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.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Proselytizing By Accident
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-05/inside-sarahs-church/?cid=bsa:mostpopular1
The various religious fundamentalists, deranged self-proclaimed luminaries, ritual sectarians and cultists who comprise groups like "Sarah's Church", Rev. Wright's isolated enclave-types, the ultra-conservative Jewish groups, primitive baptist snake-handlers, pseudo-oriental acseticists and miltant radical Islamists (to name but a few),
many of whom adhere to, promulgate and blindly wallow in strict misinterpretations of curiously arcane and out-moded ideological tenets and mythologies, thereby disabling their cognitive faculties and their awareness of reality,
therefore insisting to pretend to live in another, older, by-gone, anti-intellectual and unenlightened era...
are people practicing "religious pornography": they take what were in infancy good, purposeful and positive notions, and transform them into mental smut and emotional disingenuousness.
And those "other" people (like the author of the article above), who lend to these movements some degree of credibility and plausbility, by writing about them (with much of the same zealous bigotry they themselves decry)are literary voyeurs, using editorial gossip to describe the "oral" mental masturbatory rituals being performed. They proselytize by accident, by pouring gasoline on the fire and increasing the acrid nature of the smoke.
We would learn more about humanity by reading back issues of Playboy or Hustler. This sort of commentary is merely a lurid and arrogantly disdainful version of People magazine.
The various religious fundamentalists, deranged self-proclaimed luminaries, ritual sectarians and cultists who comprise groups like "Sarah's Church", Rev. Wright's isolated enclave-types, the ultra-conservative Jewish groups, primitive baptist snake-handlers, pseudo-oriental acseticists and miltant radical Islamists (to name but a few),
many of whom adhere to, promulgate and blindly wallow in strict misinterpretations of curiously arcane and out-moded ideological tenets and mythologies, thereby disabling their cognitive faculties and their awareness of reality,
therefore insisting to pretend to live in another, older, by-gone, anti-intellectual and unenlightened era...
are people practicing "religious pornography": they take what were in infancy good, purposeful and positive notions, and transform them into mental smut and emotional disingenuousness.
And those "other" people (like the author of the article above), who lend to these movements some degree of credibility and plausbility, by writing about them (with much of the same zealous bigotry they themselves decry)are literary voyeurs, using editorial gossip to describe the "oral" mental masturbatory rituals being performed. They proselytize by accident, by pouring gasoline on the fire and increasing the acrid nature of the smoke.
We would learn more about humanity by reading back issues of Playboy or Hustler. This sort of commentary is merely a lurid and arrogantly disdainful version of People magazine.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Responding to a Naderite
Thanks, Clint. While the "right" may be the worst abusers in this category, methinks the left is often just as guilty. And I think the "langage as symbols" you are referring to is really more a matter as "language as a weapon"...however...
The dance partner, whom I have brought along to the masquerade brawl of human understanding, for quite some time now, is the one that leads me to "linguists" for answers, insight and authenticity. I no longer rely upon politicians or their spokespersons, ideological promoters, "advocates", commentators (who twist what is already twisted to make their own point: Fox Noise?), pundits (Buchanan?), moderators (who don't really moderate: think Presidential debates) , faux observers, "columnists", or orators and rhetoriticians to help me understand what I have just been smilingly "told". They are a uniformly unreliable group.
My chosen "linguists", our generation's "straight talkers", range from Bill Moyers, to Bill Maher and Noam Chomsky, to Robert Reich, John Stewart, Jane Hamsher,George Carlin and even Paul Krugman, UT Professor Galbraith and William Grieder... even though some are thought of more as economists or comedians. But they deliver understandable language and word constructs that reveal the real meaning and import behind the endless facade' of multi-syllabic stew delivered by wordy alchemists of confusion like Frank Luntz.
NOTE: Luntz, by the way, is no "word wizard", as Nader would have us believe. He is a malevolent manipulator of simple truths, the worst of a bad breed, who clouds and obfuscates for evil purposes, and does so with glee and gusto. (I cannot think of an exact Luntzian counterpart on the left, but if you listen to Harry Reid, Keith Olberman or Gov. Dean, any of the progressive bloggers or to any of the carefully crafted Obamaspeaks, the same admixture of obscure implications and insinuations exists in all those as well).
Mr. Nader is right,of course, as usual, but a little late to the party. The founding fathers knew, over 200 years ago, how bumblingly wrong this democracy could all go through psycho-babble (and it has: look at the complete non-separation of church and state?) and worked tirelessly against the possibilities. Even Dwight Eisenhower warned that "something evil" was afoot with the military industrial complex, and today we spend SEVEN times more on defense and weaponry than any other nation in the world. I think "Blackwater"is a pretty lame euphemism for "security". And of course, we cannot wait to "give" democacy to the Iraqis and the Afghans.
What Nader should be railing against the loudest is the resultant cultural-behavorial outgrowth of this vocabularistic nightmare: nobody trusts anything anybody says. And when this mistrust erupts into non-sensical shouting matches and causes people to behave irrationally enough to bring AR-15 assault weapons to public gatherings and town hall meetings, the cumulative effect is civic chaos and nearly irreparable polarity and division. The state of our communal mental health comes into question and we live on the edge of violence. Blind understanding, caused by such far reaching deception, leads to blind rage. Everybody thinks everybody else is full of shit. Plain enough?
The three authors that Nader lauds for their recent efforts are not so much practicing "semantic discipline" (What the hell THAT, exactly,anyway , Mr. Nader? How many times have we heard someone dismiss a remark, by saying, "Well,it's all just semantics, anyway"?), as they are demonstrating appropriate applicability and some much overdue linguistic precision and clarity. (Let's see: I think the word transparency comes to mind: whatever happened to that famous campiagn buzzword, Barack?) Moreover, these writers, along with many other capable linguists, are the communicators that we can count on to come through "in the pinch", and tell us what we need to know, when we are forced, finally, to ask our "leadership" to "Tell us, please, what you really mean?"
Mr. Nader could have just easily said that we need to stop being thoroughly "euphemized" before we become completely mentally "euthanized". I wonder if these language abusers that Mr. Nader bemoans are the "Death Panels" of our public awareness?
And I used as many $10.00 words in this response as I could manage, so that everyone could blame me for being just as guilty of obfscation as everyone else I am complaining about.
END.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 6:07 PM
Subject: Fwd: Words Matter - Nader
Great column, if you're interested in language as symbols, and how they have been manipulated by the right.............CR
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Ralph Nader <info@nader.org>Date: Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 4:56 PMSubject: Words MatterTo: alerts@lists.nader.orgEver wonder what’s happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don’t wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk.Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S., Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t the media know that the correct word is “prisoners,” regardless of what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld disseminated?The raging debate and controversy over health insurance and the $2.5 trillion spent this year on health care involves consumers and “providers.” How touching to describe sellers or vendors, often gouging, denying benefits, manipulating fine print contracts, cheating Medicare and Medicaid in the tens of billions as “providers.”I always thought “providers” were persons taking care of their families or engaging in charitable service. Somehow, the dictionary definition does not fit the frequently avaricious profiles of Aetna, United Healthcare, Pfizer and Merck.“Privatization” and the “private sector” are widespread euphemisms that the press falls for daily. Moving government owned assets or functions into corporate hands, as with Blackwater, Halliburton, and the conglomerates now controlling public highways, prisons, and drinking water systems is “corporatization,” not the soft imagery of going “private” or into the “private sector.” It is the corporate sector!“Medical malpractice reform” is another misnomer. It used to mean restricting the legal rights of wrongfully injured people by hospitals and doctors, or limiting the liability of these corporate vendors when their negligence harms innocent patients. Well, to anybody interested in straight talk, “medical malpractice reform” or the “medical malpractice crisis” should apply to bad or negligent practices by medical professionals. After all, about 100,000 people die every year from physician/hospital malpractice, according to a Harvard School of Public Health report. Hundreds of thousands are rendered sick or injured, not to mention even larger tolls from hospital-induced infections. Proposed “reforms” are sticking it to the wrong people—the patients—not the sellers.“Free trade” is a widely used euphemism. It is corporate managed trade as evidenced in hundreds of pages of rules favoring corporations in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. “Free trade” lowers barriers between countries so that cartels, unjustified patent monopolies, counterfeiting, contraband, and other harmful practices and products can move around the world unhindered.What is remarkable about the constant use of these words is that they permeate the language even if those who stand against the policies of those who first coin these euphemisms. You’ll read about “detainees” and “providers” and “privatization” and “private sector” and “free trade” in the pages of the Nation and Progressive magazines, at progressive conferences with progressive leaders, and during media interviews. After people point out these boomeranging words to them, still nothing changes. Their habit is chronic.A lot of who we are, of what we do and think is expressed through the language we choose. The word tends to become the thing in our mind as Stuart Chase pointed out seventy years ago in his classic work The Tyranny of Words. Let us stop disrespecting the dictionary! Let’s stop succumbing to the propagandists and the public relations tricksters!Frank Luntz—the word wizard for the Republicans who invented the term “death tax” to replace “estate tax” is so contemptuous of the Democratic Party’s verbal ineptitude (such as using “public option” instead of “public choice” and regularly using the above-noted misnomers) that he dares them by offering free advice to the Democrats. He suggests they could counteract his “death tax” with their own term “the billionaires’ tax.” There were no Democratic takers. Remember, words matter.Using words that are accurate and at face value is one of the characteristics of a good book. Three new books stand out for their straight talk. In Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-party Tyranny, Theresa Amato, my former campaign manager, exposes the obstructions that deny voter choice by the two major parties for third party and independent candidates. Just out is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges. Lastly, the boisterous, mischievous short autobiography of that free spirit, Jerry Lee Wilson , The Soloflex Story: An American Parable.Not withstanding their different styles, these authors exercise semantic discipline.End.
The dance partner, whom I have brought along to the masquerade brawl of human understanding, for quite some time now, is the one that leads me to "linguists" for answers, insight and authenticity. I no longer rely upon politicians or their spokespersons, ideological promoters, "advocates", commentators (who twist what is already twisted to make their own point: Fox Noise?), pundits (Buchanan?), moderators (who don't really moderate: think Presidential debates) , faux observers, "columnists", or orators and rhetoriticians to help me understand what I have just been smilingly "told". They are a uniformly unreliable group.
My chosen "linguists", our generation's "straight talkers", range from Bill Moyers, to Bill Maher and Noam Chomsky, to Robert Reich, John Stewart, Jane Hamsher,George Carlin and even Paul Krugman, UT Professor Galbraith and William Grieder... even though some are thought of more as economists or comedians. But they deliver understandable language and word constructs that reveal the real meaning and import behind the endless facade' of multi-syllabic stew delivered by wordy alchemists of confusion like Frank Luntz.
NOTE: Luntz, by the way, is no "word wizard", as Nader would have us believe. He is a malevolent manipulator of simple truths, the worst of a bad breed, who clouds and obfuscates for evil purposes, and does so with glee and gusto. (I cannot think of an exact Luntzian counterpart on the left, but if you listen to Harry Reid, Keith Olberman or Gov. Dean, any of the progressive bloggers or to any of the carefully crafted Obamaspeaks, the same admixture of obscure implications and insinuations exists in all those as well).
Mr. Nader is right,of course, as usual, but a little late to the party. The founding fathers knew, over 200 years ago, how bumblingly wrong this democracy could all go through psycho-babble (and it has: look at the complete non-separation of church and state?) and worked tirelessly against the possibilities. Even Dwight Eisenhower warned that "something evil" was afoot with the military industrial complex, and today we spend SEVEN times more on defense and weaponry than any other nation in the world. I think "Blackwater"is a pretty lame euphemism for "security". And of course, we cannot wait to "give" democacy to the Iraqis and the Afghans.
What Nader should be railing against the loudest is the resultant cultural-behavorial outgrowth of this vocabularistic nightmare: nobody trusts anything anybody says. And when this mistrust erupts into non-sensical shouting matches and causes people to behave irrationally enough to bring AR-15 assault weapons to public gatherings and town hall meetings, the cumulative effect is civic chaos and nearly irreparable polarity and division. The state of our communal mental health comes into question and we live on the edge of violence. Blind understanding, caused by such far reaching deception, leads to blind rage. Everybody thinks everybody else is full of shit. Plain enough?
The three authors that Nader lauds for their recent efforts are not so much practicing "semantic discipline" (What the hell THAT, exactly,anyway , Mr. Nader? How many times have we heard someone dismiss a remark, by saying, "Well,it's all just semantics, anyway"?), as they are demonstrating appropriate applicability and some much overdue linguistic precision and clarity. (Let's see: I think the word transparency comes to mind: whatever happened to that famous campiagn buzzword, Barack?) Moreover, these writers, along with many other capable linguists, are the communicators that we can count on to come through "in the pinch", and tell us what we need to know, when we are forced, finally, to ask our "leadership" to "Tell us, please, what you really mean?"
Mr. Nader could have just easily said that we need to stop being thoroughly "euphemized" before we become completely mentally "euthanized". I wonder if these language abusers that Mr. Nader bemoans are the "Death Panels" of our public awareness?
And I used as many $10.00 words in this response as I could manage, so that everyone could blame me for being just as guilty of obfscation as everyone else I am complaining about.
END.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 6:07 PM
Subject: Fwd: Words Matter - Nader
Great column, if you're interested in language as symbols, and how they have been manipulated by the right.............CR
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Ralph Nader <info@nader.org>Date: Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 4:56 PMSubject: Words MatterTo: alerts@lists.nader.orgEver wonder what’s happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don’t wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk.Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S., Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t the media know that the correct word is “prisoners,” regardless of what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld disseminated?The raging debate and controversy over health insurance and the $2.5 trillion spent this year on health care involves consumers and “providers.” How touching to describe sellers or vendors, often gouging, denying benefits, manipulating fine print contracts, cheating Medicare and Medicaid in the tens of billions as “providers.”I always thought “providers” were persons taking care of their families or engaging in charitable service. Somehow, the dictionary definition does not fit the frequently avaricious profiles of Aetna, United Healthcare, Pfizer and Merck.“Privatization” and the “private sector” are widespread euphemisms that the press falls for daily. Moving government owned assets or functions into corporate hands, as with Blackwater, Halliburton, and the conglomerates now controlling public highways, prisons, and drinking water systems is “corporatization,” not the soft imagery of going “private” or into the “private sector.” It is the corporate sector!“Medical malpractice reform” is another misnomer. It used to mean restricting the legal rights of wrongfully injured people by hospitals and doctors, or limiting the liability of these corporate vendors when their negligence harms innocent patients. Well, to anybody interested in straight talk, “medical malpractice reform” or the “medical malpractice crisis” should apply to bad or negligent practices by medical professionals. After all, about 100,000 people die every year from physician/hospital malpractice, according to a Harvard School of Public Health report. Hundreds of thousands are rendered sick or injured, not to mention even larger tolls from hospital-induced infections. Proposed “reforms” are sticking it to the wrong people—the patients—not the sellers.“Free trade” is a widely used euphemism. It is corporate managed trade as evidenced in hundreds of pages of rules favoring corporations in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. “Free trade” lowers barriers between countries so that cartels, unjustified patent monopolies, counterfeiting, contraband, and other harmful practices and products can move around the world unhindered.What is remarkable about the constant use of these words is that they permeate the language even if those who stand against the policies of those who first coin these euphemisms. You’ll read about “detainees” and “providers” and “privatization” and “private sector” and “free trade” in the pages of the Nation and Progressive magazines, at progressive conferences with progressive leaders, and during media interviews. After people point out these boomeranging words to them, still nothing changes. Their habit is chronic.A lot of who we are, of what we do and think is expressed through the language we choose. The word tends to become the thing in our mind as Stuart Chase pointed out seventy years ago in his classic work The Tyranny of Words. Let us stop disrespecting the dictionary! Let’s stop succumbing to the propagandists and the public relations tricksters!Frank Luntz—the word wizard for the Republicans who invented the term “death tax” to replace “estate tax” is so contemptuous of the Democratic Party’s verbal ineptitude (such as using “public option” instead of “public choice” and regularly using the above-noted misnomers) that he dares them by offering free advice to the Democrats. He suggests they could counteract his “death tax” with their own term “the billionaires’ tax.” There were no Democratic takers. Remember, words matter.Using words that are accurate and at face value is one of the characteristics of a good book. Three new books stand out for their straight talk. In Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-party Tyranny, Theresa Amato, my former campaign manager, exposes the obstructions that deny voter choice by the two major parties for third party and independent candidates. Just out is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges. Lastly, the boisterous, mischievous short autobiography of that free spirit, Jerry Lee Wilson , The Soloflex Story: An American Parable.Not withstanding their different styles, these authors exercise semantic discipline.End.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Addendum to "Send More"
This came unsolicited. You might like the video. I did.
Hi Ivan,I read your post about Afghanistan where you compare the military effortto that of Viet Nam. In your post, you point out that military operativeshave an incentive to wage war. I think the following video will fit wellin your post:http://www.newsy.com/videos/afghanistan_strategy_more_troops_or_new_tacticsThe video uses multiple news sources to examine how the media are framingthe implications of the recently released Mc Chrystal report calling forincreased troop levels in Afghanistan. It compares these sources toquestion alternatives to increased military commitment in the region. Ihope you will consider embedding the video in The Way I See Things.Newsy.com videos analyze news coverage of important issues from multiplesources. Its unique method of presenting how different media outlets arecovering a story gives context to complex policy issues.Please let me know if you have any questions,Rosa Sowrosa@newsy.com
Hi Ivan,I read your post about Afghanistan where you compare the military effortto that of Viet Nam. In your post, you point out that military operativeshave an incentive to wage war. I think the following video will fit wellin your post:http://www.newsy.com/videos/afghanistan_strategy_more_troops_or_new_tacticsThe video uses multiple news sources to examine how the media are framingthe implications of the recently released Mc Chrystal report calling forincreased troop levels in Afghanistan. It compares these sources toquestion alternatives to increased military commitment in the region. Ihope you will consider embedding the video in The Way I See Things.Newsy.com videos analyze news coverage of important issues from multiplesources. Its unique method of presenting how different media outlets arecovering a story gives context to complex policy issues.Please let me know if you have any questions,Rosa Sowrosa@newsy.com
Send more!
Yesterday I blogged the report (from Politico), that the famed conservative columnist and pundit George Will had said that it is time to pull troops back from a seemingly un-winnable situation in Afghani-whats-its-place. The narrative noted that this surprising recommendation was coming, not only from a most unlikely source, but also just ahead of what would probably be a request from the General in Charge (that is a GIC, which is military lingo for geek) to raise the current troop level there by 21,000...which it just did (see below) This is after, you may recall, that even the SecDef (Deaf Sec?), Mr. Gates, a warmed over never-was-a-real-GIC from G.W. Bush... whom the benificient Obama allowed to keep his "over-all-the -other GICs " desk job... gave a "lukewarm" assessment of the situation and does not sound like he is very hot to up the ante in the anti-Taliban sand dune and poppy conflict: all this while Karzai practices US style-politics and steals the national election: perhaps Karzai thinks Afghanistan is Florida? If you hang enough chads you can be President? That whole process gores me.
At any rate, during the Bill Moyers interview by Bill Maher (which I so gleefully and enthusiastically forwarded to everyone on my blog list, as well), Moyers told the symbolic tale of a President standing before a large group of advisors, some of whom were military, asking what should be done to address a current conflict. After the suggestion was made to "send more troops, the President asks, "Are 20,000 enough?", and a military man says, "Send more". So the POTUS asks, "Are 40,000 enough?", and a miliary man says, "Send more". And when the President asks if 60,000 will do the trick, the military again responds, "Send more".
The job of the military is to make war, not achieve peace, and they will never be happy unless conflicts can be non-resolved and escalated and we spend more on troop deployments, bigger and more powerful weapons and maintain a devil-may-care attitude about how much collateral damage to the civilian population will be incurred. Hence, the answer will always be, "Send more". Lyndon Johnson kept following that advice concerning Viet Nam until Walter Cronkite exercised his influence on the American evening news audience and the citizenry of the U.S. said, "Enough!" and we took to the streets.
Inasmuch as there is no collateral damage occuring in this country, and the returning body bags and flag draped coffins are kept largely out of view (only George Stephanopolous tells us every week who and how many died), the majority of the American people are not either well enough informed or sufficiently outraged to tell Obama, "Enough!". This insulation from the reality of war in the middle East, and the passivity, prolonged ignorance about the horrors of the war and collective public indifference will continue to produce a deafening silence, about not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also about the current (and much obscured) debate about Cheney, the CIA, Blackwater and torture. Sadly, it seems as if the Geneva Convetion is thought by most Americans to be a rock band you can view on YouTube.
But the issue of the morning, the moment and of the week is Afghanistan. And in the face of an almost certainly untenable situation, where it is highly doubtful that US forces can "win" anything, in a country that does not want us, democracy or any other form of interference, the decision to "send more" looks suspiciously like the urging of idiots. Fools rush in, and later many are dead. Several other "empires" figured that one out, about Afghanistan, long ago. For a nation of smart people,we are pretty dumb.
A military escalation at this juncture will not even be as dubiously productive and worthwhile as the "Cash for Clunkers" ("Spend more!") elixir that was poured down the economic throats of the US public and Detroit ...and the benefits of that adventure are yet to be determned, to be sure. But many people are very happy with their new 18 MPG Cadillac hybrid Escalade that gets 4 MPG better than their "old" gas-guzzler version. Go figure. We sure know how to take THOSE to the streets!
Obama needs to say no and deny this both looney and lame-brained request to achieve a "conflict resolution" by "sending more troops" and broadening the nature of the conflict through troop escalation...because it doe not resolve anything. Although many are sick of hearing it , because everyone quotes it but does nothing to heed it, the fabled definition of insanity (from Albert Einstein) is "continuing to do the same old things you've always done and expecting to get different results" is still quite true. And the reality of this "send more" mentality is far more than merely disheartening. "Inane" comes to mind. Does anyone know the difference betwen an escalation and an Escalade?
We keep kicking this big fence post, over and over again, and getting a very sore toe. Are we just stupid and numb, or numb and stupid? Or are we just dumb and dumber? But let's"send more!". "Kick it again!" "Keep beating that dead horse until it comes back to life!" I think I am hearing Stephen Colbert in the distance.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
To: Ivan H
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 5:04 AM
Subject: ?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083101100.html
It may be time to replace General McChrystal with General George Will...........CR
At any rate, during the Bill Moyers interview by Bill Maher (which I so gleefully and enthusiastically forwarded to everyone on my blog list, as well), Moyers told the symbolic tale of a President standing before a large group of advisors, some of whom were military, asking what should be done to address a current conflict. After the suggestion was made to "send more troops, the President asks, "Are 20,000 enough?", and a military man says, "Send more". So the POTUS asks, "Are 40,000 enough?", and a miliary man says, "Send more". And when the President asks if 60,000 will do the trick, the military again responds, "Send more".
The job of the military is to make war, not achieve peace, and they will never be happy unless conflicts can be non-resolved and escalated and we spend more on troop deployments, bigger and more powerful weapons and maintain a devil-may-care attitude about how much collateral damage to the civilian population will be incurred. Hence, the answer will always be, "Send more". Lyndon Johnson kept following that advice concerning Viet Nam until Walter Cronkite exercised his influence on the American evening news audience and the citizenry of the U.S. said, "Enough!" and we took to the streets.
Inasmuch as there is no collateral damage occuring in this country, and the returning body bags and flag draped coffins are kept largely out of view (only George Stephanopolous tells us every week who and how many died), the majority of the American people are not either well enough informed or sufficiently outraged to tell Obama, "Enough!". This insulation from the reality of war in the middle East, and the passivity, prolonged ignorance about the horrors of the war and collective public indifference will continue to produce a deafening silence, about not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also about the current (and much obscured) debate about Cheney, the CIA, Blackwater and torture. Sadly, it seems as if the Geneva Convetion is thought by most Americans to be a rock band you can view on YouTube.
But the issue of the morning, the moment and of the week is Afghanistan. And in the face of an almost certainly untenable situation, where it is highly doubtful that US forces can "win" anything, in a country that does not want us, democracy or any other form of interference, the decision to "send more" looks suspiciously like the urging of idiots. Fools rush in, and later many are dead. Several other "empires" figured that one out, about Afghanistan, long ago. For a nation of smart people,we are pretty dumb.
A military escalation at this juncture will not even be as dubiously productive and worthwhile as the "Cash for Clunkers" ("Spend more!") elixir that was poured down the economic throats of the US public and Detroit ...and the benefits of that adventure are yet to be determned, to be sure. But many people are very happy with their new 18 MPG Cadillac hybrid Escalade that gets 4 MPG better than their "old" gas-guzzler version. Go figure. We sure know how to take THOSE to the streets!
Obama needs to say no and deny this both looney and lame-brained request to achieve a "conflict resolution" by "sending more troops" and broadening the nature of the conflict through troop escalation...because it doe not resolve anything. Although many are sick of hearing it , because everyone quotes it but does nothing to heed it, the fabled definition of insanity (from Albert Einstein) is "continuing to do the same old things you've always done and expecting to get different results" is still quite true. And the reality of this "send more" mentality is far more than merely disheartening. "Inane" comes to mind. Does anyone know the difference betwen an escalation and an Escalade?
We keep kicking this big fence post, over and over again, and getting a very sore toe. Are we just stupid and numb, or numb and stupid? Or are we just dumb and dumber? But let's"send more!". "Kick it again!" "Keep beating that dead horse until it comes back to life!" I think I am hearing Stephen Colbert in the distance.
----- Original Message -----
From: Clint Ritter
To: Ivan H
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 5:04 AM
Subject: ?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083101100.html
It may be time to replace General McChrystal with General George Will...........CR
Friday, August 7, 2009
Cash For Clunkers
This program spends a small amount of taxpayer money (relative to the size of bail-out packages) on a paliative program which puts perfectly serviceable used cars, that "regular"people could buy and drive, into junk heaps, money in the pockets of new car dealers ( who are too many and too rich), does nothing to put money in the pockets of those much ballyhooed "small businesses" like auto parts dealers and local auto repair shops (who cannot afford health insurance coverage for their employees), forces people to "feel good", gives swine flu shots to dead car companies like Chrysler (extended life support), does nothing to encourge plastic recycling, wastes dirty coal-fired electrical energy to grind up old cars that needn't be, lies to people about energy savings and makes them "feel good", will create mountains of used tires, make some people "feel good" and give those people with enough money to afford a new car one helluva deal (and feel good) on a new car/truck which may not be much more fuel efficient than the "clunker" which wasn't that they just let the dealer "kill". And it will sell lots of registration stickers and new license plates, fool people into "feeling good", give insurance companies a "reason" to up the ante on insurance rates for new, more expensive-to-repair autos and no doubt put money in the pockets of the auto industry leeches that sell extended warranties. But people with jobs will feel good by believing they are helping the economy by saving (?) $4500.00 of the money that we borrowed from China to let them give to a local dealer to give to a banker who got the money from Goldman Sachs...money which we will have to pay back later in taxes. But they will feel good. The program is too little too late, treats symptoms instead of causes (we should have challenged the auto companies to build cars with much better EPA standards decades ago) and puts a clown face on a social and environmental calamity. But is makes people feel good and creates another distraction. And the program does nothing to promote new technology: aside from a Prius or Insight or forty, most of the new, non-clunkers are still only oil and gas burning technological antiques. But buying anything new ( think flat-panel HDTV) makes people "feel good".
And Joe the Plumber can buy a new truck to drive to the town hall meeting where he speaks out against government programs and socialized health care, after he used his Medicare coverage to pay for his doctor visit after he hurt his back, reaching through the drive-through window (with engine idling) at the bank, cashing his Social Security check. So he can feel good. Note: he will feel even better after he stops at the drive-through window (with new engine idling) at the pharmacy to pick up his pain pills from the big drug company that opposes reduced drug costs and single-payer health coverage and homeopathic research.
The economy is badly in need of very serious surgery and a complete engine/drivetrain overhaul. Instead the government is handing out small $4500.00 boxes of band-aids and bottles of cod liver oil. The Cash for Clunkers program is simply another version of "take two aspirin and call me in the morning". It treats an ulcer with whiskey. The government is taking away the bread and having a "let them eat cake" sale. This is another example of a government sponsored program which recommends abstinence only while promoting unprotected sex or passes a bill to build football stadiums while health care clinics go un-staffed and underfunded and bridges fall down on the interstate. This is economic late-term abortion: kill the small child to give birth (birther?) to another mouth to feed that we hope will be more "perfect". But did I mention that it makes people feel good? Funny the right doesn't mention or object to all of this when they disrupt a town hall meeting. They don't hang in effigy the congressman who voted for THIS. Maybe they just feel too good
And Joe the Plumber can buy a new truck to drive to the town hall meeting where he speaks out against government programs and socialized health care, after he used his Medicare coverage to pay for his doctor visit after he hurt his back, reaching through the drive-through window (with engine idling) at the bank, cashing his Social Security check. So he can feel good. Note: he will feel even better after he stops at the drive-through window (with new engine idling) at the pharmacy to pick up his pain pills from the big drug company that opposes reduced drug costs and single-payer health coverage and homeopathic research.
The economy is badly in need of very serious surgery and a complete engine/drivetrain overhaul. Instead the government is handing out small $4500.00 boxes of band-aids and bottles of cod liver oil. The Cash for Clunkers program is simply another version of "take two aspirin and call me in the morning". It treats an ulcer with whiskey. The government is taking away the bread and having a "let them eat cake" sale. This is another example of a government sponsored program which recommends abstinence only while promoting unprotected sex or passes a bill to build football stadiums while health care clinics go un-staffed and underfunded and bridges fall down on the interstate. This is economic late-term abortion: kill the small child to give birth (birther?) to another mouth to feed that we hope will be more "perfect". But did I mention that it makes people feel good? Funny the right doesn't mention or object to all of this when they disrupt a town hall meeting. They don't hang in effigy the congressman who voted for THIS. Maybe they just feel too good
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Potpourri...Say what?
While waiting to watch The Daily Show yesterday, I watched this clip on The Comedy Channel:
A youngish, neatly dressed woman appears on stage and announces that she has “Roving Kidney Disease”. Since she does not know what it is, or what to do about it, she has asked her Dr. to speak.
A short, plump and bespectacled man in a white smock appears, chart in hand, and confirms her diagnosis. He points out that she currently has one kidney on her left thigh and another on the back of her neck. She asks, “What causes this?” He does not know, but asks if she has any bad falls lately?
At this point, as they talk (and she denies falling), we see short out-takes of comedic pratfalls: women being tackled unexpectedly by football players; women falling from kitchen counters; women walking into walls; women being knocked to the floor by clumsy oafs. Following these Dick Van Dyke-like routines, the DR. tells the woman that there is a cure: If she will bounce repeatedly on a small floor-mounted trampoline (shown), she will recover. She thanks him and he leaves.
The woman then begins casually jumping up and down on the trampoline, and talking about how grateful she is for her cure. After a few moments, she missteps and falls off, backwards into the (fake) wall behind her. The wall crumbles and she crashes onto the floor and out of sight. She quickly jumps up and reassures the audience: “It’s OK! I’m alright! Just a little set back!”
This is, I think, a metaphor for health care reform. We are treating the symptoms and not the cause, with antiquated technology after hasty prognoses. Then whatever meager steps are made toward wellness are then derailed by the un-health insurance companies and big pharma, and we fall off through a (fake) wall of recovery. And we get up say we are OK. Say what?
And then there is this quote, from the new book, The Death of Why, The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy, by Andrea Batista Schlesinger: “When was the last time you changed your mind on something important? I’ve changed my mind a few times. One thing I can say for sure is that I’ve never changed it while surrounded by people who agree with me.” Wow. I think this explains why so much of the “news” and “newsy” info we get is not news at all, but merely gossip. That is why I don’t read it or watch it much, anymore. We exist and subsist on newsfluff.
Faced with decisions about health care, gay and lesbian issues, the auto industry bail-out and the re-election of obviously corrupt politicians, we choose not to change our mind, and seek comfort and confirmation from those around us who will willingly and readily agree with us (read the book: the author does a much better job with this concept than I do).
With war raging in multiple countries, Goldman Sachs raping the country and foreclosures and unemployment at all time highs, why do we hear most of all about Michael Vick re-entering football for millions, what performance enhancing swimsuit will win the most contests and who is protesting it, and whether o r not Brittany has on underwear? Does it matter how much cash Ruth Madoff has stashed or that half of Michael Jackson’s brain is unaccounted for? Or that a man bit a dog? Say what?
And while I am at it, bringing together a cop and a college professor for beers (and the press speculating on who will drink which brand of beer) on a picnic table, outside the Oval Office, in order to quell racial tensions, is acting “stupidly”. Yet many of us (and the MSM) are fixated on the gesture. Say what?
We resist changing our minds; essentially we resist thinking. We listen to and tune in to what is easiest to accept without question or using the word “Why?” We accept half-truths or nonsense blindly and blithely. This is why Glenn beck has an audience that nods in agreement when he (stupidly) calls Obama a racist or Limbaugh says the same about Sotomoyor. Or how”birthers” gain an audience on a topic that is without substance or merit or grounding. Or Lou Dobbs calls Rachel Maddow a “tea-bagger queen” and gets away with the total absurdity of it all. Say what?
Having said all of this (so far), I am looking for a book, called, Idiot America, How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. It should fit in nicely with the talk about “anti-intellectualism” that is flying around, these days. “Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s anti-intellectualism!”
And speaking of half-truths and nonsense, I heard a local minister, on the radio this morning, say this (with regard to the role of churches and religion in hard economic times): “We need to teach and embody hope because that is the realization that God intends”. Say what?
Which brings me back to “Why?”, and Schlesinger’s book. She reminds us that we don’t ask why often enough because we have settled for easy “answers” (you can find out anything from Google) and instant gratification. We think we can keep the world afloat by buying more stuff, when the simpler fact is that nothing which breaks which is not essential to life does not need to be replaced immediately. Wal-Mart is not the savior of the world. There are things and stuff and items in life we can and should learn to live without, despite what the TV commercials tell us. Did I just hear someone ask, “Say what?”
Let me leave you with one remarkably realistic conclusion (about life) and one unbiased and very realistic appraisal (about what we are facing in life right now ). One is more sobering than the other, but both may help you ask “Why?”
The first is by Derrick Jensen, in Endgame:
The truth is that I am going to die someday, whether or not I stock up on pills. That’s life. And if I die in the population reduction that takes place as a corrective to our having overshot carrying capacity, well, that’s life, too. Finally, if my death comes as part of something that serves the larger community, that helps stabilize and enrich the landbase of which I’m part, so much the better. [quoted via Carolyn Baker: Sacred Demise]
The second is from the economist, Paul Krugman, in the NYT:
Medicare versus insurers
“I notice from comments that a fair number of readers think that Medicare has had runaway costs. What you need to ask is, runaway compared to what?
Here’s the raw fact, from the National Health Expenditure data: since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% — but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.
We don’t have a Medicare problem — we have a health care problem.”
Now, after both of these, you may be saying, “Say what?”...which I must remind you is dangerously close to saying “Why?” But whatever you do, do not say, “So what?”
A youngish, neatly dressed woman appears on stage and announces that she has “Roving Kidney Disease”. Since she does not know what it is, or what to do about it, she has asked her Dr. to speak.
A short, plump and bespectacled man in a white smock appears, chart in hand, and confirms her diagnosis. He points out that she currently has one kidney on her left thigh and another on the back of her neck. She asks, “What causes this?” He does not know, but asks if she has any bad falls lately?
At this point, as they talk (and she denies falling), we see short out-takes of comedic pratfalls: women being tackled unexpectedly by football players; women falling from kitchen counters; women walking into walls; women being knocked to the floor by clumsy oafs. Following these Dick Van Dyke-like routines, the DR. tells the woman that there is a cure: If she will bounce repeatedly on a small floor-mounted trampoline (shown), she will recover. She thanks him and he leaves.
The woman then begins casually jumping up and down on the trampoline, and talking about how grateful she is for her cure. After a few moments, she missteps and falls off, backwards into the (fake) wall behind her. The wall crumbles and she crashes onto the floor and out of sight. She quickly jumps up and reassures the audience: “It’s OK! I’m alright! Just a little set back!”
This is, I think, a metaphor for health care reform. We are treating the symptoms and not the cause, with antiquated technology after hasty prognoses. Then whatever meager steps are made toward wellness are then derailed by the un-health insurance companies and big pharma, and we fall off through a (fake) wall of recovery. And we get up say we are OK. Say what?
And then there is this quote, from the new book, The Death of Why, The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy, by Andrea Batista Schlesinger: “When was the last time you changed your mind on something important? I’ve changed my mind a few times. One thing I can say for sure is that I’ve never changed it while surrounded by people who agree with me.” Wow. I think this explains why so much of the “news” and “newsy” info we get is not news at all, but merely gossip. That is why I don’t read it or watch it much, anymore. We exist and subsist on newsfluff.
Faced with decisions about health care, gay and lesbian issues, the auto industry bail-out and the re-election of obviously corrupt politicians, we choose not to change our mind, and seek comfort and confirmation from those around us who will willingly and readily agree with us (read the book: the author does a much better job with this concept than I do).
With war raging in multiple countries, Goldman Sachs raping the country and foreclosures and unemployment at all time highs, why do we hear most of all about Michael Vick re-entering football for millions, what performance enhancing swimsuit will win the most contests and who is protesting it, and whether o r not Brittany has on underwear? Does it matter how much cash Ruth Madoff has stashed or that half of Michael Jackson’s brain is unaccounted for? Or that a man bit a dog? Say what?
And while I am at it, bringing together a cop and a college professor for beers (and the press speculating on who will drink which brand of beer) on a picnic table, outside the Oval Office, in order to quell racial tensions, is acting “stupidly”. Yet many of us (and the MSM) are fixated on the gesture. Say what?
We resist changing our minds; essentially we resist thinking. We listen to and tune in to what is easiest to accept without question or using the word “Why?” We accept half-truths or nonsense blindly and blithely. This is why Glenn beck has an audience that nods in agreement when he (stupidly) calls Obama a racist or Limbaugh says the same about Sotomoyor. Or how”birthers” gain an audience on a topic that is without substance or merit or grounding. Or Lou Dobbs calls Rachel Maddow a “tea-bagger queen” and gets away with the total absurdity of it all. Say what?
Having said all of this (so far), I am looking for a book, called, Idiot America, How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. It should fit in nicely with the talk about “anti-intellectualism” that is flying around, these days. “Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s anti-intellectualism!”
And speaking of half-truths and nonsense, I heard a local minister, on the radio this morning, say this (with regard to the role of churches and religion in hard economic times): “We need to teach and embody hope because that is the realization that God intends”. Say what?
Which brings me back to “Why?”, and Schlesinger’s book. She reminds us that we don’t ask why often enough because we have settled for easy “answers” (you can find out anything from Google) and instant gratification. We think we can keep the world afloat by buying more stuff, when the simpler fact is that nothing which breaks which is not essential to life does not need to be replaced immediately. Wal-Mart is not the savior of the world. There are things and stuff and items in life we can and should learn to live without, despite what the TV commercials tell us. Did I just hear someone ask, “Say what?”
Let me leave you with one remarkably realistic conclusion (about life) and one unbiased and very realistic appraisal (about what we are facing in life right now ). One is more sobering than the other, but both may help you ask “Why?”
The first is by Derrick Jensen, in Endgame:
The truth is that I am going to die someday, whether or not I stock up on pills. That’s life. And if I die in the population reduction that takes place as a corrective to our having overshot carrying capacity, well, that’s life, too. Finally, if my death comes as part of something that serves the larger community, that helps stabilize and enrich the landbase of which I’m part, so much the better. [quoted via Carolyn Baker: Sacred Demise]
The second is from the economist, Paul Krugman, in the NYT:
Medicare versus insurers
“I notice from comments that a fair number of readers think that Medicare has had runaway costs. What you need to ask is, runaway compared to what?
Here’s the raw fact, from the National Health Expenditure data: since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% — but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.
We don’t have a Medicare problem — we have a health care problem.”
Now, after both of these, you may be saying, “Say what?”...which I must remind you is dangerously close to saying “Why?” But whatever you do, do not say, “So what?”
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