January 2, 2013, Happy new year... or something
Yes, it's 2013. We've survived December 21st, when various perversely optimistic hucksters were telling us we would all be "saved" from our humdrum, unsatisfying existences by the ultimately grand cosmic gesture of an Apocaplypse as predicted by some incorrectly deciphered Mayan calendar. Most of us survived "Superstorm" Hurricane Sandy, which, as predicted by so many for so long, demonstrated what the effect of raising the world's sea-levels and ocean temperatures by willy-nilly burning everything that would burn as fast as possible in the name of... what, again?... would do to storm intensity and resulting damage, when a storm finally hit the nation's most populous city (and financial center) once "perfect storm" conditions arose. Right before Sandy, I personally survived turning 50 (big deal).
And now it would appear that we've even survived "the fiscal cliff," with a House vote overwhelmingly (or underwhelmingly... or perhaps just whelmingly) passing a Senate brokered deal raising taxes on incomes over $400K, and of course, on all incomes over $600 by re-setting social security/payroll taxes back to 6.2% from the 4.2% they were irresponsibly set at two years ago in the original Obama sell-out that created "the fiscal cliff" in the first place. Military waste, fraud and abuse spending remains sacrosanct, though "sequester" is kicked down the road for a few years weeks.
Significance? Let's face it: this "deal" was preordained for some time... the faux-drama (which had it been allowed to play out further would have presumably resulted in a faux-stock-market-crash. .. and then another, until Congress got the message, just as the 2008 bank bailout played out)... has played out. But when there is a real constituency in Washington (that would be, "what money wants")... well, stuff just happens.
And so, let's review. Money wants genetically modified organisms in the food supply (and the various chemical insecticides, fertilizers, etc. to keep them coming), and not anything healthy coursing through your bodies... this keeps you sick, and in need of the health care and pharmaceutical "industries," which in turn, keeps you in need of the government to keep paying for them (even though governmental involvement drives those costs up further.. which is good... for Money!). Money wants big defense contracts, and hence, we're in a military occupation of over 140 countries or thereabouts (including more and more this one) and in hot-shooting wars in at least seven by my count (AFG, PAK, YEM, LBYA, SMLIA, SYR and ETH), though that's just by my count... drones will continue their rampant slaughter, prisoners will continue to be held and abused at GTMO, Bagram and God knows where else, etc., etc. We will not have meaningful sustainable energy policy and 250 million cars on the road will be deemed essential to our way of life, damn the cost... because money wants all this.
Not sure if you want it, however. All I can say is that while neither you nor I probably have the power to effect meaningful macro changes, we can do what people once did before we were all hopelessly infantilized and handed I-Phones: put their own money where their own mouth is, and make personal choices on how to live your own life. Grow, cook and can your own food (this alone may be huge). Take the bus or train instead of driving. Or better yet walk. Try to pay for things with cash rather than on credit. Try to do business with community banks or credit unions rather than with "Too Big to Fails." Turn down the thermostat-- just 1 or two degrees will make a difference, no matter how small you think. Turn off your t.v. Or better yet, unplug it. Best still, take it outside to the curb. Eventually, enough people (a smaller number than you think) living sensible lives self-liberated from the corporate mindset thrall in which we find ourselves will eventually convince others that a life of boredom, sickness and clamoring-for-the-next-big-toy, the lot of most Americans (and many in the so-called First World) is not only suicidal on a global scale, it is downright boring and unsatisfying and soul-destroying on an individual scale, and there is a better way. A much better way.
These are life-long projects, boys and girls. I started growing my own food (still a hobby... no more than a few pounds of vegetables has resulted... but that's not what matters), then cooking, and this year, canning and fermenting (o.k... I've made some sauerkraut... but beer is next!) I'd like to have gotten going bicycling more, though at least I rode a bicycle last year... lots of other things (the banking changes!, more home repair myself and so forth) remain to be done... but as I said... life long project... start now. Free yourself.
A certain guy (actually, my college classmate, the President of the United States) suggested, on the day he clinched the Democratic nomination in '08, that "this is the day that..." and then he listed a bunch of things, like "the oceans stop rising." None of it proved true, as he quite literally sold out to Goldman, Sachs and Finance and Money before he even took office... but that's not to say this can't be the year that you begin to liberate yourself from the corporate matrix... just baby steps... go to a farmer's market instead of the supermarket... pack your lunch instead of going to the Golden Arches (they are golden for a reason folks, and it ain't the French Fries)... you get the idea. If it's going to be it's up to me, etc. Here's the thing. As the great Dmitry Orlov would say, things like cooking and growing your own food, even if they don't result in a successful global transformation, are just good things to do in their own right. In some sense I wish I had better news. But maybe there is no better news: you can take control of your own lives... Actually, that's really good news... Every day is a new opportunity...
Alrightie then. Happy new year.
December 15, 2012, Nothing
I have nothing to say, nothing to add, nothing... NOTHING. What can you say after a tragedy like the shooting up of six and seven year old kids, leaving twenty of them dead along with six adult members of their school staff in Newtown, CT yesterday. Well, the White House tells us "this is not the day to talk about gun control."
No. Of course not. Why would it be? After all... this isn't Britain, where one similar incident at a school in Dunblane, Scotland resulted in the banning of virtually all private hand guns in the country ( country which in its worst days had a tiny fraction of the gun violence we do). No need to worry about that here. No, it's not about "the Second Amendment." The Constitution is, as you know, ostensibly a piece of wet toilet paper taken out occasionally to justify what the powerful want... when parts of it are irritating to the interests of the powerful, we can simply ignore them (like, say, the Fifth Amendment's due process of law requirements before deprivation of life or liberty or the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment or the prohibition on suspension of habeas corpus, etc.)... whereas the Second Amendment is very useful to the powerful, as it keeps many otherwise potentially troublesome [White] people believing that widespread gun ownership somehow protects them from tyranny (I know... if I weren't crying about the Connecticut massacre, I'd be laughing my ass off).
No. This is America. Where money is our most important value. More important than justice. Than the environment. Than fairness. Than anything, including human life-- including the lives of children. (But see, "September 11th"... where investment bankers' lives are at issue, a "national response" will be forthcoming, albeit an extremely profitable and counterproductive one.)
Yesterday morning, I listened to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! air the comments of a number of peace activists trying to bring the (usually) women and children victims of American drone strikes in Afghanistan into our national consciousness. Afghanistan or Connecticut... the murder of children is, aside from insane, evil... whether perpetrated by an immature pissed-off twenty year old asshole (who evidently couldn't buy a gun himself, so he used his mother's extensive gun collection, and, as is the case in an outrageously large number of gun deaths [here's a Harvard study... YMMV], used a gun against its owner, killing his mother first)... or perpetrated by our own government as part of its permanent war [with bipartisan Congressional support, of course] against everyone, everywhere... hey, evil is evil regardless of which flag is waving.
But...but... TD... what are you saying? I said it above: I have nothing. This particular mass murder of young children will be played as a media circus for a few days, and then we'll all resume our slumber, with perhaps some of us wondering which mall, or school, or work place, or street corner will be the next site of a massacre... and guns (and money) will remain inviolate, because the powerful wish it so, and the rather deranged national narrative will go on, as before, unquestioned. [Or, the Mayan predictions of an Apocalypse will be real... not how I'd bet...] I've said it many times-- self-reliance is the way to go, where possible. No, not "I better get a gun for self-protection." Ain't no such thing, at the end of the day, as security. Security of any kind is, like most of our core beliefs, an illusion. All you can really do is just play the odds. I thank the Cosmos that I live in New York City, a place enlightened enough to have rather strict gun control laws. Notwithstanding the level of violence here, it could be far higher were we as stupid on this issue as most of the rest of the country. But then... so what? All someone needs to do is to obtain their guns in, say, Connecticut, less than an hour from here by car. All any of us can do is play the odds, and hope that the powerful wake up one day and see things somewhat differently.
In America, that's just not how you bet. No... I still got nothing.
December 5, 2012, Millions for paranoia, not one red cent for...
Anything that might help anyone, excepting the military [and the other components of the ruling class.] And so, amidst the fake crisis we're told is a "fiscal cliff," the Republican House has nonetheless found some money and voted to provide lifetime Secret Service protection to all living Presidents (right now, Democrats outnumber Republicans three [Obama, Clinton and Carter] to two [Bush Pere and Dubya])... but paranoia has bipartisan consensus. [the change, btw, is that current law provides for Secret Service protection for up to ten years after the President leaves office; this will provide such protection for life of the President and their spouse wife.]
Stated ground, of course, is fear of terrrrrrrorism. The fact that, other than professional do-gooder Carter, pretty much all ex-Presidents [Bill Clinton I mean especially you] trade on their former office for obscene riches, and can more than provide for their own security... but this is kind of symbolic... "servants of the people [on Wall Street]"... don't want to have to mingle with the hoi polloi... unprotected.
But in our ever-more "gated community" society, as the logical continuation of "every man's home is his armored fortress" that defines American suburbia [at least until the eventual energy/financial/environmental/social collapse renders it obsolete]... the "important people"-- symbolized, of course, by the President, the chief executive used as the chief mascot of the ruling class (lest they, you know, pay attention to bankers)-- need "protection" from the rest of us.
One might ask... do they know something the rest of us don't? Or... is this just the wave of the future? Them what has... gets extra security... and why not?
Where was I going with this? I guess I got nothing...
November 23, 2012, Fake Fiscal Cliff[TM] Notes
Well, the always-opportunistic Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, who famously questioned the patriotism of his opponent, triple-amputee-as-a-result-of-military-service Max Cleland, in a senate race some years back, now takes... a stand?... and suggests that he may breach his "no new tax" pledge with Grover Norquist. Yawn. [Oh... and my college classmate, the President, forgot to mention the One True God in his Thanksgiving address. The fact that he's going to use these "Fake Fiscal Cliff[TM]" negotiations to set in motion the eventual handing over of social security to his backers on Wall Street... what did you think this was about?... will be fully offset in the minds of "my team" because there will be some token "tax increase" on fabulously rich people, so you see... we win... like "we won" on expansion of the national security state, continuation of the wars, drones, civil liberties, state secrets, Guantanamo, reining in (meaning "prosecuting") Wall Street for its economy-destroying excesses, environmental regulation, income and wealth inequality, etc., etc.... what matters is that he forgot to mention God.] Where was I?
We saw what happened in the "lame duck" session of two years ago: the Democrats, nominally "the party of the people," but even more "the party of the affluent" than even the Republicans, bent over double backwards to extend the Bush tax cuts and then double down by de-funding social security... when all they had to do was nothing, and the Bush tax cuts would have disappeared... yes, the "middle class" would have paid slightly higher taxes, but just as the Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefited the really high earners, reversing them would have disproportionately impacted the job creators said really high earners... not to mention estates... in other words, Obama's horse-shit about wanting "not to raise taxes on the middle class" involved a kabuki: trading a rather token tax increase on "the middle class" which, btw, would have still raised a huge amount of revenue (because, of course, there are so many more "middle income"... or "not rich"... than there are "rich..." for the entirely false proposition that the gaping American budgetary hole could be solved in any significant way just by increasing taxes on "the rich") for not raising taxes on the plutocrat class... at all... of course, more deficits mean more bond dealing opportunities for primary dealers... will the "win-win situations" ever stop?
In other words, boys and girls, President Obama, the man who killed "mortgage cram down" even though Bush's Treasury Secretary was for it (among other financial crimes against the middle class), has been using fake class warfare... this insistence that he can "raise taxes on the rich and not raise taxes on the middle class", as his end of the kabuki to see to it that taxes on the rich are not raised at all (and then, naturally, the Republicans do their part and insist they cannot yield on this point... it's all their fault, darn them to heck).
The only difference now with "the Fake Fiscal Cliff[TM]" is, of course, that now Social Security and Medicare are in the cross-hairs. No, not the absurdly regressive way in which they are funded, or the fact that they are not means-tested, or the fact that they benefit the (by far) most affluent group in this country, the elderly, even as the wealth gap between the young and elderly is the widest ever... there are still plenty of non-affluent elderly... and they are staring down major league benefit reductions to both Medicare and Social Security... and it's going to be Barack Obama who does it to them... in his "only Nixon could go to China" thing... only Barack Obama could pull off significant cuts to Social Security. Oh... in the name of "deficit reduction." Because "the price" will be modest upper income tax increases in purported violation of prior fealty oaths to Sir Grover of Norquist... it will all be o.k.
Anyway... blowhard Republican Senators on board with "higher taxes on the rich"? Check. Stick around for the rest. And please stop pretending there is a "left-right" dichotomy... there is only an ever narrower group of "haves"... and the rest of us. And "both parties" happen to be on the same side.
Just saying.
Update [11-27-12]: Right on cue, other Republicans, notably Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Congressman Peter King (R-NY) are on board as saying they too don't feel bound by their fealty oaths to Sir Grover. Note carefully what Graham wants: "entitlement reforms," meaning, in plain English, "benefit cuts to those most vulnerable" (those least in need of social security and other government largesse have lobbyists to insure that they will continue to receive it). Only Barack Obama could phase out social security Nixon could go to China... or something like that.
November 19, 2012, Gaza Strip tease?
First, a happy birthday to TD Sister, and belated happy birthdays to TD Nieces #2 and 5 (ages 14 and now 4 days respectively) and to Mrs. TD. And now... on with the all too tragic soap opera that is the Middle East.
Israel's Haaretz reports that a cease-fire deal is in the works between Israel and Hamas. The deal being brokered in Cairo with the assistance of Egypt would, hopefully, shut down the ongoing rocket barrage into Israel coming from Gaza and the Israeli air-strikes in retaliation (as well as the possible Israeli ground invasion of Gaza).
Some things that are not generally reported here that one needs to know to understand things just a little better: Israeli elections are scheduled for January 22nd of next year. That's pretty much it, actually. Hamas, as usual, technically started all this with its rocket launches (or, if you like, you can argue that Israel has technically started it with its blockades, targeted assassinations, bantustans and occupations)... but either way, innocent Palestinians (invariably far more of them) and innocent Israelis are being maimed and killed in the cross-fire on a daily basis, with nothing-- zero, nil, naught, bubkis-- in the way of possible "peace" or even anything more than the most temporary of a cessation of hostilities likely... where was I?
Oh yes... there is an Israeli election coming up. Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu can be counted on to do what he perceives as in his personal interest, which may or may not be in the Israeli national interest (and is per se not going to be in the American national interest.. too bad about Romney, eh Bibi?). Part of the calculation right now concerns how to play on the moving Middle Eastern chessboard that not only includes rockets raining from Hamas, but Syria in the middle of a seemingly endless civil war, and an unpredictable Iran looking at its own elections (coming up next June 14th). Hamas is, of course, also calculating the effect of its actions on the Israeli elections... hoping, one would presume, to keep a relatively hard-line Israeli government (like Netanyahu's) in place, lest there be any Israeli efforts at conciliation which would undermine Hamas's raison d'etre. Which is why the Haaretz piece cites a Hamas representative cautioning Netanyahu of the disastrous Israeli domestic reaction to a ground incursion into Gaza... thing is, he's absolutely right... I don't think its sarcasm, or in any way not sincere.
Thankfully, now that our election is safely over, we can hope that the talk of (insane) American military action [for the sole purpose of benefiting Netanyahu's domestic Israeli political position, btw] against Iran will die down, and rationality can return in that quarter... of course, Israeli elections are coming up on January 22nd. And we have our "fiscal cliff" and Hostess factories closing down and Hurricane Sandy recovery and, you know... where was I? Oh... Petraeus and Allen... what's with that? [Some poetic justice in knowing that the CIA Director's private e-mails are no more "private" than yours or mine... but other than that and some schadenfreude... just a pathetic scandal... for a pathetic country where we turn on people we once lauded for their prowess at directing mass homicide and torture... because they might have had extra-marital sex. Just saying.]
Anyway, I hope that cooler heads prevail... or more to the point, that both Israel's and Hamas's leadership come to the conclusion that Bibi Netanyahu's political future will benefit if they both refrain from violence, and a cease-fire takes effect, and holds. That's about the best we can hope... and I'll take it.
November 7, 2012, A real and MEANINGFUL number
No... not the vote total of the winner of the Fake Election[TM], my college classmate, Barack Hussein Obama, but the fact that at measuring stations in Arctic and other Northern climes, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have come in at the devastatingly high 400 parts per million.
Even as much of the New York area continues to reel from the aftermath of "superstorm Sandy," with a new "Noreaster" storm expected within hours, it would appear that, whether Americans chose to recognize reality or not, reality has decided it won't wait for us.
Ah, I remember a candidate who suggested that "today is the day the oceans stop rising." Well, that candidate is no longer constrained by a reelection campaign. Perhaps he'll do something about man-made climate change (or for that matter, Guantanamo, or even the Imperial Presidency). It's not how I would bet, but I can certainly hope that those millions of people who, against all evidence and reason, continue to believe that there is a difference between "Democrats" and "Republicans," will have their unjustified beliefs vindicated with some necessary action on these most critical concerns we have.
November 6, 2012, Go ahead... throw your vote away
Thanks to whomever posted this gem from the Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror VII." Be it Kang or Kotos, Goldman or Sachs... my vote is "no thanks."
Vote any way you want. You know where I stand.
November 2, 2012, Like a hurricane blew in or something
All is well here in Stately Dog Manor in Brooklyn... alas, Familia TD in the NYC suburbs, especially up in Rockland County, continue to be without power. On a broader note, the Grey Lady gives us this round-up of frustrations associated with the (inevitably) slow recovery in many places from last weekend's Hurricane Sandy.
One of the frustrations that had been a growing irritant was the running of the NYC Marathon (given that there remain hundreds of thousands without power not to mention a seeming inability to get here-- and frustrations involving the intersection of marathoners with hotel reservations and storm refugees-- I would have voted to postpone it as a matter of good taste if nothing else, but as our Lord Mayor reminds us, this is only nominally a democracy). Although, as an entered runner, I was prepared to run the race, my twelfth NYC (just two weeks after my Midwest double of Indianapolis and Columbus in the same weekend), and indeed, I ran 12 or 13 miles yesterday through power-outed lower Manhattan to pick up my race number at the Javits Convention Center... the race has now been canceled. Ramifications to follow... but the short answer is... it just looked bad to do this in a city with hundreds of thousands still without power... or water... or food... As noted above, I fully agree with this call. And now I suppose I am freed up to see if there are [hurricane relief] volunteer opportunities in the area...
Where was I going? The broader point, of course, is that this is the new normal: we now have had a major, regionally disruptive storm here in the Northeast at least every year for the last three years (this year's Sandy, last year's Irene plus the Halloween blizzard, and the crazy Christmas blizzard and lunatic record snow winter of the prior year)... Obviously, Southern coastal climes can also expect more regular and destructive storms too (to go along with oil spills). And we know that inland, tornadoes, droughts and wildfires have gone crazy. Can we really live like this, ever more totally dependent on a complex but vulnerable system itself totally dependent on electric power and gasoline that more and more routinely disappears for a few days or weeks every year... ever more separated from nature by complexity, but thrown right back to nature when the complexity fails? Sure-- most of the world lives like this, but we prefer to believe we're "special" and only "the little people" (See Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia,Yemen, etc., etc.) have to live this way. Hey... what do I know?
Meanwhile, of seeming relevance, in Fake Election News [TM], the Lord Mayor's grudging endorsement of Barack Obama is ostensibly based on this whole climate change issue... But does this matter? Mayor Mike has the cash to hire lobbyists to bribe Congressmen to make real change if he wants. His own empire is dependent on the good will of the financial sector... btw... this may actually be why he canceled the marathon (ING, the title sponsor, seems to have seen the public relations disaster coming.) But... is it really "Advantage Obama"? H/T to TD Mom... who leads me to this... that there are massive power outages in Ohio's most Democratic areas... this has somehow managed not to be reported widely here. Funny that.
The big question, or the little question, or the irrelevant question is... which candidate would buck the status quo (and oil and financial industry campaign contributions) to do anything meaningful on the subject... Barack promised that his nomination would be the day the oceans stopped rising... Seems that hasn't happened, and the likeliest "global warning scenario"-- Katrina as a regular event-- is now the new normal. Best get used to life full of this kind of disruption.
And so, without a decent segue, I jump to hobby horse news, from our nation's permanent moral Katrina down GTMO way, defense lawyers for KSM and minions are asking for the proceedings to be televised. Like the ancient Chinese practice of "rectification of names"... forcing our society to deal with the reality of what it's doing (at least once in a while) would be hugely helpful to its overall health. In other words: there is simply no chance it will happen.
Our nation and society, for all our paranoia with "security," seems pretty much vulnerable to rather elemental forces (the weather? THE WEATHER?) And all this amidst economic malaise (or permanent contraction).
Fortunately, we have plenty of booze in the house... this is definitely a bad week to have given up drinking...
October 26, 2012, The dog turns 50... today.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Or not. As you see fit.
October 13, 2012, Eyes on the Prize
As y'all know by now, the machines bureaucrats over at the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded this year's Peace Prize to the machines bureaucrats of the European Union. Obviously, that committee has been phoning it in for years, with awards to such famous peaceniks as Henry "I Secretly Bombed Cambodia and All I Got was this lousy Peace Prize" Kissinger and, of course, my college classmate, Barack "Drone King... but I'm still not Dubya... really, I'm not..." Obama.
At some point a while back, Candace asked me if it were possible for for the Nobel Committee to take back its Peace Prize from Mr. Obama, given his nearly four year record of warmongering. Given the checkered history of that Prize, I suggested that it might be a better idea to award the Peace Prize to a Guantanamo detainee... and the name that came to mind was Shaker Aamer, the last U.K. resident still being held prisoner at Guantanamo [despite being completely innocent of anything other than being Muslim and an irritant to his jailers, and probably even "cleared for release" somewhere along the line.] And so, now that eligibility for the 2013 Prize has opened up with the 2012 Prize out of the way, Candace is asking for all of your help to get Shaker nominated for the Peace Prize. As Candace passes along further details, I'll try to relay them here as well.
Since Big Finance and Big Oil are guaranteed to win the next U.S. election (and you and I are guaranteed to lose... Barack and Mitt and Joe and Paul aren't sports teams, boys and girls... you're not serving yourselves by behaving as if they are... they are only front men for their financial backers, most of whom are the same)... there's no point in concerning yourself with who "wins"... because it doesn't matter in the great scheme of things. If Shaker Aamer, or another (or all) Guantanamo detainees win, however.... that just might matter.
And that makes all the difference.
October 3, 2012, Decrockracy
Ahead of tonight's Presidential debate in Colorado, the Grey Lady gives a little background on the "even footing" Presidential debates will give The Two Candidates[TM].
Assuming I watch at all (the Yankees will be playing the Red Sox for God's sake), it will be for the same reason most Americans watch Presidential debates... which is the same reason Americans watch NASCAR races. That, of course, is to watch over-hyped extremely loud machines go around in circles for hours, hoping that at least one of them crashes and burns. .
Just saying.
September 27, 2012, we all must watch what we say and do, etc.
It seems (as if this is a surprise, to anyone) that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, now holed up in the cozy Ecuadorean embassy in London, was designated "an enemy of the state" by American military officials (according to classified documents heretofore leaked to... Wikileaks.) This, of course, means that, without charge [Assange has never been charged by the United States with anything, though he has expressed fear that if he were extradited to Sweden on suspicion of sexual assault, he would be handed over the United States for "disappearing" (as an Australian national Assange might be eligible for Guantanamo Bay or Bagram or a CIA ghost prison, for example), torture, or who knows what. Were he at large, he might be deemed a "legitimate" target of a drone attack... wherever he might be] our President... the one who is "so much better than that awful Romney"... might just gratuitously order his death.
And so... Assange remains holed up, where, I predict, he will be for some time to come. The "friend of my enemy" doctrine, of course, would doubtless incorporate, presumably, me (for example, my dear friend Andy Worthington, for example, has been a "Wikileaks media partner", presumably making him, me, and perhaps, you for having the audacity to read this sentence, "enemies of the state"...) There is no logical end to a failing government desperate to hold on to its power coming up with outrageous and unconstitutional (and uncivilized) national policies. Once the constitution and the laws aren't followed "a little"... well, no real reason to follow them at all...
Just saying...
September 25, 2012, Fun with headlines
We start with the question posed by Peter Kirsanow in National Review Online, noting, among other things, unemployment figures, economic trends and polling on such questions as "is the country on the right track?" and "are you better off now than four years ago?" etc... and asks... "Why isn't Romney ahead by ten points?"
Possibly because Romney doesn't know why you can't roll down windows on an airplane. [That, and he wants to get those gosh darned snakes off his dang nabbed plane. Man, I could use a milkshake right about now.]
Or maybe because in Romney's world, he believes that the University of Utah "solved" cold fusion,
In short, Mitt Romney is, at the end of the day, an out of touch rich boy dumb-ass (never saw that one before... especially among Republicans). As the great Mike Huckabee observed, "Mitt Romney looks like the guy who fired you." It certainly begins to explain just why a President who campaigned on being "Not George W. Bush" but has spent nearly four years being, well, George W. Bush [and with the same disastrous results of pursuing these policies once predicted by... Barack Obama...] is still in this at all, let alone ahead in key "battleground states" (and even Chris Christie observes that, in the context of Mitt Romney, "if the election were tomorrow... that would be a problem".)
I remain more than agnostic on this election: I actually hope neither of the Wall Street Darlings manning the tops of "the Two Parties'[TM]" tickets "wins," as both are committed to our suicidal national status quo (with only stylistic and atmospheric differences between them). But that's not how the system works: one of Goldman Sachs' chosen candidates will get to chose other Goldman Sachs employees to man key governmental posts for another four years, for the purpose of continuing our neo-feudal hierarchy as far as it will go.
Needless to say, the Rockefeller family will have nothing to worry about for at least another four years.
September 23, 2012, Play ball
For the third consecutive try, I failed to reach the 26.22 mile marathon standard in a 6-hour race at yesterday's Staten Island Six Hour (somewhat ironic, as I usually, albeit not always, complete marathons in well under six hours). Anyway, in my first try at a six hour race in 2010, I intentionally ended my day slightly early, knowing that my fall season would consist of two other marathons and a 50-miler that year. No such excuse this year, but my winter medical maladies have evidently resulted in some weight gain which I haven't been able to shake; I went into yesterday's race near a life-time high weight, at around 199 lbs. This morning, it looks like 194 lbs.... I'll probably go out again in a few minutes and jog for an hour or two... I need some preparation for next month's Midwest state capital double, the Indianapolis and Columbus marathons on the same weekend (logistically, some doubling is the only conceivable way I'll get to 50 states). Anyway, I'm not a fast runner, nor particularly interesting to watch, nor, quite frankly, are these "time races", where a few dozen people circle a loop of a city park competing simply for the most mileage. But it's not really about watching... it's about doing.
Which takes us to a story about watching: the Grey Lady's take on NFL replacement referees: they may be costing the game it's entertainment value. NFL football is more than our national sport (in terms of viewership and fan interest, anyway)... it's arguably our national religion. People seem to take their football more seriously than just about anything else... including, well, politics, religion, their families, or their health, for example. Which is why, as the Times piece observes, television ratings for football are so strong. Which is why advertising rates are so high. Which is why the National Football League's decision to lock-out its referees
is arguably such a dangerously short-sighted one, and yet, so quintessentially American... that the American business practice is always-- always as in 100% of the time-- to risk the goodwill of customers and the quality of the product and hence the long term viability of the business itself-- for the opportunity to stick it to interloping workers who might just want a slightly larger slice of the pie.
In the NFL context, this is dangerous because [American] football, especially at its professional and premier college ranks, has been designed for the American attention span: fast moving, exciting bursts of energy [usually replete with violence and occasional poor sportsmanship], with a constant rhythmic flow until the next beer or automobile commercial. And the NFL's professional (albeit part-time) referees fully understand what it takes to move the game along-- when to throw the flag, when to overlook a transgression that may technically be a foul but will more likely simply foul up the flow of the game. The sort of thing that comes from... wait for it... experience.
NFL franchises are worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more despite only having eight home dates a year because of the television value: to risk screwing that up over a seemingly minor money dispute with a comparatively inexpensive, but clearly important component of the game... seems dumb... football's short experiment with "replacement players" wasn't a particularly successful idea. Fans recognized a reduction in the quality of "their entertainment experience"... and labor peace was quickly restored. One assumes something similar will happen with the referee lockout.
One does not assume, however, that the long-term trend toward the eventual death of "employment" as a model for economic organization in this country will end (despite the "headline unemployment" figures, workforce participation rates, full-time employment and real wages continue the decline they have been on for decades), even as a variety of factors from things like health insurance costs (even before "Obamacare") and the coming "fiscal cliff" promise to drive the cost of enterprises hiring people for employment to be even higher. Anyway... long-term trends... not good. One wonders why the NFL didn't simply fire the refs and hire them back as "consultants." Possibly they are too visible.
Which is pretty much all that's happening here: we are watching a trend that's been playing out for a long time (called "the worker is the enemy.") We are only noticing because of the context of our nation's most popular sport. While one hopes that this is a useful opportunity to consider the broader trend... Gotta go! The game's on!
Update (9/27/12): On cue, after the replacement refs evidently made a disastrous call costing the vaunted Green Bay Packers a game against the not vaunted Seattle Seahawks, just as with the players' lockout of yore featuring "replacement players" the fans quickly tired of and settled... after... three weeks... it seems... a tentative deal has suddenly been reached. The economy as a whole is still in the crapper, folks... we'll need to cling to our national religion (that would be football)... perhaps more than usual...
September 18, 2012, Welcome to the future
I began blogging at this domain on 18 September 2001... eleven years ago today. More on that below.
First, it seems a federal Appeals Court judge here got the memo on the NDAA, and noted that when Congress and the President say we're a de jure dictatorship, by Jove, we're a de jure dictatorship, and if the Government feels like it, it can lock you up without recourse to, you know, law. This, of course, has been the law of the land for over eight years, ever since the Supreme Court refused to spring Jose Padilla. And hence, perversely, the federal appellate judge is right on this one: if the Constitution doesn't apply to Latino ex-gang-bangers like Padilla, it doesn't apply to upper-middle-class White journos like Chris Hedges and the other plaintiffs... I've been trying to tell you this for years.
In Fake Election News[TM], it seems that old Scrooge McDuck Romney told a "truth is no defense" political "truth" to his donor base, and Mother Jones got a secret video of it... He suggested that something like 47% of Americans are on government entitlements and "will vote for this President [Obama] no matter what." Or something. Vaguely reminiscent of Obama's "gotcha" four years ago, when he lamented that lower-middle-class White voters would "cling to their religion and guns." Like all pseudo-truths, there is an element of truth to what Romney said, except there really isn't. He, of course, meant "YOU KNOW, BLACK PEOPLE." The joke, of course, is that most of the government entitlement money goes to White people, mostly via Social Security and Medicare [and Defense contracts and corporate welfare]... of course, most food stamp money and even most Medicaid money, nationwide, probably does too... because there are still a lot more White people than non-White people in the USA. The other joke is the assumption that people actually vote on economic self-interest... that's not really true either, or Democrats would never really lose elections, given that most Americans actually aren't particularly well-off (and logically, wouldn't vote for "the party of the well-off."). At this point, both parties are in the thrall of the feudal lords in the upper strata-- "the 1% or higher." Knowing this, most Americans either don't vote at all (one of the few signs of a healthy society out there, along with our national distaste for soccer)... or else, they vote on "spleen" and nonsense issues... like, of course, "abortion, gay marriage and gun control"... or, code words aside, that is to say, which party they think will be meaner to Black people. [Impressively, the President, despite, you know, being Black, has been pretty mean to Black people himself, all things told.]
Meanwhile, as American interests in the Middle East are quite literally under attack, including the unfortunate recent killing of Christopher Stephens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, the fifth sitting ambassador killed in U.S. history, it seems this is a well-followed story among Americans (who also view Mitt Romney's right-wing-talk-radio response to it quite negatively). The easy-to-understand story is "rage over an anti-Muslim video"... but of course, that video has been out for a while... the rage is about the failure of the Arab Spring to improve the lives of most Middle Easterners, and quite probably, because of stepped up American intervention in the region (perhaps designed to cause World War III to break out as a last-minute "rally 'round the flag" election tactic just in case "QE-3"-- the Federal Reserve goosing/juicing of the markets to boost Obama's reelection odds at a time when the equity markets are near all-time highs-- doesn't work... electorally.)
All of these things reflect a consolidation of central power... financially, or via outright brute force... that has been underway for a while. There is consensus among our political classes (if not our citizenry) on this point, that this kind of power consolidation is "good"-- it keeps the status quo power in place. The proposition of this blog is that this is unequivocally bad: IMHO, decentralization, autonomy, and local control... are always superior, pretty much regardless of context, be it of agriculture, or politics. Not to say rules, including the rule of law, consistently enforced, aren't good... Of course, as you know, laws in the USA anyway aren't consistently enforced... be it on [mostly] racial lines, or on socioeconomic lines, or just on an out-and-out raw power basis... and this is, you know, bad.
Reality is that the human condition, at least through recorded history, has mostly sucked for most people. We had a window throughout most of the latter half of the Twentieth Century where things were getting better-- at least politically and materially-- for more people than had ever happened before. Now, it seems, we are reverting to the norm (some kind of feudalism). I am saying this is unnecessary, and given the "environmental" in every sense (physical, biological, moral, etc.), I am suggesting that this too, is bad. Only it's more than bad: in the interest of propping up the power and status of the status quo, we run the risk of killing everything and everyone on this planet, be it from global warming, rampant use of chemical and GMOs in agriculture, nuclear waste, fracking, war, or any of the self-imposed pestilences that our current hierarchical based status quo and our ever more "me first... and only me" lifestyles are imposing on everyone else.
And so, once again, here we are. Poetically, just as my first post did eleven years ago, this blog anniversary falls around Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, a time when the annual cycle of life can re-set... a time of celebration, yet of sober reflection, as in just over a week, comes Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the Jewish people's Deity, at least goes the theology, will finally seal our fate, and determine whether our year-to-year contract is finally up, or whether we get to make it another year. While, in my view, this is an extremely useful metaphor for individuals, it is also an extremely useful macro-metaphor. Somehow it has been lost in our "Me first" world [where our dominant philosopher has become Serial-Killer-Admirer Ayn Rand.] We can either acknowledge that our fantasy of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" (he did not suggest it as a "good thing") is not an appropriate ordering mechanism of the universe, or we can go on not being nice to each other (micro and macro) and maybe give up having a chance at a future just to keep an unsustainable party for fewer and fewer people going. Eleven years on in this blogging endeavor, I cannot say that I'm optimistic about the direction we've chosen.
But the metaphor of the universal cycle-- and the possibility of renewal-- is always available to us, and this seems as appropriate a time as any to reconsider whether we are capable of actual renewal and genuine introspection. On that point, as my dear friend Candace always says, "Hope dies last."
