My cohort, Deb, over at Turn Left wrote this about Joe Lieberman:
http://turn-left.hypocrisy.com/2009/11/02/the-return-of-the-3-million-man/
Not to be outdone, I wrote this:
Until not long ago, as I watched the Lieberman antics, I was locked into the pseudo-Christian dilemma of trying to decide if what he is doing (or pretending to do) was moral or immoral.I was convinced I could think of it all in terms of right and wrong. Eventually I came to realize that I was barking up the wrong tree.
The problem is that this tree has NO ROOTS. Lieberman is neither moral nor immoral: he is simply AMORAL. His thoughts and actions have no substance. He is an over-paid entertainer, a showman, who plays for money, grins and giggles…mostly for his own amusement. Sadly, beneath the garish mirth is untold misery because he is a hollow man. He is masquerading as public servant, when in truth of fact, he is a parasite. In leech-like fashion, he has attached himself to the artery of the public employment roles and sucks it drier and drier every day.
Public life for Lieberman is a sordid circus. He loves the center ring, the brass band and the elephant parade, loves to play the clown and sell nutritionless popcorn, but wants no one to know the animals in the cages out back are starving and diseased.
Lieberman is a morbid and dangerous monument to the moribund face of what the crumbling edifice of what democracy is becoming. He is a harbinger of terrible times to come. I guess everyone needs someone to look down to.
If Lieberman is allowed to proceed and continue unchecked, then we deserve whatever we get. And we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
Any moment now, I expect to see the Connecticuit Israeli Police coming to arrest both of us.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Current events
I read this article (you might do so, as well),
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/kaufmann
Then I wrote this:
In a word? "Yes." Just as in the discussion (?) concerning healthcare reform, our elected officials have develpoed a deaf ear and are acting instead as the "chosen few." Instead of listening with any sensitivity to the opinions, desires and wishes of the consitutuents who elected them, with the exception of Barney Frank and handful of others, they have chosen to become aloof and unresponsive.
With respect to both healthcare and this credit regulation legislation, the "representatives" are failing to represent and choosing to ignore the will of the very people who entrusted them with this critical responsibility of oversight and shepherding.
The word that comes to mind is "arrogant," and if one takes a quick trip through the dictionary, you find that this word comes from the Latin, meaning "to claim." In these cases it would seem to mean to lay claim to a superiority of wisdom and intellect that they have conferred upon themselves. The definition also mentions "haughtiness," thereby implying (again) a self-imbued sense of a heightened ability to make value/judgement calls on behalf of others they seem to deem incapable of doing for themselves (us).
The sadness of this conundrum is that we seem to be facing the need to legislate fiscal morality, and the task has fallen to those who have no moral compass to guide them in their task.
To be regarded as a schmuck is to be regarded as inferior and stupid, and I am sorely offended. You should be, as well.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/kaufmann
Then I wrote this:
In a word? "Yes." Just as in the discussion (?) concerning healthcare reform, our elected officials have develpoed a deaf ear and are acting instead as the "chosen few." Instead of listening with any sensitivity to the opinions, desires and wishes of the consitutuents who elected them, with the exception of Barney Frank and handful of others, they have chosen to become aloof and unresponsive.
With respect to both healthcare and this credit regulation legislation, the "representatives" are failing to represent and choosing to ignore the will of the very people who entrusted them with this critical responsibility of oversight and shepherding.
The word that comes to mind is "arrogant," and if one takes a quick trip through the dictionary, you find that this word comes from the Latin, meaning "to claim." In these cases it would seem to mean to lay claim to a superiority of wisdom and intellect that they have conferred upon themselves. The definition also mentions "haughtiness," thereby implying (again) a self-imbued sense of a heightened ability to make value/judgement calls on behalf of others they seem to deem incapable of doing for themselves (us).
The sadness of this conundrum is that we seem to be facing the need to legislate fiscal morality, and the task has fallen to those who have no moral compass to guide them in their task.
To be regarded as a schmuck is to be regarded as inferior and stupid, and I am sorely offended. You should be, as well.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Relative Values
Yesterday, on ABC's "This Week", hosted by George Stepenopulence, the first guest was the venerable, beady- eyed, ex fed-chairholder/warmer, Alan Greenspan. (NOTE: he is not in anyway green, but has spanned much too much time in the pubic domain). Each time George pressed Mr. Not-Green-Spanned-too-long for an answer about the economy, the stimilus packages, the unemployment, the recession or the Fed's possible actions, he responded with either, " We don't know yet", "We will have to wait and see", "It is hard to project these things", "We will have to wait for the report from the GAO/CBO", "These things are hard to predict", or "We have never had a sustained period of unemployment/recession/imbalance of debt/etc. like this with which to compare it to" (that is, historcally speaking, by the way, a completel bald-faced lie...and very bad grammar).
It would seem that Mr. Greenspan would serve us all much better if he were to return to the relative obsurity of retirement, rather than muddy the airwaves and prove , once again, that he doesn't know anything. Since I am one now, I can excusably and with impunity therefore decry old, staid and stale men, with granite in their ass and noodles in their brains, who have moved way past their prime and should stay home and watch re-runs of "The Flintstones".
Last week, as I trudged down a rainy street in Austin, and pondered the weather forecast with my son, he reminded me of a quote from a wilderness book writer, who said that " weather forecasters were invented to make economists look good." Yesterday, on this same TV program, Cokie Roberts (NPR) reminded us that "economists were invented to make astrologers look good". I am guessing that Paul Krugman might somehow (at last partially) agree. I have also just become more trusting as regards my horoscope.
And my other guess (and I'm not waiting on a report from the CBO on this) is that the longer the President and Congress listen to the malarky we get from the likes of Alan Greenspan, the longer we will continue to drift towards becoming a third world country, economically.
It would seem that Mr. Greenspan would serve us all much better if he were to return to the relative obsurity of retirement, rather than muddy the airwaves and prove , once again, that he doesn't know anything. Since I am one now, I can excusably and with impunity therefore decry old, staid and stale men, with granite in their ass and noodles in their brains, who have moved way past their prime and should stay home and watch re-runs of "The Flintstones".
Last week, as I trudged down a rainy street in Austin, and pondered the weather forecast with my son, he reminded me of a quote from a wilderness book writer, who said that " weather forecasters were invented to make economists look good." Yesterday, on this same TV program, Cokie Roberts (NPR) reminded us that "economists were invented to make astrologers look good". I am guessing that Paul Krugman might somehow (at last partially) agree. I have also just become more trusting as regards my horoscope.
And my other guess (and I'm not waiting on a report from the CBO on this) is that the longer the President and Congress listen to the malarky we get from the likes of Alan Greenspan, the longer we will continue to drift towards becoming a third world country, economically.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
"How do we remedy the Situation?"
Or, As Shara said later, this about "the paucity of langauge".
From: shara_thome@hotmail.com
To: ihentschel@austin.rr.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 6:46 AM
Subject: shara_thome@hotmail.com has shared: Theodore Dalrymple on the Gift of Language
....but how to remedy the situation? Dumbfounded here.
Theodore Dalrymple on the Gift of Language Source: austrolabe.com
For starters, let me say that I am "dumbfounded" by discovering there were so many Muslims living amongst the Aussies. But I suppose I shouldn't be, because Muslims can now threaten Danish cartoonists and cause ghetto riots in Paris. Be that as it may, that there is so much sudden concern for how to deal with the "Muslim problem" and the Muslim language(s), in places like down under and elsewhere, is perplexing. I say this because in Australia, where the concern for the Muslim invasion gets front page coverage while they slaughter, ignore and denigrate the aborigine; in the U.S. , where we sought to obliterate the native Americans and today force them into encampments, while still not dealing with our history of slavery and contemporary racism ( and the language obstacles involved there, bro); in Scandanavia the Nordic past is being ameliorated and watered down to appease the Muslim outsiders; in France they are busier worrying about headscarve etiquette than they are the quality of education and have almost foresworn the problems with the Moroccan and Algerian populations in favor of the Arab refugees; in England the disparities over Scots and the Irish have been put aside to worry about the employment and education requirements of the Muslim Indian refugees, and in Germany, the concern with Turks has displaced recognition of Jewish issues ...Nearly overnight, it seems, the world is obsessed with acclimating to, absorbing, yielding to and incorporting the culture and language of a people we regarded as ignorant, backward, infidel in nature,bloodthirsty and heathen, not so long ago.
Would that we were so afraid of the perils of rampant Christianity.
Note: In earlier centuries,the Spaniards (in particular), always solved the problem of cultural and linguistic assimilation by simply trying to make everyone Catholic. That insidious and predatory (and arrogant) practice, coupled with the Inquisition, has not worked out so well, except to make Mexico City a safe place for the Pope to visit. And I dare say that catechism classes for the masses of Muslims will not get very far.
As for your query, "but how to remedy the situtation?" , I am stubbornly and narrow-mindedly in the camp of Robert Frost, on this one. Disregarding for a moment the question of which tongue do you speak when you are in which land, "When in Rome" rings a bell. If you are visiting, simple attempts at the mother tongue are acceptable and errors easily overlooked, since everyone knows you are going home soon. But if you reside, more less permanently, in a land where the mother tongue is other than your own, it would behoove you to learn it and speak it as best you can ( and my bias is that Hispanics in America are not excepted). Anything less is a gesture of disrespect. But back to Frost:
Frost said (approximately) that "to teach a person to write is to teach a person to think". And thinking, real thinking (I think), is encumbent upon all of us. And if you think, you arrive at ideas. And if you have ideas you must find a way to express them. And for that you need words, and often new words. The current mood that has been identified in the U.S. as "anti-intellectualism"reveals how not thinking precludes new ideas: recent town halls are regurgitations of old thinking and old ideas and old words.
If our educational systems, world-wide, (to mimick Ms. Scheslinger) were to focus upon teaching and enabling children to think and to ask "why", to be inquisitive and become logical searchers and researchers of meaning, they would learn to use the proper, appropriate and substantive words required to promote better understanding. (I might suggest, at this point, that immersion in the Bible or the Quoran does not lead to this lofty end. Thinking requires a working knowledge of cause and effect, and neither of these includes a clue as to either.)
Hedges (as in the piece I sent you), Safire (too bad), Carlin (way too bad), Chomsky, Maher, Reich, Buckley and Vonnegut are all some examples of linguists (my broken record is playing, again) who took (and take) the time to find the words to express their ideas. To them, I say, "Right on!", and "Awesome!" (Think about those two expressions as they relate to cause and effect)
And there are enough people down under who speak that almost-South Carolina garble the Aussies call "English" that any self-respecting Muslim ought to be able to pick it up. Blimey. I'll have a Foster's.
From: shara_thome@hotmail.com
To: ihentschel@austin.rr.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 6:46 AM
Subject: shara_thome@hotmail.com has shared: Theodore Dalrymple on the Gift of Language
....but how to remedy the situation? Dumbfounded here.
Theodore Dalrymple on the Gift of Language Source: austrolabe.com
For starters, let me say that I am "dumbfounded" by discovering there were so many Muslims living amongst the Aussies. But I suppose I shouldn't be, because Muslims can now threaten Danish cartoonists and cause ghetto riots in Paris. Be that as it may, that there is so much sudden concern for how to deal with the "Muslim problem" and the Muslim language(s), in places like down under and elsewhere, is perplexing. I say this because in Australia, where the concern for the Muslim invasion gets front page coverage while they slaughter, ignore and denigrate the aborigine; in the U.S. , where we sought to obliterate the native Americans and today force them into encampments, while still not dealing with our history of slavery and contemporary racism ( and the language obstacles involved there, bro); in Scandanavia the Nordic past is being ameliorated and watered down to appease the Muslim outsiders; in France they are busier worrying about headscarve etiquette than they are the quality of education and have almost foresworn the problems with the Moroccan and Algerian populations in favor of the Arab refugees; in England the disparities over Scots and the Irish have been put aside to worry about the employment and education requirements of the Muslim Indian refugees, and in Germany, the concern with Turks has displaced recognition of Jewish issues ...Nearly overnight, it seems, the world is obsessed with acclimating to, absorbing, yielding to and incorporting the culture and language of a people we regarded as ignorant, backward, infidel in nature,bloodthirsty and heathen, not so long ago.
Would that we were so afraid of the perils of rampant Christianity.
Note: In earlier centuries,the Spaniards (in particular), always solved the problem of cultural and linguistic assimilation by simply trying to make everyone Catholic. That insidious and predatory (and arrogant) practice, coupled with the Inquisition, has not worked out so well, except to make Mexico City a safe place for the Pope to visit. And I dare say that catechism classes for the masses of Muslims will not get very far.
As for your query, "but how to remedy the situtation?" , I am stubbornly and narrow-mindedly in the camp of Robert Frost, on this one. Disregarding for a moment the question of which tongue do you speak when you are in which land, "When in Rome" rings a bell. If you are visiting, simple attempts at the mother tongue are acceptable and errors easily overlooked, since everyone knows you are going home soon. But if you reside, more less permanently, in a land where the mother tongue is other than your own, it would behoove you to learn it and speak it as best you can ( and my bias is that Hispanics in America are not excepted). Anything less is a gesture of disrespect. But back to Frost:
Frost said (approximately) that "to teach a person to write is to teach a person to think". And thinking, real thinking (I think), is encumbent upon all of us. And if you think, you arrive at ideas. And if you have ideas you must find a way to express them. And for that you need words, and often new words. The current mood that has been identified in the U.S. as "anti-intellectualism"reveals how not thinking precludes new ideas: recent town halls are regurgitations of old thinking and old ideas and old words.
If our educational systems, world-wide, (to mimick Ms. Scheslinger) were to focus upon teaching and enabling children to think and to ask "why", to be inquisitive and become logical searchers and researchers of meaning, they would learn to use the proper, appropriate and substantive words required to promote better understanding. (I might suggest, at this point, that immersion in the Bible or the Quoran does not lead to this lofty end. Thinking requires a working knowledge of cause and effect, and neither of these includes a clue as to either.)
Hedges (as in the piece I sent you), Safire (too bad), Carlin (way too bad), Chomsky, Maher, Reich, Buckley and Vonnegut are all some examples of linguists (my broken record is playing, again) who took (and take) the time to find the words to express their ideas. To them, I say, "Right on!", and "Awesome!" (Think about those two expressions as they relate to cause and effect)
And there are enough people down under who speak that almost-South Carolina garble the Aussies call "English" that any self-respecting Muslim ought to be able to pick it up. Blimey. I'll have a Foster's.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Not NecessarilyThe News
And people wonder why newspapers are dying....I saw this headline
Defense Bill, Lauded by White House, Contains Billions in Earmarks(article below)in the WaPo this morning, and when I saw "billions" in earmarks, I thought, "Holy Shit!", stopped and read the story. It turns out that the "billions" is $2.65B out of $636B. If you have a calculator, you will see that that the earmark amount (still obscene in the manner in which it is being proposed) amounts to something like .04184% of the total defense budget bill under consideration. The Post has ponied up an eye-popping headline which misleads and agitates but largely misses the point, while stirring up, no doubt, false conservative ire over big government and waste.
The "obscene" number really is the $636B, which is nearly as much as the two TARP bills that were passed. Those were done with great fanfare and furor and debate, that this gets nary a notice. In fact, the headline says that it is "Lauded by White House". Well jolly good. Why? It never comments about that.
Let's see: that $636B for one year of "defense" (which is offensive to most) is only 80% of $800B for ten years of national health care would cost (or only 71% if you use the $900B estimate from the GAO), or only $80B or $90B per year to fund and yet we cannot even get a reasonable bill passed to enable, enact and accomplish that, in any reasonable form that does not throw billions in profits back at the insurance companies. Good work, WaPo. You make your industry proud.
And speaking of health care and insurance reform, there was only one (1) article that I could find concerning those issues. Here is the byline: In Delivering Care, More Isn't Always Better, Experts Say, by By Ceci ConnollyWashington Post Staff Writer . The thrust (if there is one)is this:
Medical professionals say the fundamental problem in the nation's health-care system is the widespread misuse and overuse of tests, treatments and drugs that drive up prices, have little value to patients, and can pose serious risks. The question, they say, is not whether there will be rationing, but rather what will be rationed, and when and how.
To begin with, just out of curiousity, who is Ceci Connolly and what qualifies he/she to pontificate on health care? May I see some credentials, please? Or perhaps a birth certificate? Is Ceci even an American name? Is this journalism or idle time gossip?
Secondly, this story an as old as a 60 Minutes program on the subject from two years ago. We have heard this old saw 1,000 times before, and it has not changed, one iota. And there is no substantive discussion in the article about either single-payer or the public option or how much money Max Baucus has in his pocket from insurance companies. The WaPo is making damn certain that we stay as wholly unfocused as possible. Journalism should help us define what is wrong in such a way that a corrective can be envisioned. This article merely reheats already overcooked leftovers. It is a half-eaten Big Mac, retrieved from a dumpster. This makes this newspaper (I use the term loosely)the Washington Posthumous, publishing obits instead of birth announcements.
Both stories provide unspectacular reporting about unspectacular non-news. They are misleading and erroneously fanciful and take up space, while wasting energy. And while so many bemoan the death of the newspaper media, and Obama speaks lately (and glibly)of bailing out the industry, the WaPo is not doing much to further its' cause when it publishes tripe like this. Maybe we should put an earmark in the defense bill for that bailout. A story about that would surely make the front page..on Saturday.
----- Original Message -----
From: ihentschel@austin.rr.com
To: ihentschel149@gmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 7:43 AM
Message from sender: really?
Defense Bill, Lauded by White House, Contains Billions in Earmarks
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Sen. Thad Cochran's most recent reelection campaign collected more than $10,000 from University of Southern Mississippi professors and staff members, including three who work at the school's center for research on polymers. To a defense spending bill slated to be on the Senate floor Tuesday, the...
Do you love D.C.? Get the insider's guide to where to stay, what to do and where to eat. Go to www.washingtonpost.com/gog for your guide to D.C. now.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company Privacy Policy
Defense Bill, Lauded by White House, Contains Billions in Earmarks(article below)in the WaPo this morning, and when I saw "billions" in earmarks, I thought, "Holy Shit!", stopped and read the story. It turns out that the "billions" is $2.65B out of $636B. If you have a calculator, you will see that that the earmark amount (still obscene in the manner in which it is being proposed) amounts to something like .04184% of the total defense budget bill under consideration. The Post has ponied up an eye-popping headline which misleads and agitates but largely misses the point, while stirring up, no doubt, false conservative ire over big government and waste.
The "obscene" number really is the $636B, which is nearly as much as the two TARP bills that were passed. Those were done with great fanfare and furor and debate, that this gets nary a notice. In fact, the headline says that it is "Lauded by White House". Well jolly good. Why? It never comments about that.
Let's see: that $636B for one year of "defense" (which is offensive to most) is only 80% of $800B for ten years of national health care would cost (or only 71% if you use the $900B estimate from the GAO), or only $80B or $90B per year to fund and yet we cannot even get a reasonable bill passed to enable, enact and accomplish that, in any reasonable form that does not throw billions in profits back at the insurance companies. Good work, WaPo. You make your industry proud.
And speaking of health care and insurance reform, there was only one (1) article that I could find concerning those issues. Here is the byline: In Delivering Care, More Isn't Always Better, Experts Say, by By Ceci ConnollyWashington Post Staff Writer . The thrust (if there is one)is this:
Medical professionals say the fundamental problem in the nation's health-care system is the widespread misuse and overuse of tests, treatments and drugs that drive up prices, have little value to patients, and can pose serious risks. The question, they say, is not whether there will be rationing, but rather what will be rationed, and when and how.
To begin with, just out of curiousity, who is Ceci Connolly and what qualifies he/she to pontificate on health care? May I see some credentials, please? Or perhaps a birth certificate? Is Ceci even an American name? Is this journalism or idle time gossip?
Secondly, this story an as old as a 60 Minutes program on the subject from two years ago. We have heard this old saw 1,000 times before, and it has not changed, one iota. And there is no substantive discussion in the article about either single-payer or the public option or how much money Max Baucus has in his pocket from insurance companies. The WaPo is making damn certain that we stay as wholly unfocused as possible. Journalism should help us define what is wrong in such a way that a corrective can be envisioned. This article merely reheats already overcooked leftovers. It is a half-eaten Big Mac, retrieved from a dumpster. This makes this newspaper (I use the term loosely)the Washington Posthumous, publishing obits instead of birth announcements.
Both stories provide unspectacular reporting about unspectacular non-news. They are misleading and erroneously fanciful and take up space, while wasting energy. And while so many bemoan the death of the newspaper media, and Obama speaks lately (and glibly)of bailing out the industry, the WaPo is not doing much to further its' cause when it publishes tripe like this. Maybe we should put an earmark in the defense bill for that bailout. A story about that would surely make the front page..on Saturday.
----- Original Message -----
From: ihentschel@austin.rr.com
To: ihentschel149@gmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 7:43 AM
Message from sender: really?
Defense Bill, Lauded by White House, Contains Billions in Earmarks
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Sen. Thad Cochran's most recent reelection campaign collected more than $10,000 from University of Southern Mississippi professors and staff members, including three who work at the school's center for research on polymers. To a defense spending bill slated to be on the Senate floor Tuesday, the...
Do you love D.C.? Get the insider's guide to where to stay, what to do and where to eat. Go to www.washingtonpost.com/gog for your guide to D.C. now.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company Privacy Policy
Monday, September 28, 2009
Wisdom borrowed from Bageant
Nice to know I am not alone in my musings. Noam Chomsky has been telling us, for years, that we have a one party system, called the "corporatocracy" and nobody listens. If , like myself and many others I know, are on SS, SSDI and/or Medicare, this should not be a pleasant read.
When "capitalism" ceases to be entrepreurship, but instead morphs into greedy, limitless and shortsighted, quick gain expansionist enterprise, we have lost our way.
We found out much too late that "compassionate conservatism" and "trickle down economics" and cheerful Clintonite free trade agendas were a bunch of bunk, that, altogether led us into our economic disaster and it is time to consider some alternatives. One would be what I have come to call "humanitarian, community based capitalism", where we are able to say to the profiteers, "OK. Thanks. Enough is enough", and we level the playing field and give everyone a chance. But, as I seem to recall, that is called socialism, Marxism or communism, and then people want to hang me from a light pole for even mentioning the possibilities.
I think that the much ballyooed "free market economy" is intent on making certain that some people are "more freeer" than others...sorta like the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm who were more equal than others. And then current day conservatives, Libertarians and other ideologues warn us that we should be afraid of Obama and socialism? It is precisely that inverse, obtuse logic that drives Wall St., General Electric and CocaCola.
And let's see: by my latest reckoning, the U.S. goverment owns most of Genral Motors. And the largest auto company in Russia is state owned as well. And then there is China....But I must stop here: I must run down to Home Despot and buy the plastic plumbing fixture I can no longer buy from the local hardware store that is no longer here.
Subject: AlterNet: There Was Nice Talk About 'Change' and 'Hope' But the Money Party There Was Nice Talk About 'Change' and 'Hope' But the Money Party Won Again> http://www.alternet.org/politics/142840>
When "capitalism" ceases to be entrepreurship, but instead morphs into greedy, limitless and shortsighted, quick gain expansionist enterprise, we have lost our way.
We found out much too late that "compassionate conservatism" and "trickle down economics" and cheerful Clintonite free trade agendas were a bunch of bunk, that, altogether led us into our economic disaster and it is time to consider some alternatives. One would be what I have come to call "humanitarian, community based capitalism", where we are able to say to the profiteers, "OK. Thanks. Enough is enough", and we level the playing field and give everyone a chance. But, as I seem to recall, that is called socialism, Marxism or communism, and then people want to hang me from a light pole for even mentioning the possibilities.
I think that the much ballyooed "free market economy" is intent on making certain that some people are "more freeer" than others...sorta like the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm who were more equal than others. And then current day conservatives, Libertarians and other ideologues warn us that we should be afraid of Obama and socialism? It is precisely that inverse, obtuse logic that drives Wall St., General Electric and CocaCola.
And let's see: by my latest reckoning, the U.S. goverment owns most of Genral Motors. And the largest auto company in Russia is state owned as well. And then there is China....But I must stop here: I must run down to Home Despot and buy the plastic plumbing fixture I can no longer buy from the local hardware store that is no longer here.
Subject: AlterNet: There Was Nice Talk About 'Change' and 'Hope' But the Money Party There Was Nice Talk About 'Change' and 'Hope' But the Money Party Won Again> http://www.alternet.org/politics/142840>
Friday, September 18, 2009
Got up on the left side of the bed
Deb Dellapiana wrote an opinion piece at a blog site we shrae (sort of) this morning( you can read it here: http://turn-left.hypocrisy.com/2009/09/18/the-bait-and-switch-presidency/#comment-455), and I had to say a few words (Oh no! Not again!). Here goes:
You have correctly identified the largely presidential symptom of a deeper causality. Obama did not bait and switch, he just baited and did nothing. In a classic case of lousy customer service (and we are the customer), he "over-promised and under-delivered". One obvious result is that nearly the entire country has now decided to "Bitch and wait". They bitch about Wall St., a lack of jobs, foreclosures, too many immigrants, high taxes,expensive education, credit card rates, a lack of adequate (or any) health care, indifferent legislators and, under it all, having a black man as president. There are several ways to look at this. The first (spoken clearly by Maureen Dowd (NYT), Jimmy Carter (town hall), Eugene Roninson (WaPo) et. al.), is that the unrest over everything else has unearthed our nation's long-hidden dirty little secret: we are bigoted (we don't care much for women) and hugely racist( www.alternet.org/story/142630/). Nearly all of the other bitching and complaining is driven by the ugly truth that caucasian white America is overhelmingly terrified of having someone of color be the POTUS. So they irrationally yell and scream (and bitch) about everything else, most of which has been wrong for a very long time and was ignored, looked-over and glossed-over by an America, content to let Bush and Cheney shred the Constitution and pile up the national debt via the military. And the obfuscation is so insidious that when Jimmy Carter call us out on it, the WH soft-peddles it, the moderate democrats deny it and Rush Limbaugh calls Carter a rectal anatomical disorder on the radio (among other embarrassments).
The two-facted reason for this is that the citizenry of the US, just like the government and Obama, THINK TOO SMALL. The libertarians and the conservatives have it largely wrong about the size of government and our taxing structure: it is not too big, our thinking about it is too small and so we make the same old decisions about problem solving we always have and the problems remain. We think too small when we re-elect the same people over and over, who behave the same way,over and over because they/we think too small. And Obama is in over his head,unable to coerce a government of any size to work at all, because he thinks "too small" (using the internet to get elected is not big thinking: it is opportunism)and he is powerless to move a congress which wallows in thinking too small (which we elected by thinking too small), because (and here is the second facet):
As Noam Chomsky puts it (and writers like Naomi Klein confirm), we do not have a two-party system, we have a CORPORATOCRACY, driven by the money and influence of the greed-oriented big businesses and the shareholder corporations of America. And they pay the congressman (like Max Baucus) to contiue to think small and maintain the status quo. Tiny, old, repetitive thinking does not give birth to big, new bold ideas (which we desperately need). And politicians (including the newly elected Obama) and are more concerned with becoming re-elected than they are with performing the tasks for which they elected in the first place.
So we bitch and wait. We are victims of our own complacency, old habits, small thinking, and lack of courage to challenge the status quo, as long as have enough to get by. We are content to let our rights get taken away and/or abused, to allow the conservative mentality to say, "I've got mone, screw you", and happy to get through the day living on Fox News, instant consumer gratification and lousy non-nutritional fast food. And we let the government pacify us with programs like "Cash For Clunkers" (which turns out to be an anti-economic recovery program to benefit Detroit auto makers and finance companies). We are numb from shock and awe (Naomi Klein, again) and live in a perpetual fear of losing even more than we have already. And we are angry and unhappy. We can rant and rave, we can yell and scream , but we cannot innovate. We cannot "think big" or elect anyone who can, either, from all appearances.
The citizenry of America is, at the moment, anti-intellectual, non- analytical, anti-investigative, racially biased, narrow-minded, complacent and unwilling to upset the status quo apple cart because it might be a little difficult or cause some short-term (or long-term) hardships in order to prevent the ship from sinking (which it is).
So we bitch and wait. We paint ugly signs and march about the wrong issues, paint Hitler faces on the president, listen to Glenn Beck and O'Reilly and McConnel and Enzi and let Baucus screw us and keep thinking small and prolonging the misery of doing nothing new. We allow the fear of possible poverty and of any non-white, non-Christian movement to keep us inert: it makes self delusional bitching easier. has anyone simply come out openly and conjectred that Glenn Beck is just plain crazy? I mean,"nuts" as in mentally ill?
Sadly, perhaps Obama has realized that the conundrum and behemoth of old/small political thinking in America is much bigger than he is. So right now, he is doing what every American institution has always done to stay alive and prosper: he is conducting a very aggressive marketing campaign, by being on the television and making speeches every five minutes,in an attempt to prevent us from seeing the real problems of big money and ignore the real manipulations of our corporatocracy. He is pulling an empty delivery wagon down main street. But he is a parade of one and the emporer has no clothes.
As long as we bitch and wait, Obama, Boehner, Pelosi,Wall St., big insurance, big pharma, big energy and the off-shore banks are safe and secure. But we are fooling ourselves: we are really bitching that the system does not work and is failing quickly, and have unkowingly discovered that we can try to blame the failure on a black man (again). And beneath all of that we wait. We wait for a savior or an economic/cultural messiah to save us from everything we brought upon ourselves through our innattention to detail, small thinking and repeated social episodes of uncritical observation. And all we know is that we don't want that savior to be anything other than white, male, protestant and from Iowa.
You have correctly identified the largely presidential symptom of a deeper causality. Obama did not bait and switch, he just baited and did nothing. In a classic case of lousy customer service (and we are the customer), he "over-promised and under-delivered". One obvious result is that nearly the entire country has now decided to "Bitch and wait". They bitch about Wall St., a lack of jobs, foreclosures, too many immigrants, high taxes,expensive education, credit card rates, a lack of adequate (or any) health care, indifferent legislators and, under it all, having a black man as president. There are several ways to look at this. The first (spoken clearly by Maureen Dowd (NYT), Jimmy Carter (town hall), Eugene Roninson (WaPo) et. al.), is that the unrest over everything else has unearthed our nation's long-hidden dirty little secret: we are bigoted (we don't care much for women) and hugely racist( www.alternet.org/story/142630/). Nearly all of the other bitching and complaining is driven by the ugly truth that caucasian white America is overhelmingly terrified of having someone of color be the POTUS. So they irrationally yell and scream (and bitch) about everything else, most of which has been wrong for a very long time and was ignored, looked-over and glossed-over by an America, content to let Bush and Cheney shred the Constitution and pile up the national debt via the military. And the obfuscation is so insidious that when Jimmy Carter call us out on it, the WH soft-peddles it, the moderate democrats deny it and Rush Limbaugh calls Carter a rectal anatomical disorder on the radio (among other embarrassments).
The two-facted reason for this is that the citizenry of the US, just like the government and Obama, THINK TOO SMALL. The libertarians and the conservatives have it largely wrong about the size of government and our taxing structure: it is not too big, our thinking about it is too small and so we make the same old decisions about problem solving we always have and the problems remain. We think too small when we re-elect the same people over and over, who behave the same way,over and over because they/we think too small. And Obama is in over his head,unable to coerce a government of any size to work at all, because he thinks "too small" (using the internet to get elected is not big thinking: it is opportunism)and he is powerless to move a congress which wallows in thinking too small (which we elected by thinking too small), because (and here is the second facet):
As Noam Chomsky puts it (and writers like Naomi Klein confirm), we do not have a two-party system, we have a CORPORATOCRACY, driven by the money and influence of the greed-oriented big businesses and the shareholder corporations of America. And they pay the congressman (like Max Baucus) to contiue to think small and maintain the status quo. Tiny, old, repetitive thinking does not give birth to big, new bold ideas (which we desperately need). And politicians (including the newly elected Obama) and are more concerned with becoming re-elected than they are with performing the tasks for which they elected in the first place.
So we bitch and wait. We are victims of our own complacency, old habits, small thinking, and lack of courage to challenge the status quo, as long as have enough to get by. We are content to let our rights get taken away and/or abused, to allow the conservative mentality to say, "I've got mone, screw you", and happy to get through the day living on Fox News, instant consumer gratification and lousy non-nutritional fast food. And we let the government pacify us with programs like "Cash For Clunkers" (which turns out to be an anti-economic recovery program to benefit Detroit auto makers and finance companies). We are numb from shock and awe (Naomi Klein, again) and live in a perpetual fear of losing even more than we have already. And we are angry and unhappy. We can rant and rave, we can yell and scream , but we cannot innovate. We cannot "think big" or elect anyone who can, either, from all appearances.
The citizenry of America is, at the moment, anti-intellectual, non- analytical, anti-investigative, racially biased, narrow-minded, complacent and unwilling to upset the status quo apple cart because it might be a little difficult or cause some short-term (or long-term) hardships in order to prevent the ship from sinking (which it is).
So we bitch and wait. We paint ugly signs and march about the wrong issues, paint Hitler faces on the president, listen to Glenn Beck and O'Reilly and McConnel and Enzi and let Baucus screw us and keep thinking small and prolonging the misery of doing nothing new. We allow the fear of possible poverty and of any non-white, non-Christian movement to keep us inert: it makes self delusional bitching easier. has anyone simply come out openly and conjectred that Glenn Beck is just plain crazy? I mean,"nuts" as in mentally ill?
Sadly, perhaps Obama has realized that the conundrum and behemoth of old/small political thinking in America is much bigger than he is. So right now, he is doing what every American institution has always done to stay alive and prosper: he is conducting a very aggressive marketing campaign, by being on the television and making speeches every five minutes,in an attempt to prevent us from seeing the real problems of big money and ignore the real manipulations of our corporatocracy. He is pulling an empty delivery wagon down main street. But he is a parade of one and the emporer has no clothes.
As long as we bitch and wait, Obama, Boehner, Pelosi,Wall St., big insurance, big pharma, big energy and the off-shore banks are safe and secure. But we are fooling ourselves: we are really bitching that the system does not work and is failing quickly, and have unkowingly discovered that we can try to blame the failure on a black man (again). And beneath all of that we wait. We wait for a savior or an economic/cultural messiah to save us from everything we brought upon ourselves through our innattention to detail, small thinking and repeated social episodes of uncritical observation. And all we know is that we don't want that savior to be anything other than white, male, protestant and from Iowa.
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