Ron Suskind and those wacky liberals at the Obama administration

Aaron Task and Henry Blodget again, via Yahoo Finance:

above: "No Change: 'Fat Cats' Still Winning Despite Obama's Tough Talk"

Does Blodget really believe that Obama offended Wall Street by calling them fatcats? Me kinda skeptical, but I suppose he may. The last time I speculated about the inner broilings of somebody out there in the big world, a certain commenter scolded me, so maybe I better not.

However I remember in May of 2010, Obama said he was going to "put his boot on the throat" of BP during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and some other pol denounced him for it, but the Justice Department or the EPA or whoever behaved as if their hands where tied when the administration discouraged BP from using Corexit as a dispersant. (Incidentally use of Corexit is banned altogether in the British Isles.)

According to Wikipedia:

On May 19, the Environmental Protection Agency gave BP 24 hours to choose less toxic alternatives to Corexit from the list of dispersants on the National Contingency Plan Product Schedule, begin applying the new dispersant(s) within 72 hours of Environmental Protection Agency approval or provide a detailed reasoning why the approved products did not meet the required standards.[203][204] On May 20, US Polychemical Corporation reportedly received an order from BP for its Dispersit SPC 1000 dispersant. US Polychemical said that it could produce 20,000 US gallons (76 m3) a day in the first few days, increasing up to 60,000 US gallons (230 m3) a day thereafter.[205]

Also on May 20, BP determined that none of the alternative products met all three criteria of availability, toxicity, and effectiveness.[206] On 24 May, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Jackson ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct its own evaluation of alternatives and ordered BP to scale back dispersant use.[207][208] According to analysis of daily dispersant reports provided by the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command, before May 26, BP used 25,689 US gallons (97.24 m3) a day of Corexit. After the EPA directive, the daily average of dispersant use dropped to 23,250 US gallons (88.0 m3) a day, a 9% decline.[209] By July 30, more than 1,800,000 US gallons (6,800 m3) of dispersant had been used, mostly Corexit 9500.[210]

So maybe an Obama boot on the throat means, "I want you to fear my wrath up to nine percent of the time."

Likewise, Obama sounds a bit silly when he calls people fatcats. Frankly it's embarrassing. It's reminiscent of a drunk who threatens a much bigger guy when he knows his sober buddies are holding him back and the other guy isn't particularly interested.

In the 1st video clip, above, Aaron Task suggests that BHO wanted to be much tougher with the bank in early 2009, but Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers talked him out of it, so I guess they qualify as the two sober friends who prevented the fight in question. Blodget starts things off by suggesting that fight would have involved "coming down hard" on Wall Street, and Task chimes in by suggesting that could've meant nationalizing the banks, although he stumbles and says privatizes for a moment. And yes, I'm tempted to read into that, that it was one of them Freudian slips, but what do I know about what people may really be thinking?

Incidentally, Jonathan Schwarz of Tiny Revolution recently mentioned the same book that Task refers to, Confidence Men by Ron Suskind. His discussion suggests a different conclusion, and it didn't go along with the Obama as impressionable naif theme at all. I haven't read it, although it sounds interesting.

Here's a quote from Suskind, via Schwarz:

According to one of the participants, he then said, "I'm not out there to go after you. I'm protecting you. But if I'm going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation."

No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn't seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none; neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.

After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.

Is this what happened? Even if it isn't, and is just what Suskind's source said, it certainly doesn't square with Aaron Task's interpretation of the book. Maybe Task is a slower reader than Jon Schwarz, and hasn't gotten that far.

Below, Blodget says some sensible things here about infrastracture spending, then he sneaks in the usual bit about unsustainable entitlements needing to be cut, and says nothing about taxes. It reminds me of how Alan Simpson said some sensible sounding things to the lady from Reuters in the interview clip I posted the other day, but also snuck in a similarly themed swipe regarding those supposedly unsustainable entitlements.



HERE’S WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE ECONOMY… (And How To Fix It)
Henry Blodget | Daily Ticker – Mon, Oct 3, 2011 2:13 PM EDT

see also The Promiscuous Reader, "The Protection Racket"

...

Arthur Silber update Aug 2011

A lot of people could use some help right now. But the abstraction is just that, and Arthur in particular could use some help right now.

25 August 2011

Koch Responds To Buffett: ‘My Business And Non-Profit Investments Are Much More Beneficial To Society'

America’s current tax system forces people making $50,000 a year to pay a higher rate than hedge fund managers making $2.4 million an hour. Warren Buffett penned an op-ed last week declaring that America’s super-rich have been “coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.”

By way of counterpoint and context, there's Moon of Alabama's post linked below, with some cold water regarding Warren Buffet's alleged awesomeness. The devil's in the details, as is usually the case.
M of A - Buffet Is Lying On "Future Promises"

It would make sense, and save a lot of problems, if the U.S. would tax capital gains at the same rate as income form a regular job...

Two from Raw Story:
1. "Ron Paul suggests spending cuts could lead to riots"

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul wants to make deep cuts to spending and entitlements, but he’s worried there might be European-style riots in the U.S. if he gets his way. “I see the anger building and problems getting worse,” Paul told Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs Wednesday.

Ron Paul is a problematic figure for me. He generally comes down on the correct side with respect to civil liberties matters and his critique of the security state, as well as regarding our extensive network of military bases all over the world. But Paul and his son are pretty eager to tear down the social safety net, even as they have both made a lot of dough from collecting medicaid payments in their medical practices. Above all, do no harm. Or not.

2. John Dean rips Cheney’s memoir: It displays his ‘authoritarian personality’


Then and now, MLK and Malcolm X; I have a feeling Rob Payne and Duncan Mitchel were unaware of each other's similarly themed essays, both worthwhile, illustrating a similar theme drawn from different material:

Rob Payne: Forgetting MLK, "We cherry pick the past in order to cherry pick the present"

Duncan Mitchel:"He Who Controls the Past Controls the Future"


Dave Anderson, "Austerity kills"
Rachel Tabachnick, Talk2Action, "What is it About Uganda? Bachmann Campaign Faith-Based Organizer Arrested There in 2006"
(via Jay Taber, "Christian Dominion")



The Onion, "Report: At This Point, Most Americans Feel More Comfortable In Dying Economy" August 23, 2011 | ISSUE 47•34

"You get used to sending 50 resumés into the void each day and having them all go unanswered," said Mary-Lee Jones, 46, of Cleveland, who later called the enduring unlikelihood of ever finding employment "her rock." "The emotional trauma of not knowing if or when I'll work again has just become a regular part of my life. Honestly, not living on the knife's edge of poverty might make me a little anxious."

The report also found that many take comfort in the dependable stream of ominous fiscal predictions in the media, particularly in seeing, on a regular basis, the weary face of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the cover of major newspapers, accompanied by giant bold letters announcing the dollar's latest slide.

"Even if the economy did start to make a miraculous recovery, all that would happen is I'd get my hopes up and then, boom, it would collapse again like it always does"...

The Ides of August, approximately

Nouriel Roubini, Slate, "Is Capitalism Doomed?"
Karl Marx was right that globalization, financial intermediation, and income redistribution could lead capitalism to self-destruct.
Posted Monday, Aug. 15, 2011, at 2:17 PM ET

There's something amusing about this story carrying a Goldman Sachs ad. Or maybe it's not the least bit funny.

IOZ, on Ron Paul(and Dennis Kucinich): "Ersatz intellectual diversity superimposed on the public facade of the ruling class is an affect overlying an underlying unanimity among the actually powerful."

Sibel Edmonds has a website,and links to a bunch of other links, here.

Dennis Perrin, "Nietzsche's Abyss"

Rob Payne announces his pick for the 2012 presidential contest.

11 August 2011

Joshua Holland (Alternet) on the "Super Congress"



Two from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

1.Attorney for Graves, Rogers: Bank is at fault(via Unqualified Offerings)

Jeremy Redmon and Aaron Gould Sheinin:

CALHOUN -- While U.S. Rep. Tom Graves was calling for fiscal responsibility in Washington his attorney was arguing in a lawsuit that a North Georgia bank is at fault for issuing Graves a $2.2 million loan the bank knew he could not repay. Graves was fighting a lawsuit along with business partner Chip Rogers, the state Senate majority leader. The two Republicans, through a limited-liability company, used the loan to purchase and renovate a Calhoun motel that quickly went under.

The bank sued, alleging the two defaulted on the loan. The politicians filed counterclaims against the bank, accusing it of improperly declaring the loan in default after reneging on a promise to refinance it at more favorable terms.

2.Pa. judge gets 28 years in 'kids for cash' case | ajc.com

SCRANTON, Pa. — A longtime northeastern Pennsylvania judge has been ordered to spend nearly three decades in prison for his role in a massive juvenile justice bribery scandal that prompted the state's high court to toss thousands of convictions.

Dahlia Lithwick,Slate, "The GOP's war on the NLRB isn't just about airplanes and unions"


John Robb writes(July 29th), " I admire the way the US gov't used the budget fight to manufacture a black swan financial event out of thin air. Very GG of them. Of course, there will be lasting damage done that hasn't been considered even if it doesn't result in a default. "


The capital of hard times: With 28% of unemployment, a U.S. high, Arizona city twists in the wind. Erik German, Monday, August 1, 2011


Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings, "Hire one man to drop a bomb, hire another man to fill the crater with old tea leaves"


Poll: Christians Are Much More Likely to Condone Violence Than Muslims or Atheists


from the Christian Science Monitor, "Knights Templar: In Mexico, like Norway, criminals look to past for legitimacy"

The attacker in Norway and a Mexican drug ring both invoke the ancient Knights Templar to describe themselves. Why do violent ideologues and criminals search the past for inspiration?

Buckeye surgeon, "Irrational death"

Belarus Drafts Law Against Peaceful Gatherings (via NYT)


The class politics of the US debt ceiling crisis (I think this was from Jodi Dean)

Jay Taber, "Greed Kills"

In his 1994 book Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia, Hans Magnus Enzensburger examined the consequences of societies built on systems that treated people as if they didn't matter. Introduce weapons and scapegoating, and pandemonium will ensue.

Thursday, August 11, 2011, Reality Zone:
"5 Reasons Why American Riots Will Be The Worst In The World"

via KFO, who writes,

20% is that portion of the landscape where government is recognized as an oppressor, not a force for good; where consumerism is seen as destructive, not liberating; where capitalism is seen as plutocratic, not empowering; where fashion-style-fine wines-fine dining-trendy literature are seen as corrosive diversions, not as fulfilling ways to spend one's time. The 20% is where we find that America is fatally collapsing because of hubris, greed, materialism, self-satisfaction, consumerism, and a pretense of being beyond and above failure.

Dennis Perrin,"Chaotic Masters"

...Instead, they rave on about Obama the Socialist Muslim. They cite the Founders as timeless seers whose 18th century social notions fit a 21st century global economy. They blast runaway spending but say little about corporate/military influence. That they didn't erupt when Bush expanded the state exposes their hypocrisy. Tea Partiers are no threat to the status quo. They espouse some vile opinions, but then so do many Americans.

Liberals pout and are equally locked down. Far from organizing grassroots resistance, liberals leap into Dem arms, afraid of the scary GOP. As I've said, it's a beautiful system for those who own it.

I tend to think that Dennis Perrin is closer to the mark. Things may get worse, maybe even a lot worse, but Americans, at least those who vote, seem to have an endless appetite for hitching their aspirations to co-opted faux outsiders, both on the left and the right.

Faith in the system

Ruin The Economy Or Not? Congress Still Unable To Decide

Also from The Onion; this is from last week, but needless to say the melodrama is still playing. Am I expecting too much if I'm disappointed that they don't point out that BHO is also trying to cut entitlements?

And(below),from August 2008,


Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

I was reminded of this because Ian Welsh recently discussed a Firedoglake post of his from August '08, and I linked to the second Onion video at Hugo Zoom that summer.

I've been meaning to add Ian Welsh's site to the blogroll, as well as Jodi Dean's I Cite, both of which are very valuable to me, along with some others.

For example, Robert Bonomo(The Cactus Land),Bob Somerby(Daily Howler), Moon of Alabama, and Washingtonsblog.

However I hesitated, partly because sometimes I think of shutting down this wee blog. I'm not going to, although I may take a pretty lengthy break, say six to ten or twelve months. At any rate I wouldn't feel right doing so without consulting Bob in Pacifica, Mimi, and Micah Holmquist, and naturally they may still post. I hope they will.

I miss when Rob Payne was affiliated with us, although I understand his reasons for leaving, some of which is my fault, as he is a very gracious and decent chap. (As I said before, he essentially carried this blog on his shoulders at times.) I always looked forward to going to the web site when he was here, as I am always look forward to posts from Bob and Mimi and Micah today, as I also looked forward to Micah Pyre's posts in 2009. If you post solo you miss out on the pleasure of being surprised by your blog collaborators, although I guess if you're a big-shot blogger who takes getting 50 or more comments for granted every time you discuss your dog or cat or parakeet, you may not understand, or you may understand but not care too much about things like that.

Does blogging matter? Not as much as concrete action, but the sense of solidarity people can get from reading and writing political blogs matters, especially living in a surreal age of impression management and "optics" and a constantly changing, distracting spectacle. Maybe we should be disappointed that left and right-wing blogs don't have more of a conversation, although maybe they do and I don't see it, and maybe worrying about it is false sentimentality.

(There's a little more to it than "left=good", "right=bad", and the brutishness and tribalism that corrodes the culture is more complicated than left vs right, but I want to leave that discussion for another day. )

I note the conversion of Balloon Juice's John Cole from being a George W. Bush supporter to a team democrat booster in 2008, although in his case I think it illustrates Cole's recognition of Obama's right wing corporatist aspect more than anything else.

Ultimately millions of people are like John Cole, even if most of them don't blog; they prefer government that treats them like consumers (of constitutional services?) and asks them to vote every 2 to 4 years to reaffirm the legitimacy of the system but which they otherwise don't have to think about too much, like an insurance agent who shows you where to sign and assures you he's trustworthy and respectable by virtue of a genial manner and the numerous plaques on the wall, and doesn't want you to worry about the details apart from where to send your check.

To some extent this is understandable. Certainly it's preferable, or would be if it existed, when contrasted with a government that seems intent on making you worry that it's on the verge of collapse. But it's a fiction. It's a desire to have one's delusions and childish disposition protected, and that same desire helps open the door to precisely the people who create the opposite situation, with the manufactured crises designed to rattle us. Ultimately it requires a massive suspension of disbelief to give the people in power that much benefit of the doubt, and you have to wonder if the people who behave as if they have that much faith actually do. And if they don't, what do they tell themselves to make believe they believe?

I've talked to several persons I know who are reliably democratic voters, who are willing to accept the notion that BHO might be a weak leader, or the best we can do under the circumstances, or just befuddled and outfoxed by the wily Tea Partiers, etc. But they are usually aghast when I suggest he might just be a right-wing(not "centrist") crook and that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, as well as republicans like Ryan and Cantor are in collusion, whether de facto or otherwise, in a concerted effort to wreck the welfare state. And actually, if he is trying to ruin the economy for the lower 80 or 90 percent of people on the economic ladder, does it even matter what kind of crook he is?


Moon of Alabama, "Obama's Artificial Debt Crisis"

28 July 2011: Yves Smith on th' Real News, etc

note: update below

video: "Yves Smith: Debt Ceiling Extortion"

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism is a lady? Apparently so! The name Yves makes me think of Yves Montand, so all this time I pictured a middle aged French guy who put himself through grad school making WWII movies featuring him smoking Gauloises and shrugging a lot.



Forbes, "There Is Rage At The Rich Paying Only 18% Taxes"

www.quickanded.com: "Effective Tax Rates of the Richest 400 Americans"

The IRS has just released an analysis of the richest 400 American tax filers (pdf link). The top-line finding drawing the most attention is that these 400 earned about $138 billion, collectively, in 2007, the most recent year of data...

BBC, Arundhati Roy: India's success a 'lie'

Novelist Arundhati Roy speaks about how India's apparent economic success hides growing poverty and oppression

CNN, "Poll: 52 percent approve of God’s job performance"
(pdf link)

Mark Thoma, "Why Taxpayers Are So Angry and So Wrong About Spending"

"The real reason that the U.S. public is so dead set against tax increases and so apoplectic about government spending is growing income inequality. In addition, many taxpayers underestimate their consumption of government services..."

I don't know. It's getting harder to say "the public feels x" and feel confident that you've made an accurate observation, whatever thing x may be. The public is both atomized and polarized. Yes, many people are angry about wealth inequality, but when some people say they want the government to cut spending they're talking about vague, amorphous 'social programs', while others are talking about our massive military expenditures, etc. And I don't think 'the public' is all that against increased taxes. Most people do believe in progressive taxation, even if they have never heard of the phrase. (Yes, there I go making a sweeping statement about the public mood.)

update: see also Duncan's post about the Mark Thoma article.

21 July 2011

The video is by way of Glenn Greenwald's column from earlier today,
"Cenk Uygur and the ethos of corporate-owned media"

Also from Salon(via Mahablog):

“Corporate America’s Sunshine Patriots.” “… as of last week, as per the website Zero Hedge and data analysts Capital IQ, 29 public companies — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GE and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — each have more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury.”

from Rolling Stone, "Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where's the Uproar?"

Two from Dissident Voice,

Alton C. Thompson, The New Society: Part III: Toward a New Moral Equivalent of War

(Part 1, and part 2 are here.)

Phil Rockstroh, "The Arts of Life They Changed into the Arts of Death: Bachmann, Palin, Robertson and the limits of logic"

15 July 2011

A commenter writes:

Somehow it seems that The South will never get any better. Nowhere is perfect, but The South seems to pump out a never-ending stream of demented brutality from men in positions of power. And the South seems to be the future of America.*

apropos of this article at Streetsblog, "Mother Convicted of Vehicular Homicide For Crossing Street With Children"

A 30-year-old woman in Marietta, Georgia was convicted of vehicular homicide this week – and she wasn’t even driving a car. The woman was crossing the street with her three children when a driver, who had been drinking, hit and killed her four-year-old. The driver, Jerry Guy, was initially charged with “hit and run, first degree homicide by vehicle and cruelty to children,” Elise Hitchcock of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “Charges were later dropped to just the hit and run charge.”

The man has previously been convicted of two hit-and-runs – on the same day, in 1997, one of them on the same road where he killed Raquel Nelson’s son.

Guy will serve six months for killing the boy, but Nelson will serve up to 36 months – just for crossing the street with her child. Yes, it’s true: they were not in a crosswalk. Are there any crosswalks on that street at all?

The image is from the Google Street View of the intersection where Raquel Nelson's four-year-old son was killed. There are no crosswalks in sight. I don't know how you can be found guilty of 'vehicular homicide' when you're a pedestrian.

and, via another commenter,
http://peds.org/resources/pedestrian_right_of_way/


From John Emerson,"If you’re not a conspiracy theorist some of the time, you’re a sucker"

July 13, 2011 Gallup.com: On Deficit, Americans Prefer Spending Cuts; Open to Tax Hikes
Twenty percent favor deficit reduction by cutting spending only
by Jeffrey M. Jones


Joe Weisenthal , Business Insider: "IT'S OFFICIAL: The Whole World Thinks Republicans Are Dangerous Maniacs Threatening Everyone"

Dean Baker, "Economic Illiteracy" (via Rob Payne, "Trust in Obama")

CNN, "Tea party to GOP: We could make 'examples' of you over debt ceiling"



1958 interview with Aldous Huxley[video]

*I remember a New Republic article from the mid-90s or so, about how the Southern political model was being exported to the rest of the US. I wish I could remember the title or the author's name.

update: I think this is the article I was thinking of, from 1995, by Michael Lind(partial paywall). It seems that later he expanded it into a book.

Baboon Petting Zoo

Keiser Report: Europe's Neo Feudalism (E162)
Youtube: This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report on selling Greece's sovereignty and Spain's El Gordo. In the second half of the show, Max talks to economist Michael Hudson about the IMF assassins sent in to destroy the Greek economy.
KR on Facebook: www.facebook.com/KeiserReport

Discussing our crumbling government and society is growing increasingly depressing. I wonder, as I so often do, what 'the people' think, and it's hard to escape the overwhelming impression that US society is growing increasingly fragmented, and although large numbers of people "get it", as it were, that fragmentation is only part of the reason the elites seem more brazenly corrupt, and knowing there's a problem is most definitely not some kind of magical first step out of twelve.

I don't believe in violent revolution, not because I believe the elites are likely to reform spontaneously or through strictly non-violent pressure-- I don't expect either of these things. Rather, because I know violent revolutions can and often do spiral out of control and cause more bloodshed and misery than the rotten old order. Given how predisposed American society is towards violence, this might be particularly likely in our case. Having said that, I don't know what kind of alternatives may exist to effect worthwhile change.(And yes, that word seems to have been ruined, doesn't it?)

Do those alternatives exist?

For that matter, why read political blogs? Why read anything or pay attention to anything about the world around you, apart from what's on Entertainment Tonight or the latest interminable circus-celebrity trial on CNN, et al? I'd like to believe that reading and writing blogs is a gesture of solidarity, but let's face it: (1)it's hardly the same thing as demonstrating in the streets, and (2)there are also millions of other politically engaged people blogging for a sense of solidarity and arguing for the destruction of the welfare state, against public education, for slashing the benefits of government workers and numerous other things you may find alarming and wrongheaded.


WSWS.org,"How the Mediterranean Anti-Capitalist Conference defended French imperialism"

Washingtonsblog,"The Big Banks Are Waging Warfare Against the People of the World"

Gregory Elich, "Class War Without Mercy"

Ian Welsh, "So, compared to McCain, was Obama the lesser evil?"

Cheap date

55ella2007k, a video blogger* I've linked to once or twice before,

calls attention to this dKos diary[ video link] from one Giles Goat Boy:

"President Answers Collective Bargaining Question with Right-wing Talking Points"

Here's a sample from his essay:

GGB:I said all through the Wisconsin protests that we did not need President Obama to come here to validate our movement. I said he needed us more than we needed him. It wasn't a criticism. I truly believed that we could handle this without the distraction of having the President walking the picket line with us. I thought it was strategically smart to keep him away. I still believe that.

I assumed he would do his part in Washington and elsewhere to fight for the right to collectively bargain. I thought he had our backs. Apparently he has been taken in by some truly ridiculous Fox News-style talking points. That's what I find disappointing. Here is his answer, with the truthy parts highlighted:

BHO:The first thing I want to emphasize is that collective bargaining is the
reason why the vast majority of Americans enjoy a minimum wage, enjoy weekends, enjoy overtime. So many things that we take for granted are because workers came together to bargain with their employers.

GGB:Uh, oh. He's praising the Labor movement first. Here it comes...

BHO:Now, we live in a very competitive society in the 21st century. And that means in the private sector, labor has to take management into account. If labor is making demands that make management broke and they can’t compete, then that doesn’t do anybody any good.

When I read something like this I am often skeptical, given the kind of mental contortions I've seen people do to rationalize voting for and still supporting Obama after the abundant evidence he's offered to anybody paying attention that he's just a corporate shill. In no particular order:

1.He has to say what he says because of how far right the country has drifted;

1b. because of the viciousness of the press, especially Fox News,

2. he's playing 'eleven-dimension-chess', deftly out-maneuvering his opponents,

3. he has to keep the Blue Dogs happy, or they'll bolt for the GOP,

4. I voted for him without illusions, because a more liberal candidate wouldn't have been viable, etc.


In Goat Boy's case, this bit stood out:

"I assumed he would do his part in Washington and elsewhere to fight for the right to collectively bargain. I thought he had our backs. Apparently he has been taken in by some truly ridiculous Fox News-style talking points."

So Goat Boy belongs to yet another camp, the one that believes that BHO is an impressionable naif. Michelle, don't let him watch so much teevee! I suppose if he's naive that explains why he doesn't seem to see any contradiction in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize and ramping up the war in Afghanistan, or starting one in Libya; presumably this would vex a more sophisticated sort of person.

Ella opines that maybe Goat Boy will be banned from Daily Kos for daring to criticize the president and pointing out that BHO sounds like he's essentially sympathetic with the goals of the GOP regarding worker's rights because the people who run dKos generally don't take kindly to lefties who rock the boat for team democrat. But I don't think he has too much to worry about, regarding possibly getting kicked off dKos. Maybe she didn't see this from the Kos comments(there were over 200):

I rec'd the diary, but can't tip the jar. (78+ / 0-)


At some point we progressives are going to have to ask ourselves, "How does guaranteeing our vote for those that don't represent us effect change?"
"What does 'holding accountable' mean?" To all those who whine, "But, look what happened in Wisconsin," I say, "Look what is HAPPENING in Wisconsin!"

by WisePiper on Thu Jul 07, 2011 at 11:54:36 AM PDT

That's cool. (20+ / 0-)

My decision is based on a number of factors including the way our government is structured. I'll vote for him, but I understand why some people won't.It's not that easy being green.

by Giles Goat Boy on Thu Jul 07, 2011 at 11:59:06 AM PDT

******


Yes, WisePiper, at some point progressives are going to have to ask themselves, "How does guaranteeing our vote for those that don't represent us effect change?"

Who can doubt this? Nobody!

And Goat Boy**, it's very big of you to understand why some people won't vote for Obama. I hope you understand why BHO couldn't care less about your opinions.





*or vlogger, if you insist.
**I wanted to create a sock-puppet commenting identity over at Kos as 'John Barth' and demand my title back , but it seemed like too much bother.

The slow(er) boat to hell

[video, above] Tenebroust, The "left" sets up the "right" for takeover, Feb 15, 2010 (1st posted at DH here, "Fascism USA...")

Ian Welsh: "A blast from the past and a reminder about the future", April 24, 2011

Obama is not turning things around, what he is doing is negotiating with Republicans how fast the decline will be, and how much and how fast it is necessary to fuck ordinary Americans in order to keep the rich rich. If Obama wins another term, he will continue to negotiate the decline, then, odds are very high, a Republican will get in, and slam his foot on the accelerator of collapse.

Chris Hedges, "The corporate state wins again", April 25, 2011

The rhetoric of the Democratic Party and the neoliberals sustains the illusion of participatory democracy. The Democrats and their liberal apologists offer minor palliatives and a feel-your-pain language to mask the cruelty and goals of the corporate state. The reconfiguration of American society into a form of neofeudalism will be cemented into place whether it is delivered by Democrats, who are pushing us there at 60 miles an hour, or Republicans, who are barreling toward it at 100 miles an hour.

Xymphora: "Hell or heaven", April 29, 2011

I'm getting sick and tired of these elections fought by the left on the basis of promising to take you on the road to hell, but a little slower than the other guys. This is killing the Liberals in the current campaign, as they have nothing positive to offer but that they are not the utter hopelessness of Harper.

First of all, no, I am not saying that Hedges and Xymphora are just filching from Ian Welsh, nor am I saying that Ian is filching from Tenebroust. (It's highly unlikely the other three have even heard of Tenebroust, who is not, er, conventionally articulate. (although I suspect he could be if he wanted to be, but just doesn't feel like it.))The same idea can spring up roughly simultaneously in many places.(incidentally, I gather that Tenebroust and Welsh are both cautiously pro-nuclear power, while Hedges and Xymphora are both steadfastly anti-nuke.)

At any rate, to me it seems that one of the reasons an idea spontaneously springs forth in divers minds may be because it is increasingly valid. (I was tempted to say 'increasingly resonant' but I'm getting tired about hearing about how ideas and spin 'resonate', and didn't want to contribute to the din.)

If you can recall other instances of having seen this line of argument please email me, or better yet tell me in the comments.

Additional thoughts regarding bin Laden

There were several interesting commentaries about the execution of bin Laden in the past 24 hours. For example, here, here and here. But I particularly like these two pieces by Jodi Dean and Helena Cobban:


Jodi Dean, "Post-terrorism":

For a moment, the twenty minutes or so when the intertubes were alive with the news and before the president spoke, I felt something--something like relief, the sense of an end, perhaps even hope. It was, I think, the anticipation of an end to the disaster of the last ten years of ritualized humiliation, electronically stimulated fear, widespread surveillance, and the enjoyment of camps and torture.

The television media quickly made it clear that this sort of anticipation has no place: the war on terrorism is endless, total. It won't stop. We are not the same people. We have been reconfigured in a massive psycho-political experiment in transforming democracy into fascism, or a new barbarous variant of fascism, capitalist anarcho-fascism.

Helena Cobban:

Pres. Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, told reporters that the mission of the team was defined as follows:

If we had the opportunity to take Bin Laden alive, if he didn’t present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that. We had discussed that extensively in a number of meetings in the White House and with the president. The concern was that Bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation. Indeed, he did. It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight and that’s when [his mortal] remains were removed.

But we certainly were planning for the possibility, which we thought was going to be remote, given that he would likely resist arrest, but that we would be able to capture him.

I am glad that Brennan said that. The rhetoric surrounding the operation is important. However, the idea that Bin Laden was killed in "a firefight" doesn't seem to have any evidence to back it up; and it seems to me distinctly possible that the U.S. team went in and simply snuffed him out. This is a modus operandi very frequently used by the U.S. forces using drones or other killing machines, in Pakistan or elsewhere. Such killings are correctly termed extra-judicial executions (EJEs) because they are carried out far outside the normal, and normally transparent, workings of legal systems. The individual reported to be Bin Laden was not, like those numerous other victims of EJE's, killed by a drone operator sitting many hundreds or even thousands of miles away, but by members of a team on the ground, able to look him in the eye as they killed him. Presumably the main intention in using a ground-force team was to obtain irrefutable evidence that the victim was indeed Bin Laden, though that evidence has not yet been presented to the public.

Yesterday when I discussed my initial reaction to the news of the taking of bin Laden's life, I debated whether or not to speculate about whether or not they meant to kill him. Even though a living US prisoner bin Laden would go a long distance towards defusing tensions between America and the Muslim world, as well as defusing the possible threat of retaliation, I somehow doubt that Obama was terribly concerned about that. But I also recognized that unless the government explicitly admits they meant to kill bin Laden, you have to allow for the possibility they meant to capture him alive, because even with the technological and tactical advantages that a special forces unit enjoys, things can go wrong and such a mission is dangerous work, and nothing like the numerous movies and television programs that portray these missions, in which the good guys never accidentally shoot somebody, or screw up, or lose their cool, etc. Still, it sure looked like they meant to kill him.

Helena Cobban gave voice to the same skepticism I had, and said it far better than I could. Discussing the same question I wanted to say that if they had captured bin Laden alive to take him to trial it would have gone a long way towards restoring the legitimacy of federal government behavior to pre 9/11 standards. It's the way a government is supposed to behave. But I felt silly writing that, partly because I doubt many politicians in power care about that. Maybe regular people don't even care about it that much any more; I don't know. At any rate, I don't for a moment believe the president cares about that. He just wants to look powerful and decisive, keep his sponsors happy, and otherwise seems perfectly content with the post-constitutional style that is presently in fashion.

Arthur Silber update

If you read this nanoblog it is likely you have a more than passing familiarity with the great Arthur Silber. He could use some help right now. [24 March 2011]

22 February 2011

image via rocknetroots

Robert Reich advocates raising the top tax bracket to 70 percent
[via Avedon ]

Ian Welsh discusses events in Wisconsin and advocates a top tax bracket of 90 percent.

Yahoo/AP:At CIA, grave mistakes, then promotions via Detroit Free Press, but I have a feeling this link will eventually be no good.

In December 2003, security forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched German citizen Khaled el-Masri. For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been taken to a secret prison in Afghanistan for interrogation. But he was the wrong guy.

Paul Craig Roberts, "From Brunei to Washington: Kleptocrats at Work"

'Upper-Class People Have Trouble Recognizing Others’ Emotions''

and (speaking of perception) Rob Payne, "The Gaddafi Mirror"


Mother Jones, "South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion Providers"


Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics

Two via the redoubtable BDR:

1. Hosni Mubarak used last 18 days in power to secure his fortune
and
2: Corporate scavengers

Rob returns to Halcyon Daze

but not here. OK, he calls his blog "Halcyon Days" but I like my spelling. Anyway, here's his most recent post. No wait, this is his most recent item: "Ack Obama and the macho liberal"

Caruso resurfaces

John Caruso at Distant Ocean has been on a break for a while, something I'm getting ready to do. He wrote on Friday:

If you're hankering for something of substance, read John Halle's response to Robert Parry's hauntingly familiar argument about why you should vote for Democrats, and how if you don't, every bad thing that's ever happened is your personal responsibility. Thrill at the fanciful flights of logic as Parry opines that you may have literally "doomed the future" through your desire to "feel morally pure." And when you've finished reading, repent your heresy and hand your vote back to the party that rightfully owns it. Robert Parry commands you!

Catching up

As you may have noticed Rob Payne has left DH. He was upset at me over something I shouldn't have posted, which I have since corrected, but since then Rob has decided that he is tired of blogging. (His last post at Halcyon Days is here.) I understand this, even though I am disappointed by his decision and hope he might someday decide to return.

I mean to continue, and I hope that Bob and Mimi and Micah might make additional contributions here; I look forward to their posts and always feel exited when I see one of theirs up, just as I did with Rob's posts. I always wanted the members of DH to feel like it is our blog, even though it needs to be noted that Rob essentially carried it on his shoulders, posting 60-70 per cent of the material while he was here.

For now however, I admit to feeling a bit disconnected, partly because of Rob leaving, and partly because I also have other projects I need to attend to, so my posting will be light in October and November.

All the same, I mean to add these folks to the blogroll shortly:


http://agonyin8fits.blogspot.com/ aka Susan from Texas, as she sometimes signs her comments at ATR

http://bdr.typepad.com/blckdgrd/

http://pezcandy.blogspot.com/ aka "Constructive destruction"

http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/

http://www.joerivashelpseveryone.net/

http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/

http://leninology.blogspot.com/

http://mondoweiss.net/

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

I've debated whether or not to add IOZ, "Stop Me Before I Vote Again" and Lady Poverty just because I suspect most of the few persons likely to visit already know who they are and they don't really need additional promotion, per se.


I still post ephemera that strikes my fancy at Hugo Zoom occasionally. I try to treat DH as the "serious" blog, although hopefully not too much so.

Doug Henwood and the Econo-misers

in "The Non-Crazy Left" Jonathan Schwarz over at ATR posts 3 Real News videos of a Paul Jay interview with Doug Henwood. I've posted the second of these above because I think it relates to yesterday's essay by Rob, "Tipping point." You should go see the 1st and 3rd parts of the interview at ATR as well.

I note, however, that neither Paul Jay nor Henwood touch upon the reasons for the Republicans screaming for austerity and Obama's tepid response to them. Maybe that's because if they honestly addressed this they'd have to acknowledge that the behavior of both the GOP and BHO are part of a generation-long project to dismantle the New Deal and the middle class it created. They don't want the economy to recover; their friends and masters are doing OK.

Let me be clear that I don't fault Paul Jay or Doug Henwood; the interview is well worth your time, more so than a lot of crud on CNN, CBS, and so forth. Jay is trying to maintain objectivity. It's not his fault if the facts have a strange liberal slant that makes neither the GOP nor the president(or his supporters) look good.

27 August: blind lib

Digby has a silly post up in which she suggests, based on a Washington Post story, that anti-Islamic prejudice didn't exist in the US before people started stirring it up recently.

She writes:

The only time anybody ever looked at a Muslim (or Arab looking person) askance was on airplanes. I live in Los Angeles and there are millions of Muslims here and they have been mingling and working and living like any other American since the day of the terrorist attacks. Aside from some brief apprehension in the very early days when the authorities were looking closely at Muslim organizations, things have been remarkably and quite inspirationally normal here in the US especially since we have been involved in two wars with Muslim countries during that time.

So, tell me, what the hell has happened recently that made everyone suspicious of Muslims all of a sudden? We haven't been attacked. There has been no public debate.

The only thing that's happened is that we elected a black president to whom his political enemies conveniently attached the Muslim label. And thus they have extended the hatred for him to hatred of Muslims in general. It's not that these people hate American Muslims. It's that they hate Barack Obama and everything he stands for.

This is ridiculous. First, it sounds like she's saying that only manifestations of prejudice that she's aware of could possibly exist or matter. It's as if racism only exists when it serves Digby's purpose and allows her to score rhetorical points for Team Democratic Party and all the swell people who support it. There are good people and bad people, and the good people luv their Obama. In my comment at Ethan's 6th or 7th I wrote:

Ethan, the WaPo article that Digby quotes minimizes intolerance towards Muslims because it taps into one strain of the Arab-American experience: Assimilation. Arab-Americans (and other Muslims) who can pass for WASP generally try to do so, because it's understood you should do this, and not wear your ethnicity on your sleeve.

In a sense there are two US Muslim communities; one that tries its best to "pass for white" as it were, to reduce the impact of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice, and another which is alienated by the US and has a harder time fitting in. (The former generally comes from a more well-heeled background, so there is also a class frisson operating here.)

But if the WaPo writers just went to the campuses of GWU and Georgetown and the like, they are less likely to see the second group.

Anyway, Digby is less likely to see the 2nd group herself, so that fits.

I hadn't yet read all of the WaPo article when I wrote that, but as it turned out I was partly right, in that the students they talked to were at George Mason U. in tony Fairfax, students at American U. in D.C., as well as the Muslim chaplain of Georgetown. The kids are young people who've presumably lived sheltered lives, even if they may have done some volunteering here and there, so I think they deserve a pass. Digby however, is at least around my age, in her mid-40s or older, so her myopia is harder to excuse. So too, the WaPo writers, who apparently couldn't be bothered to talk to students at a grubby junior college. Don't they have any in D.C.?

Prejudice towards Arabs and Muslims has always been there. Although I don't think my experiences are more relevant than hard data or the news accounts that corroborate my view and that Digby doesn't mention, I note that a man called me a sand nigger to my face in 1995, not so long ago but years before most of us had heard of Bin Laden.

Maybe things are better to some degree in Digby's LA than they are here in the South; I wouldn't know. But I don't believe it has suddenly appeared recently, there or here. One of the problems with people like Glenn Beck and Pam Geller beating racist drums is they make millions of people out there feel as if their otherwise unexpressed darker impulses are legitimate and deserve expression. They enable, even if you can't hold these shit-stirrers liable, and I mean meaningfully liable, in a courtroom. If you could, even someone as wealthy as Rush Limbaugh would suddenly find he couldn't afford the insurance. I'm not saying it should be that way, or that all people are that prejudiced. But the Digbys (Digbies?) of the world speak as if they haven't got a clue, whether this is a result of sincere blindness, or because they think they can will the world to conform to their expectations, or something else.

Today Friday the 27th, is Lyndon Johnson's 102nd birthday. In the 1990s when I worked for the state of Texas, we used to get 8 hours comp time for every 8/27. (we also got 8 hours comp for Robert E. Lee's birthday in January and for Texas Independence Day in March.) I wanted to write something about how complicated LBJ seems to me in comparison with BHO, how he tried to do good at home while he killed thousands of people in Southeast Asia. Obama, by contrast, seems like somebody who would never try to push through a Great Society program, not just because it would hurt his party but also his own future speaking fees. (I don't count so-called healthcare reform as anything more than an oily, budget-busting debacle that will make ever getting to single payer that much harder.)

Back to August 2010- I was glad when Obama spoke out in favor of the Cordoba Center, however briefly he took this stance. Of course if he really wants to support Muslims he could support not killing them. I want to write more about BHO and the Great Society, and the Cordoba Center. I will, soon.