February 7, 2010, See Sarah Run
Sarah Palin, proudly addressing her peeps (Southern White men) at the "tea party convention" suggests she would certainly consider running for President in 2012. The obvious question becomes just how much the Obama people would be paying her to do so, as she already bears her share of responsibility for the fact that he's the President now, and let's face it: Tina Fey isn't going anywhere.
That said, of course, note that as far as media accounts go, and this, of course, includes "even the liberal New York Times," the only relevant places on the political spectrum are "right-wing" and "even more right-wing." Hence, all of the discontent to the Obama Administration is borne by those who have never, and will never, support anything it does (up to and including eliminating all taxation, formally instituting martial law, formally declaring war on everyone else on Earth, eliminating any and all environmental, worker safety or any other kind of regulation that impinges on big business, etc., etc.)... simply because the President is a Black man.
The discontent from people who actually supported this President (and his party) who are utterly appalled at his utter and total reneging on civil liberties, torture and accountability for same, not to mention the expansion of the two major wars now raging... and the President's ineptitude in not getting a stimulus through unless it included tax cuts for the rich, and the seeming total inability to get even modest health care reform through huge majorities in both houses of Congress... isn't reported upon, and let's face it, therefore... does not exist.
No... only the discontent of affluent Southern White males is relevant. And they resent the fact that a Black man is President, even one whose policies are much more in line with (his, and presumably their, political idol) Ronald Reagan and George W, Bush (except, perhaps on matters of torture, indefinite detention and "liquidation of enemies of the state" where the Obama policies are actually well to their right) than they are with, say, LBJ or FDR... but, nonetheless, we still get to hear that Obama is a "socialist," because, of course, few Americans know, or even care, what that word actually means... and the discontent of the ignorant and the bigoted... is, we are told, the only discontent out there.
Brother Dmitri keeps things in perspective, and rightly points out that too much belief in our government to do anything other than cause problems is itself problematic thinking:
You see, from my point of view, only a fool would want to go a-nudging the Central Committee of the Politburo toward adopting better policies. Here, perhaps once there was hope; and now it's gone. Unfortunately, many people continue to believe in the miraculous properties of national politics and policy.
To coin a phrase... indeed. The really fascinating thing is that, in contemplating what difference "President Palin" vs. "President Obama" or "President Cheney" or "President Homer Simpson"... I'm damned if I can think of any difference. Our Government is trying to tell us something with its total dysfunction; the only real issue is how many of us are prepared to listen to it... and how many will continue to delude ourselves into thinking that the current race to disaster will lead to anything but.
February 4, 2010, I'm not QUITE dead...
For those wondering, "Hey TD... why the radio silence?" The short answer is that my lengthy run of luck that unsupported Movable Type 2.64 would remain viable for the rest of my time on God's green Earth (or at least God's green Blogosphere) came to an end, with an "upgrade" to the servers on my (now former) host company. Thanks to the magic of my friends at Blog Consulting, we're back on Movable Type Pro... which, hopefully, will now keep up with our new and improved server.
Obviously, for those who missed my commentary on the state of the union, the loss of the Kennedy family Senate seat, or the sudden loss of nerve associated with trying Ron Jeremy Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian trial in Manhattan, or of course, Rahm Emmanuel's use of "R-word," thereby hopelessly disturbing the sensibilities of the Kennedy Shriver family owners of the "Special Olympics" ... as I write this a few days after Groundhog Day... let me just say... I got nothin'.
I'll just refer you over to "Who is IOZ?" for this rather intelligent commentary on the intelligent observation of others that the United States's adoption of a "summary liquidation of enemies of the state" doctrine... is "radical" only in our mindset of the idea of America... in the actual history of the extraordinarily tainted actual America... it's just less of a big deal than all that. Maybe that's the perspective we need: what's old is new again... the old problems weren't so radically different from the new ones... none of us peons really had too much to say about the big picture, and it's really just about how to best live our lives on our own terms... perhaps we can individually try to make this a better world, but understand that it's always an uphill battle, and the owners of the planet, with names like Goldman and Sacks, Kennedy and Shriver, and so forth... well, they own the place... we just live here.
So... while we can be rightly offended at the humongous disappointment that my college classmate the President has been thus far... what the hell did we expect? He's never had a real job before, for God's sake (and I'll keep saying it: senator IS NOT A REAL JOB.) And hence, he has failed to realize that paying the price for principles-- if he has any, which remains highly dubious-- is necessary for long-term viability. The fact is-- selling out on civil liberties, GTMO, torture, state secrets, etc., allows the public to RIGHTLY regard him as a worthless pushover-- which is the REAL reason he and the worthless pushovers in his worthless political party, despite current large majorities, may well lose those large majorities in the very next election. Fortunately, we have some precedent: the President's stated favorite politican (that would be Ronald Reagan) had a bad first year or two, but turned it around by standing for things he believed in (I happen not to believe in them, but that's another matter). But the people admired his cojones. If the current President wants to stand for something-- and he can stand for, oh, the rule of law or something... then popularity and public support to do other less important things, such as health care reform, will follow. If not... it's going to be a long three years... and it's only going to be three more years. (Although, the President's first year has told us in terms heretofore thought unimaginable that the identity of the occupant of the Oval Office is not quite as important as we thought anyway; somehow, the interests of the powerful at the expense of the less powerful continues unabated regardless.)
January 12, 2010, Random acts of unkindness
You don't need me to tell you that life isn't fair. But some things just... well...
"Unfair" doesn't do justice to... a magintude 7.0 earthquake hitting Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere... seems a bitter pill, indeed. You might try contributing to the Red Cross, or UNICEF, or Doctors Without Borders, or the reputable charity of your choice. Let's do what we can.
And, in further proof that life isn't fair, 104 year old strongman Joe Rollino was struck and killed by a car here in Brooklyn. One of the most popular Coney Island strong men, he was credited with lifting over 3,200 lbs, despite never weighing more than 150 lbs; the 5'5" dynamo walked several miles a day, avoided meat, alcohol and tobacco... and, a model of health and what the human body and spirit are capable of... gets run down in the street by a minivan.
As expected, any possible "good" part of the health insurance "reform" bill, in this case, mandates that large employers (Walmart, we mean you) provide health insurance coverage for their employees and that high income earners pay higher taxes to partly pay for the expansion of health coverage... will likely be jettisoned in "negotiations" between the House and Senate.
A new study tells us running shoes cause joint-ache. Outstanding: in the country with the most obese population in the history of the world, go ahead and discourage people from exercising. Thanks.
And an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in an explosion outside his home. Colleagues say he was critical of the Iranian government, which is a death-penalty offense in Iran these days; naturally, the Iranian government blames the Americans and Zionists. Either way... the man is dead.
I know I promised to be all... upbeat in the new year. At least it looks like the feckless Harry Reid will soon be unseated. So we have something. His recently uncovered racially-charged statements don't strike me as that serious... the fact that he has been an abysmal leader of the Democrats in the Senate, however, is quite serious. Harry, the problem is, we more than hardly knew ya'.
Losing Harry's seat is all part of the strategy that led to this breaking news tweet: Democrats hoping to take power back from Republican minority in 2010. So you see? I ended on an upbeat note.
January 10, 2010, Who's yo' daddy?
I tend to agree with Tristero (at Hullaballoo) and his take that the debasement of our public discourse is far scarier than the President's apparent unwillingness to crap in his pants on national television, as suggested in this Maureen Dowd column that can only be explained as "inexplicable"... the ending lines summing it up best:
Our professorial president is no feckless W., biking through Katrina. He is no doubt on top of the crisis in terms of studying it top to bottom. But his inner certainty creates an outer disconnect.He’s so sure of himself and his actions that he fails to see that he misses the moment to be president — to be the strong father who protects the home from invaders, who reassures and instructs the public at traumatic moments.
He’s more like the aloof father who’s turned the Situation Room into a Seminar Room.
You see, ladies and gentlemen, actually trying to understand the problem and fix it, acording to Maureen Dowd, is a bad thing.
WTF? This is the vaunted New York Times, giving this valuable op-ed real estate to this twit (who called the President "Obambi" because he didn't show enough testosterone for Maureen on the campaign trail.)
The President's performance has left much to be desired, but frankly, stylistic issues are not the problem. The problem is substance: the Obama approach to counter-terrorism is the same as George W. Bush's. Period. Right down to pointlessly escalating a war, apparently starting a war yet somewhere else, keeping the same Secretary of Defense, and arguing for exactly the same dictatorial powers in courts that the Bush Administration argued for... and I'll talk about Guantanamo a bit later. It's as simple as that: if you have a problem with Obama, it is that he is giving us "the third George W. Bush term." Sorry, boys and girls, but John McCain would have been different... maybe (hell, probably) no better... but without doubt... different.
Stupid style points because poow widdle Mauween doesn't have a sense of secuwity are... irrelevant. But as Tristero notes above, this is what now passes for public discourse.
We're coming up on an ignominious anniversary tomorrow (besides being exactly 100 months since 9/11, btw)... that being the eighth anniversary since America's Own Gulag (TM) opened at the American naval air station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Although the President promised to close the place by some date less than two weeks from now, his friends, like Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-MilitaryIndustrialComplex) tells us that completely innocent men cleared by our courts and/or our executive should not be returned to countries where al Qaeda might be at all because... well, it sounds good, right? O.K.... they're completely innocent, so then, we should have no trouble at all releasing them into the United States... or... is that some kind of a problem too?
And so... here we go again. I'd like all of these things approached soberly... and I'd like all of these problems to be approached differently from the...troubling... way that they were handled under the Bush Administration, instead of in the identical way they were handled by the Bush Administration. And that...rather than some fantasy about daddies... is what I want.
January 9, 2010, Rule of Gnaw
This absurdly cold Saturday (it started around 20 F here in NYC, but with 25-35 mph winds swirling...felt colder), we treat you to two items that, if you think that having a Bill of Rights is "a good thing," might just may make your blood run colder still.
The first (h/t Candace) concerns a sudden "controversy" over what heretofore hadn't been particularly "controversial," that being, the seemingly routine release of two Guantanamo detainees who have been determined to have done nothing wrong (and hence, have been wrongly held for eight years), said release now being "controversial" for no reason other than Congressman Pete Hoekstra (Fasc. - Mich.) says so in light of the underpants bomber. Once again, the Obama Administration's inexplicable insistence that it can gain support from people who oppose it for no other reason than it is not of their party (or, of course, that its titular head is not of their complexion) can somehow be won over by selling out (and outright back-stabbing) his own supporters and, of course, going 180 degrees against what he campaigned on... pays dividends. And so here we are. Any "threat" posed by men at Guantanamo is magnified not by releasing them (even to Yemen... "we have always been at war with Eastasia Eurasia Yemen") but by keeping them there as an ongoing symbol of American contempt for the rest of the world and hypocrisy as to our own stated "principles"... a hypocrisy only magnified when we specifically hold men that either the executive, the courts, or both have determined shouldn't be in custody. After a year of this nonsense, where, despite advancing Dick Cheney's policies more creatively than Cheney himself ever did, only to have Dick himself continually blast the Administration for the reasons set forth above, you'd think they'd learn... but, I see no evidence of that... Anyway, those of us who follow this issue closely are duly appalled and concerned... we'll just have to wait for the current hysteria over the underpants bomber to pass... it might be a while.
And speaking of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underpants bomber (a name apparently too hard to type into the appropriate database necessary to keep him off of airplanes... and which should remind us that any technical fix will never get around the fact that the undereducated, overworked, minimum wage technicians we employ to "keep us safe" simply can't possibly do the job under the current insane way things are set up, no matter how many expensive full-body scanners we buy)... naturally, a group of Republican legislators has written a letter to the President demanding that Abdulmutallab be denied a civilian trial so that he can be tortured in military custody. We told you so, Mr. President: your bullshit policy of having it both ways with federal trials where you thought you had a slam dunk case and military commissions where you were more doubtful really does make us all ask the question: why aren't military commission tribunals good enough for everyone... including, say, drug dealers or money launderers, two groups who might somehow be linked to terrorism, somewhere?
The thing is, of course, the Republicans have a point. While Obama can point out that the Bush Administration chose to bring shoe-bomber Richard Reid and "20th highjacker" Zaccarias Moussaoui to civilian justice, the fact is, another supposed "20th highjacker," Mohammad al-Qatani, was held at Guantanamo (still is, IIRC) and tortured mercilessly. Any particular reason for the disparate treatment? None has ever been publicly offered, as far as I am aware. Once you open the door to arbitrary second-string "justice" and "enhanced interrogation"... how do you justify not going through that door? (Hint: that's why you don't open that door.)
And so, here we are. Just as post-9-11 and pre-Iraq War (and before the'04 election with the OBL videotape... and before the '06 election with the announced Saddam execution), we have the politics of mob rule based on hyperbolic fear of terrorism (maniacs are always going to try to kill us; we have to keep our heads, or the terrorists will win... not vice versa). As always... it ain't pretty. This has been... "Rule of Gnaw."
January 4, 2010, And then there were... 198
We are rapidly coming up to January 22, 2010, the day that President Barack Obama will have unquestionably broken a promise that, at the time he made it anyway, was 100% within his power to keep, that being to "close Guantanamo within one year."
The thing with the Guantanamo promise, aside from candidate Obama's stand on the issue having been a selling point for many rubes and suckers (such as myself) to support his candidacy, is that it was an actual concrete promise on which we can clearly measure accountability, rather than the nebulous (and ultimately meaningless) "hope and change" and the all-important "Oprah(TM) says he's The One(TM)" that were the twin hallmarks of his campaign. Nope: my old college classmate really screwed the (non-talking) pooch on GTMO all by himself, having managed to release a pathetic three dozen or so of the over 230 men he inherited last January (down from the over 700 who passed through the place at one time or another). Had the place been "substantially" vacated, say, down to the few dozen actual possible "bad guys," with trials of those remaining in some stage of progress... we'd have given a "substantially complete" assessment, and a hearty back-slap. Instead, we have seen foot-dragging and ineptitude, not to mention outright malfeasance (such as permitting Congress to tie his hands re: bringing even cleared prisoners to the United States, or the dictatorial "preventive detention" proposals... and we won't even talk about the abuse of state secrets privileges) that would have embarrassed the Bush Administration. And hence, we have an Obama Administration that tells us the majority of men it is holding are "cleared for release"... but it will hold them in potential life sentences in maximum security anyway!
Fortunately, our friend the indefatigable Andy Worthington is ever vigilant, and gives us his definitive prisoner list updated for 2010. And he means definitive: Andy gives updated accounts of quite literally all of the 779 (known) unfortunate bastards who have passed through GTMO, including the 198 (known) to still be stuck there (notwithstanding that most of them have been "cleared for release")... and the half dozen or so who died there (including at least one who was himself "cleared for release" at the time of his death.)
Andy is a top-notch journalist and historian, but in the "interesting" media environment we find ourselves in (where the staged musings of "reality t.v. stars" is "news" and what used to be considered "news" is now done by... well, it's not done by what used to be considered "news organizations")... Andy is a one-man show. Please consider supporting his critical work by clicking on the PayPal link in the linked post. The thing is, this is really the state of "journalism" as we presently find it in the year 2010. Guantanamo and American detention in the so-called "war on terror" really is the story of our time. And yet, with a few honorable exceptions (pretty much exclusively in either print media or non-corporate radio, btw), such as Charlie Savage, Carol Rosenberg and Amy Goodman, the journalism in this area is being done almost entirely by "the new media"... a free-standing journalist like Andy, an advocate seeking to keep the public informed of key developments like Candace Gorman, or perhaps by some talking dog with a computer who has managed to interview more of the players in this area than just about anyone on Earth. But this is what now comes to mind when thinking about Guantanamo related journalism.
Which, let's face it, is a huge part of the problem. Even many "informed" people simply write off GTMO as a partisan issue, and assume that since the beloved Obama is in charge, everything is better now...even though nothing could be further from the truth. But then, it's not as if there's any reporting on this in the sources that most people rely upon for their "news," now is there?
Well... just wanted you all to know that some of us, at least, are keeping score, and if there ever is to be accountability... the powers that be had better know that accounts are being kept.
January 2, 2010, Nostaligia act
It may be a new decade, but that's no reason not to go to a good old throw-back here at TTD, and what better way to start a new decade than with a nostalgic revisit to "Saturdays with Pravda" to this piece telling us that... wait for it... over 60% of Russians are nostalgic for the Soviet Union. For many Russians, guaranteed housing and employment and cheap food (even if variety wasn't tremendous) seem better than the rough and tumble of capitalism where (this is just crazy talk)... many people don't live quite as well... but a few people are fabulously rich, so doesn't that make everything better? No wonder we never understood the Russians! Sheesh!
I suspect that many Americans, though they won't say it to a pollster, may also be somewhat nostalgic for the Soviet Union for a different reason-- to have the certitude of having an "evil empire" to contend with, one against whom big, expensive heavy weapons systems appeared to make sense rather than the messiness of nebulous "terrorists" (currently of the "Islamist" variety). Americans are somewhat uncertain that some other enemy would necessarily emerge to justify the expenditure of the massive amounts of money we currently devote to re-fighting the Battle of the Bulge (and the USSR) that might go to, say, medical research (also from Pravda, how about this optimistic report linking cancer research to possibly saving the Tasmanian Devil from extenction... but I digress), or development of cold fusion or combating global warming, or sustainable agriculture or maintaining a crumbling infrastructure or lots of other frivolous expenditures that would only result in... the collapse of our vaunted American way of life.
And then, perhaps, I'm tipping my own hand here. Since, after the fall of the USSR, we didn't renounce anything-- the infrastructure remained intact, conveniently waiting to be remobilized at the right prompting, and 9-11 proved an excellent excuse. There are those who wonder if aggressive, expansionist military acts are somehow in America's DNA... and they make a sufficiently excellent point that I must stop to question my own support of American military action anywhere (since I don't currently support American military action anywhere except Afghanistan at the moment, and so I must question my support of that.) Perhaps we have to separate the emotional pull to lash back at someone that was so instrumental in unleashing the Afghanistan War in the first place, and realize that viewed in the context of broader intrinsically "morally detached" American involvement everywhere for every reason, the whole thing might... look different. For an analogy which may or may not apply, I am reminded of ferile housecats that Mrs. TD and I encountered on our last trip to the Hawaiian islands over a dozen years ago. They seemed friendly, cute and cuddly to us... we even fed the ones nearby...but in their good-natured cuddly-ness, blithely and unthinkingly they devastated local species, which evolved without feline predators, including a number of flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth that quickly found themselves reduced to the point of endangerment or extinction by Fluffy and Mittens. Remind anyone of some superpower somewhere?
Wheeewww... I mean to be more upbeat here in the new decade, so I should back-off a bit, and just say perhaps we can better diagnose the problem if we can start to ask ourselves the "hidden in plain sight" questions like "does this make sense... or it it once did, does it still?"... or something like that. This has been... "Nostalgia Act."
January 1, 2010, Happy new year... and new decade... and new opportunities
On this first day of the new year, and the new decade (and, as always, "the first day of the rest of your life" and all), I'll just link to the Grey Lady's annual salute to the revelers in Times Square.
Others might note that thousands upon thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers and others ignored Dick Cheney's consistent message of doom and gloom about "security threats" and went on with the celebration,
but I'm just going to go with the "life-affirming" thing... people just want to come out and celebrate the passage of time, and express their hopes and wishes for a bright future.
For a change, maybe turning over a new leaf in 2010, I'll just leave it there. There's plenty of time to face what we must face (often just to get through the day) the rest of the year (and the rest of our lives)... but today, let's just revel in the moment-- a new day, a new year, a new decade, full of hope and possibilities. The myriad problems are all before us, to be sure... just scroll down this page if you don't believe me. But I have no doubt that we have it in our hearts and souls to overcome all, and to assure ourselves and our children and their children the bright, happy and fulfilling futures they deserve, and I for one, am going to go about my day with that in mind.
Happy new year, everybody!
December 31, 2009, Alas, another New Year's Eve
I see that this time last year, I was much more upbeat than I am now. Maybe it was like finding a shiny new penny... so exciting, until you realize that it has no buying power. Or perhaps it was like embarking on that long-awaited vacation, before the unpleasant reality that "it may be fun while it lasts (or perhaps it won't be), but in any event it's not really going to change anything once you get back to the usual humdrum or pain or whatever it is that defines your life." But it proved to be something like that.
And so, it seems, we have encountered 2009. Obviously, the year still started with the dominant figure of the decade, Dubya, a man best known by a mispronunciation of the first letter of his middle name (which is "Walker," btw) sitting in the big chair, doubtless counting down the days until he left Washington with the same gusto as the rest of us. And after him, we would finally have someone whose very name deviated so dramatically from the monchromatic Anglo-ness of Presidents past coalesced with his twin nebulous campaign promises of "hope" and "change" (the latter properly pronounced in the French and rhyming with the last syllable of "duck l'orange").
But it's clear that by the end of 2009, we are not merely disappointed (say, our anticipated week of Caribbean sunshine was, instead, met with a solid week of rain, in which case, we could at least have the good sense to chug pina-coladas and head for the casino), but affirmatively disillusioned, or more accurately, devastated. WTF happened?
Things foreshadowed badly in a political sense pretty early-- maybe a week into the presidency-- as it appeared that the President was pursuing "bipartisanship" as if it were some kind of good in its own right,
even as the most popular tune in much of America was "Barack the Magic Negro"... and if the Republicans would not play ball on a comparatively easy economic stimulus package at a time when Obama's stock was at apex, it seemed clear that wasting time trying to get their support-- any of their support at all-- was nuts, when the expedient of budget reconciliation and its mere 51-votes-in-the-Senate needed-- i.e., how Dubya governed-- was the way to go. So... the foreshadowing of political incompetence was set. But then...
Not even a fortnight in, "extraordinary rendition" was retained "as a policy option." The Obama Administration continued the mean-spirited appeal to bar cleared Uighur Guantanamo detainees whose only crime was hostility to Communist China from entry into the United States. And, this is the one that tipped most of us that "change" was, at best, going to be of the "pocket change" variety, the Obama Administration was hellbent on maintaining "state secrets" as an overarching legal position designed to evade accountability-- not just of itself, but of its predecessor and their contractors.
The following month saw the kind of "change" we would actually get: change in nomenclature. A bit later, we saw some more stonewalling on release of photographic depictions of abuse, and by mid-May, we knew that nothing at all had changed when the Administration announced that it was going back to the use of military commissions that candidate Obama had railed against so eloquently. While it was good to see the nomination of the nation's first Latina Supreme Court justice, this is more atmospherics than substance, which is pretty much all one can say about the Obama Administration. Any doubts that we had, in fact, evidently voted for a third term of George W.. Bush were disabused when the Obama Administration began touting its own version of "preventive detention."
And we had an inkling last summer that "health care reform" wasn't exactly on track; ultimately, what we got amounted to a government fiat that millions of people who can't afford private health insurance pay for it anyway. And we were going to get months of dithering on "what to do with Afghanistan" (followed ultimately by "more of same.")
We then got more stonewalling; more stupidity; and of course... more stonewalling. To interrupt the stonewalling and stupidity, the Supreme Court took Kiyemba, for the proposition that habeas corpus might mean something... maybe.
And speaking of stonewalling, by November, for the first time in over eight years of blogging, most of them during the despised Bush Administration, I found myself the subject of government censorship at the hands of my college classmate's Administration; it being the subject of censorship... I can't really explain further.
Unsurprisingly, a much vaunted climate change summit went nowhere, coupled with the President espousing the virtues of war while accepting a peace prize.
That's the year that was, in macro- terms. At least in micro-terms, things here at Stately Dog Manor progress along; we're all a year older but still together and still mostly there (even as I fear the ravages of time are ravaging my intermediate term memory)... we traveled to new and exciting places... we're still gainfully employed even in these troubled economic times... and now we even have two bouncy kittens... and maybe those are the only things that truly matter? Hey, we have our health, right? This has been, "Alas, another New Year's Eve." Happy new year, everybody! May next year be a healthy, happy, fulfilling and productive one.
December 30, 2009, Fin de siecle
Loyal reader Michael from Mass. sends along this piece of snarky brilliance from "Who is IOZ?" I can't really top it; the brilliant synthesis of the micro- and macro- of what my country has become, makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. To wit:
While good progressive types bray that the traitorous Obama econ team is feverishly working to reinflate the bubble, as if Larry Summers et alia were unaware of their own project, from my cheap seats it seems the perfectly reasonable thing to do, if indeed your ultimate goal is the maintenance of a vast, underliterate, overweight, edge-of-poverty, reactionary, religious, chauvinistic, bovine, compliant, wage-slave consumer class down whose ever-hungry gullets you can shove ever more crap in order to fund the vast and indifferent engine of hegemony. Do you think America is going to get any less fat and stupid over the next ten years? Whyever so, when precisely that society has so well served the interests of expansionism? I was in a Wal-Mart last week and saw a man the size of seventeen of me zipping around in a Rascal. On the back-end of the seat was the old, familiar bumper sticker. "These Colors Don't Run!"
To coin a phrase... indeed.
Happy new year, everybody. I'll doubtless say that a few more times... but, hey... happy new year, everybody.
December 27, 2009, An enigma...wrapped in a pita
This Ashura, things is heating up in Iran again, with reports of violent clashes between street protestors and forces loyal to the "government" led by Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamani; among the reported dead is the nephew of opposition presidential candidate (and opposition leader) Mir Hossain Mousavi.
Assuming arguendo that our Presidential elections actually matter (and if the 2008 election hasn't already disabused us of that ridiculous notion, I don't know what will), one must still at least give the Iranians props for refusing to sit idly by when a presidential election is so clearly stolen right in front of them. Then again, maybe their elections actually do matter.
Whichever scenario it is, the ongoing protests of the "reelection" of Iranian President Ahmadinedjad with the help of well-organized government thugs "complicate" American policy toward the usually perceived as inscrutible Iranian regime. Alas, neither the comic-book "Axis of Evil" Bush treatment, nor the New Agey "we have to engage and invite 'em over for 4th-of-July-barbecues" Obama approach, seems to provide all the answers. Because, of course, the situation is... wait for it... "complicated." A big part of the complication will come from our friends in Israel, who are rightly concerned about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Notwithstanding my preternatural attachment to Israel's interests as an American Jew, I have come to the conclusion after the role of the Neocon/Likudnik alliance in getting us suckered into the Iraqi quagmire as supposedly in Israel's interests, that given the aftermath of that fiasco and the fact that it was easily foreseeable, those purporting to speak for the hawkish Israeli wing... have no credibility whatsoever, and have demonstrated that they are not competent enough to even tell us what is in Israel's best interests, let alone the best interests of the United States.
That said, it seems to me that the relevant way to deal with Iranian protests is to quietly support them, while not overtly giving the regime any basis to scream that the Great Satan is intervening in a way that has any credibility. As to Iranian nuclear ambitions, alas, the Iranian regime itself is highly cryptic, and given American regime change policies elsewhere in the Muslim world, it seems hard to believe Iran will surrender its nuclear ambitions if that is the question in a vacuum. A deal involving principal nuke supplier Russia as well as likely U.N.-anything-vetoer China would have to be worked out, and a sale made that something containing Iran is in their broader interests... how? Don't know... but it might involve American ambitions (as if we didn't have any) elsewhere (starting with, say, Iraq and Afghanistan...)
Don't know if it can all be worked out... as I said in a prior post, most of the "options" are bad... I'm just hoping one is definitively less bad...
December 26, 2009, Boxing Day Musings
I don't agree with Congressman Dennis Kucinich on everything, but after a while, I find that I agree with him on more and more things, such as his sentiment that generals who publicly advocated certain military policies viz Afghanistan should be fired [as an aside, note the tenor of the comments, and one can, I suppose, get a flavor for who reads "The Hill," or at least, who read that particular post.] Kucinich went much farther than I did, of course, in calling for a complete American pullout from Afghanistan (which, unlike a pullout from Iraq, which is essential), I remain unconvinced is "a good idea," though of course, I am certainly also unconvinced that "a surge" from the 189,000 American personnel already in Afghanistan is going to make much of a difference either, other than, probably, getting more people killed (on all sides of the Afghan conflict). But what can you do? As with Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan (they have to be seen as a unitary situation) has few or no "good" answers, albeit lots of bad ones.
And as time goes on, I'm not as convinced as I once was of the silliness of Kucinich's proposed "Department of Peace." Obviously, the military-industrial-Congressional-entertainment-financial-healthcare--energy-complex (I think that's all of them) isn't just going to dismantle our over 60-year old permanent war machine...but it's a nice thought, and maybe nice thoughts might deter crazy-ass Nigerians from trying to set themselves on fire on airplanes ("I'd like to sit in the 'no self-immolation section', please"), although to be sure, it probably would not.
Well, it is less likely, of course, that thanks to the universal paranoia that has swept the world (particularly the West) since 9-11, that a lone madman could take out an airplane in that manner without the other passengers intervening to thwart it, the question is whether the wild official American overreaction (two major wars and the attendant thousands of dead and wounded in blood costs and trillions of dollars in treasure costs, embrace of torture, civil liberties rollbacks, etc.)... has made us any "safer."
Here's the thing (while I conveniently evade the question, allowing the reader only to infer my answer, though I will submit the question is ridiculous and irrelevant): until to a great extent China and to a lesser extent India began dramatic movement toward industrializing, we had a reasonable chance of deluding ourselves into thinking that our peculiarly untenably gluttonous use of planetary resources could go on indefinitely (defined as "the party won't end until at least the far end of the life-spans of anyone currently alive"). Well, now that China and India and their 2.6 billion people have added their pent-up demand to that of the USA/EU/Japan and "our" billion or so people... you see the problem, starting with oil and electricity, moving right on to food and water and land and timber and minerals and you name it. Eventually, an equilibrium of sorts will set in, and on the scales of billions of people, the usual way we settle such things is with conflicts great and small... and since everyone involved at the forefront of the struggle (save Japan) is nuclear armed... well, one can draw their own conclusions.
The grim realities of global flooding are such that we can probably no longer afford to screw around with the usual failed human organizations (the modern nation-state, the pathetically weak international organizations that the modern nation-states have allowed, and the modern business corporation) within the time frame we have, before the climate alteration becomes... irreversibly unpleasant (maybe 20 or 30 years, probably less). We won't talk about "Venus Syndrome," because, well, it would be too depressing.
How does this tie in to Kucinich, Afghanistan, etc.? You got it: by and large, these are all forms of weapons of mass distraction, to divert attention so that none of us can ask the fundamental question: is our "technology" (and we must include "organizational" technology of the nation state and the business corporation) up to the necessary task of "self-correction" on a global scale to ameliorate the worst effects of their excesses to date? Once again... I'll leave it to you to infer the answer I would give, and otherwise ask you to draw your own conclusions.
December 23, 2009, The most wonderful time of the year
December 22, 2009, Good riddance, 'aughties
On this, the final Festivus Eve of this decade... one is just never quite sure what to call the first decade of the new century/millenium... from 2000 to 2009... obviously, the decade ("the aughties"? the "2000's?" the zero's?) has a personal significance to each of us...
Still, on a macro-scale, I find it difficult to argue with Juan Cole's assessment that it was basically "The Bush Decade," and as such, it sucked. Bush himself was more of a stand-in for the aspirations of the already rich and powerful to suck up whatever means of production and wealth they didn't already own and control... and as such, Juan's perverse "top ten list" makes one cringe with recognition.
The most miserable recognition of all, unstated by Juan so I'll say it, is that while the Bush/Cheney era was peculiarly toxic, it was largely amplifying trends already well in motion (and largely accelerating in the Clinton years), and the corporate interests (that's simply "very rich people") largely have had their way no matter which political party held nominal power, and why the departure of that loathsome parasite known as the Bush Administration on our body-politic... probably won't matter too much...
Let's face it, the election of Obama isn't going to change very much (as we have seen with something as simple as relocating 200 or so mostly acknowledged as innocent men from a gulag officially under his direct command), as even if Obama actually wants to do something his our corporate masters don't like (and, btw, it's not clear to me Obama isn't delighted with the whole police-state thing)... it simply won't happen. So imagine genuine health or welfare or environmental reform, let alone electoral reform or the restoration of progressive taxation.
Why? Because of the genius of turning our Constitutional structire on its head, via the brilliant tie-in of racism to get Southern and Midwestern regional lower- and lower-middle-class White voters to consistently support the interests of the plutocracy (despite the clear detrimental nature of policies favoring the rich to lower- and lower-middle class people's own interests). That tie-in has permitted the leveraging of the already absurd veto points in our system... and voila... nothing happens that the corporate interests don't want, and with simple appeals to racism [duly coded, of course, as "God-fearing, family values"], there is always enough juice to defeat any actual social reform.
Besides...many Americans are simply stupid, and have no idea what their interests actually are. And since our forbears were energetic enough to place us in a dominant economic, political and military position, we're likely to take that stupidity all the way toward rendering human civilization unviable on this planet, and we'll certainly make things far, far less comfortable. But I'll agree with Juan that it all came to the fore in the '00's, under the banner of George W. Bush, and he and his minions brilliantly played every angle to seize and then hold power... though again, I assert that his reign was a matter of degree... the trends were already in place, and lest we forget, Democrats merrily supported the sacred Bush tax cuts that were the underpinning of much of the rest of the crappy decade, such as happily going along with virtually every police state measure that came down the pike in the aftermath of the 9-11 attack that Bush's minions failed to take any effort to prevent in the first place.
Well... on a macro-scale, a decade that left much to be desired, not the least of which is the fact that we'll be paying for it one way or another at least for the rest of our own natural lives. This has been... "Good riddance, 'aughties."
December 21, 2009, Vox parvi populi
So you didn't think you'd see me back here, did you now? Well, here I am, in an obvious demonstration that with "health care" reform safely through the Senate, global warming safely on track to be flooding my home town of New York City well before the time I'm Daddy's age, and other stuff, Daddy is simply out of ideas... it is clear that once again, only a cool picture of some teeny-bopper superstar remains the only hope for traffic on this blog. Hence, even though it's a school night... it's time for... Vox...Parvi... Populiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!! Yes... we're baaaaaacccckkkk!!!!
And up there is superstar singer Taylor Swift. Her best work is "Just a Zombie."
Beyond that, come to think of it, I seem to be as out of ideas as Daddy is. Enjoy the video. Happy winter solstice. Have a nice day.
This has been... "Vox parvi populi!"
