creates private sector jobs.
Johan Green says There But for Fortune is "A Moving Tribute To A Complicated Singer". And includes the rather nice trailer.
Time Lord incest, or the Doctor and the Doctor's daughter. Or The Doctor's Daughter.
Everclear, "Hater"
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22:55 GMT
Thursday, 06 January 2011
Epiphany
Sammy's been hitting 'em out of the park on Majority Report this week. Sunday on VSS I was saying that while the Village narrative is that the Republicans are holding the debt ceiling hostage, the fact is that the Corporatocracy doesn't want the US to default and it's not terribly likely they'll let that happen, so it's really "the left" that has the hostage and "we" could simply refuse to give the Republicans what they want. But it looks pretty clear that the plan is for everyone, including - well, especially - the Democratic leadership, to pretend that the GOP has them over a barrel and they have no choice but to give the Republicans everything they want (i.e., wreck what's left of the economy) in order to get them to "let" us raise the debt ceiling. Sammy really got his teeth into that very same idea on Monday's show, and on Tuesday he went to town on another of my favorite topics taxing the rich. Wednesday he talked to Digby.
Did you notice that we just had another Saturday Night Massacre? Once upon a time, that sort of thing earned a banner headline in the Washington Post. Of course, the press no longer worries about such things.
You know all those Canadians who are supposedly racing across the border to get the benefits of US health care? Just Phantoms in the Snow. (via) Also: David Horsey's 40 Favorite Cartoons. Hm, actually, I found a bunch of good stuff at this place, I can't even link it all, go look.
"If you look under your seat, you'll see you're not getting anything."
Is it really not unusual for all these things to be happening at once?
Mr. Skelton Regrets the recall of Gray Davis. Well, of course it didn't improve California's situation - in fact, Davis had to go because he was actually trying to get back for California what had been stolen from it.
Ian Welsh says, "Centrists don't want to do the right thing," and also that Stuart Zechman has fallen into the "they're not evil" trap. (But I would add, Ian, that it's not merely making money that motivates these people. They're from the Chicago School, and in the Chicago School, it is understood that there is a point at which making money for the sake of mere material profit is irrelevant. Once you've got a hundred million bucks or so, there's not all that much more you can buy with it - you can already afford to buy the government by then, anyway. No. They aren't stealing your money just because they want to have more money; they are stealing your money to steal your money, because money is power and though they already have plenty, they want to make sure that you have none.)
A "shrewd insight" from Mitch McConnel: "We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals. Because we thought - correctly, I think - that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the 'bipartisan' tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there's a broad agreement that that's the way forward." And McConnel is right - but Yglesias is wrong about what is possible. The Democrats didn't have so much trouble because the Republicans opposed them. They had "trouble" because they were trying to hide the fact that they wanted the Republicans to succeed. (Via yet another very linky post at Progressive Blog Digest.)
The Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2010 doesn't include anything from me this year because I was too lazy to browbeat my commenters into telling me if I did any posts worth remembering.
Neat Christmas snow pic
Ooh, I just got my first Darwin coin!
Cave cities
It's either Christmas or the last day of Christmas, depending on your point of view, and after tonight you won't have to put up with any more of my Christmas trees for a while.
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13:42 GMT
Tuesday, 04 January 2011
Assorted stuff
I forgot to mention beforehand that this week's Virtually Speaking Sundays featured Avedon Carol and Chris Kendrick, with nyceve joining us about halfway through (podcast).
I'm also looking forward to some upcoming events in the Virtually Speaking schedules - such as Susie Madrak's own BTR show starting tonight (er, that's Monday night in the US), Virtually Speaking Susie with Will Bunch (Which is too late for me to stay up for, so I'll have to listen to the stream later). And the next VSS (on the 9th) will feature Digby and Glenn Greenwald.
If five people write to a newspaper and say, for example, that the only crisis facing Social Security is the politicians who want to mess around with it, the paper will claim it is legitimate to ignore those letters on the grounds that it must be a "campaign" that has been "organized" by some liberal group (or blog). But if five people write in to that same newspaper and say some insanely crackpot right-wing thing, they behave like it's some sort of grassroots movement. Grassroots my ass.
Nice little catch from Tristero: "Scandalous as it may sound to the ears of Republicans schooled in Reaganomics, one critical measure of the health of a modern democracy is its ability to legitimately extract taxes from its own elites. The most dysfunctional societies in the developing world are those whose elites succeed either in legally exempting themselves from taxation, or in taking advantage of lax enforcement to evade them, thereby shifting the burden of public expenditure onto the rest of society." And yes, I am amazed by the source.
Yes, Virginia, there is a war on public service.
Never forget that Fox News is the organization that went to court to defend their right to lie to the public. This stuff is just cheesecloth over a bed of sandpaper.
Ettlin on trial - in Parking Court, with a an unofficial jury making the calls.
A really big, really cool cave.
"What I Did In My Christmas Holidays" was originally written as a short story for the 2006 Doctor Who annual, but re-written and re-purposed later for the highly-praised broadcast episode "Blink".
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03:03 GMT
Saturday, 01 January 2011
Happy new year
Robert Parry on The Coming War over the Constitution:
Indeed, the Tea Party crowd so loves the Constitution that the new Republican House majority will take the apparently unprecedented step of reading the document aloud at the start of the new congressional session, presumably including the part about enslaved African-Americans being counted as three-fifths of a white person for purposes of congressional representation.One also has to wonder if these "constitutionalists" will mumble over the preamble's assertion that a key purpose of the Constitution is to "promote the general Welfare." And what to do with Section Eight of Article One, which gives Congress the power to levy taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce among the states, and "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization"?
Of course, the right-wing always tries to pretend that "the general welfare" is just a restatement of "the common defense", which would be correct if they didn't think all "the common defense" means is taking up arms against foreign governments who we are told "threaten our way of life" in some way. But it would be worthwhile to examine that assumption more fully - what, exactly, do we mean by "threaten our way of life"? What way of life? What is supposed to be different about the American way of life that our Founding Fathers (who predate right-wingers' alleged concerns about such modern threats as communism and the imposition of Sharia Law in Oklahoma), thought needed defending? It hardly matters if the rich and powerful people who suck the blood out of your nation's economy and oppress the common people are foreign-born or native-born, does it? Of course, what was special about America was that government's purpose actually was supposed to be to provide for the common welfare. What was unique about it was separation of church and state. Neither of these things are of any interest whatsoever to the right-wing.* * * * *Google wishes you a happy new year.
Good news! Most Americans are smarter than the Villagers!
Pruning Shears: "While it's satisfying to settle on a single culprit for the continuing abomination of Guantánamo, the president of the moment (Bush or Obama) doesn't bear all the blame. Congress has been rubber stamping the continuation of the gulag of our time for years now. Their contribution to the evil should not be forgotten. That said, Obama has been an unconditional failure (via) in civil liberties and human rights with respect to the WAR ON TERROR!!! His work in bringing about the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) was impressive - and a real, substantial advance for civil liberties - but that doesn't overshadow the unstinting energy and diligence he has applied towards inflicting subhuman treatment on those he wishes to peremptorily declare enemies of the state."
Revolving doors - Generals get in on the act.
Diane went after an annoying op-ed in the LAT by Hacker and Marovits pretending that charity can help offset tax cuts for the rich. Charity may be vital in a number of circumstances, but only because the suppers that should be there aren't there, and they aren't there because we don't tax the rich heavily enough. The rich give more when they are most heavily taxed. Reduce their taxes and you reduce what's available through charity. The rest of us can't pick up their slack, since we're paying for all those freeloading rich people already.
In France, an essay - a call to arms - by a 93-year-old hero of the Resistance tops the best-seller list: "Hessel's book argues that French people should re-embrace the values of the French resistance, which have been lost, which was driven by indignation, and French people need to get outraged again. 'This is an appeal to citizens, young and old, to take responsibility for the things in our society that don't work,' he said. 'I wish every one of you to find your own reason for indignation. It's precious.' Hessel's reasons for personal outrage include the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, France's shocking treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-establish a free press, protecting the environment, the plight of Palestinians and the importance of protecting the French welfare system. He calls for peaceful and non-violent insurrection."
I gotta say it was refreshing watching Sam Seder on Countdown, where he had guests you don't see much on TV, like Thom Hartmann. And you can see more of Thom here.
Top Ten Nixon Quotes of 2010 "3. Nixon ordered staff members to get Bill Moyers's new show on PBS off the air: 'It must not appear that you're trying to affect the network's news content. That's what you must do, but you must not appear to be doing that. That would be stupid.'"
Gosh, I hadn't noticed that Toles had turned into a blog - complete with commentary to accompany his cartoons. I particularly liked this one on the economy.
Polar Bears 'Playing' with Spy Video Cameras (and you may recognize the voice of the narrator).
Boop!
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17:15 GMT
Thursday, 30 December 2010
What happened to that funny face?
As you may recall, I'm not done with Christmas yet, since of course it's not really Christmas until January 6th. And I like to keep as much of the child-like wonder in it as I can, but you know it's bitter-sweet, because we're not children, and we know that next year our troubles won't be "out of sight". Garland's performance of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" seems, to me, to capture that sense of hope tempered by knowing in a way most seasonal songs do not, but I was still surprised to learn that the pollyanna-ish opening lines were changed by the composer at her request because she thought them too depressing.
Did you know you can get a whole can of Whoopie in Tom the Dancing Bug's Christmas Super-Fun-Pack? (Also: Some nice pics from the Harben Ice and Snow Festival.)
I'm still trying to take a holiday from reality, but Atrios flagged a story today that made me seethe, about Bank of America's steal your house program: "The largest bank in the United States earlier this month notified Shock Baitch and his wife Lisa (Friedman) Baitch that foreclosure action will start today - Christmas eve - unless the couple agrees to put their home up for a forced sale. Why? Because another unit of Bank of America erroneously reported to credit agencies that the family was seeking a loan modification, ruining their credit rating and as the result putting their mortgage into default." I still find it stunning that this process seems to be automatic - that on any or no pretext, your (even nonexistent) request to know about loan modification gets reported to credit agencies, and even though you are not in default yet and may never be, your credit rating is ruined and then your mortgage is in default. Surely non-payment should be the only thing that could put you into default. How can anything else precede that?
Chris Hedges, "2011: A Brave New Dystopia [...] Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse." Also, Bob McChesney's interview with Hedges. (And a reprise of McChesney's interview with the late Chalmers Johnson.)
The principle cause of malpractice suits is malpractice, plus the fact that no one wants to pay thousands of dollars to be malpracticed on.
Sam Seder is sitting in for Olbermann on Countdown this week (27-30 December. You can watch here.
Little did I know that Ernestine had left her job at the phone company to work for someone else who doesn't care, because they don't have to, either.
Still looking for a way to express the spirit of giving? You could do some good by contributing to Bradley Manning's defense.
Some non-traditional Christmas, courtesy of PZ Myers and Tim Minchin.
Have a Doctor Who promo for BBC America. (Meanwhile, Wikipedia has a little Marilyn and the Doctor trouble.)
Skiffy trailers for Falling Skies, and, well, this one is just for a Transformers movie, but it's still a cool trailer.
I'd like to ask a little favor of commenters, even though I know Echo goes out of its way to make it difficult: Put the link to your blog at the end of your posts. I could click 'em automatically back in the good-old Haloscan days (I used to laugh when people complained that "Haloscan sucks" - oh, you naive things, didn't you realize how much worse it could get? Well, now you do!), but Echo wants me to know as little as it can manage, so please do what you can to repair the broken circuit.
Oh, yeah, it's my birthday again. I can't believe how long I've been doing this.
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15:11 GMT
Saturday, 25 December 2010
Merry Christmas
In celebration of Chuch Harris' Birthday, here's Lonconfidential, complete with scans of Atom's original illos - and Chuch's own version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas".
The last few years when I've tried to find a good version of Mel Tormé singing "The Christmas Song", I've washed out, not sure why, but this year I found this one - not only gorgeous, but somewhat amazing given that he was somewhat older when he did it and yet his vocal control is simply - well, it's absolute Velvet Fog. Of course, what started me on the quest to find this was that traditional link to Mark Evanier's lovely Christmas story about Mel Tormé, which still makes me smile. And, well, to be honest, it gets my eyes a bit wet.
And the other traditional Christmas links:
The lyrics to Tom Robinson's song about the 1914 Christmas Truce, and the truces we make every year at this time. At my request, Tom has posted the .mp3, too.
And The Daily Brew's post of the letter about the truce from someone who was there.
From Jo Walton, The Hopes and Fears of All the Years.
An excellent Christmas Card from Joshua Held, Irving Berlin, and the Drifters - or a live version done in Christmas lights!
And I just like this.
Ron Tiner's one-page cartoon version of A Christmas Carol from an ancient Xmas edition of Ansible.
And a bit of Marley's speech:
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
[...]
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?""I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"
[...]
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
I wish you all the best, today, and for the time to come. |
14:46 GMT
Friday, 24 December 2010
Dodging the Grinch
And now it's time for Brian Brink's wonderful tour-de-force performance of "The Carol of the Bells"!
Huzzah! A good version of the Mel Tormé and Judy Garland performance of "The Christmas Song" is up on YouTube! I don't know why I couldn't find it last time. And a more recent solo by Mel, with a brief explanation of how the song got written, too.
Pat Robertson Wants to Decriminalize Pot, and thus marches way out to the left of the Democratic leadership.
Luckily for you, I didn't find much news since I'm busy having Christmas, but here's a few:
WTF: "The CIA has launched a taskforce to assess the impact of 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables. Its name? WikiLeaks Task Force, or WTF for short."
Obama to Issue Indefinite Detention Orders We Can Believe In.
Dennis Kucinich says he won't primary Obama. Actually, I think I've come to the conclusion that if anyone from the left primaries Obama, they should be someone genuinely out of left field (a commie?), and they should be black. Someone needs to remind people what "the left" actually is, and nobody white better be going after The First Black President. (Also: Further evidence that nothing looks more stupid than men displaying or admiring testosterone.)
Al Franken didn't think much of the fake Net Neutrality rule, and Eli wasn't much convinced by their totally convincing explanation. (There's nothing "open" about Android. What are they even talking about? And that has nothing to do with net neutrality, anyway. In the US, the carriers pretty much have monopolies in many areas, and what phone you use is irrelevant to whether your carrier is blocking or overcharging you to reach certain content.)
Having worked at any number of businesses in my life, I never put much stock in the insistence that somehow government would be more efficient and somehow better if it "worked like a business". My experiences was that businesses are often full of stupid, inefficient crap that, as we have seen, no government should be able to get away with. But I'm thinking it's time to start asking people to go back over the question of what a good idea it is to have government work like a business. Most of these guys can't even add.
The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas
A Christmas card for you.
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16:25 GMT
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Baby, it's cold outside
Every year I post a link to this excellent Christmas Card from Joshua Held, Irving Berlin, and the Drifters - and every year I have to go dig up a fresh link for it because the old one has died. This year when I found it again, I also found that it had so inspired one person that they put it out for real in Christmas lights!
This Christmas, some of our friends could use your help.
Sammy talked about the demise of net neutrality on yesterday's show.
For 98% of the country, "uncertainty" about jobs, a roof over their heads, food on the table and a future doesn't matter, but when it comes to rich people, well, God forbid they should have to be uncertain of whether they will be listed in the Fortune 500 next year.
Suburban Guerrilla: "Yeah, I guess the SEC regulators are right - we 'wouldn't understand' and we'd just take this information 'out of context,' wondering why no bankers have been indicted." Plus, the Quote of the day from Stephen Colbert: "If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it."
Apparently the "Christian" right has discovered that Christianity is unAmerican.
But who knows, maybe the banks will have to answer for their sins after all. That would be a nice change. (via)
Palast Arrested by BP in Azerbaijan.
Veterans Want YOU for Civil Resistance!
Thanks for the kind words at the end of your musings about politics, Spacecrab.
I am doomed: "The Loop Current which gives Britain a moderate climate has stopped, says a noted scientist with years of experience in analyzing it. If so, the ramifications are staggering. The current weather in Britain is the coldest in 100 years. Is this a one-time anomaly or a precursor of things to come?"
I'm told this is a good video of the Solstice morning solar eclipse, but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.
Freezing water in Lake Erie creates "a rather unusual work of art".
A bunch of pictures, two of which are so cute that even I went, "Awwwww, kitten!" (Not to mention the photo of the Golden Girls playing Dungeons & Dragons with Wil Wheaton - framed in bacon!)
I just finished Unseen Academicals, and I liked it a lot. It's not at all like that other school for wizards and their local sport.
I think they fell down a bit on the harmony in this arrangement, but it's still a fine performance.
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16:35 GMT
Monday, 20 December 2010
Facing a dying nation
I was distracted by the snow. I can't help it, it feels like Christmas every time I look outside.
Gays in the Military, 1779; the love letters of Alexander Hamilton. Also, a note of appreciation from the rich.
"Hi-tech terrorist"? Is that like "Hi-tech lynching"? I will admit there has been some good news: Repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell finally passed, and so did the Local Community Radio Act. The former will get all the attention but the latter may have the most positive impact if we take advantage of it fast. Grabbing a spot on the airwaves is something that could really make a difference. Susie talked about these and other things with Digby on Virtually Speaking Sunday
Chris Floyd: "Tonight Bradley Manning is being tortured and destroyed in a prison cell because he has been accused of trying to tell the truth about war that all so-called enlightened people know: it is brutalizing, senseless, futile and cruel. He is also being tortured in the hope that he can be used as an instrument to stop Julian Assange from telling the truth about war and the corruptions of power that all so-called enlightened people claim to know." Also, Obama's highway to hell in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
John Cole: "There is absolutely no reason for this whatsoever, other than the fact that the United States has morphed into a brutal and repressive regime that is terrified of dissent. The only difference between this treatment and what we imagine third world nations do is that we have cleaner and more modern facilities." Eric Martin: "The treatment of Bradley Manning is microcosmic of a broader trend that does not speak well for the degree of civilization in our society. And yet we continue to lecture the world as if we were somehow exceptional."
The Poor Man: "So I got to thinking: Maybe we shouldn't take foreign policy cues from Saudi elites. [...] "I do wonder how the Arab world could have come up with the crazy idea that the United States would ever be willing to act as the outsized proxy of much smaller Middle East powers, like some ferocious dog being wagged by its tail. I mean, really."
Ian Welsh on The Kabuki Congress and Presidency, and on sending a message in The Torture Culture.
Down With Tyranny! "The Obama Administration definitely sees passage of the job-killing/Social Security-harming tax break for billionaires as a way station on the path to Obama's reelection. They're very much in tune with right-wing polemicist Charles Krauthammer, who has convinced himself that by turning sharply right and repeatedly spitting on the base that elected him in 2008, Obama is headed for a win in 2012." Is it possible that Obama is actually stupid enough to believe the things he says?
Two from Cloggie: "Dylan Horrocks: better to be pirated than to be forgotten," and "Wikileaks saved Afghan asylum seekers from deportation."
From The Raw Story:
Republicans vote for child rape.
"Hello! Welcome to the Progressive Internet Forum!" I loved this one. (Thanks for the tip, Ruth!)
Tom Tomorrow fights the War on Christmas.
Doctor Who Meets Star Wars, and wishes you a merry little Christmas..
"The Flesh Failures"
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14:43 GMT
Friday, 17 December 2010
Short take
My garden is all white again and it was snowing when I sat down here, but now the sun is out. Oh, well.
Jay Ackroyd: "Suppose you're in good standing on your Jumbo mortgage. But you get to wondering whether your title is secure, and so you use the SEIU's "Where's The Note?" page. You may find your credit score lowered." This is one of the things that really scares me about the information age. Used to be, if you wanted information that wasn't in your paper this morning or in your household encyclopedia, you had to go to the library, and librarians would not tell the FBI what books you were reading - for good reason. The internet tells everyone. Well, it's not the thing that worries me. I'm worried all the way around. And as far as the things I love about the internet, well, they're taking care of that. Even my best friends think I'm being a crank when I make remarks about how I'm going to miss the internet when it's gone, but this is no joke.
The Guardian interviewed Bill Keller and was somewhat horrified by Mr. Newspaper of Record's statement (I would have said "admission", but he wasn't admitting, he was kinda bragging) that they let the government vet their material before it appears in the NYT.
Just in case you forgot this little detail about the WikiLeaks material: "More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes."
"Why is Marijuana Illegal? [...] Racism; Fear; Protection of Corporate Profits; Yellow Journalism; Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators; Personal Career Advancement and Greed " (Actually, he left out the fact that Anslinger was also a member of the Mellon family, one of a small group of distillery owners who had just engineered prohibition of alcohol in order to corner the market.)
Maybe I'll post more often if I stop thinking I have to just look at five more blogs first.
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15:30 GMT
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Next week we've got to get organized
I was actually too distracted to research all the Advent calendars, but if you're in the mood for one, try this, or this. or this,
American Extremists
I'm embarrassed to say that I overlooked posting this one at the time, but Jay actually managed to get James Fallows and Jay Rosen together on Virtually Speaking last Thursday, and you can stream it at that link or grab the podcast. (You might also like to get the podcast for Athenae's visit with Watertiger, with a surprise appearance from Susie Madrak.)
Moody's says the United States's credit rating might just get downgraded. Charles says, "Schedule the IMF riot for April."
I'm always a bit worried about people who define "the" problem, because I think there are several problems, not least of which is media consolidation. Campaign finance is a problem, but perhaps less crucial than many people think, because it hardly matters what advertising the candidates' campaigns pay for when they have the whole media behind them giving them and their ideas free promotion all year long. Create a situation where it is impossible for the respective campaigns of the candidates or their parties to spend unequal amounts on the official campaign and you automatically advantage the more conservative candidates who are backed by the corporations that own the big media outlets. Moreover, it's not the campaign money that really buys the candidates (many of the most bought-and-paid-for officials got at least as much from ordinary small contributors as they did from corporations), but rather the prospect of the kind of jobs they will be getting once they retire from elective office - big bucks for little or no work paid by those huge corporations who have found a much more efficient way to bribe them to serve the masters while still in office. (The beauty of this method is that since the bribes don't appear as cash-in-hand at the point of sale, they aren't officially bribing public officials. There's no money trail to embarrass the officials while they are still in office, so there's no worry about being busted for bribery. And afterwards, well, hey, it's just that the officials happen to find cushy jobs with them after they retire, you see.) The real problem is that there is just too much concentration of money at the top, and we used to prevent that by taxing the hell out of the rich. So it may be reasonable to argue that "Tax Pandering is the Problem." (Also: A judge declared the Health Insurance Subsidy Bill unconstitutional. I'm pleased to see that Atrios doesn't think that's completely insane. I actually don't really mind if the individual mandate goes down in flames, since it's actually lousy policy that could have been avoided by, well, having a real health care option.)
It's not just that Obama gave the Republicans so much more than he got back for the rest of us that really ticks me off, it's that he even gave them more than they asked for. (via)
Sam Seder at Huffington Post, "I don't trust Obama with my retirement insurance, do you? [...] What's truly stunning, and should be terrifying to the 85% of Americans who oppose Social Security cuts, is who believes that 'most of our long term debt and deficit has to do with Social Security.'" Well, he says he believes it, but I think he's just a liar, and I suspect that Sammy does, too.
Disgustingly, CREW actually joined the Insider Attack Squad against WikiLeaks. CREW, for chrissakes! So Glenn Greenwald resigned from their board in protest, and they actually whined about his having failed to keep his disagreements with them in-house. Like NARAL with their steadfast support for Lieberman and so many other nominally liberal/progressive established groups, CREW has turned out to be yet another weapon that's been turned against us. Where do we go from here? (Sam Seder devoted both Monday's and Tuesday's shows to interviewing Glenn on this subject.)
Stuart Zechman thinks it's time Michael Scherer learned that Larry Summers is an architect of financial disaster, and not so much of a liberal.
From Suburban Guerrilla:
- Bernie Sanders tells the truth to Tavis Smiley.
- "Are you aware the anti-terrorist squad are looking at your Facebook account?" A schoolboy in David Cameron's district is organizing a protest of cuts, and he gets a talking-to from, well, terrorists.
- * On the Overton Window, from BTD at TalkLeft: "But think about this - Barack Obama won a landslide in 2008 had historic Democratic majorities in Congress, indeed a much more progressive Congress than Bill Clinton ever had, and he can not even restore the Clinton tax policy. Instead President Obama is continuing the tax policy of a President who was as repudiated as any since Nixon. This failure is the signature moment of the Obama Presidency so far. Unless he can reverse that in 2012, I certainly will consider the Obama Presidency a failed Presidency. YMMV." (Depends how you define "success".)
- * Nobody knows how many thousands of people may be unable to get jobs because of bad data from background checks.
- Saying goodbye to Elizabeth Edwards, Fred Phelps' way. (Really? Anderson Cooper didn't know what "bailiwick" meant?)
- And, of course, one of my favorites, getting more appropriate every year.
Riverdaughter on Planes, Trains and the Obama-McConnell deal
I'm delighted to know that Republicans have finally told us what are "wasteful earmarks. I mean, like, food safety. Wouldn't want a couple of hundred thousand dollars wasted on that!
The Pirate Bay is trying to find a way to make sure there's still an internet when the bad guys take over and destroy the one we have now. Except, well, no one is quite sure how.
I move that we replace Chris Matthews with this woman. (May not be work-safe.)
The entire atheist hymnal, provided as a musical interlude to this guide to the Christian code for C&E; (Christmas and Easter) Christians.
Ruth Calvo keeps complaining about the lack of lingerie, but I'm just in a Christmas tree mood, and anyway, I have to say I've been disappointed with a lot of what Figleaves is promoting lately (and how they're doing it. What happened to their old photographer, anyway?), but maybe she'll like this one.
Luridly pink
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15:20 GMT
Monday, 13 December 2010
And the pattern never alters until the rat dies
Watertiger and Athenae will be tonight's guests on Virtually Speaking at 5:00 PM Pacific, 8:00 PM EST.
Andy Kroll, "The New American Oligarchy: Creating a Country of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Rich."
Amazingly, there is a post at DKos called, "President Obama is neither weak nor stupid... nor a progressive." And he doesn't appear to have been banned yet. "The Obama Paradox presumes that the president is a liberal or a progressive, and that he is ceding his principles based on faulty strategies or a disinclination to face confrontation. Many of the president's more ardent supporters also buy into this presumption, but rather than accept that the buck stops in the Oval Office, they concoct a series of ever more ridiculous rationalizations. It's always someone else's fault, and the blame usually falls on Congress, particularly the Republicans, the Conservadems, and the Blue Dogs. But it's time to consider the possibility that the problem lies with the presumption underlying all these questions and explanations. It's time to consider that the president accepts centrist and conservative policies because he himself is a centrist or conservative."
"Justice Department Prepares for Ominous Expansion of "Anti-Terrorism" Law Targeting Activists: Seizing on this overbroad definition of "material support," the US government is now moving in on political groups and activists who are clearly exercising fundamental First Amendment rights by vocally opposing the government's branding of foreign liberation movements as terrorist and supporting their struggles against US-backed repressive regimes and illegal occupations."
James Fallows on the recent move from the Obama administration of Peter Orszag to CitiBank: "When we notice similar patterns in other countries -- for instance, how many offspring and in-laws of senior Chinese Communist officials have become very, very rich -- we are quick to draw conclusions about structural injustices. Americans may not 'notice' Orszag-like migrations, in the sense of devoting big news coverage to them. But these stories pile up in the background to create a broad American sense that politics is rigged, and opportunity too. Why do we wince a little bit when we now hear 'Change you can believe in?' This is an illustration."
Mercury Rising: "But it's actually worse than that. If a state defaults, interest rates for everything go up. Higher interest rates will impact states that are not in deficit, will make houses harder to sell, and will cause corporations to lay off even more people, meaning more unemployment. If you read the comments at Krasting's site, you'll realize that the end game of the right is destroying the United States. There are people who think that the only way forward is to force the states and eventually the federal government into bankruptcy. This is a recipe for disaster, concocted by the party that brought you the Great Depression, doubtless licking its chops at the prospect of blaming a Democratic president for creating the Second Great Depression."
One of the two movies Marcy Kaptur recommends all Americans should see is Inside Job. The other is Capitalism: A Love Story.
Jim Morin on poker, and Mark Fiore in the Dojo of Democracy.
More strangeness in the WikiLeaks case as an accuser disappears, allegedly to the Middle-East, and is reported not to be cooperating any longer with the authorities,, and Assange continues to be held without charges.
ProtestObama.org
Bacon Nativity Scene
An interview with Nathan Fillion
Jay reminded me that for some time now I have been meaning and forgetting to read the late Janet Kagan's seasonal short story, "The Nutcracker Coup". That was a gift.
Simon & Garfunkel
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00:45 GMT
Saturday, 11 December 2010
When the truth is found to be lies
Who will tame the giant vampire squid?
Not Obama. Atrios flagged a CJR story on how the press - even the NYT - has been running some sharp material blowing apart the Obama administration's PR in which they falsely claim to have a new operation in progress that has produced a sweep of arrests and convictions for financial fraud. Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil: "The statistics looked squirrely on their face. Some of these cases began years ago, long before the multiagency task force was formed. It's obvious what the prosecutors did here, too. First they tracked down every small-fry Ponzi scheme, affinity fraud and penny-stock pump-and-dump they could find that had advanced through the courts since mid-August. Then they totaled them up and called it a sweep, lumping together cases that had nothing to do with each other." Of course, none of the people whose fraud actually caused the financial crisis have been called to answer for their crimes.
Why the Obama tax deal with Republicans is insane "In order to get as much of society's financial resources into the hands of the rich - the people in the private sector who supposedly would do a better job investing it - Reagan, the Republican Party, and American conservatives in general developed a simple-minded faith in tax cuts, especially in reducing taxes on the highest incomes. What are the results of this thirty year experiment [in low taxes for the rich]? The Reagan / Republican / conservative theory DOES NOT WORK. For the first time in American history, we now have a generation that has less education and worse economic prospects than their parents did thirty years ago. [...] In fact, there have been three grand multi-year national experiments with Republican / Conservative tax cutting over the past century. And all three experiments resulted in the average American becoming poorer, the real (industrial) economy in tatters, and spectacular financial crashes." Tony Wikrent explains how it works.
Bernie Sanders filibusters, even though technically it isn't a filibuster, but at least he's explaining why nobody wants the Obama tax-shift plan.
You remember this creep from his recent tenure in the Obama administration? Digby reminds you why we hate him: "Peter Orszag really has it in for the social security program. We already know that he's selling the ridiculous idea that if the Democrats agree to cut social security they will be rewarded for doing it. Now he's introducing the new image of the "disability queen" to weaken the program even more." Right-wing conservatives always revive these creepy tropes in the service of the continuing destruction of our country. Nothing has changed. They can call themselves "centrists" or "moderates" or "pragmatic" or "serious" or "responsible", but it's been the same damn thing since the founding of the nation and it is not going to change. The only questions we might have are whether people like Obama are actual Tories or just useful idiots, but whatever they are, they are not on our side. (Last try.)
Must See TV: Wendell Potter's confession that he was paid to run a fake "independent" campaign to smear Michael Moore and Sicko netted a face-to-face on Countdown between Potter and Moore.
Sam Seder hosted Countdown earlier this week and, in examining Petulant Obama's funky new deficit expansion plan, got Sam Stein to say that Mr. Hopeychangey is going to have trouble getting Democrats to trust him two years from now. (And a report on Assange that features a brief look at his lawyer, my old pal from anti-censorship debates.) Seder also noted that the Tea Party asked Sarah Palin to be the party chair - a job that would prevent her from running for president. So, who, exactly, wants her to run?
Mysteriously, Diane found that Blogspot wouldn't publish her post until she turned it into .gifs so it couldn't read the words.
Ian Welsh on Wikileaks And The End of the Open Internet: "Let's just state the obvious here: we're seeing the end of the open internet with what is being done to Wikileaks. It's one thing for Amazon to toss them, it's another thing entirely to refuse to propagate their domain information. [...] When the only way to get your product to market is an unregulated monopoly or oligopoly they will take it all. The result isn't just unprofitable businesses, it's failed businesses and businesses that never get off the ground, because they can't afford to pay the freight, or more accurately, the vig. Oligopolies in between producers and consumers always strangle the economy. Always. And, on top of p0litical repression of free speech, that's what's coming to the internet near you. The essentially free and open internet is dying and it will soon be dead."
Herbert on class war: "Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time."
The Great MERS Whitewash: Rep. Kaptur with MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan - and she recommends some movies everyone should see in order to get a sense of what's going on.
Greenwald re Assange
Tom Tomorrow on the amazing adventures of MiddleMan.
On the streets of London, a new generation of students learns that they will have to answer the question,"Which side are you on?" It's amazing how articulate 15-year-olds can be once you give them a righteous cause.
Don't be fooled - the new estate tax cut will not be stimulative, and is worse than under Bush.
An Irishman explains what's going on.
More on 4Chan/Anonymous.
If enough people knew about this, you could probably get all sorts of people to join a boycott of Heinz.
The Muppets perform "The Carol of the Bells". (And here's a prettier version by George Winston, with prettier pictures, too - great shots of snow, ice, and of course, bells.)
Jefferson Airplane, Monterey Pop
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22:56 GMT
Thursday, 09 December 2010
Just another week in America
Sammy's Wednesday show featured laughs and tears and is worth listening to for a solid explanation of what's going on. It started off with what may qualify either as comic relief or something that might make the "religious" right useful: "US politician: 'homosexual agenda' behind TSA groin grope: The next TSA official that gives you an 'enhanced pat down' could be a practicing homosexual secretly getting pleasure from your submission,' Loudoun County, Virginia, supervisor Eugene Delgaudio wrote in an email to his followers in the conservative organization Public Advocate, of which he is president."
But it wasn't very funny after that, especially the part about how one of the things Obama is giving the Republicans (not to mention strangling Social Security! And making people who make less than $20K a year pay for keeping rich people richer than God!), is not extending Build America Bonds, which will result in (a) states going bankrupt and (b) thereby breaking their union contracts - part of a plan that was already spelled out quite a while ago by the "centrist" right-wing.
And then there is listening to Obama whine and moan about how the mean old left just doesn't appreciate the classy way he passed Republican policies for us and keeps leaving us up the creek without a paddle
It's not that "the left" doesn't praise your policies, it's that you keep passing policies nobody likes. You're all lies and no fight. (Isn't it amazing how he can never push things any farther left than way out to the far right?). We would have loved it if you'd at least compromised on health care, Mr. Petulant, but you didn't - you just gave the store away, and now you want to give away the rest of the block - and then dismiss objections to destroying the lives of 98% of the country as a fight for "an abstract ideal". It's not an "abstract ideal", you little creep, it's our country and our families and our lives. It's food on our tables and a home to live in and getting the heat up above freezing in the winter and preventing your children from dying unnecessary deaths. It's honest work for honest pay versus begging and bowing and slavery. A roof over your head and food in your belly are not "an abstract ideal", you putz. Don't ask me to thank you.
* * * * *"Finally, the reaction of governments to these leaks should scare the hell out of you. The seemingly inevitable arrest (via Reddit) of Julian Assange by British authorities on Swedish sexual assault charges as encouraged by the American government likely represents a 21st century remix of the classic honeypot, and the willingness to use it on such a high profile individual should be worrisome irrespective of the veracity of the charges."
Ellsberg: "EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time." [...] "The media: again, the media is key. No one has said it better than Monsenor Romero of El Salvador, who just before he was assassinated 25 years ago warned, 'The corruption of the press is part of our sad reality, and it reveals the complicity of the oligarchy.' Sadly, that is also true of the media situation in America today."
The whole WikiLeaks thing is really about more than just a few impolite musings by and about diplomats - it's actually important to exposing the connections between the people who run the world. Susie Madrak said some interesting things about it Thursday on Virtually Speaking (.mp3 podcast). (And while you're there, check out the session with Marcy Wheeler and Stuart Zechman from Virtually Speaking Sundays (podcast).)
Digby: "I don't know why Wikileaks would be guilty of espionage but all other newspapers which have possession of all 260,000 documents aren't. Not to mention all the "bad citizens" all over the country and the world which have published them and written about them. Wikileaks didn't "leak" the documents --- they published them on the internet in conjunction with these other newspapers, which also published them. The "leakers" are those who leaked the documents to Wikileaks and its partners. It's no different than the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers (and 15 other papers re-publishing in solidarity.) Ellsberg was the leaker and was tried in a separate case --- the paper was the publisher."
4Chan's Anonymous goes after bad guys (like MasterCard and PayPal) who have been trying to freeze out WikiLeaks. Anonymous' previous victims have included the RIAA, another arm of the devil.
There is something delicious about the fact that Matt Taibbi has gone after one of my favorite targets, the revolting Matt Bai: "Here's what this all comes down to, dogma or no dogma: who is going to pay for a) the Bush tax cuts b) the bank bailouts and c) the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? If you want to get there by making janitors and pipe-fitters wait until they're 69 to retire, raise your hand. If you want to get there by making Jamie Dimon rent out his 900-foot rooftop terrace in Chicago two nights a year, raise your hand."
Fareed Zakaria interviews Bill Maher on CNN, via Suburban Guerrilla.
The Return of Get Your War On, via almost everyone.
Josh Silver on Democracy Now! about the end of Net Neutrality.
Note to self: Listen to the archive stream of the Backbone campaign and the Coffee Party talking on BTR. (.m3p podcast)
All You Need
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14:18 GMT
Sunday, 05 December 2010
A strange kind of love
I'm not entirely sure how much more Obama can "reach out" to the Republicans, unless he's proposing to bring back slavery. Which, the way he's been going, is not as far-fetched as it once might have been.
McClatchy reports that the Fed is trying to find ways to make it harder for you to prevent banks ripping you off. As Atrios points out, this is evil.
Krugman on Freezing Our Hope: "After the Democratic 'shellacking' in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity? On Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking - successfully, it seems - to destroy him. So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of."
Organizing for America finally bottoms out trying to get supporters to write letters to the editor praising the federal wage freeze, and wins Atrios' coveted Wankers of the Day award. In case the point hasn't been driven home yet, taking money out of the public sector also takes money out of the rest of the real economy and thus not only makes more people jobless and miserable, but increases the deficit. Three mints in one!
Sammy interviewed David Dayen (dday) on Thursday's show. Man, it's so refreshing to hear two people who can read and understand things talking about them in plain English. See, this banking thing is only "complicated" in the sense that the banksters came up with a lot of rubbishy "explanations" for why they were cooking the books. They're just criminals. Book 'em.
Dan at Pruning Shears points out that the destruction of the internet includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actually seizing dozens of websites, apparently under a piece of legislation that was proposed but in fact never passed (but with the help of a judge!), and using dubious evidence of any alleged illegality in the first place: "ICE went before federal magistrate judges with goods 'confirmed as counterfeit or otherwise illegal' in order to obtain the seizure orders. Did it have goods from each of the eighty-two sites? In at least one case - TorrentFreak - the site in question does not deal in goods at all. It provides search results for torrent files, just like Google does. Is Google going to be seized as well? Alternately, since it is literally impossible for ICE to have obtained any goods, legal or otherwise, from TorrentFreak, what evidence was presented to the presiding judge? What was the basis for the ruling?" Of course, This Week In Tyranny, the whole WikiLeaks story is much more interesting and complicated than you might have imagined, and for that matter so is the "sex by surprise" charge against Assange. (Dan also reminds me that it's that time of year again, and he's chosen a nominee for The Sideshow's Greatest Hits of 2010, in a single paragraph in this post regarding the Eric Alterman article on Kabuki Democracy.)
Digby: "There are many progressive initiatives that liberal interest groups could be spending their time and money working on rather than defending the social safety net from people who would destroy it. It's a sad comment indeed that it was necessary to mobilize like this under a Democratic president and congressional majority." I dunno, I think a primary challenge would be a good thing, as long as it comes from the left of Obama, but I don't think it will happen, either. For one thing, we've already seen that anyone who tries to stand up to Obama on anything ends up having Kos go on TV to say they should be primaried. For another, where would this white knight come from? Not from the Democratic Congress that's let Obama get away with all this, I think. There is only one party, and they hate us all..
Live-action Roadrunner
Who knew the Doctor Who theme music had lyrics? (Watch it three times.)
NIN in a box
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19:00 GMT
Thursday, 02 December 2010
When worlds collide
Blimey, it snowed. And again! This sort of thing excites me because it has been so rare, but... Oh, well, it's a distraction from just being grumpy, I guess.
Naomi Klein says the wrong people are in jail and there's a war on activism, but she still believes we can come together and fight back. That's actually the most optimistic thing I've heard anyone say in a long time. But then, she is talking about Canada. Can we come together and fight back?
In America, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, and Medea Benjamin plan to rally on December 16th with some military vets outside the White House to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and afterwards will try to chain themselves to the White House fence, because, "Hope, from now on, will look like this. Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government. [...] Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something." (You might also want to check out the good interview with Chris Hedges in the first hour of The Sunday Show at KPFA, where he talks about the death of American liberalism.)
In the Department of Information Wants to Be Free, and hot on the heels of the UK opting for a two-tiered internet that nobody wanted, the FCC is being pushed into treating the internet as the property of cable companies (more here), Amazon has terminated the WikiLeaks webhosting account, the US has announced it is investigating whether WikiLeaks violated our espionage laws, and Interpol has issued a Wanted notice for Julian Assange. I used to tell libertoonians that no, the internet did not change anything, and they didn't believe me. Technology had eliminated censorship! Hahaha. You have to be mighty rich to say what TPTB don't want you to say.
Thanks to Buzzcook for calling my attention to this rendition of "Silver Bells".
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20:10 GMT
Sunday, 28 November 2010
We were like children posing
In honor of Advent, Canonfire reposts How the Bro Stole the Country. Via Make Them Accountable, where we are reminded of why "Bro" is the right term. (Oh, yeah, here's my favorite seasonal music.)
And in honor of Thanksgiving weekend, Jay Ackroyd and I will be shooting the breeze and taking phone calls at Virtually Speaking Sundays, and you'll find that number at the link.
"The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot: The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who -- with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI's own undercover agents -- allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon."
Bruce Schneier has pointed out that the "nude scanners" wouldn't have caught the underwear bomber, but Will "Dumber Than His Own Junk" Saletan thinks we should meekly submit. Via Pruning Shears.
War is Over, if you rename it: "The US military and the Obama administration loudly trumpeted the withdrawal of the "last combat brigade" from Iraq last week, but news reports suggest the move is purely semantic: The combat brigades are still there, but under a different name."
Susie Madrak: "The thing that no one seems to mention is that Wall Street bankers and mortgage companies, confronted with a record number of transactions to go with those record profits, never even considered simply hiring enough people to actually handle the paperwork."
On Washington Joural, an economics "reporter" tries to blame consumers for failing to show confidence in the Tinkle Down Economics school, and Ruth Calvo took issue in email, pointing out that people can't spend money they don't have, and that since the corporations got all the profits that went with those big tax breaks, they can start giving people jobs. The journalist responded by accusing you all of hoarding your savings.
Good interview with Matt Taibbi at AlterNet.
Elizabeth Warren had your back: "Elizabeth Warren was the first senior Obama administration official to recognize the potentially incendiary impact of a bill that would have made it significantly easier for mortgage companies to foreclose on homes, and her subsequent warnings played a crucial role in persuading the President to veto the measure, according to freshly released documents and people familiar with the deliberations." I find it interesting that as soon as liberal blogs started posting warnings about this bill, Obamapoligists were assuring us in comments that the bill was no big deal and might even be good. So, what I wonder is, was Obama hoping to get away with signing the bill rather than giving it a veto?) (via)
Why Charlotte Shane is happy she became a prostitute.
Toles: "There is no 'rest of the trick.'"
"Charade"
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19:47 GMT
Friday, 26 November 2010
What a town without pity can doLet me draw your attention to the sidebar, where we have the new graphic for the 2L4O T-shirts, in both "too left" and "too liberal". Click it now!
So, what the hell is going on at The Nation that they'd publish a hit piece on someone who objected to what the TSA has been doing? There's nothing inherently right-wing about not wanting to have complete strangers manhandling you for no good reason. Greenwald: "And therein lies the most odious premise in this smear piece: anyone who doesn't quietly, meekly and immediately submit to Government orders and invasions -- or anyone who stands up to government power and challenges it -- is inherently suspect. Just as the establishment-worshiping, political-power-defending Ruth Marcus taught us today in The Washington Post, objecting to what the Government is doing here is just immature and ungrateful; mature, psychologically healthy people shut up and submit. That's how you prove that you're a normal, responsible, upstanding good citizen: by not making waves, doing what you're told, declaring yourself a loyal Republican or Democrat and then cheering for your team, and -- most of all -- accepting in the name of Fear that you must suffer indignities, humiliations and always-increasing loss of liberties at the hands of unchallengeable functionaries of the state." (via)
Anglachel, who doesn't care who wins on Dancing With the Stars, makes the interesting observation that the progressive obsession with Palin helped revitalize the Republican base and made her into a far larger political force than she might otherwise have been. (Every now and then I will go over to see what's on one of my favorite blogs and there is post after post of how whacked out the right-wingers are. Well, that's all very well, but we've spent the last two years getting screwed not by Republicans, but by Democrats, and while those Democrats may not say such whacky things, what they are actually doing has been the real show. Watching people I respect waste time elevating the sideshows to center stage has not been a pleasant experience for me.)
David Cay Johnston Asks President Obama to Call the Republicans Bluff on Bush Tax Cuts: "This is a fight that Obama can win, and win handily, if he has the backbone to stand up for the vast majority and sound tax policies, and to take on the antitax billionaires who are piling up huge gains while unemployment, debt, and fear stalk our land." Or if he can be bothered to.
"If you're wondering why we have to have these invasive techniques to supposedly protect us from terrorists, when the Israelis, who haven't had an airline incident in many years... follow the money. Meanwhile, Cenk Uygur is "an optimistic guy," but I'm not, and I say the system is not structured to reward bribery, which is supposed to be illegal. Will be corporations fund candidates who appear to agree with them? Sure. But does that mean politicians who are "good people" should change their votes to get that money? No, that's corruption. But "Who says an individual can't make a difference?"
"Back to School: Cheating U. "One of the ways that jobless workers have kept off the streets while upgrading their potential has been by going back to school for more training. Inevitably, that admirable tactic has attracted those looking for someone to cheat out of their money."
OK, I'm not completely immune to laughing at some of the weird things they say: "The far-right lawmaker believes the Pilgrims were 'a great bunch of Americans,' who 'came here with the idea that, after trying socialism, that it wasn't going to work. They realized that it was unbiblical and it was a form of theft. So they pitched socialism out; they learned that in the early 1620s.'"
"Ours is not an easy age, we're like tigers in a cage."
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16:00 GMT
Thursday, 25 November 2010
It must be ThursdayIt's just like any other Thursday in the UK, which means we celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday around here, but all the same I'd like to say thanks to you for continuing to read even though it's all so depressing and frustrating and I'm obviously having a harder time doing it as often, and to the wonderful people who provide me links in comments and mail all year long, and to the people who have popped a few bucks into the tip jar now and then, and to those of you who provide your own insights and reminders, and even to Tom Harrister, who makes me laugh almost as hard as Colbert does, even though he actually means it. And, as always, special thanks to Mr. Sideshow and to Dominic, without whom I doubt I could have managed to keep this blog running for the last nine years. Among other things....
TomDispatch, Steve Clemons, Jonathan Larson and James Fallows say good-bye to Chalmers Johnson, who wrote: "If present trends continue, four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative impact guarantees that the United States will cease to bear any resemblance to the country once outlined in our Constitution. First there will be a state of perpetual war leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a growing reliance on weapons of mass destruction as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second, there will be a loss of democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency fully eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from an 'executive branch' of government into something more like a Pentagonized presidency. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there will be bankruptcy, as we pour our economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchange the education, health, and safety of our fellow citizens.".
RJ Eskow exchanged some letters with the Peterson Foundation after one of them objected to his own objection to describing foundation's far-right media campaign as "moderate". We all know the foundation, which is running the government's deficit (catfood) commission, wants you to believe that Social Security contributes substantially to the deficit (when it does not do so at all) and will run out of money if there aren't heavy benefit cuts (which it won't). We also know that some of the "remedies" they've been kicking around amount to turning Social Security into little more than a welfare program for people who managed to hold a job for the minimum number of quarters. Eskow addresses a few of the memes they've pushed:
"Reducing benefits for the well-off" sounds reasonable - until you realize that this billionaire's definition of the "well off" includes people who earned an average of $43,000 per year during their work life. A 20-year-old who earned that average through their work life would see a 17% cut in benefits from one Peterson-backed proposal, and would see a 30% cut if they earned an average of $69,000. Under the Simpson-Bowles plan, even workers who made as little as $20,000 average would see benefit cuts starting in 2040.As for the truly wealthy who receive Social Security benefits, the problem is that there aren't enough of them to make a difference. Remember, retirement benefits only go up to a certain amount. It sounds reasonable to say that billionaires shouldn't receive a Social Security check (although they've paid for the benefit, too). But when you calculate the number of wealthy people that would be excluded under any reasonable plan, there aren't that many of them. When you add in all the time and expense of identifying them and tracking them (How would that be done? Cross-reference IRS returns and check their bank and real estate holdings?), studies have concluded you'd spend more to find them that you would save by cutting their benefits.
Eskow's correspondent actually has the temerity to state that, "Mr. Peterson and the Foundation have also repeatedly stated that we must consider all viable solutions from across the political spectrum if we hope to meaningfully address our fiscal challenges." There are two things wrong with this statement, of course. One is that it is only half right: the far-right edge of the political spectrum that the Peterson Foundation and most members of the Catfood Commission represent has no place in this discussion since they clearly are not aimed toward addressing the nation's real fiscal challenges, but rather toward immiserating the 98% of the populace who don't happen to be filthy rich. The other is that they are completely ignoring the rest of the political spectrum, including most Republicans, who, like virtually all Democrats and independents, believe (quite rightly) that our real solutions involve doing pretty much the opposite of what the foundation and their Obama-appointed commission are recommending.Dave Johnson has a good primer up in "Social Security Facts vs Fog" that why we are being hit with this barrage of lies in the first place:
One thing that most people do not know is that conservatives have been following an actual plan, a step-by-step strategy to get rid of Social Security, that was laid out a couple of decades a go. A 1983 Cato Institute Journal document, "Achieving a Leninist Strategy" by Stuart Butler of the Cato Institute and Peter Germanis of The Heritage Foundation lays it out for us. The document is still available at Cato, and select quotes are available at Plotting Privatization? from Z Magazine. It is worth reading the entire document (in particular the section "Weakening the Opposition") to understand completely the strategy that has been unfolding in the years since...Whatever the current attack might be, keep in mind that it is just one more attack. Instead of spending all your time trying to refute each lie while they throw up a dozen more, remember that they hate Social Security and they just lie. Of course, there is a risk that each time Social Security is attacked more of the public will get the idea that something must be wrong with the program, when there isn't. Keeping in mind that there is a corporate/conservative strategy at work to undermine the program helps to fight off the fog.
"Former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay Convicted Of Money Laundering Charges" - or, as Atrios put it: "Seems ancient history now, but the DeLay thing was one of the early "things only liberal bloggers care about" while being lectured by our betters in the Village that this was all the work of a partisan (read: Democrat) prosecutor trying to criminalize politics." (I love the way Republicans call it "criminalizing politics" to accuse someone of breaking the law when they have broken the law. No, it's the law that criminalizes the activity, and it's the politician who committed crime in the name of politics, you bastards.)"Florida Woman Dies After Medicaid Program Outsourced To Private Insurers Denies Her Liver Transplant: One of the most destructive practices of private health insurance companies is the practice of denying care to customers for frivolous reasons. [...] t was this practice of frivolous denials that ended up costing Jacksonville, Florida woman Alisa Wilson her life. For months, Wilson, her family, and the surrounding community had been pleading with her HMO to approve coverage for a liver transplant. Although Wilson was enrolled in the state's Medicaid program, she was not guaranteed care because she was 'forced to join a private plan as part of a Gov. Jeb Bush-era experimental overhaul of the program,' meaning she had to deal with a private, for-profit insurance company to get her care, not a government agency accountable to the public."
Digby: "Anyone who is able to inflict that kind of pain to gain compliance from a bedridden old woman is a cruel sadist. There's just no other way to look at it." Also, the difference between Steven Colbert and right-wing attempts to parody liberals is that unlike the wingers, Colbert satirizes actual right-wingers and what they actually say.
This Week in Tyranny, Dan said a lot of interesting things and supplied a lot of interesting links, as usual, including: "Marcy is worried we'll be metaphorically at war forever. I'm worried we actually will be as well" And more evidence that David Kelly's "suicide" was murder.
DHS to monitor "domestic extremists" protesting unconstitutional airport screenings.
Blue Texan flags an interview of Matt Taibbi by Chris Hayes about how the financial industry scammed everyone on the Maddow show.
Stuart Zechman was so impressed by an article from concern troll Pat Caddell in The Washington Past that he introduced it into a comment thread at Swampland, and reposted it for our attention here.
John Nichols: "In a letter to President Obama, members of the group Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength argue that it is time, again, to tax the rich."
I'm saddened to learn of the passing of yet another fannish friend, Asenath Hammond, also known in certain blog comment sections as DominEditrix. (I'm not sure I would have noticed Rick Sternbach in the early days if I hadn't thought of him as Asenath's guy.) Asenath lost the battle with the immune system problems that had long plagued her. According to her husband Will (Howard William Perlis, aka Biohazard), "She fought well but the odds were far too great."
Tech Support
Two minutes and forty-three seconds of Flowing Auroras Over Norway.
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16:42 GMT
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Not the Sunday funniesTonight's Virtually Speaking Sundays will feature Culture of Truth and Dday (David Dayen), at 5:00 PM Pacific, 8:00 PM Eastern, and one o'clock in the morning GMT.
Michael Moore noticed a bit of a scoop on Democracy Now! "WENDELL POTTER [former executive, CIGNA]: ...We were concerned that the movie [Sicko] would be as successful as Fahrenheit 9/11 had been. And we knew that if it were, it really would change public opinion about our health care system in ways that would be harmful to the profits of health insurers. So, it was very important for this [attack] campaign to succeed. At one point during a strategy meeting, one of the people from [the insurance companies' public relations firm] APCO said that if our efforts, our initial efforts, were not successful, then we'd have to move to an element of the campaign to push Michael Moore off a cliff. And not meaning to do that literally, but to -- "
No power on Earth will convince me that they are willing to go to these lengths just to prosecute a rape. I mean, it's not as if they are normally all that concerned with rape....
"Obama's Failures... and Ours [...] The nation was ready for change, but Obama picked the status quo. And so "much of the public's anger, disappointment and frustration has been turned on a leader who failed to lead." Ganz identified "three crucial choices that undermined the president's transformational mission": "First, he abandoned the bully pulpit of moral argument and public education. Next, he chose to lead with a politics of compromise rather than advocacy. And finally, he chose to demobilize the movement that elected him president. [...] As a result of these choices, Obama not only failed to convince the public that he can turn the economy around - the central axis upon which judgment of the success or failure of his presidency will turn - but also lost the confidence of many of his original supporters. Yet in his refusal to adapt the inspirational rhetoric of his campaign to his presidency, he allowed the forces of right-wing reaction to claim the mantle of the common man. They even managed to make it appear to most people as if the Democrats, rather than the Republicans, were the party in the pocket of Wall Street and the big-spending fat cats." Well, at this point, they both are.
Lawrence Lewis reviews in "Broken: From Watergate to yellowcake", and says, "About halfway through the film, I recalled an earlier film about an earlier national scandal. But All The President's Men had a feeling of exultance about it. Because it had a sort of happy ending. A corrupt administration was forced from office. Criminals went to prison. The system worked. In some ways the current film is haunted by its earlier counterpart, because both films are so well done but only one recounts a story where the reality was well done."
Adam Liptak says the Roberts court is verbose and opaque.
I don't know why Steve Benen thinks Republicans want to sabotage the economy solely because it will make it easier for them to win the next election. Republican "thinkers" have long stated that their goal is to depress the economy so that most Americans are economically insecure. They want to destroy the middle class. That much is ideological. If the Republicans just want to improve their electoral chances, look for them to (a) scream about what a pathetic president Obama is for refusing to put more money into jobs programs and (b) oppose Obama on raising the retirement age or any other cuts in Social Security, That might just destroy the Democratic Party altogether by making the Republicans the party that saved America's jobs and Social Security from evil Democrats.. They won't do that, and Obama won't worry about preventing it by ceasing to promote right-wing programs and start saving the economy. The fact of the matter is that the president and the Republicans are on the same team, but they're pretending that one of them isn't the one doing what they're all doing.
Apple and Apple: "Over in America, meanwhile, Fox News, forthright as ever in the pursuit of factual accuracy, seemed to have unearthed shock new information on the Beatles' geographical origins ('What's up Apple's sleeve?' its website asked. 'Apparently, Manchester's favourite moptops')." Also, Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch have teamed up to create the iPad newspaper.
You can watch the full theatrical trailer for the Green Lantern movie and see if you like the look of it. Personally, I found it worrying. And why are the gloves green?
RIP Paul Gamble - I'm sorry to say that I will never again have the privilege of Gamma addressing me as "Dave".
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17:16 GMT
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Seasons change with the scenery50 years ago, children were at the front line of integration. It's hard to imagine a parent making the decision to put their children on that line, but it took many acts of courage to make those inroads against racial inequality.
Among the many things Atrios has written over the past few days about the way our leaders are uninterested in stopping the wreckage of our economy, he said, "At Least Maxine Waters Knows What's Going On. I get the sense that our political culture tends to treat her like the crazy aunt, but she knows the deal with the banksters and the useless regulators." And, yes, why does our political class treat Waters like the crazy aunt? Why is it, in fact, that most of the black caucus is treated as not worthy of our respect. Why is it that people who can't even get elected (like Ford) get more traction? Well, we know the answer to that, don't we? Just like we know why Obama treats them the same way. A generation of derision of people who stood up when it mattered way back when has made it "cool" to laugh at people who are still on our side. And even our so-called "liberals" join in the chuckling. Does it really need saying that America would have been better off electing Jesse Jackson (Sr.) than this "cool" little spiv?
Atrios also notes that Congress has had another "historic" moment in failing to extend unemployment benefits at a time of monumental unemployment crisis, in an unprecedented move.
It is an obvious lie that giving the rich tax cuts encourages them to create more jobs in America, and clearly the private sector is simply not interested. It's all just a lie so we won't notice that the rich caused the deficits. So, really, there's no excuse for the administration's refusal to create more jobs. God knows there are things that need to be done, if we were willing (not able - we are able) to pay for it. And by "we" I don't mean the faceless masses of ordinary people who "journalists" refer to whenever they need someone to blame for how bad things are ("Americans" are spendthrift, unwilling to work, blah blah blah), but people who were elected to solve this problem and can't be bothered to do so. (By the way, Dave's short paragraphs with the two cute little images showing how the money was supposed to flow and how lower taxes on the rich have screwed that up would make a nifty flyer.)
Rachel says a repeal of DADT is "feasible" - maybe - now that three Republicans (and maybe four) say they may vote for it. (Keep watching for alleged evidence of spine in the Democratic leadership. But, hey, it's safe, it's right after the election, and it will make them look good without their having had to do anything. The fact that they didn't make the Republicans own up to their policies before the election when even the GOP might have been afraid to vote against popular items tells me the "spine" is just more kabuki. And the message gets muddied when some Senate Democrats join Republicans to keep the economy depressed.) (Amazing how fast they can pass something when they want to, though, isn't it?)
I've been a bit distracted, so without my wonderful commenters, I might have missed the fact that the liberal member of the Catfood Commission, Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL-9th), has offered her own deficit reduction proposal that actually reduces the deficit (unlike the official proposal), and does so without some of the more poisonous elements of the Peterson catfood plan. It's got some great content, including the elimination of a pile of tax breaks for the Malefactors of Great Wealth (one of my favorites is the break they get for exporting American jobs overseas - $132.2 billion), and a nice money-saving public option. It's not perfect, but it's got some serious meat to it. Anyway, Paul Rosenberg at Open Left didn't miss it, Lucia Graves wrote about it at The Huffington Post, as did Chris Bowers at DKos, and there's even an article at The Atlantic (although they tried to make it look like the Peterson plan was better). And, somehow, I don't expect this to get much good buzz on the TV.
Yes, there's that chill in the air, and there's this tune in my head.
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16:39 GMT
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Castles made of sandFred Clark knows how to fix the deficit:
The biggest short-term deficit problem, after all, is unemployment. The obvious solution to joblessness is jobs. Put the unemployed back to work and you make them happier -- you give them something they fervently desire while at the same time solving your short-term deficit problem. No attempt to address America's current federal budget deficit can succeed unless it involves putting the jobless back to work, yet this unavoidable fact is ignored by most of the so-called serious people because putting the jobless back to work makes people happy and doesn't entail suffering and sacrifice and widespread unpleasantness.For some perverse reason -- I can't fathom why -- the serious people have become convinced that any attempt to address budget shortfalls must necessarily entail suffering and widespread unpleasantness. They thus tend to prefer approaches that produce such suffering and unpleasantness, even though those approaches don't do anything to address the fundamental fact of our current budget deficit -- 9.6 percent unemployment. And the one solution that would be effective -- putting the jobless back to work now to solve our near-term budget woes regardless of the immediate expense -- is rejected out of hand because it would make people's lives better.
This same perverse reasoning shapes longer-term plans for deficit- and debt-reduction, where we see the same penny-wise pound-foolish obsession with never investing in the future and the same cruelly warped insistence that any long-term debt-reduction scheme must entail widespread suffering and austerity. Ideas that might make people's lives better are, by definition, off the table.
So the serious people probably won't like my plan.
Marcy Kaptur knows the rules of Let's Play Wall Street Bailout. I didn't see this when she stood on the floor to say it in September. Most of the sources I regularly check were too busy focusing on loony statements by right-wing hacks, I guess, to highlight something worthwhile that someone said. How does that happen? Why is it that when people like Louise and Marcy get up and talk sense, it never gets the buzz? You can't claim Kaptur is a boring speaker or "too nuanced" or any of that crap. The simple fact is that everyone is still letting the wingers set the agenda. Instead of worrying about whether Sarah Palin or some Teabagger said something stupid, we should have been calling our representatives to demand that they support Kaptur's proposal.Matt Taibbi learns about Florida's special foreclosure "courts" that sound almost as fake and illegal as the mock courts with fake sheriffs that the debt collectors have been using. Here, retired judges who don't know and don't want to know pay no attention to the details and rubber-stamp foreclosures in much the same way that the industry had fake title transfers and fake notarizations rubber-stamped by people who had never seen the documentation or even had any idea what it meant. "This isn't some rare goof-up by a low-level cubicle slave: Virtually every case of foreclosure in this country involves some form of screwed-up paperwork. 'I would say it's pretty close to 100 percent,' says Kowalski. An attorney for Jacksonville Area Legal Aid tells me that out of the hundreds of cases she has handled, fewer than five involved no phony paperwork. 'The fraud is the norm,' she says. [...] This is the dirty secret of the rocket docket: The whole system is set up to enable lenders to commit fraud over and over again, until they figure out a way to reduce the stink enough so some judge like Soud can sign off on the scam. 'If the court finds for the defendant, the plaintiffs just refile,' says Parker, the local attorney. 'The only way for the caseload to get reduced is to give it to the plaintiff. The entire process is designed with that result in mind.'" (Oh, yeah, and there's a new Jimi Hendrix track out.)
Thanks to Hawiken in comments for reminding me that, while it wasn't on TV, the blogs did explain Lieberman's sudden change of mind on the Medicare buy-in: "In an interview with the New York Times, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) revealed Tuesday that he decided to oppose a Medicare buy-in in part because liberals like Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) liked it too much." And what this demonstrates is that the left blogosphere was as much to blame as Obama for poor negotiation technique: We should have been demanding an NHS-style system all along and decrying anything less as a right-wing sell-out. Then people like Lieberman would have creamed their jeans at the opportunity to pass a Canadian-style single-payer system just to piss off liberals who wanted an NHS.
What "11-Dimensional Chess" really is: "In watching a t.v. montage of the President in East Asia, I saw that in Japan, he attended a genuine kabuki show... one assumes he did so as a matter of professional development, as the kabuki seems to be the only coherent theme of governance he has (that, and capituation, which kind of sounds like kabuki)."
Teresa Nielsen Hayden has more clues to why the new professional class really, really bites, and Avram Grumer with the modern American law-enforcement privilege pyramid.
Soulless liberals, or soulless Brooks? "But that's not what he's really talking about. It's not that liberalism and liberal economists don't have emotions, it's that they have a basis for their emotions. That's what Brooks is railing against."
Show Trials Are Bad and Lead to Bad Results: "When a State announces in advance that, even if a defendant is found not guilty, he will nonetheless be imprisoned for the rest of his life, the trial is transformed from an inquiry into the question of individual guilt or innocence and the related question of whether punishment should be imposed, to an unalloyed exercise in the glorification of State power."
I'd like to take a moment to commend Dick Durata for this sentence: "The Presidential Deficit Commission, a.k.a. The Catfood Commission released some depressing news today for the nation's seniors and seniors to be: there will be less cat food, and you will have to wait longer to get it." Notice that he said "less catfood" rather than "you will have to eat catfood." What a lot of people overlook is that many of today's seniors who have only their Social Security to live on are already eating catfood. For them, we are not talking about catfood, we're talking about starving to death.
Did you hear about all that violence at the student protest in the UK? Every newspaper had a photograph of the very same act of "violence". But there's something funny about that picture - it lacks a certain spontaneity. (via)
Johann Hari, "Cameron's economic policies will kill, not cure: "One minister recently told the Times the rationale behind it off-the-record: 'The undeserving poor,' he said, 'are undeserving.'
Robot Pundits on the Obama excursion
Good for you, Mom: "If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to 'make' him gay then you are an idiot. Firstly, what a ridiculous concept. Secondly, if my son is gay, OK. I will love him no less. Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off." (via)
I watched this guy's face very carefully.
Ain't nothin' wrong with a little more Hendrix.
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05:25 GMT
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
The biggest tax-hike everYou should really give a listen to last Wednesday's Majority Report, in which Sam Seder talks at mostly uninterrupted length about the Catfood Commission, the Blue Dogs, Lawrence O'Donnell, Matt Bai, and other things I have a long-standing dislike of. (And, Larry, The West Wing was not a liberal show, you putz.) Sam and Cenk also broke the idea on TV that Obama isn't on our side. And that's the meme that we should be working to push: Obama is a conservative. Well, actually, I'd prefer, "Obama is right-wing," since people seem fairly confused about what "conservative" means.
What few people are prepared to admit: "And that doesn't begin to touch what Dave Dayen calls the 'killer app' in the proposal - 'Cap revenue at or below 21% of G.D.P.' That would kill progressive government, one that 'promotes the general welfare,' forever. A revolutionary force at work, implacable and relentless." Every time I hear someone saying it will take "a long time" or "years" or "a generation" to undo the mess we're in, I think, "Have you no understanding of history?" It was a miracle the Founders created what they did, and it took unique circumstances and thousands of years to get to that point. You think you're gonna come back from this? Unless something stops this train-wreck now - and I don't see anything like that happening - you can kiss it good-bye. Forever.
Atrios says the only question should be, "Where are the jobs?" He's citing Rotwang, who said: "There should be no doubt that austerity -- tax increases and spending cuts -- would make the current awful employment situation appreciably worse. This is frankly acknowledged by deficit hawks, who are nothing if not cagey. Nevertheless, they would immerse us in discussions of austerity, in the middle of the worst employment crisis of the past thirty years." Yes, that's the plan.
A recent FDL Book Salon on Roger Hodge's The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism, and some further discussion.
Jeez, does it always come down to Joe Lieberman? Diane learns that he was the final nail in the coffin of something better than crumbs in what turned out to be only a health insurance industry welfare bill: "What I find so horrific about the whole episode is that this is the first time I've heard of it, and I followed the healthcare reform process pretty carefully. I also don't consider myself to actually be a 'fucking retard,' although I will cop to being naive. It would have been nice if somebody in the press had weighed in on the threat made by Joe Lieberman. It would have been nicer if Harry Reid or any other senator had let us know why we couldn't have a public option or something vaguely approaching it beyond stating 'the votes aren't there.' Well, the votes weren't there earlier this month, and this is one of the reasons why."
Glennzilla on Democrats and the rule of law, on The "pro-Constitution=pro-terrorist" canard, on Two presidents and their justifications, and Glenn Greenwald vs. Larry O'Donnel, pt. 2.
David Dayen on Re-Foreclosure, Counterfeit Notaries, and Petrified Lawyers: Tales of Foreclosure Fraud.
Like Susie, I wish more people would complain about the TSA.
I need to find time to listen to The Nicole Sandler Show.
This seems like a cartoon parody or something, but apparently it's for real: How Wesley Clark nearly started World War III, and was stopped by a pop singer.
Somehow, the real Green Lantern teaser isn't as much fun as the fakes.
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01:40 GMT
Saturday, 13 November 2010
As the stomach turnsDown in comments, The Oracle is saying the Catfood Commission is part of some deal-making early on by Obama to extend the Bush tax-shift (his so-called "tax cuts" that lower costs to the wealthy and shift the costs to everyone else). I guess taking Social Security away from the people who paid for it is their way of "offsetting" the trillions of dollars it will cost to continue the Bush tax-shift. Of course, anyone with any decency, and any Democrat who wants to be re-elected in 2012, is decrying the recommendations of the commission, with the result that Obama (who apparently thinks no one else knows what this stuff is) says, "Before anybody starts shooting down proposals, I think we need to listen, we need to gather up all the facts. ... If people are, in fact, concerned about spending, debt, deficits and the future of our country, then they're going to need to be armed with the information about the kinds of choices that are going to be involved, and we can't just engage in political rhetoric." Of course, we've been gathering up facts since before Social Security was passed in 1935, so if Mr. Obama still needs to gather facts at this late date, he belongs in a remedial reading class, not in the White House. Economist Duncan Black: "Um I Have The Facts. And my political rhetoric is that the catfood commission cuts taxes for rich people and pays for it by getting rid of the EITC."*
But Dr. Atrios and Mike Lux both say that, on looking at the proposals further, they are even worse than they originally seemed, containing many other plans for immiserating the populace and, get this, "You know what is most bizarre: all this pain for the economically stressed working and middle class, and they still don't actually balance the budget until 2037." (Remember, these are the same people who keep harping on the fact that, maybe 40 years from now, Social Security might not be in quite as nice a surplus as it is now.)
We have a president who is in thrall to the "ideas" of conservatives, which are in fact not so much ideas as just a longing to return to those heady days of more than 200 years ago when no one had any rights except the richest and most powerful people in the world, a tiny class of callous, spoiled, nasty rich folk who claimed that God gave them the right to make everyone else miserable while they wallowed in the wealth created by others. But, as again Dr. Black points out, bright ideas like "austerity" aren't even helping stock prices, and some companies are even acknowledging (finally!) that the clever, "modern" idea of outsourcing costs more than it's worth.
None of our "Deficit Hawks", of course, are talking about getting rid of the genuinely wasteful public expenditures that harm rather than help us - an over-inflated war-making machine that squanders billions on destructive policies that actually make the world a more dangerous place for all of us, for example. And a security state that terrorizes ordinary people going about their ordinary lives while, with the help of the odiously destructive War on (Some) Drugs, imprisoning more hapless citizens than any other country in the world does.
The facts are simple common sense: If there is not enough money in the economy because the wealthy are sucking it out of the economy and sitting on it, the way to restore the economy is to take that money back and inject it back into the economy where it will do the most good - at the bottom, where the people who need that money to spend live. Welfare checks, Social Security, food stamps, numerous public programs (like free education) and a host of mid-level public servants are one way we ensure that we have a lot of people who can spend that money in the real economy. "Austerity" means reducing the amount of money that is being put into the economy. It's really that simple.
For quite a while, now, The Sideshow has been trying to remind people that what the conservative ruling class wants is not merely to make money, but to push the rest of us back down into the dirt. The hard-scrabble existence you and your children face is not just an unfortunate by-product of their "grown-up" program, it is the goal.
And, now that I think of it, next week marks nine years of The Sideshow. As always, I remind you that there are other bloggers who need the money much more than I do, but it's that time of year when various internet-related services want money from me and if you have anything to spare, maybe you'd like to help celebrate our anniversary by clicking the ugly orange tip jar link, somewhere down on the sidebar.
* * * * *Rachel Maddow interviews John Stewart.
Keith Olbermann interviews Michael Moore, who talked about how well the banksters rewarded the Democrats for giving them everything they wanted, and also:
MOORE: And other things I pointed out in the film, in terms of his connection to how the war happened and how he and Halliburton and the others were going to make money from it. I would love it actually if my plea - if (INAUDIBLE) anyone who's watching here at G.E., if they would - if they - I will give them for free "Fahrenheit 9/11" to run on NBC -OLBERMANN: Wow.
MOORE: -- as balance to all the publicity they have been giving President Bush this week and his answers about, you know, the worst thing that happened to him was Kanye West and all this. I hope we never forget what this man did.
Parents, tonight, thousands of them sit at home, their children no longer with them because of a war that was essentially a lie. So, that's my answer to Mr. Bush.
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23:05 GMT
