Sardonicky

Funny Stuff

2012-03-08T15:42:00.000-05:00

It must be the silly season, or the full moon, or the big Solar Storm wreaking havoc with grids and the GPS, but I haven't encountered so much ironic humor while trolling the internets in months. In just the past hour alone, I have been treated to a three-fer laugh riot by simply doing a quick scan through my email and the Times website.

First, the email. In the same week that saw Attorney General Eric Holder claim transparency by giving a public speech opaquely defending the secrecy of the Obama Administration when it decides to kill people, the White House has announced a new website devoted to ethics and transparency:

The idea that government is more accountable when it is transparent is a principle that President Obama has worked hard to make a reality in his administration.

That's why the President pledged “to create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings in a searchable, sortable, and downloadable format.”

This site, ethics.data.gov, is designed to be a fulfillment of that promise.

You can supposedly punch in a name, or a keyword, and oodles and oodles of info will pop right out at you. It purports to rip the White House Visitors' Log wide open! I haven't tried it out yet, and don't know that I ever will. My hesitancy has a little something to do with the Obama re-election campaign being involved in a massive data-mining scheme -- bringing me to my second object of hilarity.

A story in today's Times lays out the secretive, massive high-techie-tackiness of his Chicago political arm, and how campaign workers have all sorts of sneaky ways to find out who we are, via tracking cookies and other nefarious methods. (There is also a great piece in ProPublica outlining how those annoying Obama emails begging for donations are subtly tailor-made to apply to each unique donor). Anyway, here's the part in The Times piece that cracked me up:

Many of the small donors who gave early and often in 2008 have failed to rematerialize, (though officials say that with new donors and increasing enthusiasm they have no doubt that they will at least raise the $750 million they did then). Some of the volunteers who went to work enlisting friends and neighbors have been turned off by unmet expectations and the hard realities of partisan Washington, though the Republican attacks on Mr. Obama this year have helped bring some back into the fray.

And, campaign officials say, they have literally lost track of many reliable Democratic voters, particularly lower-income people who have lost their homes or their jobs or both, and can no longer be reached at the addresses or phone numbers the campaign has on file.

So Mr. Obama’s re-election team is sifting through reams of data available through the Internet or fed to it by its hundreds of staff members on the ground in all 50 states, identifying past or potential supporters and donors and testing e-mail and Web-based messages that can entice them back into the fold.

This is priceless. They're actually attempting to locate the poor slobs who lost everything to the biggest, unpunished financial fraud conspiracy in American history, and thinking these people will be in any position or mood to give money to the biggest political sell-out in history. Don't forget to peruse the reader comments, especially the ones who still have listed phone numbers and get annoying daily -- daily! -- calls from the Obamatrons.

And last but not least, here is the third blackly humorous item on the agenda. Another Times story bemoans the fact that the corrupt Afghanistan government has not prosecuted a single case of corruption since the occupation, despite the fact that the righteous Americans are leading by democratic example! My stomach literally still hurts from the eruption of guffaws that one brought on. The Americans are said to be livid that Karzai has refused to go after crooks in his own country, despite being presented with tons of evidence by the generals. Karzai is inexplicably reacting to demands to prosecute his banksters with "interference, obstruction and delay." Wow. He probably had just gotten off the phone with Eric Holder, collecting some helpful tips in passive aggression.

Glenn Greenwald was having a field day with this one. "It’s simply shocking," he writes, "to find a country which would allow its political class to be dominated by those who 'have profited from the crony capitalism that has come to define its economic order' and who “nearly brought down” its banking system. What must it be like to live in such a country?"

The Pathology of Greed

2012-03-08T10:52:00.004-05:00

Hardly a day goes by that we don't read an infuriating account of the bad behavior of rich people. This week, it was revealed that union-busting billionaire Chicage heiress and Obama bundler Penny Pritzker also makes a career out of systematically getting the property taxes on her many estates drastically reduced. There is a body of proof as high as a penthouse that the uber-rich as a whole are insatiably greedy, inhumane and really not as smart as they fancy themselves to be. If they had as much brains as they do money, they'd have the sense to shut up and hide. But narcissists can never shut up and hide. They flaunt, they preen, they throw their contempt in our faces.

Nevertheless, I was shocked, shocked at the latest extreme demands that the heavy-hitting lobbying group known as The Business Roundtable are making of the government they so obviously control. It used to be that the oligarchs worked behind the scenes and behind closed doors as they peddled their influence to presidents and congress members and treasury secretaries. No more. The BRT has come out with a public manifesto called Taking Action for America. It's just about as cravenly ugly as it gets. It's for the benefit of a very select few and to the detriment of the many. It's a veritable counter-attack against the Occupy Movement. It even parodies the Declaration of Independence and begins with: "We, the CEOs of America...."

In a nutshell, the kleptocrats of the BRT want what little taxes they do pay reduced, environmental regulations scrapped, laws governing humane working conditions for their employees relaxed, their contributions to workers' health care and pensions slashed, the already watered-down and delayed measures in Dodd-Frank financial reform to just go away, and Medicare and Social Security "reformed".

And here's the really scary part. They released their report after meeting with President Obama and receiving some encouragement. They were also slated to meet privately with Treasury Secretary Geithner to discuss the details and logistics.They're openly bragging about how they are working closely with Congressional conservative Democrats (and yes, they really do call them Blue Dogs) to get their legislation passed. They're crowing about how the Beltway corporate media just love, love, love their ideas! As far as they are concerned, they have themselves a done deal. And they may be right.

Of course, the proposals are couched in the tried and true doublespeak linguistics of "job creation" and "economy healing." The BRT aims to hook us with a long intro about how terrible the unemployment crisis is for all those poor workers out there, and how they can help. But it's really nothing more than a repetition of the mantra of voodoo Reaganomics. If the government will only release the millionaires and billionaires from their shackles, they will be free to trickle down their golden drops of beneficence on the rest of us! Ummm -- haven't we already seen how well that theory has worked out?

True to form, these transglobal corporate heads just love to refer to themselves as "small businessmen" who are being inordinately hurt by such cumbersome anti-pollution regulations as the Clean Air Act. They provide a laundry list of regulations they want tweaked. For example, they reckon that it will cost them too much money to comply with proposed EPA guidelines for solid waste removal. And they are vehemently against a requirement making them divulge the toxic chemicals used in hydrofracking, their excuse being that forcing them to list the ways they poison our water will put a damper on "innovation" (translation: limitless profits).

And make no mistake: the one percenters want to destroy Social Security by privatizing it. Of course, they don't say so in so many words. Their sanitized version goes like this: "Complex and burdensome regulations" such as forced FICA contributions "are slowing the recovery and hampering job creation."
The BRT would much rather help workers start individual retirement savings plans, and "educate" the doofuses on how to scrimp and save and plan ahead:

Ensure that requirements do not discourage retirees from continued work.... Enact reforms that bring Social Security into long term financial balance as soon as possible to minmize disruption and give Americans the lead time to plan appropriately.

Translation: People are lazily retiring too early! Kill Social Security and either make people work until they die or force them to purchase junk pension plans created by the private sector, all the while humanely forewarning them they will have to make do with much, much less.

Democratic Lame Duck Rep. Heath Shuler, who is leading yet another secretive "Gang" effort in Congress to achieve a draconian Grand Bargain of safety net cuts, is quoted on the BRT webpage as simply loving these plutocratic ideas: "Taking Action for America is the right plan at the right time," he gushes. "America’s business leaders have detailed a jobs and growth strategy that will benefit American workers. I call on my colleagues to work with me, the Business Roundtable and all stakeholders to act this year."

And Barack Obama also seems to be totally on board with his corporate cronies:

These are relatively modest adjustments that can stabilize our economy, give you the kind of business confidence you need to invest.That means working together to reform our tax system so that we are rewarding companies that are investing here in the United States, making sure that we are able to cut our tax rate here but also broaden the base," he said.

The president said more should be done on energy and providing educational and job-training opportunities for workers, in line with what the BRT outlined on Wednesday.

"I'm prepared to be a partner in that process," Obama said.

"But we're going to have to have everybody pulling together," he said. "The business community is going to have an important voice in how that moves forward."

Tell me again why some people still believe that this President's new-found campaign populism should be taken seriously.

Co-Presidents Obama and BRT's Jim McNerney (of Boeing) Share a Tender Moment

Holder: Tough Times Call for Murderous Measures

2012-03-06T11:31:00.002-05:00

When you're the U.S. Attorney General whose assignment is to sanitize state-sponsored murder, it is best to do so in a law school a thousand miles away, as opposed to, say, an actual Washington press conference. It helps if you do your 'splainin' to a select group of academics who understand, or pretend to understand, your legal nitpicking and double-speak, and who won't upset your gravitas. You reckon you can get away with saying there is a difference between "due process" and "judicial process" at a friendly place like Northwestern University in Chicagoland, the home turf of your boss's political machine.

You will not be facing a media mob shouting out inconvenient questions -- such as, why hasn't the government responded to a FOIA request for documents relating to the drone strike assassination of Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son? Exactly how many thousands of women and children have been part of your collateral damage, anyway? When you are Eric Holder, you intellectualize the slaughter, and try to get away with bullshit like this:

Let me be clear: an operation using lethal force in a foreign country, targeted against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or associated forces, and who is actively engaged in planning to kill Americans, would be lawful at least in the following circumstances: First, the U.S. government has determined, after a thorough and careful review, that the individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; second, capture is not feasible; and third, the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.

Eric Holder conveniently did not find it necessary to mention any evidence of how the government determined that the target of the assassination was actually a "senior operational leader of al Qaeda", rather than, say, a loathesome provocateur, or why the "applicable law of war principles" could be applied in a country (Yemen) with which we are not at war. Here is just a little more of what he said:

Al qaeda leaders are continually planning attacks against the United States, and they do not behave like a traditional military – wearing uniforms, carrying arms openly, or massing forces in preparation for an attack. Given these facts, the Constitution does not require the President to delay action until some theoretical end-stage of planning – when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear....

Some have argued that the President is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or associated forces.....

The Constitution’s guarantee of due process is ironclad, and it is essential – but, as a recent court decision makes clear, it does not require judicial approval before the President may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war – even if that individual happens to be a U.S. citizen.

So, by repeating the claim over and over again that Awlaki was an al Qaeda mastermind plotting attacks, Holder makes the case that saying something often enough makes it true. Yet, he and his boss refuse to provide the evidence behind the legalese, because they deem it to be top secret. Rather than admit that there is in fact no credible evidence, they hide behind the convenient curtain of national security. Bush taught them well.

Holder was also careful to add that such targeted killings (he just hates, hates, hates that critics are calling them "assassinations") are ever so humanely carried out, so as not to impose "unnecessary suffering" on hapless innocents who may have the poor taste to get in the way. Here again is his dry legalspeak way of putting it: "Under the principle of proportionality, the anticipated collateral damage must not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. Finally, the principle of humanity requires us to use weapons that will not inflict unnecessary suffering".

In other words, if some women and children get killed along the way, their numbers are acceptable, and their deaths will not be needlessly prolonged. Isn't it too bad that President Obama is being forced into humanely killing people? These are the most extremely unique times in all of recorded history! Here a threat, there a threat, everywhere a threat-threat. "It is an indicator of our times," Holder cravenly pontificated on the need to kill. "Not a departure from our laws and values."

Besides, nobody really cares about targeted assassinations on foreign soil, as long as a photogenic Democratic president who loves his gorgeous wife and and adorable kids and cute puppy dog is doing it. He outlawed torture, didn't he? The drone targets hardly feel a thing when they have the good sense to die quickly, disappear from sight, and not linger on and on, calling attention to themselves. So let's continue expressing 24/7 outrage at a fat slob of a provocateur named Rush Limbaugh, and yammer some more about whether crazy Rick Santorum can win Ohio in the GOP sweepstakes tonight.

Collateral Damage in Pakistan

Defending the Inquisition

2012-03-05T11:30:00.007-05:00

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly

There are false equivalencies, and then there are feckless equivalencies. A newspaper columnist has just compared N.Y. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to Rush Limbaugh slander victim Sandra Fluke. Mike Lupica of the Daily News has had it with the abuse being heaped on Kelly for having the guts to trash civil rights in the name of public safety. If you think the War Against Women is bad, says Lupica, then the War Against Ray Kelly is just plain horrid. So much so that Islamophobic anti-civil libertarians are fighting back with a rally today at Police HQ to support continued police surveillance of Muslims of every age, gender, residence -- anywhere and everywhere and forevermore.

The livid Lupica sputters that Kelly is being attacked out of pure "turf war" spite by the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Times and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who've all taken umbrage at his spying spree. Lupica was so mad that he made a typo which unintentionally speaks the truth:

They do this as Kelly continues to do everything he can — and within the law, despite the coverage — to keep the city safe at the most dangerous period in his history. The Times even asserts that the kind of surveillance employed by Kelly and the NYPD produces no “obvious payoff for public safety.”

Even as legal experts are weighing in and speculating that the police spying program is most likely illegal, and Attorney General Eric Holder is "taking a look" at the practice after being intensely pressured to do so, Kelly is fighting back. He could not have picked a more telling venue to defend himself in a speech over the weekend: the Cipriani Club on Wall Street. The Cipriani's balcony was the infamous site of champagne-sipping one percenters hurling insults at OWS protesters last fall. Of course, the NYPD conducts part of its surveillance from the Goldman Sachs office building, so it's no surprise he picked the financial district to give his little talk. Kelly surmises that while most Muslims are law-abiding citizens, you have to keep an eye on them. They're prone to being radicalized:

We know that while the vast majority of Muslim student associations and their members are law-abiding.we have seen too many cases in which such groups were exploited..... The notion that the Police Department should close our eyes to what takes place outside the five boroughs is folly, and it defies the lessons of history. If terrorists aren’t limited by borders and boundaries, we can’t be either.

Kelly conveniently failed to mention that most, if not all, of the "exploited" groups and individuals are actually entrapped by the police and/or FBI and arrested to much fanfare after they are convinced by informants and undercover agents to aspire to blow things up. Law enforcement m.o. is to find marginally intelligent or mentally disturbed people who can be easily used as tools in the phony War on Terror. None of those charged was ever really capable of or even close to carrying out an attack. They got caught on tape saying they hated America, or admired Al Qaeda, or maybe wanted to blow stuff up. That was enough to charge, even convict, them.

In his column today, Lupica gives us two feeble examples of how the NYPD surveillance program has made us safer:

Let Kelly continue to use NYPD surveillance of conversations inside an Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, one attached to a mosque, that helps New York cops keep a Herald Square subway station from being blown sky high.
The names you want to know about on that one, guys who certainly were a threat to public safety, were Shahawar Matin Siraj and James Elshafay, eventually arrested and tried and convicted in federal court. Siraj, who worked in that bookstore, ended up getting 30 years. And there is the “spying” that last year resulted in the arrests of Ahmed Ferhani and Mohammed Mamdouh and a plan from radical Islam to bomb a Manhattan synagogue.

Lupica doesn't tell you that Siraj was set up by an informant and was strung along with bribes from the police -- or that Elshafay was a schizophrenic who was convinced to plead guilty and testify against Siraj. You can read all the details here. The other two alleged terrorists whom Lupica cites were initially investigated by the FBI, who dropped the case for lack of credible evidence. The NYPD got the sloppy seconds, and the charges were eventually reduced. The duo, in effect, pled guilty to "wanting to" blow up a synagogue.

Lupica chooses to ignore the facts, and instead warns the public to "get off Kelly's back, and get out of his way":

At a time when you look around at what passes for political leaders in a presidential election year from both parties, watch them blow with the wind, you have actual leadership from Kelly, who stands his ground and tells the truth about the city in which he works and the world in which he lives.

You don’t go to war against Ray Kelly on something as important as this; you stand with him. Sometimes you wonder if Kelly’s loudest critics, the ones from politics or the newspapers or the protesters in the street Saturday yelling about him, have forgotten what year it is.

I think Mr. Lupica has forgotten what century it is. He seems to have wandered into a time machine and traveled back to the Spanish Inquisition, or the Salem Witch Trials, or even as recently as the 1950s and Joe McCarthy's Red Scare. Man's inhumanity to man knows no expiration date, though, and Lupica is exactly correct: 2012 is turning out to be a very unforgettable medieval year.

Patriarch in Chief

2012-03-04T13:50:00.005-05:00

As a "father of two daughters", Barack Obama's aides said, the president had read about Rush Limbaugh's nasty comments about Sandra Fluke, and wanted to reach out to the health care activist to offer some fatherly support. After carefully "consulting with advisers", Obama called Ms. Fluke from the Oval Office on Friday afternoon. What an amazing coincidence that she was just about to appear on Mrs. Alan Greenspan's Democratic veal pen cable TV show! Obama told the young woman that her parents must be so proud of her. No matter that she is all of 30 years old, and caring about what her parents might think has probably not been part of her agenda for at least a decade.

The very next day, the president bumped the first woman editor of the New York Times from her commencement gig at all-female Barnard College, and invited himself to speak instead. "As the father of two daughters," the White House announcement proclaimed, "President Obama wanted to speak to some of America’s next generation of women leaders.” Father Knows Best, apparently more so than one of the world's most powerful women leaders. Adoration, not emulation, little girls! Who is that in the front lines of the war against women again?

Every time I hear Barack Obama preface a remark with that cringe-worthy "as the father of two daughters" I know the news will be (a) A really bad public policy decision, such as overriding science and his own female FDA commissioner to ban the sale of Plan B contraceptives to teenage girls; (b) a blatant pitch for female votes and an appeal to all who crave authoritarianism; (c) an indication of his ingrained male chauvinism, or (d) a lame joke betraying an unhealthy fixation on the future sex lives of Sasha and Malia.... not to mention a creepy obsession with the drones and guns he will use to protect them.

Long before the newly declared War Against Women reached a fever pitch with the Rush Limbaugh rants of hate, and congressional Republicans frothing at the mouth about the gateway-to-promiscuity drug of birth control pills, the Democratic president was fretting about the chastity of his own two kids -- who are only 10 and 13 years old. The most recent (known) occasion was a campaign photo-op at the Master Lock factory in Milwaukee last month. "As I was looking at some of the really industrial-size locks, I was thinking about the fact that I am the father of two girls who are soon to be in high school and it might come in handy to have these super-locks," he joked. "For now I'm just counting on the fact that when they go to school there are men with guns with them." Heh, heh, heh. Video here.

At the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2010, Obama warned the singing Jonas Brothers to keep their hands off his offspring, as if they even had any interest in the pre-teen girls. "Boys! Don't get any ideas," he sternly intoned. "I have two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming.”

And the following year, speaking at a high school commencement, he noted that the principal’s daughter had chosen to go to a different school because she “was worried that the boys would be afraid to talk to her if her mom was lurking in the hallways.” Because of this, he said, he’d decided to announce that his “next job will be principal at Sasha and Malia’s high school — and then I’ll be president of their college.”

There's more. The Chicago Tribune's Lynn Sweet wrote last August:

CNN's Wolf Blitzer, interviewing President Obama on Tuesday asked him what he would get daughters Malia and Sasha if he wins a second term. The girls got Bo, the dog after the Obama family moved to the White House.

BLITZER: What are you going to get them the next time, if you're reelected?

OBAMA: When I'm reelected, what I'll be getting them is a continuation of Secret Service so that when boys want to start dating them they are going to be surrounded by men with guns. That's their gift.

From another interview last year on ABC's Good Morning America:"But I understand teenage-hood is complicated. I should also point out that I have men with guns that surround them often.’

From a 2009 Newsweek interview: "Now, I worry about them when they're teenagers where, you know, you're already embarrassed about your parents and even more embarrassed on TV all the time. And dating I think will be an issue because I have men with guns surrounding them at all times [laughter], which I'm perfectly happy with, but they may feel differently about it.

At his National Prayer Breakfast speech last month, Obama carefully refrained from mentioning weaponry before his religious audience, but admitted that he will pray for strength when eldest daughter Malia "goes to her first school dance and begins dating" and hopes that she "keeps her skirt long as she grows up." Video here.

Of course, the worst episode of paternalism came in December, when Obama nixed the purchase of the "morning after" pill by girls under the age of 18. Being "the father of two daughters" apparently makes you forget everything you learned in your Ivy League schools. It puts you right down there with the most rabidly ignorant anti-feminist GOPers. And when his own base lashed out at him, he blamed yet another woman -- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius -- as well as all those stupid teeny-boppers who can't tell a contraceptive from a pack of gum:

I will say this, as the father of two daughters. I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine. And as I understand it, the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old go into a drugstore, should be able—alongside bubble gum or batteries—be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect. And I think most parents would probably feel the same way.

Tell me again where this man gets off addressing a group of women at a commencement ceremony, or how he and his fellow Democrats think they have any standing when it comes to women's rights and health issues. This is a perfectly convenient wedge issue for him as well as for the Republicans.

ObamaCare, besides not kicking in for another two years even as 50 million people remain uninsured, is a poster child for the Law of Unintended Consequences. The president blew it when he allowed private insurance leeches, employers and the clergy to have a say in his quasi-public health plan. Now is the perfect time to point out yet again that Single Payer (Medicare for All) is the only way to go.

Lucrative Lunacy

2012-03-02T10:31:00.014-05:00

If you've been paying any attention to corporate-sponsored news and cable gab-fests, and opening up emails from politicians and and their fund-raising lackeys, you might think the overriding issue of our time is the Republican War on Women. Forget the ever-increasing income disparity in this country. Forget the wars. Forget drone strikes and targeted assassinations and the attack on civil liberties. Forget the Great Fraudclosure Scandal. Forget wage stagnation and underemployment. Because, ladies, the Republicans are after your uteri! So while you're shaking with fright and indignation, reach into your designer bags for your checkbooks and help your corporate Democrats hold on to their seats. Somebody should be profiting off this ginned-up controversy, so it might as well be Harry Reid and Friends.

First, they came for your birth control pills. Next, they wanted to rape you with ultrasound probes. Then, they put Rush Limbaugh on the air to talk dirty about you and force you into making porn videos. Now, it's time for you and your money to join Congressional Democrats in the One Million Strong for Women "grassroots" movement. (forget about the Occupiers -- they make the maligned Wall Streeters feel queasy, so the Dems are just trying to ignore their increasing influence).

If the Republicans can conjure up a new phony culture war out of thin air, the Democrats are more than willing to play along by filling the victim role. They want you to feel aggrieved right along with them. Heaven forbid they should actually speak truth to power and call out war crimes past and present, and the real plutocratic agenda of the Republicans, who don't care one whit about birth control, or virtue. The GOPers pretend that government is trying to impose its socialist will to hurt the freedoms of the private insurers and the "job creators". That the mainstream media are actually taking this latest fakery at face value, and treating this ridiculous War on Female Health with any seriousness is pretty amazing. Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned tomorrow or next week or next year. Planned Parenthood will continue prescribing free birth control and mammograms to women who need them for the forseeable future. Rush Limbaugh only has a platform reaching far beyond his stupid radio show because the "left-leaning" cable shows give him one. His misogynistic rants make the corporate Democrats and the corporate talking heads who love them look good. He helps fill the vacuum, helps hide the inconvenient truth that the DNC has no proactive platform of its own. What is it that they stand for again? Seems to me that not so long ago, they were the party of labor unions, universal health care, a progressive tax system, world peace, and the eradication of poverty.

N.Y. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand posted a diary on the Daily Kos yesterday, announcing a "One Million Strong for Women" initiative. The piece started out reasonably enough; she even acknowledged that the manufactured war on women is steering the conversation away from the war on the middle class. The opening hook:

In recent weeks, I've said repeatedly that I was dumb-founded (sic) that in 2012 we are actually debating whether women should have access to contraception. I had no idea I’d be even more dumb-founded (sic) today, when, instead of coming together to fix our economy and strengthen the middle class, the Senate is considering a measure so extreme that it would allow any employer -– religious or secular –- to deny their employees coverage of any preventive service, including contraception, mammograms—anything the employer deems unfit to be covered. Let me say this once and for all: the power to decide whether to use contraception or any other preventive care service should be up to each individual woman, not her boss.

Yeah! But then, we are directed to the Million link. It turns out this so-called grassroots effort is not made up of women. It is made up for women (the helpless creatures) by politicians. There is no million-woman march on Washington planned. This has nothing to do with "activism" at all. It is a campaign fund-raising gimmick, planted as a news story on a liberal website, designed solely to get you to donate cash (a million strong dollars?) to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed by Gillibrand's fellow New Yorker Chuck Schumer. (Chuck, as you may remember from a previous post, is just fine with NYPD thugs spying on Muslim women and children). Here's a thought, Kirsten: why not suggest that people make a donation direct to Planned Parenthood or a free clinic serving the indigent?

MoveOn.org, the Democratic veal pen organization, also wasted no time sending out fund-raising emails. They want me to contribute $15 toward a Democratic campaign TV ad to stop the GOP's "Let Women Die!" agenda. Keep the fear alive, let the lifestyle liberal cash flow. MoveOn, by the way, is simply a SuperPac organization disguised as an independent activist group. It has so much money in the bank that the New York Times has actually categorized it as a corporate member of the One Percent!

The Center for American Progress, the think tank with close ties to the White House, sent out a two-fer email blast the other day, telling me that the Republicans want to put my boss in my bedroom, and by the way... the Stock Market always does better with a Democrat in office!

Schumer and Gillibrand have been lukewarm at best in voicing support of OWS. Schumer was even careful to say that protesters should not be "getting in the way of everyday New Yorkers on their way to work." Translation: OWS is out of the everyday mainstream, which is made up of his financial sector sugar daddies.

Republicans are geniuses at setting up fake cultural issues to distract people from the fact that they are staging a not-so-silent coup against the 99%. Democrats are geniuses at being weak reactives who wring their hands every time a crazy new attack pops up -- and then they beg for money to keep the lunatics at bay. They think they can get away with moving to the right wing themselves by simply throwing out a liberal lifestyle-issue crumb every once in awhile.

In fact, they are probably extremely grateful to the Republicans for giving them a big excuse to disingenuously play defense, deflecting attention away from the fact that Democrats no longer represent working class and poor people. They are every bit as corrupt as their GOP counterparts. They're in it for the money.

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Be Very Afraid and Support Your Local Politicians

DHS vs OWS

2012-02-29T11:32:00.000-05:00

From Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone comes confirmation of what we already took for granted: the Department of Homeland Security has kept a close watch on Occupy Wall Street. Hastings just got hold of a secret five-page DHS report culled from the five million newly-released WikiLeaks documents.

Three things are screaming out:

1). Homeland Security was created to guard against terrorism. Why is it even interested in a peaceful domestic protest movement?

2). Homeland Security is a Huffington Post copycat. It got all the info for its report from Internet news items, and simply republished them in aggregate form, links and all. I picture a 20-something, low-level DHS hack/wannabe blogger sitting in a cubicle, trolling the Web in a frenzy of copying and pasting. He/she/they even went to the Daily Kos to get a copy of a protest march route! Among other sources were Reuters, CNN, The Huffington Post(!), major metropolitan newspapers and TV outlets. There is no indication in the report that actual DHS personnel ever visited the camps.

3). This report was in the possession of Stratfor, the Austin, TX company that was the subject of a mass email hacking by the Anonymous hacktivist group. What is the relationship between DHS and a private intelligence firm whose clients are multinational corporations? The Surveillance State is beholden to the Corporate State, it appears. Or they're in cahoots. Or they are really one big entity, each faction feeding off the other. Isn't there a word for that?

As Hastings notes, the DHS report is fairly innocuous on the surface, although slanted toward concerns about the safety of the target of the protests -- the financial services industry -- and the "potential for violence". There is no smoking gun, no direct evidence in writing of a conspiracy to destroy the movement. But it ever so subtly hints that law enforcement should be on guard against the mobs in the camps and in the streets. There is just the hint of a dog-whistle within its five pages. There is a whiff of an "us against them" mentality. The last paragraph reads:

The growing support for the OWS movement has expanded the protests’ impact and increased the potential for violence. While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure (CI). The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters. As the primary target of the demonstrations, financial services stands the sector most impacted by the OWS protests. Due to the location of the protests in major metropolitan areas, heightened and continuous situational awareness for security personnel across all CI sectors is encouraged.

In retrospect, it should be noted that the DHS report was written in October, at the very beginning of the Occupy movement. It was not until the following month that coordinated police crackdowns on the camps got underway, reportedly in the wake of a conference call among the mayors and DHS. This must have come after the Terror State urged the mayors to become paranoid and "situationally aware."

One more sordid chapter in the History of American Government Overreach. One more smidgen of proof that we are under the control of an oligarchy. One more small step toward complete oppression, one giant leap backward for civil rights. Happy Leap Day, everybody!

NYPD Guards at Zuccotti Park (post-eviction)

Update: Hastings was on The Young Turks last night to talk about the leaked DHS report. Watch him here.

When Islamophobes Attack

2012-02-28T12:05:00.005-05:00

It's the latest episode of Shoot the Messenger. The enterprising AP reporters who revealed to the world that the New York City Police Department has been illegally spying on Muslim Americans for years are now being castigated by both smarmy politicians and their own fellow journalists for making the power elites and their hired army look bad. There's a whole new descriptive meant to marginalize people who insist on taking their constitutional rights seriously -- "extreme civil libertarians."

Far from evoking government and media outrage, the revelations -- which include the new shocker that the White House itself has funneled "drug war" money to the NYPD spying apparatus -- have generally inspired reactions ranging from disbelief and denial, thence to a spirited defense of state abuse of power. and finally to the demonization of those who dare to tear away the fabric of government secrecy. Erstwhile "liberals" seem to be generally okay with paramilitary thugs grossly overstepping their Constitutional bounds and geographical jurisdiction to conduct surveillance on an entire group based entirely on its religious beliefs. The hate speech of Islamophobes is no longer all that shocking. Politicians who last year were merely non-committal about the building of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan are now daring to be blatant.

Chief among them is one of the most powerful Democratic leaders in the country: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. He has mounted a vigorous defense of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his spy program. Chuck is being championed in the pages of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post as a defender of freedom. It is fine, Schumer says, to single out Muslims for a sweeping surveillance program, as long as you don't single them out on the basis of their religion. Yes. He really did say that. Here are his exact words:

“There is nothing wrong with the NYPD collecting and assessing publicly available information from New York, New Jersey, the other 48 states or around the world in the effort to prevent another terror attack like 9/11. In fact, it is widely understood that the NYPD’s actions have kept us safer. Looking at public information and following leads is perfectly acceptable as long as any one group, in its entirety, is not targeted based only on its religious or ethnic affiliation.”

Schumer's blanket statement that the NYPD spy program "has made us safer" is going unchallenged by the mainstream media. The New York Daily News has published an editorial lauding Schumer and blasting anybody daring to tar and feather the NYPD. The News takes great umbrage, not at state-sponsored civil rights violations, but at the Peabody-award winning Associated Press.

Finally (gushed the News editorial) after weeks of innuendo, half-truths and distortions that have depicted the NYPD as spying on the city’s Muslim communities, an elected official has spoken the truth....There’s no there there, said Sen. Chuck Schumer of reports that the department’s Intelligence Division invasively monitored New Yorkers based on their religious beliefs.....
Excavated endlessly by The Associated Press in a series built on the false premise that to gather preventive information is to violate rights, the division’s work has amounted, for the most part, to checking out facts that are in the public record....
Schumer perceptively divined that which should have been obvious to all of the city’s elected leaders: Checking out information in the public domain tramples on no one’s rights or privacy.
More important, the NYPD needs to have the facts on hand in order to know where to go and to whom to speak in the event that the CIA passes on a tip that a suspected terrorist from, say, Pakistan is somewhere in the city.
Referring to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Schumer said: “I don’t think he has a bigoted bone in his body.”

And here is what the rabidly anti-Muslim Post is saying about Chuck the Hero:

Sen. Chuck Schumer stood tall for the NYPD this week as it took a politically motivated pummeling for gathering intelligence in New Jersey on potential Islamist extremist threats.
That took guts.
Bravo, Chuck.

Yes, it takes a courageous politician to defend the police practice of spying on elementary school children across the river in Newark, NJ, and targeting innocent Americans who suspiciously munch on fried chicken in an ethnic restaurant. But Schumer by no means stands alone. NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who recently sold out to the Obama Administration in the fraudclosure scandal, sees no reason to investigate civil rights scandals either. Attorney General Eric Holder is certainly not about to rock the boat. After all, when it became known that the CIA was illegally spying on American citizens in tandem with the NYPD, he sat on his hands. Homeland Security, the CIA, the NYPD, the Dept. of Justice, Goldman Sachs.... these are interchangeable terms. They are all part of the same team.

When the AP first started publishing its series of articles on the illegal police spy operation last fall, NJ Rep. Rush Holt asked Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate. Holder ignored the request.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have renewed calls for an investigation in light of possible White House involvement, however oblique, in the spy program. The Obama Administration says there is no oversight of how the money it provided to the police department is used, and is refusing to comment on the controversy.

Not since FDR authorized the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II has ethnic profiling of citizens been undertaken with such monumental overreach. What's next? A Diaspora? Concentration camps? The government compiled data on and spied on Japanese-Americans for years prior to their mass arrests. World War Two ended, but the global War on Terror will continue into the foreseeable future. Will some future president end up apologizing one day for this latest miscarriage of justice as Ronald Reagan did forty years after the second world war?

With Democrats like Chuck fomenting fear and hatred, cheerleading a new American Inquisition, who needs crazoid right wing Republicans? Our elected officials are falling all over themselves trying to establish their Torquemada bona fides.

Update: Watch a video with Glenn Greenwald on the ACLU site, here.

Conductor Chuck, Keeping Fear Alive

Going Postal on the Poor

2012-02-27T10:52:00.003-05:00

Leave it to Congress to exceed even its own abysmal level of clueless incompetence. In general, our lawmakers have not raised too much of a stink about the mass closures beginning in May of post offices and mail distribution centers, and the loss of thousands of postal service jobs. That severely poor rural areas are being unfairly targeted in the cutting frenzy has raised nary an eyebrow. I can't seem to recall any bill pending in the Bubble Dome that would put an end to Congressional franking privileges (free postage for official mailing to constituents) in order to stem the hemorrhage of money from the cash-strapped USPS.

But that has changed. It is suddenly occurring to the political class that, due to closures and cutbacks, the delivery of mail-in ballots may be delayed in this November's general election. They have therefore decided that postal budget cuts constitute a crisis of epic proportions. People may be unable to vote them back into office because they can't get to a post office! Delivery of ballots to absentee voters may be slowed by days, even weeks! The closing of the distribution centers will mean an end to next-day delivery of first class mail. So something must be done -- pronto!

Some politicians are calling for delaying the closures until after Election Day. Millions of voters cast their ballots by mail every year, and in Washington and Oregon, voting is done only through the mail. Voting by mail is always more popular during a presidential election year. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is worried that ballots from rural areas in his state won't get to and from their destinations in time: "Not knowing how long it will take to process those ballots could disproportionately affect rural voters, he said.“Closing these facilities carries many unintended consequences. It is not a risk worth taking.”

What Wyden didn't say is that those rural areas will end up suffering from a lot more than disenfranchisement once the small-town post offices are shuttered for good. One of the main excuses the government has for annihilating mail service as we know it is that the Internet has killed snail mail. Tell that to the rural poor, who are often deprived of decent broadband coverage in their remote habitats. Mitt Romney is not the only tone-deaf member of the ruling class elite. He and his plutocratic cadre just assume that everybody has a computer, a Cadillac and a career, money to burn and gas to burn to drive to the nearest unclosed post office, maybe 50 miles away.

According a recent report published by Reuters, nearly 80 percent of the 3,830 post offices under consideration for closure are in sparsely populated rural areas, where poverty rates are higher than the national average -- and where one third have no Internet service. And unbelievably, the USPS did not even take economic impact on communities into consideration in deciding which facilities to close. The decision was based purely on profitability or the lack thereof. From Reuters:

About 2.9 million people live in the rural communities where the post office that may close is either the only one or one of two post offices serving their zip code area. For many rural residents, that would translate into longer drives to mail packages, pay bills or buy stamps.
The Postal Service chose post offices for possible closure based primarily on revenue. Two-thirds of the 3,830 post offices slated for closure earned less than $27,500 in annual sales, postal data show. Nearly 90 percent of these post offices are located in rural areas, where shrinking populations and dwindling businesses mean the post offices simply cost more to operate than they earn.

As with so many of the other gratuitous cost-cutting measures in the current federal budget, the post office cuts seem designed specifically to punish poor people in the name of austerity. If you don't do your fair share in this mercenary society, you just are not going to get President Obama's fair shot. Your worth as an American citizen seems to be based solely on your monetary productivity. And Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe seems to know exactly what he is doing, because he refused to honor a Freedom of Information request from Reuters about revenue from each individual post office on the chopping block. The targeting of the indigent is no accident. And the savings from these arbitrary closings are so miniscule as to be meaningless. Statistics show that Donahoe's proposed closings would save only $295 million a year, or four-tenths of one percent of the USPS's annual operating expenses.

"That's a drop in the bucket," said William Henderson, who served as Postmaster General from 1998 to 2001. Then he corrected himself: "That's not even a drop in the bucket. The bucket won't ripple."

Do read the whole Reuters article. It is a real eye-opener; an all-too-rare example of enterprise journalism in this era of media stenography. It just adds even more evidence to the charge that Donahoe is another political front man of the privatization of America. He is doing his fair share to give corporations a fair shot at shaking us all down in their endless quest of making a buck. To hell with people who don't have enough money to make a difference, or to make him and his boss care.

NYU Professor Steve Hudkins says that Donohue seems to be frantically rushing to get rid of post office jobs and buildings before advisory studies and public input are even collected and collated. (Hudkins runs his Save the Post Office website purely as a public service. He neither works for the postal service nor has he any relatives who are postal employees. He just likes his small-town post office!):

The Postal Service isn’t waiting to hear what the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) has to say about the Network Rationalization plan. The PRC’s Advisory Opinion is due out in late summer, probably August or September, but the Postal Service plans to get started on the consolidations as early as May.
It’s disconcerting that the Postal Service is in such a rush to begin closing the plants, especially considering that it has only itself to blame for when the Advisory Opinion will be ready. The Postal Service could have submitted the Request for an Opinion four months earlier....
It’s not clear why the Postal Service is now in such a hurry and why it wants to close so many plants in such a short time. It’s a sure formula for chaos in the mail system, and delays in delivering the mail will be inevitable, probably much worse than the change in service standards for First-Class mail that's already part of the plan.
Perhaps the Postal Service wants to increase pressure on Congress to pass legislation, perhaps management really believes its own hype about how dire the situation is, or perhaps they just want to amp up the sense of emergency to help further their agenda.
Whatever the reason, the Postal Service is basically thumbing its nose at the PRC and saying it doesn’t really care what the Advisory Opinion says. Many of the plants will be closed before the Opinion even comes out.

Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio wants Donahue fired, and he also doesn't understand why the President is not more involved in defending the USPS against (mainly) Republican assault.

"They think somehow the private sector will take over," DeFazio said. "Tell me who in the private sector is going to deliver a letter for 45 cents to a small rural community 40 miles from the nearest, or 100 miles from the nearest, sorting facility? That's not going to happen. These people will be deprived of any meaningful service."
DeFazio said generally that reduced mail service would be an "incredible blow" to the U.S. economy and would affect several companies and consumers who rely on the current level of service.
"I guess we'll become the first developed nation on earth without a postal service, just like we're the only developed industrial nation on earth without universal healthcare," DeFazio said. "We're the best."

Obama's proposed 2013 budget calls for ending Saturday mail service to save money, but he has been mum on the plant closings, layoffs and shuttering of post offices in poor rural areas. What a huge surprise. How many photo-ops and campaign events has he held in poor rural areas? If you can't afford the gas to drive to one of his populist harangues in a monied burb, you're out of luck.

Abandoned Post Office in South Georgia

Obama iPhone Cover-up and Other Insensitive Tackiness

2012-02-25T13:58:00.006-05:00

Are you an Obama supporter feeling just a wee bit uncomfy for continuing to own the symbol of Chinese wage slave labor? Well, you can rest easy, because his operatives have come up with the perfect solution: you can now cover up your iPhone of Shame with a trendy case. And it's made in the USA! It gets rid your guilt, and pumps up "An America Built to Last" faux-populism at the same time. And it costs a coincidental $40! What a perfect way to blow the extra amount they claim you'll be taking home in your paycheck now that Congress has passed the FICA Holiday extension bill. That is, if you have a job that pays at least $50,000. Of course, if you don't earn at least $50,000, you can't very well afford an iPhone either. As an indigent middle class refugee, you're not in their target group.

Cover Up the Abuse of Chinese Sweatshops

Now that horrible working conditions in Apple factories have been exposed for the whole world to see, people are actually starting to make noise about boycotting iPhones and iPads and other electronics. I saw one woman on TV last week talking about how she hopes Apple will improve the lives of the worker bees before the next edition of the iPhone comes out, or else she will feel great angst when she is forced to go out and buy the latest model.

There are some pundits who actually believe that without Apple and its Foxconn subcontractor, the factory workers would be dead anyway. There is no shortage of eager applicants lining up at Apple factories in the company city of Zhenzhou, they say. And polling reveals that if you happen to own an iPhone, you are less concerned than non-owners about where these products are made. So go ahead, feel better about yourself, and support your corporate Democrat at the same time.

In keeping with the propaganda that everyone aspires to the American Dream of material riches, and that prosperity is just around the corner, the Obama campaign is also rolling out St. Patrick's Day shirts just in time for the March 17th holiday. O'Bama has a tiny trace of Irish blood, milked to the hilt during a 2009 visit to his ancestral home town, where he famously quaffed a Guinness. So who knows? Maybe the Luck of the Irish can magically transport you over the rainbow to the pot of gold. Just fork over $30 now, to help the champion of ~~Wall Street~~ the working man get re-elected!

Uh-oh. There is just a wee problem with this design. The symbol of the Irish is not the four leaf clover. It's the shamrock, which only has three leaves, to represent the Holy Trinity. Calling Cardinal Timothy Dolan of St. Patrick's Cathedral! (He is already mad at Obama over the contraceptive kerfuffle,) And Christopher Cahill of the Irish Historical Society tells the New York Times that the tee shirt represents a major gaffe and is downright abnormal. The Obama Campaign, while promising to investigate the error, instead wasted no time adding four leaf clover O'Bama pint glasses to its catalogue of kitsch. Sure, and they really care.

New York Times commenters of Irish descent are not amused at all. "The beer mug is a ethnic slur that wouldn't happen to any other group without a huge fuss," writes Emily Kelly of New York. "I'm Irish, Catholic and offended by President Obama. Let him know it's not ok! Stand up and be counted now and on election day."

And John O' of Westchester chimed in: "St. Patrick's Day is rapidly becoming an occasion to besmirch the Irish; last year Mayor Mike's comment regarding boisterous parade marchers and now the President using a weed as a symbol to reflect his Irish-ness. However, there is no greater insult than the use of St. Paddy's or St. Pat's to refer to the great day. If the President would champion a law making it a federal crime to use any reference other than St. Patrick's Day, perhaps he won't have to take back all the shirts and glasses."

Never mind. Here are a couple of better selections. The first manages to offend everybody, and the second inadvertently tells the truth:

Hilariously Tainted Politics

2012-02-23T10:49:00.004-05:00

Winning at any cost has become so important to Team Obama that its SuperPac is openly wading into the GOP primaries, running attack ads on a candidate who might lose the nomination in his own home state to a religious fanatic. The Daily Kos, a well-known Obama veal pen website, has also launched "Operation Hilarity", which urges supporters of the president to vote for Santorum in states which hold open primaries. This is ostensibly to make it easier for Barack to win the election: better that he run against Rick Santorum than Mitt Romney, with whom he has too much in common for comfort.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, originally had started a fundraiser to help sabotage the Republican primaries, but scotched the monetary angle when criticism came pouring in about its tainting of the political process. No matter: PrioritiesUSA is spending its own tainted cash for attack ads. The objective of the Democrats seems to be this: drag out the GOP nominating process as long as possible in order to weaken all the candidates and make Obama a shoo-in.

This is wrong on so many levels. It reeks of desperation. It reveals Democrats to be in thrall to a Cult of Personality. The only beneficiary of a drawn-out food fight among the Republicans will be President Obama. It will not be the electorate. The more we can be distracted by the phony culture wars, the birth control fight, vaginal probes, presidential theology... and the more we can manufacture outrage and portray the president as a victim of a smear campaign, the easier it will be for Obama to continue his own far-right policies. The more an unhinged Rick Santorum can fill the airwaves and the blogs, the less we will notice, or care, about the shadow wars, the abuses of the surveillance state, the war on whistleblowers, the war on drugs, the war on poor people, the stealth privatization of schools, that too many of us are permanently unemployed and underemployed, and that the American Dream is just so much hot air.

The presidential contest the Democrats prefer will be between a right wing corporatist and a racist lunatic -- not between two right wing corporatists. We must not, cannot notice that the entire process is ruled by oligarchic special interests. The pretense of choice must be maintained, no matter what the cost. Here is how Moulitsas put it yesterday:

Of course, I realize that this (voting for Santorum) makes some of you squeamish, and if you live in one of those states and don't want to participate, you don't have to! (We also stopped fundraising for it, focusing instead in message mobilizing.) But there's too much at stake to worry about idealistic notions of what democracy should be. Luckily for all of us, Team Obama isn't restraining itself based on such idealism. They're playing to win, and this latest action is essentially strategic vindication for Operation Hilarity.

The action he refers to are the Obama SuperPac ads running in Michigan against Romney, who is not even the nominee yet. This tactic of an incumbent president involving himself in another party's nominating process had been unheard of until now. Citizens United is proving to be a real radical trend-setter, isn't it?

David Sirota of Salon has written a fine piece on the dangers of focusing on the manufactured culture wars during a drawn-out Republican primary. He disagrees with the conventional wisdom of the Democratic veal pen that the longer the Republicans can duke it out, the more they will expose their awfulness to the public at large. In fact, the opposite will occur:

Straightforward as this hypothesis is, I don’t buy it — I believe the longer the Republican primary battle continues, the more the GOP’s most extreme proposals are given a mainstream platform, the more their ideas are granted public credibility and the more conservative propaganda is invisibly woven into our most basic political assumptions. In other words, I believe in the Goldwater Principle, which suggests that while the eventual nominee may fail to win the cycle’s general election, the elongated nomination contest — with its news cycle dominance and hardcore ideological edge — will help permanently shift the supposed mainstream “center” of our public debate to the fringe right.

We are already too far to the right as a nation for our own comfort and our own good. It has become the acceptable new normal to have a Democrat in the Oval Office who is openly anti-union (he pulled OFA, his official campaign arm, out of the Wisconsin labor protests a year ago), fiscally conservative (Catfood Commission), anti-environment (he nixed his own EPA's ozone rules), pro-corporation and Wall Street, job-destroying free trade proponent, and ad infinitum. His base is left slobbering in gratitude over the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (which has yet to increase women's pay), his same-sex marriage slow evolution and other liberal tidbits.

The corporate media have fallen down on their own job, abysmally. The so-called progressive cable TV shows no longer delve into substantive issues. Even renegade Keith Olbermann has stopped questioning or criticizing the Obama Administration. It's all about ginning up outrage at the latest antics of the GOP candidates. Citizens United has extended the process by bankrolling fringe candidates, and the TV stations are raking in the advertising bucks. They have discovered that lunacy is a commodity and an eminently lucrative one.

You don't hear much criticism of the White House during this election season from the more popular liberal blogs, either. In fact, the fomenting of fear is on a definite upswing. Just glancing over at the headlines in this site's blogroll and elsewhere this morning tells the story: "Romney: 'Nuclear Weapons Will Be Used if Obama Elected!""; "Our Nation of Moaners"; "Forced Births in the Bad Old Days"; "Santorum Excommunicates 4500 Christians!"; "Virginia To Impose State-Sponsored Rape by Forcing Women to Get Vaginal Probes!"

MoveOn.org is having hysterics. Can you contribute $15 right away to stop the Republican "Let Women Die!" bill? $top letting the Republicans make the war on women's health a wedge issue by helping us ensure that it will continue to be a wedge issue!

The only thing we have to fear is corporate Democrats telling us how much we should fear Republicans. This stuff reminds me of the alien abduction craze of years ago. UFOs were kidnapping people right and left, and there were always probes involved. Forget about the looming Iran War. There is a war against women, people! It is so much more fun to be scared about imaginary things, like Rick Santorum. Heck, even I write the occasional blog post about Rick Santorum. But I don't give this marginal human being power and nonstop publicity he doesn't deserve in order to make "my side" look good.

"Villager" pundit Ezra Klein of The Washington Post and MSDNC is beginning to see the light. A little. He explains "why voters can't trust their own political party." It's because politicians care more about getting elected than they do about the needs of voters. Duh. But it is not the media's job to explain policy to the hoi polloi, sniffs Klein. They are, after all, just the stenographers:

Perhaps my biggest frustration with the U.S. news media (and yes, I am a card-carrying member) is that we permit the two parties to decide what is “left” and what is “right.” The way it works, roughly, is that anything Democrats support becomes “left,” and everything Republicans support becomes “right.”
There are good reasons for this. It isn’t the media’s job to police political ideologies, and it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to try. But that leaves ordinary voters in a bit of a tough spot.

Well, at least he is being honest about clarifying his self-imposed limits. It is simply not in his job description to give us a crash course on substance. Klein seems to echo New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane's infamous column which rhetorically asked if reporters should be calling out politicians on their lies. This paragraph from the Klein piece made me cringe:

Parties -- particularly when they’re in the minority -- care more about power than policy. Perhaps there’s nothing much to be done about this. And as I said, it isn’t clear that the media, or anyone else, should try. But it puts the lie to the narrative that America is really riven by grand ideological disagreements. America is deeply divided on the question of which party should be in power at any given moment. Much of the polarization over policy is driven by that question, not the other way around.

Okay, Ezra. All politicians are scum, but just keep continuing to parrot what they say, give them a free platform and wring your hands in despair. Don't call them out publicly, by name, but do write a generic column every once in awhile to ease your conscience. I guess Ezra never reads ProPublica, or learned about muckraking in college.

Soaking the Poor

2012-02-22T11:46:00.008-05:00

It seems so long ago and far away, now that President Obama is spinning around in an oratorical frenzy of populism. But remember last summer, when he offered up draconian cuts to the deficit hawks in exchange for allowing the nation to raise the debt ceiling and pay its bills? It could have been worse, the pragmatists insisted. He wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare, but John Boehner refused. We bit the bullet on that one, temporarily. The country's credit rating only tanked by one letter. And Obama proudly proved his deficit hawk cred all the same, and bragged at the time that he had cut spending to the lowest levels seen since the Eisenhower Administation. He was a fiscal conservative, and a true believer in the old canard that if the country tightens its belt just like a family does during hard times, the economy will magically burst at the seams.

Then came the national protest movement known as Occupy, the looming re-election campaign, the continually tanking economy.... and Obama decided it was time to pivot back to pretend progressivism. He fired his bankster chief of staff and hired a different bankster chief of staff who is now insisting they never were Austerians. You can't make cuts in a time of recession, they shrill. It's all the Republicans' fault. Call Congress! Pass This Bill!

So, when the White House released its budget last week to minimal fanfare, they tried to gloss over all the de facto austerian discretionary cuts. "It looks worse than it actually is," they insist, counting on nobody actually reading its thousands of pages. "The money is just being switched around.... there's a lot of waste and redundancy.... when ObamaCare finally kicks in years from now, it'll all be good."

Ha, ha, ha. I spent half an hour skimming the Osterity Budget last night. A cursory glance reveals that if you happen to be in that one third of Americans now classified as either dirt poor or teetering on the brink, Fiscal Year 2013 is not going to be very good for you. I will be blunt: this President does not give a rat's ass about poor people. The cuts may seem miniscule in the big picture, but for people who must count every penny, they are literally the difference between life and death. Here is the official White House budget-unveiling propaganda:

We now face a make-or-break moment for the middle class and those trying to reach it. After decades of eroding middle-class security as those at the very top saw their incomes rise as never before and after a historic recession that plunged our economy into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover, it is time to construct an economy that is built to last.
The President’s 2013 Budget is built around the idea that our country does best when everyone gets a fair shot, does their fair share, and plays by the same rules. We must transform our economy from one focused on speculating, spending, and borrowing to one constructed on the solid foundation of educating, innovating, and building. That begins with putting the Nation on a path to living within our means – by cutting wasteful spending, asking all Americans to shoulder their fair share, and making tough choices on some things we cannot afford, while keeping the investments we need to grow the economy and create jobs. The Budget targets scarce federal resources to the areas critical to growing the economy and restoring middle-class security: education and skills for American workers, innovation and research and development, clean energy, and infrastructure.
The Budget is a blueprint for how we can rebuild an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded..

As you can tell, Obama still hasn't been able to completely wean himself from the bad habit of comparing the most powerful country on earth with a family living within its means. And he is talking only to the "hard-working folks" about getting a fair shake and fair shot. If you are poor, old or disabled, then you are not doing your fair share and this budget makes it painfully clear that you have no shot at reaching that fabled Middle Class. Here are just a few examples of how this Democratic administration would like to punish our most vulnerable citizens:

Housing for Persons with Disabilities: a cut from $165 million to $150 million. This may seem miniscule, but if you are physically challenged and on a waiting list for an apartment outfitted with ramps, wheel-in showers and other amenities, you are going to have to wait even longer. There is a real shortage of rental units for disabled people as it is. The Obama budget assures us that current construction for special housing will go on. Just no new disabled-friendly housing units, because you have to cut the waste.

Community Block Grants: funding was already drastically cut last year, leading to a nationwide protest by mayors serving inner cities. Now, President Obama proposes to cut 2013 aid to poor neighborhoods nearly in half, from $679 million to $350 million. The reason? The Government Accounting Office and Health and Human Services have determined that there has not been enough "oversight" of entities receiving the grants. Hmmmm... I guess all those paper bags full of cash being dropped on ghettoes are finding their way into the wrong hands. Drug Lord Hamid Karzai needs it more in Afghanistan, and God knows there is no oversight on the forever wars.

The Job Corps: being cut from $1.703 million to $1.650 million. Another seemingly miniscule, gratuitous cut, from a program designed to train disadvantaged youth. Again, without going into any details or providing one iota of evidence, the White House explains that it's cutting this program in order to launch a "bold reform effort to improve outcomes and strengthen accountability." Uh-huh. Spend less money to improve something. This is very Paul Ryanesque, using the rationale that youmust destroy something (Medicare) to improve it. Reforming the Job Corps smells like another privatization scheme to me.

Children's Mental Health Services: being cut from $117 million to $84 million. No new grants will be issued, and no needy children newly diagnosed with emotional disturbances will be accepted into existing clinics. No explanation. It is now estimated that a quarter of all children fall below the poverty level. Since economic hardship is a known causative agent in depression and other mental illnesses, it is stunning to me why this budget has not been quadrupled. More totally gratuitous, deficit hawk chest-thumping.

Low Income Home Energy Assistance: there was shocked disbelief last year when the president cut this funding. He is doing it once again, with another cut from the already low $3.472 million to $3.020 million. Luckily, this winter was fairly mild and there are no known cases of people freezing to death because they couldn't afford heating oil. Congress actually restored some of the money Obama had cut last year.

If you thought that the government's fraudclosure settlement with the banks was a kick in the teeth, they are now planning to kick some of the hardest hit victims while they are still down. Obama, while bragging on how he will help upper middle class people adjust their mega-mortgages in exchange for letting the banks get off scot free, wants to make severely poor people contribute a bigger chunk of their meager resources to their subsidized rent payments. I was happy to see an editorial in today's New York Times critical of this heartless plan:

Affordable housing advocates are rightly alarmed by proposals in the White House budget and in Congress that would drive up rents for the nation’s poorest public housing residents, many of whom are in households that subsist on less than $3,000 a year. If the federal government raises rents in housing subsidy programs that shelter about 4.5 million households, it must do so in a way that shields the poorest from eviction and homelessness.

Under current federal law, housing authorities have the option of setting a minimum rent of $50 per month. About a quarter of public housing agencies around the country have set the minimum below that number, allowing some of the poorest families to pay $25 or less. A bill in the House would require that the minimum rent in public housing be raised to $69.45. The White House budget would raise it to $75.

These may seem like small amounts, until you consider households where single parents with two children might be subsisting on food stamps and about $250 in cash payments from the federal public assistance program. Many of these families are already teetering on the verge of homelessness. Some in Congress support raising the minimum rent as an adjustment for inflation, but the resources of poor families generally have not increased.

In the adding insult to injury category, President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner this morning rolled out a brand new plan to cut corporate tax rates in exchange for maybe sewing shut a few of those pesky loopholes with some very cheap thread. Oh, and it's too hard to really fix the Tax Code in less than several years. But it is good politically to say that you'd like to, because it will make the Republicans seem anti-business if they don't agree to it during this election season.

I am feeling shaken. I feel like this country's citizens are being lined up in front of a firing squad and shot. And it isn't fair.

Alternative Presidents Day

2012-02-20T10:58:00.006-05:00

Happy Presidents Day, everybody. It's the dregs of yet another three-day weekend in the guise of a VIP un-birthday. Last month it was MLK Jr., celebrated a day late and five decades of civil rights struggles and anti-war activism short. Today, we are required to revel in the February Happies of Washington and Lincoln, owner and freer of slaves respectively. But I don't feel like giving respec', as Da Ali G used to say, even though Abe is one of my faves.

Instead, let us honor three people who are daring to run for the highest office in the land, although they probably don't have a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning or even coming close. That isn't really the point, though, is it? In this age of Citizens United, money rules politics, and voters are rapidly becoming superfluous. We are but the warm bodies expected to do our duty and pull the lever for one of the two vetted and pre-approved candidates of the oligarchic duopoly. But last I checked, we still have our first amendment rights, even though privacy is dead and the right to assemble is pretty much at the whim of the individual municipality and police force.

What alternative candidates and third, fourth, fifth parties are achieving right now is raising public awareness of what is possible, and what we deserve and what abysmally low standards we have set for ourselves as a putative Democracy. According to polling, most self-identified conservatives actually support progressive causes, such as single payer health care and taxing the rich and ending the wars. Yet, the two sides of the Money Uniparty no longer answer to the will of the electorate.

I am sure there are more outsider parties and people (I am leaving out the Libertarians and Communists, although I may come back to them in a later post), but here is today's trio of independent candidates (links go to their official websites) : Rocky Anderson of the American Justice Party, Jill Stein of the Green Party, and Jerry White of the Socialist Equality Party.

Jerry White

Jill Stein

Rocky Anderson

First, Rocky -- he has the biggest organization of any declared leftist independent thus far. Former three-term mayor of Salt Lake City, Anderson is an unlikely progressive from a traditional rock-solid conservative state. He ranks as one of the strongest environmentalists who ever held public office. Unlike the corporatist deficit hawk DINO Barack Obama, Anderson embraced the ideals of Occupy before there even was an Occupy. From a profile of him in The Guardian:

His agenda is a familiar one on the left. Broadly speaking, he wants to break the hold of corrupting corporate influence on the two main parties and give a voice to ordinary working people. It also chimes with the general thrust of the Occupy movement, even though the latter has steered clear of engagement with electoral politics.

"The more time has gone on, the more it has become clear that we're not going see change in this country with these two parties," he says. "There are lots of good individuals in the Democratic party, [but] without Democrats voting the way they did in Congress, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. We wouldn't have suffered as a nation because of these Bush tax cuts.

"Obama received more money from Wall Street than any presidential candidate ever. And they got a great return on their investment."

This would represent the first attempt to apply the principles of the Occupy movement within the electoral area. Anderson points out discussions about launching the party preceded the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street. But while there are no organisational links, he says there is plenty of common ground. "There is clearly a convergence of interests regarding the concerns we have and the concerns of Occupy Wall Street. There's little I've heard from the Occupy movement that I would disagree with and I think there's little we support that they would disagree with."

Anderson thinks Obama's neopopulism is fraudulent. "How does he, with a straight face, talk about getting jobs back to the U.S. without even mentioning free trade agreements and the need to significantly renegotiate those agreements to put them in better balance in terms of worker rights and environmental protections?" (Anderson has a point -- everybody has conveniently forgotten that textile jobs are headed to South Korean factories peopled by North Korean guest slaves, and that Colombian farmers are still getting beaten up and worse by thugs in the employ of multinational corporations.)

Next up: Jill Stein is a physician from Massachusetts and this election cycle's Green Party candidate. An avid Occupy supporter, she is running on a platform for a "Green New Deal" --

the objective of which would be to employ "every American willing and able to work" to address "climate change...[and the] converging water, soil, fisheries, forest, and fossil fuel crises" by working towards "sustainable energy, transportation and production infrastructure: clean renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, intra-city mass transit and inter-city railroads, “complete streets” that safely encourage bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing of the goods needed to support this sustainable economy". The initial cost of the Green New Deal would be funded by various mechanisms, including "taxing Wall Street speculation, off shore tax havens, millionaires and multimillion dollar estates" as well as a 30% reduction in the U.S. military budget.

The four points of the Stein Green New Deal are the right to a job at a living wage; the transition to a sustainable, green economy; a financial sector serving Americans; and citizen empowerment. Sounds eminently logical and simple and refreshingly socialistic.

Which brings us to our third candidate and party, which you may not be as familiar with, although the principles of all three overlap. The Socialist Equality platform stresses a strong labor movement, as originally advocated by Karl Marx, and is unabashedly anti-capitalist. If nothing else, it should demonstrate to the audiences of Romney and his ilk that Barack Obama is about as far right to socialism as it's possible to get without plummeting off a cliff.

White also ran on the Socialist Equality ticket in 2008 against Obama and McCain. A labor journalist, he is a long-time union organizer and strong proponent of the Auto Workers movement in Michigan. He is not at all impressed with Obama's auto industry bailout, which resulted in a draconian reduction in wages and benefits and record profits for the industry. Here is what he has to say about Obama's playing of the populist card for purposes of his own re-election:

Yet under his watch, not a single banker, hedge fund manager or financial regulator responsible for the economic catastrophe has been prosecuted, let alone convicted. On the contrary, the president has handed them the keys to the national treasury and tailored his policies to enable them to continue their speculative activities and make more money than ever.

The fury of the state has been reserved for those who have sought to protest against the plundering of society by the financial elite and the resulting growth of poverty, unemployment and inequality. They, for the most part student youth, have been assaulted by baton-wielding police in riot gear, packing rubber bullets and using pepper spray. The protesters have been arrested in the thousands. Obama, with his silence, has signaled his support for these attacks, carried out for the most part by Democratic mayors.

The SEP platform includes an international working class movement (as opposed to one limited to the United States) and public ownership of banks and other institutions. Writes White: "There are some who say this is unrealistic. But what can be more unrealistic than maintaining a system that perpetuates the wealth of the few at the expense of the many? Is it more realistic to tell workers that they must accept a 50 percent wage cut to keep their jobs, or to tell the elderly that they must go without medical care, or to tell the young that they must go without an education?"

On this Presidents Day, depressed as you may be by the corrupt status quo, rejoice that there are people who refuse to lie down and take it. Activism lives. The left is resurging because there is no other choice. Rumors of the demise of the Occupy movement are grossly exaggerated. We don't have to settle for Rombama or Bamtorum. Go ahead. Spoil their day.

Rick Transit Gloria Mundi

2012-02-19T20:18:00.005-05:00

Unintelligent Design

Try as I might, I have been unable to escape the voice and visage of Rick Santorum, the overgrown Boy Scout engaged in a futile struggle to contain the psychosis bubbling just beneath the surface of his prim sweater vest. The guy even has his name creepily embroidered on his trademark couture. Why? Does he have parochial school flashbacks of getting lost after being left off at the wrong bus stop? I wouldn't be surprised if he had his phone number Sharpie-marked on an Opus Dei sackcloth undershirt too.

Just when we thought the Republican freak show had reached its apogee with Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum has burst forth in all his glory, fire and brimstone, spiked garter belts and chains. Even his own daughter inadvertently admits that he is demented. "So, here we go", she blogged last summer on Backstage with the Santorums. "We are out of the gates and into the race … and what a crazy journey it will be!"

Actually, Daddy did not so much decide to run for president, as he was called by God. In the same blog entry, Elizabeth Santorum writes that it took "months of discernment" for "Our Father", as she calls him, to announce. Not discussions with the family, nor talks with think tanks and pollsters. Discernment is a Catholic theological term, a form of soul-searching and meditation so intense that one can reach the point of literal arousal by the Holy Spirit. It goes way beyond prayer. It's what happens when a religious person is "called" by God to a vocation as a priest or nun. I think it is fairly obvious that Rick Santorum is not so much running for public office as he is on a one-man crusade to impose his medievalist oddball fantasies on an unsuspecting body politic.

Direct from the Eldest Daughter of the Santorum Cult/Clan:

Yesterday was a big day in the Santorum household. After long months of discernment, my father has decided to run for president of the United States of America. This morning, as I drove my sister Sarah Maria to school, she looked over at me and said, “Wow. I think I’m still absorbing how important yesterday was!” I had to agree.
So, I’ll give a recap of yesterdays “behind the scenes” excitement. My Dad spent the morning doing radio and television interviews, while my Mom and I got all six of my siblings ready to go. As you can imagine, getting everyone ready is never an easy task. From “Oh no, did you pack the hairbrush?” to “Patrick, those had better not be grass stains on your khakis,” let’s just say that we averted several minor crises. Bella is often the easiest to get ready because she always looks adorable in whatever she’s wearing. Her sweet smile and peaceful demeanor are a constant source of joy for our family.

What a typical family, right down to the authentic dialogue, huh? But I have one quibble. Elizabeth says she drove her younger sister to school. Aren't the Santorum spawn all supposed to be home-schooled by the parents? At least, that is what Dad brags about. Or are the kids driven around the block a few times before they are dropped right back at Home School? Is Home School the name of an elite private academy nestled amidst the Homeland Security complex in Northern Virginia, where the Santorums have a home and initially got Pennsylvania state funding for their Home School? I emailed the campaign to ask, but they have not yet replied. Do I discern a brush-off?

(The Santorum sons did go to an all-boys Catholic school in Washington, DC for a time -- see above Opus Dei link. The place was so insulated that rumor had it that secular mothers put condoms in their son's Christmas stockings.)

The Ricktus (he has the preternatural grin of a surprised corpse) was all over the TV this morning, rantsoruming about Obama's "phony ideology." Unfortunately, he is not complaining about presidential corporatism or crony capitalism or even the usual straw-man socialism, because Rick unabashedly adores the One Percent God. Monuments and statues are erected in honor of the titans of industry and finance, says Rick, who probably missed the chapters on heresy and idol worship in Catechism Class. It is the Gospel of Inequality Rulz!

He also seems to take the story of Adam and Eve quite literally. He sunk even deeper into his own primordial ooze when he told one TV interviewer that Obama is wrong to put the fate of the earth before Man, who shall have dominion over it:

"I wasn't suggesting the president's not a Christian. I accept the fact the president's a Christian. I just said that when you have a world view that elevates the world above man, and says that we can't take those resources because we're going to harm the Earth by things that are frankly just not scientifically proven, like for example the politicization of the whole global warming debate, I mean this is just all an attempt to centralize power and give more power to the government. This is not questioning the president's beliefs in Christianity. I'm talking about the belief that man should be in charge of the Earth, and have dominion on it, and be good stewards of it."

The anti-Environmental Protection Agency crowd must have loved this. The checks from the polluting Koch Brothers are in the mail even as we speak.

Rick, along with alcoholic Arizona Governor Jan Drinkwine Brewer, also seems to have a severed head fetish. In his Saturday column, New York Times writer Charles Blow recounts how Santorum has actually foretold the Second Coming of the French Revolution:

Also last week, he suggested that liberals and the president were leading religious people into oppression and even beheadings. I kid you not. Santorum said: “They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.”

Obama as Robespierre. Ohhh-kay. Somebody needs to stage an intervention. Or a casting call for The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade!

Cutting the Crap

2012-02-17T13:37:00.002-05:00

Have you heard about the special face armor that Chicago police will be wearing this spring at the G-8/NATO summits? Mayor Rahm Emmanuel is afraid that Occupiers will fight back against oligarchic bullshit by hurling some shit of their own. They may even retaliate against pepper spray attacks by splashing urine into the faces of the fuzz! --

Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields demanded the new shields to prevent officers from being blinded by bags of urine and feces thrown at them by “anarchists” and other hard-core protesters....
“We have 9,500 patrol officers. Every one of them needs a new shield because every one of them has the old one and it’s completely ineffective. It’s a very thin plexi-glass. If you press on it with your thumb, it would crack. If you threw a rock at it, it will pop off. Water can seep right through. Any liquid can seep right through,” Shields said.
“Rioters known to attend NATO and G-8 meetings have been known to throw bags of urine and bags of feces at police. Chicago Police officers need a shield that can adapt to what is being thrown at them.”

Wow. It seems we just cannot escape from nightmare scenarios of flying feces. Rick "Google-It" Santorum's SuperPac is running an ad in which Mitt Romney shoots brown stuff from a rifle at the poor hapless sweater-vested Rick. It is supposed to be mud, but I don't buy it. It looks suspiciously like projectile doggie doo to me, the kind that poor Seamus suffered from during his nightmare ride on the top of the Romney hellwagon. You decide -- check it out here.

If anybody needs protection from all the crap, it's us -- you know, the regular people. We're the ones who need face shields, brain armor against all the propaganda. The effluent flies fast and furious, it clogs up the toilet of political discourse, and it tends to stick. There is just way too much of it to cut through every single day, but let's give it a try anyway.

First of all is the fiasco of fraudclosure fecklessness. It leaked out today that this is indeed just one more bailout for the banks, and that the penalties they will pay, such as they are, in reality will be coming from taxpayers and investors. This is solidly crappy. Since when is it legal for a rapist to force his victim to serve his sentence? Or say that you go to court, you win a judgment, but the loser is then allowed to freeze your bank account instead of the other way around? That is pretty much what the newest bailout does. Read more about it here and here. (H/T to readers Neil and Denis).

Oh, and that bipartishit payroll tax holiday stinks too. Instead of taxing the rich to help the ~~poor~~ middle class as Obama pretended to promise, they'll be taxing the middle class to throw a crumb to the middle class. The length of time you can collect unemployment benefits will be reduced. Applicants may have to undergo drug testing, even though statistics show that only about 2% of the newly jobless have a substance abuse problem. (You need to feel guilt-ridden and demonized to collect on an insurance policy that you paid into, because this way, the lie that it's an "entitlement" is more easily swallowed by voters. Divide and conquer!) In certain locales, you will be required to work for no pay in order to collect on your own insurance. Federal employees will be forced to contribute more to their pension plans. (another example of divide and conquer: placate the red-state masses by making the unions pay!) Congress will actually auction off the public airwaves to the highest bidders. In exchange for partially funding the FICA holiday, the telecoms may well be given carte blance to screw us into perpetuity, via rate hikes and monopolies. Privatization continues apace.

But what, inquiring minds want to know, about the Buffett Rule? You know, the Rule that Obama has made the centerpiece of his An America Built to Last re-election campaign. This latest hurling of jingoistic bullshit says that everybody should have a fair shot, and do their fair share. The Rule is personified by Warren Buffett's secretary, who pays a higher effective tax rate than her billionaire boss. Obama was so sincere about it that he even used her as a prop in the First Lady's box during the State of the Union speech.

Well, not so fast. It turns out that the Buffett Rule is merely an aspirational thing. Obama did not even include it in his own budget! From Annie Lowrey of the New York Times:

But the White House says it is a “guideline,” rather than a legislative initiative. And it says it prefers not to establish the Buffett Rule without a broader overhaul of the tax code, though it would support a Congressional effort to carry it out alone.
“This is the guiding principle of tax reform,” said Jason Furman, principal deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council. “To some degree, it’s a specific policy, where we set a floor, a minimum rate. And to some degree, it is a statement of principle of how you would like to design the tax system.”

So, in effect, Obama punted it over to the same Congress which he purports to disdain because of its chronic gridlock. This is pure unadulterated presidential bullshit, and I am surprised this story is not getting more outraged play. Timothy Geithner, meanwhile, says an overhaul of the corporate tax code will take "years."

One more calling out of crap and I'm done. Remember how Team Obama defended their slinking into SuperPac territory this week by saying the Republicans are outpacing them in campaign money? The January results are in, and Obama raked in a record $29.1 million. In only one month. Romney has yet to post his figures, but they are expected to be much less. And this does not, of course, take into account the millions the president is raising during a two-day marathon fundraiser on the West Coast, nor the back-to-back Wall Street cash orgies planned on March 1. Obama, apparently, is playing the age card as part of his plea to wealthy donors:

Obama was concluding a three-day swing of California and Washington that included eight fundraisers, where he was expected to raise more than $8 million.
Obama repeatedly tells his audiences that this election will be more difficult.
"And that's not going to be easy because, first of all, I'm older and I'm grayer," he told about 70 high-dollar contributors in San Francisco on Thursday night.

It's nice to know that Obama is an equal opportunity bullshit artist, anyway. Gullibility knows no class boundaries.

Holder & Donovan Open Comedy Act in Vegas

2012-02-16T11:02:00.005-05:00

The editorial in yesterday's Las Vegas Sun might have been titled "Moving Forward, Stabbing You in the Backward". Allegedly co-written by Attorney General Eric Holder and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, it's a cringe-worthy, craven apologia shamelessly directed at residents of one of the states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.

You have to read it to believe it. I'm posting a somewhat condensed version, with translation (you can peruse the whole slimy thing here. And the daffy duo also crossposted their self-parody at the Obama-friendly Daily Kos for the even greater convenience of the koolaid-bloated masses) --

Too often, real progress in Washington can be stymied by bureaucratic red tape, turf fights, or conflicts between federal and state authorities. Unfortunately, it has become a place where partisan deadlock and political games can threaten to crowd out substantive debate.
In times of crisis – when people’s livelihoods are in jeopardy and families are losing their homes to foreclosure – they deserve better than intransigent bureaucracy. They need and deserve a government that actually solves problems.
This past week, the Obama Administration and a bipartisan coalition of 49 state attorneys general demonstrated what can be accomplished when people put aside turf wars and focus on what they can do to make things better. By working closely with one another across federal agencies, state boundaries, and party lines, we reached a historic mortgage servicing settlement on behalf of American homeowners.

(Translation: We have been putting pressure on a few recalcitrant Attorneys General for well over a year now, trying to get them to cave to a sweetheart deal letting the banksters off the hook. We are absolutely blaming the AGs for their altruistic foolishness -- and we are also accusing them of allowing even more homeowners to be foreclosed on while they diddled about trying to do the right thing instead of the expedient thing. We finally co-opted them through our sheer brute force. We worked closely with them by getting right in their faces. We are disdainfully reducing their bravery in the face of an overreaching federal government to a political "turf war.")

The need for a settlement on this scale has long been clear. Some five years after the housing bubble burst, America continues to pay a steep price. Lenders sold loans to people who couldn’t afford them and packaged mortgages to make profits that turned out to be nothing more than a mirage. Their actions hurt millions of families who did the right thing, but still lost their houses or saw their home prices drop. And, unfortunately, as our extensive investigations found, abuses continued long after consumers bought their homes.

(Translation: we were well aware this whole time of massive fraud and conspiracy. Even though our "extensive investigations" uncovered abuses, we did nothing. How unfortunate. We are not mentioning in this editorial that the crimes continue to this very day. Because we are corrupt, do-nothing political hacks. We are also throwing minorities under the bus by putting equal blame on some of the victims who were snookered into signing fraudulent documents. They rose above their station by buying into our American Dream malarkey. Even though many are uneducated and barely literate, we brazenly claim that they knowingly bit off more than they could chew. We continue to insinuate that poor black and brown people hurt the "responsible" homeowners just as much as the mega-banks did.)

In response to thousands of mortgage servicing complaints fielded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), state attorneys general, and banking regulators across the country, HUD initiated a large-scale review of the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) 10 largest servicers in the summer of 2010. Devoting some 6,000 hours to reviewing servicing files for thousands of FHA-insured loans, the scope of this review soon broadened to encompass a long list of mortgage servicing issues, including lost paperwork, long delays, and missed deadlines for loan modifications. The Justice Department’s U.S. Trustees Program reviewed more than 37,000 bankruptcy claims and motions filed by the top five servicers. And HUD’s Office of the Inspector General, the Justice Department, and state authorities discovered that the country’s five largest loan servicers routinely signed foreclosure-related documents without knowing whether the facts they contained were correct.

Some have asked why we don’t address these actions by taking the banks to court. But rather than pursuing hundreds of lawsuits with varying degrees of success, the goal of this settlement has been to benefit struggling homeowners and to do so now – not sometime in the future, when it may be too late to help many families.

(Translation: our chutzpah knows no bounds. We started this huge investigation a year and a half ago, spent 6000 hours reviewing files, looked at 37,000 pieces of paper filed by mortgage servicers and banks. We chose not to prosecute, because the success would only have been "varied". So we decided to give up while we were ahead, sweep the whole thing under the rug, and throw a few pennies at the victims before they die and it's too late. Why we are not being investigated ourselves for legal malpractice and dereliction of duty is beyond the scope of this editorial and may be chalked up to our unbridled arrogance.)

This settlement also forces banks to clean up their acts – and to fix the problems covered during our investigations – by committing them to major reforms in terms of how they service mortgage loans. This is significant, given that these banks service nearly 2 out of every 3 mortgages. And these new customer service standards are in keeping with the Homeowners Bill of Rights recently announced by President Obama – a single, straightforward set of commonsense rules that families can count on, requiring lenders and servicers to honor a long list of rights for those facing foreclosure.

(Translation: We choose to call the crimes of the banksters "problems" in order to further absolve them and us, their willing and able co-conspirators and accessories during and after the fact. Slapping them on the wrist will scare the bejesus out of them and make them honest. They need a dose of common sense, not a jail term.)
While this historic settlement isn’t designed to address all the issues of the housing crisis, it will offer significant help to those who suffered the most harm. Alongside the broad-based refinancing plan President Obama announced to help homeowners, it provides a path toward stability for our housing market and our broader economy. And, by ensuring that banks and mortgage servicers fulfill their essential obligations – and taking major steps to hold these institutions accountable – it proves that we can make real progress, and achieve extraordinary results, when we work together.

(Translation: A path toward stability for our housing market and our broader economy is simply doublespeak for more profits for the banks and a surge in their stock prices. This travesty proves that not only can they get away with murder, they can always count on us, their 'umble servants, to help them and cover up for them as they continue their stranglehold on the entire planet. They own us lock, stock and barrel; they pay us and keep us exactly where they can see us.)

In a related development sure to be swept under the rug as soon as the Obama Administration can make them an offer they can't refuse, San Francisco officials discovered that of the 400 foreclosures they audited recently, nearly all of them were fraudulent at worst, suspicious at best. The intrepid Gretchen Morgenson broke the story in today's New York Times. You can read it here.

Donovan & Holder Share a Conspiratorial Chuckle At Our Expense

Bootlicking for Dollars

2012-02-15T13:52:00.008-05:00

Enough with the Robin Hood shtick he's been forced to perform in Washington lately, co-opting the language of Occupy and presenting a lukewarm budget that pretends to take a little from the rich to give even less to the poor. It's time for President Obama to devote some attention to his neglected day job: crisscrossing the country in Air Force One to mingle with the fabulously wealthy at multimillion-dollar fundraisers, and do some old-fashioned political wheeling, dealing, and groveling.

Forget about the phony baloney nonsense of how Populist Obama is siding with the middle class against the rich. His real business is playing Silicon Valley off the movie industry, doing the bidding of Wall Street in private as he chides it in public, talking the 99% talk while walking the 1% walk.

Today he's off to Hollywood to placate pouty entertainment plutocrats like Senator-turned-lobbyist Christopher Dodd, who vowed last month to cut off the Obama cash because of the president's failure to support SOPA and PIPA. If you were hoping to catch TV footage of the president crooning with the stars in the next few days, you're out of luck. All the events will be private, unless a millionaire Occupier manages to sneak in and get video.

And now that the paltry foreclosure fraud settlement is apparently a done deal, and Campaign Director Jim Messina has met with banksters to assure them that Obama has no beef with them, the president will go to four back-to-back Wall Street fundraisers in New York on March 1. This is where it gets interesting.

It turns out that one of the $35,800-a-plate soirees will be hosted by regular Obama bundler Ralph Schlosstein, a hedge fund manager who is among a whole slew of financial overlords going public with opposition to the looming Volcker Rule. He is also among the money men whom Messina soothed last week, promising that the president will not be demonizing Wall Street in campaign speeches.

The Rule, which is set to go into effect in July, will ban proprietary trading by banks -- in other words, it will prevent them from trading with their own money rather than for clients. A centerpiece of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, it says that banks should not make risky wagers while the government guarantees their deposits. It's designed to prevent the kind of bubble which caused the Crash of 2008. Or the kind of unpunished theft allegedly committed by former Senator and Obama Bundler Jon Corzine. But since these kinds of bets are so lucrative for banks, they are howling at the prospect of their profits being reduced in the interest of honesty, fairness and the public good.

Regulatory agencies only have four months to further tweak the Volcker Rule here and there and everywhere. They are being beset from all sides as they decide to either water down an already watered-down bill, or stand firm against the banks. From the L.A. Times:

The passion on both sides of the issue — and the big money that is at stake — are evident in the 14,490 public comments that the SEC had received and posted on its website as of Tuesday. Thousands of those were from private individuals expressing their support for cracking down on Wall Street's risky trading practices.

For banks, the debate comes at a particularly sensitive moment. The last few months have been filled with news of layoffs and pay cuts on Wall Street as banks grapple with a raft of newly proposed regulations and continued economic turmoil in Europe.

The proposed Volcker rule puts a number of new limitations on the financial industry. Big banks would be able to own only small stakes in private equity and hedge funds and they would have to do away with any trading desks that trade solely for the profit of the bank.

Schlosstein has gone on TV to signal publicly what he will no doubt be whispering privately in the presidential ear as he tantalizingly waves his bundle of cash.

"Its (the Volcker Rule's) intent is to reduce risk in commercial banking and investment banking,” Schlosstein said today (2/14) in a Bloomberg Television interview with Betty Liu. “But the line between proprietary trading and market-making is almost impossible to draw. You wind up with this incredibly complex regulation with incredibly complex enforcement, all of which will really increase costs for investors and for companies in the U.S.,” Schlosstein said. (waaaaah)

The United States Chamber of Commerce has also bundled up corporations to stand in solidarity with Wall Street to protest the Volcker Rule. It may have unintended consequences for profit-hoarding "job creators", they fear. Corporations are people, my friend, etc.

But others, such as pension fund managers, individual citizens and even a few bankers, say the Rule -- even in its current un-tweaked, pre-Schlosstein influenced state -- does not go nearly far enough in reining in the big banks. It is one more weak, and delayed, and meagerly-funded part of the already limp Dodd-Frank financial "reform" bill (yeah, the same Dodd to whom Obama must also now kowtow for even more cash). One former banker who disagrees with Obama's bundler buddy is:

John S. Reed, who ran Citigroup from 1984 to 2000 and has been an outspoken proponent of financial reform, cited the recent cases of MF Global and UBS in his comment letter to make his case for tougher regulation, writing, "When a firm is focused on market gain, it will employ every available device to achieve those gains -- including taking advantage of clients and putting the firm at risk."

In his own way, Reed was a victim of the deregulatory environment on Wall Street that the Volcker rule aims to rein in. He was ousted soon after Citigroup was created in the wake of the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, allowing banking, securities and insurance firms to merge.

(See Reed's suggestions for improvement at the above link).

And this from Occupy the SEC, via Firedoglake.

Space is Limited, but the 1% Possibilities Are Endless

Twisted Logic

2012-02-14T11:31:00.004-05:00

Happy Valentines Day from Your Pretzel President (graphic by Kat Garcia)

I thought I had heard all the reasons why President Obama is being forced at gunpoint to embrace the Supreme Court Citizens United decision in order to fight nasty Republican dirt with clean Democratic dirt. But how wrong I was. The justifications for influence peddling and money-grubbing by the Obama re-election campaign are flying fast and furious. George Bush choked on a pretzel; Barack Obama and his handlers are twisting themselves into one. It's the warm, soft, malleable kind that vendors sell on the street corners in winter.

Not only will Priorities USA now accept unlimited cash for negative ads -- but Obama has given the go-ahead for members of his own cabinet to shill for him at SuperPac fundraisers. It is all perfectly legal, as long as they don't blatantly ask for money during their pay-to-play availabilities with wealthy lobbyists and CEOs. For example, when Energy Secretary Stephen Chu gives a speech in front of a group of oil tycoons about deepwater drilling safety at a SuperPac fund-raising event, he won't say a single word about campaign donations. This logic runs in tandem with the reasoning that it's okay for lobbyists to bundle campaign cash for the president as long as they are not registered lobbyists.

Chu and at least three other Cabinet officials are openly champing at the bit to get into the fund-raising that is not fund-raising sweepstakes. The reason? They already have histories of being champion political bundlers. It might even be safe to say they got their jobs in large part because of the wads of cash they raised for their boss in his first campaign.

According to the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News, one such expert bundler is Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a fellow Chicago pol from the old days, who is anxiously awaiting invitations to speaking gigs. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is an enthusiastic natural, having raised over $13 million for his own Senate campaign. Then there are U.S. Trade Rep Ron Kirk and the hundred grand he bundled for Obama's first campaign, and Chu, who even before the SuperPac decision, has "mingled" among donors at various political soirees.

That does it for the Cabinet officials -- so far. According to CPI, Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta will not be shilling for campaign cash, nor will Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and former bundler Susan Rice, who is now UN ambassador.

Politico is running a pretty hilarious piece today on the various criticisms and rationales from both the left and the right about the Obama cave on anonymous fundraising. The funniest conservative gripe comes from David Bossie, chairman of the Koch Brothers' astroturfing Americans for Prosperity. He so hates the Obama hypocrisy of deploring Citizens United only to then start PrioritiesUSA that he has produced a video funded by SuperPac money to condemn SuperPac money.

Besides the critics, there are also defenders from both the left and the right. Former Republican Congressman Philip English quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson in defending Obama: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines", adding:

By robustly trolling for big money to fund the inevitable attack ads, the Obama campaign has demonstrated a predictable large-mindedness, free of hobgoblins. The only venue in which anyone should be shocked by this is Rick’s Place in Casablanca. One has to wonder - if a Republican incumbent displayed such ambidexterity, would the media be so placid?

Hmm. If I were more cynical, I'd say English is trolling for a team of rivals-type appointment in Obama's second term.

Then there are the usual Democratic apologists twisting themselves into knots:

We may not like the rules, but we didn't choose them. So as Democrats fight for campaign finance reform - which Republicans have repeatedly blocked - we will play by the rules as they are, not as we wish they were. -- Bill Burton, founder of Priorities USA.

Playing by the rules as they exist, the same rules that apply to everyone else, while they work to change those rules for everyone, is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the Republican expectation that Democrats hold themselves to a stricter standard than their opponent, when it was Republicans who stopped those standards from being put in place. -- Rodell Molineau, president of American Bridge 21st Century.

Unsurprisingly, the same Republicans who falsely claim the president is an appeaser expect him to unilaterally disarm his campaign. Thankfully he is too smart for that. President Obama knows that to change elections you have to win elections. -- Christine Pelosi, Democratic activist and daughter of Minority Leader Nancy.

There is no hypocrisy in working to change a system while following its rules as long as they are in place. In politics, acting like you are in a perfect system while your enemies kill you amounts to stupidity not idealism. The hypocrisy here is among those who are criticizing Obama for doing what they do. Also, I think this is a non-issue with Americans in general. For them, the dysfunction of the entire political system is the issue. -- Theda Skocpol, Harvard professor.

Obama's decision to tacitly support the super PAC set up to benefit him was just an acknowledgment of reality. With potentially hundreds of millions flowing to its anti-Obama counterparts, the president really had no choice but to act.
Don't think that this decision will drive a single vote away from Obama in the fall, however. In 2008, remember, Obama spurned public financing after promising he would accept it, and no one cared - except for John McCain, who sputtered around impotently about what an outrage it supposedly was. All of this is inside baseball that doesn't impact the behavior of real voters, who cynically and correctly assume that candidates are going to raise as much as they can no matter how they do it. Obama made the right decision. -- Garry South, Democratic consultant.

If we are ever going to right this political ship it will be the Democrats who do it not the McConnells and Boehners. There is no point of acting like lambs to the slaughter, and sacrificing the presidency and seats in Congress, if our ultimate goal is to have the votes to change the system. Obama made the only call possible. -- Peter Fenn, Democratic media consultant.

Speaking of hilarity, I got an amusing email the other day from the Obama campaign. It gives instructions on how to slap down mean talk about the prez from my redneck friends and relatives. The Empire Strikes Back it is not, but there is more than a hint of Homeland Security-lite in what they are asking "supporters like me" to do. If I hear something, I should say something. There are even downloadable talking points for Obamabots to stash in their arsenals. Sign up now to be a worker bee for the ~~Ministry of Truth~~ Truth Team. Campaign operative Stephanie Cutter writes:

Comunicating about the President's record -- and that of our opponents -- is what I do full-time. But people don't just want to hear from campaign statements or ads -- they want to hear from the family and friends they trust.

The President needs folks on board to roll up their sleeves, stand with him, and get the truth out all over the country.

So the next time you hear Mitt Romney accusing the President of "crony capitalism" or someone asking, "What has President Obama really accomplished?" you'll know what to do.

Stephanie has no idea what I am capable of doing. For one thing, most of my conservative family members and friends already despise Romney and the crew of wingnuts. And defending Obama against crony capitalism charges? Jeffrey Immelt, Timmy Geithner, Larry Summers, to name just a few.

Happy Valentines Day, fellow Sardonickists!

Quoth McRaven: "Give Me More"

2012-02-13T11:03:00.005-05:00

The New York Times has a pretty stunning lead article today on how the admiral in charge of the elite and secret Special Ops wants carte blanche to bypass normal command channels and conduct his own War on Terror, in the interest of saving time and trouble. It seems as though he wants to be named Global Warlord and have a big say in dictating foreign policy from the battlefield of a shadow world war.

Reading between the lines of the article, it's obvious that both Admiral William H. McRaven and the Obama Administration are the likely sources. The usual leakers are not identified because they are "not authorized to speak". Or they are too coy to talk, and The Times is the willing stenographer. So we are left wondering whether McRaven is a loose cannon attempting a soft military coup against an inept executive branch, or whether this is a joint effort at a trial balloon to gauge public reaction before an end run around the State Department and Congress. The Times makes it clear that the White House is fully aware that McRaven is lobbying for more power. President Obama, of course, is known to be a huge fan of McRaven, of the Special Ops, and the bin Laden-killing Navy SEALs -- who are now starring in their own commercial Hollywood movie. They're playing themselves in a documentary disguised as a thriller. It's a recruiting tool! It's entertainment for the masses! It's propaganda to feed our fear and make us safe!

From today's article:

.... McRaven, who leads the Special Operations Command, is pushing for a larger role for his elite units who have traditionally operated in the dark corners of American foreign policy. The plan would give him more autonomy to position his forces and their war-fighting equipment where intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed.
It would also allow the Special Operations forces to expand their presence in regions where they have not operated in large numbers for the past decade, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Administration, military and Congressional officials say that the Special Operations Command has embarked on a quiet lobbying campaign to push through the initiative. Pentagon and administration officials note that while the Special Operations Command is certain to see a growth in its budget and personnel when the new Defense Department spending plan is released Monday — in contrast to many other parts of the military that are being cut — no decisions have been made on whether to expand Admiral McRaven’s authorities.

The article contains just enough doublespeak to confuse us. On the one hand, McRaven is quoted as saying while he is not really interested in running the global war on terror, he doesn't want to go through normal Pentagon channels in deciding where troops are to be deployed, or how many are to be deployed -- because sometimes there just isn't enough time to be deliberate and cautious. So if he isn't running the shadow wars, who will be? Is it because he doesn't want to bother Barry with a 3 a.m. phone call? Is it to give Barry plausible deniability? This is pretty unbelievable stuff.

McRaven already runs the elite military within the military. It is unaccountable to the public, of course. And now it wants to be unaccountable even to the brass, or (disingenuously) tothe executive branch. Forget about Congress. The full extent of his activities is already been deep in the shadows. According to Nick Turso of Counterpunch, Special Ops represent an industrial scale killing machine:

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once “special” for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from (McRaven predecessor Admiral Eric) Olson: “I am convinced that the forces… are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer.”

On any given day, writes Turso, Special Ops are deployed in at least 70 countries (and likely about 120) throughout the world -- theoretically, by invitation only from the host country. Or whatever goon purports to be acting in behalf of the host country. Read Turso's whole article. It's an eye-opener.

The latest gimmick in that "well-honed public relations campaign to project their superhuman image" is the new commercial Hollywood movie about the SEALs that I mentioned earlier. Act of Valor is scheduled to open in 3000 theaters nationwide next week, and it has already generated controversy. It was originally meant to be a Pentagon recruiting tool, but the scenes were so exciting and action-packed that the producers decided to go commercial and make a buck.

A retired army lieutenant general gave Admiral McRaven a dressing down last week for approving the chest-thumping cinematic piece of propaganda, warning it might be used as a training tool for enemies. Others accused the admiral of using it as a tool to get more funding from Congress.

The movie reveals the faces of the SEALs -- but not to worry:

At the New York premiere, held at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, the Navy seemed to be trying to find the right balance between glitz and discretion. Most of the Seals arrived in limousines, dressed in their dress blues. There were canapes and champagne served at the reception afterward. Squads of paparazzi and press handlers swarmed through the crowd.

But when the Seals took the stage for a question-answer session after the screening, introduced by their ranks and first names only, a Navy public affairs officer waived off any questions from the audience and would not allow the Seals to talk to a reporter.

This phony coyness is also very much the defacto policy of the Obama Administration's secret and exquisitely executed assassination program. The president pretty much destroyed the top secret nature of his kill list at an internet "Hangout with the President" PR appearance last week, when he bragged about the precise precision of his drone strikes. But he is still fighting a Freedom of Information request by the ACLU and others about the precise nature of the program.

JSOC, which has even been implicated in torture in the so-called black site prisons, has been described as Obama's own private army: a unique hybrid of killing machine and spy agency. Marc Ambinder, in a Wired magazine interview, describes the Constitutional end-run logistics:

There are legal restrictions on what the CIA can do in terms of covert operations. There has to be a finding, the president has to notify at least the “Gang of Eight” [leaders of the intelligence oversight committees] in Congress. JSOC doesn’t have to do any of that. There is very little accountability for their actions. What’s weird is that many in congress who’d be very sensitive to CIA operations almost treat JSOC as an entity that doesn’t have to submit to oversight. It’s almost like this is the president’s private army, we’ll let the president do what he needs to do. As long as you don’t get in trouble, we’re not gonna ask too many questions.

The American public has not displayed too much curiosity about the foreign policy being conducted in our name, either. We apparently do not care. A recent poll revealed the vast majority of us are perfectly content to let Gitmo remain open forever, and have no problem with drone strikes against alleged militants in foreign countries. Even if they are American citizens.

And don't look for Obama to even consider firing Admiral McRaven for insubordination or overreach. This is no Truman/MacArthur scenario, at least not yet. These men belong to a mutual admiration society, McRaven having lauded the president for being the "smartest guy in the room", and in turn being awarded a prized seat in the First Lady's box at the State of the Union address. I guess the only consolation we have is that the "Protester" beat out the Admiral as Time's Person of the Year. (Read McRaven's magazine profile here.)

Admiral McRaven (first from left) at State of the Union Address

No Banker Left Behind

2012-02-10T12:49:00.002-05:00

How do we hate the mortgage fraud settlement? Let us count the ways. First, there are Yves Smith's dozen reasons why the deal stinks. (She should know -- she writes from the unique perspective of a shadow banking heretic who escaped to tell about it). And Dave Dayen, Jon Walker and Matt Taibbi, who has dutifully confessed that his initial optimism was woefully misplaced. As was mine, believing somehow that my attorney general (Eric Schneiderman) was the reincarnation of Eliot Spitzer -- who isn't dead, but simply marginalized and only occasionally allowed to speak truth to power on Current TV.

That we would be screwed once again was to be expected. But what is still breathtaking to me is the unbridled arrogance of President Obama in pretending this is a great deal for people. I missed his TV appearance yesterday, but just looked at the grim photos and the transcript. Yes, they actually had the nerve to preserve the broadcast of their litany of lies, the likes of which we haven't heard since.... oh, maybe a week ago when Obama bragged on the exquisite execution and precise precision of his officially nonexistent war crimes. And the pictures memorializing yesterdays's heinous event actually reminded me of the publicity shot from The Sopranos. Mobsters, no matter the particular racket or crime family from which they hail, all seem to share the same body language and facial expressions: hands folded casually in front of their pricey dark suits, each oozing a uniform aspect of smug, sullen, cocky arrogance:

You can read the transcript of Obama's bravura performance here. I am not going to parse the whole speech: its mendacity and unmitigated gall speak for themselves. But here are a few excerpts from a somewhat more truthful rough draft rescued from my imaginary waste basket:

All right, good afternoon, everybody. Before I start, I just want to introduce ~~my enforcers~~ the folks on stage here, because the extraordinary work that they did is the reason that a lot of families are going to be ~~screwed~~ helped all across the country.....

The ~~criminal actions of too big to exist banks and our complicit government~~ housing bubble that burst nearly six years ago triggered, as we all know, the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. It cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and their homes. And ~~because I refused to break up the~~ ~~banks and bring back Glass-Steagall~~ it remains one of the biggest drags on our economy.

Last fall, my administration unveiled a series of steps ~~but failed to actually follow through on~~ to help ~~all~~ responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages to take advantage of historically low rates. And last week, I urged Congress to pass a plan that would help millions more Americans refinance and stay in their homes. And I indicated that the American people need Congress to act on this piece of legislation. ~~Election time is fast approaching, the Occupy movement happened, and I had to pretend to care.~~

But in the meantime, we can't wait to get things done and to provide relief to America's homeowners. We need to ~~pretend to~~ keep doing everything we can to help homeowners and our economy. And today, with the help of Democratic and Republican attorney generals from nearly every state in the country, ~~and taking our marching orders from the banks themselves~~ we are about to take a unprecented ~~leap into the arms of our Wall Street masters~~ major step on our own.

We have reached a ~~paltry~~ landmark settlement with the nation’s largest banks that will speed relief to ~~their bottom lines and secure the bonuses of their CEOs~~ hardest-hit homeowners, ~~aid and abet~~ end some of the most ~~criminal~~ abusive practices of the mortgage industry, and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that ~~continues to leave~~ has left so much damage in its wake.

By now, it’s well known that millions of profes~~sionals in the monied burbs~~ Americans who did the right thing and the responsible thing -- shopped for a house, secured a mortgage that they could afford, made their payments on time -- were, nevertheless, hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of others: by lenders who ~~tricked and defrauded~~ sold loans to people who couldn’t afford them; by buyers who knew ~~who were snookered into signing documents they~~ ~~didn't understand~~ couldn’t afford them; by speculators who were looking to make a quick buck; by banks that took risky mortgages, packaged them up, and ~~knowingly and fraudulently and maliciously~~ traded them off for large profits.

It was ~~the worst and biggest case of massive fraud and theft and forgery in the history of the~~ ~~world~~ wrong. And ~~it is still costing~~ cost more than 4 million families their homes to foreclosure.

Even worse, many companies that handled these foreclosures ~~were such heartless bastards they~~ ~~planned ahead of time to steal people's homes out from under them~~ didn’t give people a fighting chance to hold onto their homes. In many cases, they ~~deliberately committed fraud~~ didn’t even verify that these foreclosures were actually legitimate. Some of the people they hired to process foreclosures used fake signatures to -- on fake documents to speed up the foreclosure process. Some of them didn’t read what they were signing at all. ~~The deal I am agreeing to today absolves all these felons of criminal responsibility.~~

We've got to think about that. ~~We did think about it, a little, and came to the conclusion that the~~ ~~American people are not as important as the banks~~. You work and you save your entire life to buy a home. That's where you raise your family. That's where your kids' memories are formed. That's your stake, your claim on the American Dream. And the person signing the document couldn’t take enough time to even make sure that the foreclosure was legitimate. And the person signing the document knew damn well what they were doing was illegal and immoral. He or she was getting paid minimum wage in a foreclosure mill working as a subcontractor to the criminal banking cabal. We should not be calling it "carelessness."

These practices were plainly ~~felonies punishable by long prison terms.~~ irresponsible. And we ~~are allowing them~~ refused to let them go unanswered. So about a year ago, our federal law enforcement agencies teamed up with state attorneys general to get to the bottom of these abuses ~~to try to force a~~ ~~sweetheart deal to please the banks and sweep the whole thing under the rug.~~ The t~~ravesty~~ settlement we’ve reached today, thanks to the ~~co-optation and passive aggression~~ work of some of the ~~fucks~~ folks who are on this stage -- this is the largest ~~criminal conspiracy~~ joint federal-state settlement in our nation’s history -- is the result of that extraordinary cooperation ~~and complete takeover of our~~ ~~democracy by fascist elements.~~

Under the terms of this settlement, America’s biggest banks -- banks that were rescued by taxpayer dollars -- ~~are getting yet another taxpayer bailout~~.will be required to right these wrongs. That means ~~simply paying a small fee of less than a penny for each dollar they stole~~ more than just paying a fee. These banks will put billions of dollars ~~of other people's money~~ towards relief for ~~a mere fraction~~ of families across the nation. They’ll ~~theoretically~~ provide refinancing for borrowers that are stuck in high interest rate mortgages. They’ll ~~possibly but not probably and not in time to help~~ reduce loans for families who owe more on their homes than they’re worth. And they will deliver ~~another kick in the teeth~~ some measure of justice for families that have already been victims of ~~Class A felonies~~ abusive practices. ~~If people who were robbed even get their moving costs covered maybe three years hence, they'll be lucky~~.

All told, this isn’t ~~good at all~~ just good for those families -- it’s good for ~~the banks~~ their neighborhoods, it's good for their ~~the bankers' families~~, and it's good for ~~increased Wall Street donations to my SuperPac~~ our economy.

This settlement also protects our ability to further ~~ignore~~ investigate the ~~crimes~~ practices that ~~are stilling causing~~ caused this mess. And this ~~lie~~ is important ~~for my own political prospects~~. The ~~woefully inadequate~~ mortgage fraud task force I announced in my State of the Union address retains its full authority to ~~cursorally~~ aggressively investigate the packaging and selling of risky mortgages that led to this crisis. This investigation is already well underway ~~and will end mere days~~ ~~after the statute of limitations runs out and millions more families are kicked to the curb~~. And working closely with the ~~co-opted and bought-off~~ state attorneys general, we're going to keep at it until ~~I am~~ ~~safely re-elected~~ we hold those who broke the law fully accountable.

Now, ~~let me tell last whopper before I go count the Wall Street money in my war chest~~ I want to be clear. No compensation, no amount of money, no measure of justice is enough to make it right for a family who's had their piece of the American Dream wrongly taken from them. ~~This deal sucks -- so~~ ~~what~~? And no action, no matter how meaningful, is going to, by itself, entirely heal the housing market. ~~So shut the hell up if you don't like it~~. But this settlement is a ~~pathetic response to a crime~~ ~~against humanity~~ start. And we're going to make sure that the banks live up to their end of the bargain ~~until, in keeping with past promises and past behavior, we won't~~. If they don’t, we've set up an independent inspector ~~whom the banks have approved~~, a monitor that has the power to make sure they pay exactly ~~the peanuts~~ what they agreed to pay, plus ~~a lashing with a wet noodle~~ penalty if they fail to act in accordance with this agreement. So this will be a big help. ~~to the banksters.~~

Of course, even with this settlement, there's still millions of responsible homeowners who are out there ~~who will still be illegally foreclosed on~~ doing their best. And what they need us to do is get back on their feet. ~~and make a campaign donation to me~~. We've still got to stoke the fires ~~of my personality cult~~ of our economic recovery. So now is not the time to pull back.

And the ~~conspiratorial~~ bipartisan nature of this settlement and the ~~appalling~~ outstanding work that these state attorneys general did is a testament to what happens when ~~money rules politics~~ everybody ~~is only concerned with their own re-elections~~.is pulling in the same direction. And that’s what today's settlement is all about -- ~~screwing~~ standing up for for the American people, ~~absolving and continuing to~~ ~~reward and enable~~ holding those who broke the law accountable, restoring confidence to in ~~to our rentier~~ ~~class~~ housing market and our financial sector, getting things moving ~~and allowing the financial~~ ~~predators to get bigger in order to strengthen their chokehold on our very lives~~. And we're going to keep on at it until ~~the 99% are rendered moot~~ everyone shares in America's comeback.

So, ~~consiglieres~~ ladies and gentlemen, thank you for ~~selling out~~ your outstanding efforts. We are very, very proud of you. And we look forward to seeing this settlement lead to some ~~miniscule~~ small measure of relief to a ~~pathetic few~~ lot of ~~property owners~~ families out there that need help. And that’s going to strengthen ~~my re-election chances~~ the American economy overall.
So thank you very much.

Black Bloc Backlash (say three times fast)

2012-02-09T15:51:00.001-05:00

It's a given that Chris "Death of the Liberal Class" Hedges is one of the intellectual inspirations and living legend heroes of OWS. So when this Pulitzer Price-winning journalist wrote that there is a cancer growing in the movement, it caused a widespread stir. More than one stomach plummeted, heart sank, spine chilled. Depression became epidemic in a matter of hours as Hedges' TruthDig piece spread throughout progressive cyberspace.

Hedges, of course, was talking about so-called "Black Bloc" anarchist elements infiltrating various Occupy groups and fomenting violence. Occupy Oakland is the poster child for the radicalization of the movement, with its shutdowns of ports and storming of vacant buildings and "clashes" with paramilitary police.

That the corporate pundits are quick to smugly declare OWS dead and buried with each crackdown and each eviction is to be expected; they have, for the most part, denigrated it from Day One of its Zuccotti Park birth. From time to time, the mainstream press has legitimized the protests and it actually became chic to take quick rides on the resistence bandwagon, straight to cable. If you had a minor tussle with the fuzz and got the plastic cuff treatment for an hour or two, so much the better. It seemed like the nightly cable shows were filled with celebrities chattering about their forays into one camp or another. Then came the presidential horserace reality show, and Occupy was pushed off the national radar. Coverage revolved around the latest in a round of serial evictions. The public, decreed the pundits and their polls, was growing tired. The novelty of a protest movement was wearing off.

And now, coupled with corporate media ennui, comes Hedges' declaration that there is a Cancer on Occupy. What's up with that? I love Chris Hedges, I really do. But let's face it: the man is a professional diehard pessimist. Read his book -- he predicts that sooner or later we'll all be living in widely scattered communes, scratching out a miserable existence in a dystopian hell that even George Orwell didn't imagine. During interviews at the burgeoning of Occupy, he expressed pleasant surprise that the propagandized masses had actually mobilized. It seemed like he was All In.

Then the revelation of the Black Bloc element, which Hedges predicts is a possible death decree to the inherently pacifist Occupy. Only peaceful nonresistance is allowed in a populist uprising. Be good little Gandhis, or begone, I reckon. The violent, "hypermasculine" outside agitators, he writes, will give the security state the perfect excuse to smash the entire movement into smithereens:

The corporate state understands and welcomes the language of force. It can use the Black Bloc’s confrontational tactics and destruction of property to justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population away from supporting the Occupy movement. Once the Occupy movement is painted as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob we are finished. If we become isolated we can be crushed. The arrests last weekend in Oakland of more than 400 protesters, some of whom had thrown rocks, carried homemade shields and rolled barricades, are an indication of the scale of escalating repression and a failure to remain a unified, nonviolent opposition. Police pumped tear gas, flash-bang grenades and “less lethal” rounds into the crowds. Once protesters were in jail they were denied crucial medications, kept in overcrowded cells and pushed around. A march in New York called in solidarity with the Oakland protesters saw a few demonstrators imitate the Black Bloc tactics in Oakland, including throwing bottles at police and dumping garbage on the street. They chanted “Fuck the police” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay / NYPD go away.”

The absolute worst thing we as citizens can do is moan, groan, bitch that anarchists are spoiling things and therefore we might as well give up while we are ahead. What we should be doing is mounting a PR counteroffensive. The "official" newspaper of OWS -- The Occupied Wall Street Journal -- is doing just that, and publicizing the debate. Here's how Crooks & Liars Managing Editor Tina Dupuy tells it in one guest contribution:

.... the destruction of property is exactly what Occupy is protesting against; it’s what the banks took from us. Occupy has pointed out the criminality of the banks and the seeming collusion with government to take wealth and property away from working people and give it to the wealthy. So protest property crimes, by committing crimes against property? It’s nonsensical.
Destroying property destroys moral authority.

On the other hand, protest movements throughout history have had their ugly, violent sides. People protest when they get angry, and some angry people have anger management issues. And Occupy Oakland is unique. It exists in a city with a horrible reputation for police brutality and repression, even murder; its police force is on the verge of being taken over by the Feds because of its pattern of civil rights violations. Blogger Josh Cook of Deep Green Awakening thinks we can acknowledge the anarchic mindset without condoning it:

Compare the “property damage” (and the whole issue of property and what sort of damage constitutes violence is another discussion altogether) with the long-term harm done to the People of Oakland, especially minority groups, activists, and Occupiers. It should dawn on rational, empathic people that such intense moments of conflict are practically unavoidable in the face of so brutal a system, and rather than waste time judging people, we ought to cry out louder for an end to the rule of the 1% and their system, the true root cause of social unrest and violence.
Furthermore, at this point, it is silly to talk about Constitutional rights. We in the US live in a Police State. We have no such rights — most recently and dramatically demonstrated by the passing of the NDAA. For moral force, I suggest speaking of human rights, as this has the added benefit of keeping us connected to the international dimension of this movement. Solidarity with all people struggling for democracy and justice is of utmost importance.

And in an article in Counterpunch (don't you love all these aggressive-progressive blog titles?) Peter Gelderloos accuses Hedges of using the C word as a scare tactic to frighten OWS into submission... or nonexistence. Nobody, he says, ever promised you a revolutionary rose garden:

The medical language of Hedges’ title, referring to the anarchists as a “cancer,” should immediately ring alarm bells. Portraying one’s opponents as a disease has long been a tactic of the state and the media to justify the repression. This language was used against the Native Americans, against the Jews, against communists, and many others. Recently the police and the right wing used this same language of hygiene to talk about the occupations around the country as health threats so as to justify their eviction and generate disgust and repulsion.....
But beneath the black masks, anarchists have been an integral part of the debates, the organizing, the cooking and cleaning in dozens of cities. Anarchists also participated in preparing the original call-out for Occupy Wall Street, and they played a key role in organizing and carrying out the historic Oakland general strike and the subsequent West Coast port blockades–probably the strongest actions taken by the Occupy movement to date.

There have been setbacks in every movement for change. Outside agitation is nothing new and it serves the agenda of the oligarchy in squelching protest only too well. Perhaps the most famous (or infamous) incident of violent elements nearly destroying the entire labor movement was the Haymarket Massacre in 1886, when an unknown assailant threw a bomb into a crowd of protesters, killing a Chicago policeman, with an ensuing gunfight killing more cops and citizens. It was not until several years later that the "anarchist" labor movement demonstrators got what they wanted in the first place: an eight-hour day. It's something we take for granted today, not something we can envision people actually dying for.

Randomly Ranting Edition

2012-02-08T13:59:00.004-05:00

Wending my way through the various "progressive" news sites and blogs over the past day or so, I have been struck by the dearth of criticism of President Obama's latest foray over to the dark side -- to wit, his decision to embrace Citizens United, and accept unlimited and anonymous campaign donations via his SuperPac.

Maybe I've been looking for outrage in all the wrong places, or maybe the usual polemicists are still working on their material. But so far, I can count on the fingers of one hand the severe condemnations of the latest Barry flip-flop. The New York Times ran an editorial accusing the president of selling out democracy to the highest bidder. It even came close to accusing the president of criminal behavior for now allowing and encouraging members of his Cabinet to shill for corporate cash for the aptly named "Priorities First USA" SuperPac. (It is against the law for cabinet members to actively campaign and solicit money).

Ditto for Robert Reich, who blogged about the "sad spectacle" that is the Obama re-election campaign:

The sad truth is Obama has never really occupied the high ground on campaign finance. He refused public financing in 2008. Once president, he didn’t go to bat for a system of public financing that would have made it possible for candidates to raise enough money from small donors and matching public funds they wouldn’t need to rely on a few billionaires pumping unlimited sums into super PACS. He hasn’t even fought for public disclosure of super PAC donations.
And now he’s made a total mockery of the Court’s naïve belief that super PACs would remain separate from individual campaigns, by officially endorsing his own super PAC and allowing campaign manager Jim Messina and even cabinet officers to speak at his super PAC events. Obama will not appear at such events but he, Michelle Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden will encourage support of the Obama super PAC.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold also professed to be appalled and shocked, but ended his tirade by saying he still supports the president even though he is "dancing with the devil". So as far as I am concerned, he cancelled himself out. His purported disgust is full of baloney and shouldn't even count. He was among those "pragmatists" who helped quash talk for a primary challenger while there was still time.

The Times piece was greeted with scathing reviews by the Readers Who Comment. It is just so naive of the editorial board to think our pragmatic president wouldn't level the playing field, they cried. One reader huffed that the public at large simply does not mind that money rules politics. My own comment, meant as a tongue in cheek pre-emptive litany of Obama apologist talking points, seems to have been taken at face value by at least a few 'bots. I thought my irony was fairly obvious; for example, "you have to fight Evil with Evil." One person responded "Totally agree! About time he took a gun to a gunfight!"

Even the erstwhile renegade Keith Olbermann seems to have given the president a pass on this one. He has been out on an extended sick leave, and I can only surmise that his medical treatment included an IV cocktail with Obama kool aid mixed in with an MSNBC antibiotic. He has failed to mention Occupy and the mass evictions even once this week, but is falling into the familiar and lazy pattern of guffawing at the latest GOP loathesomeness and waxing indignant at Susan G. Komen. Yeah, I get that Susan G. Komen for the Cure is full of horseshit. But it has always been a corporate gimmick, so why are we surprised about the Planned Parenthood de-funding? What about the Drone attacks, the media drumbeat for an Iranian War, the continuing Long Depression that is so bad that people have stopped getting married?

And do you know who Keith had on as his very special guest last night? Jerry Springer! These guys are apparently buddies from way back. Springer was celebrated on Countdown because he had told Fox and Friends they were not fair and balanced, to their faces. So apparently, you can exploit poor people on a TV show all you want, as long as you later insult the talking heads who are politically dishonest while performing their own brand of poor people-exploitation.

*****************************************************************

I admit it. I watched the Super Bowl on Sunday night, but just to see the commercials and the halftime show. Seriously! I kept the sound muted for the actual game, and read some of George Orwell's essays to pass the time. His Notes on Nationalism hit me like a ton of bricks. If you just substitute "partisanship" for "nationalism", he could be talking about the divisive and corrupt political cesspool threatening to drown us in this election year. Early in the essay is this trenchant observation:

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

Once citizens have allowed their own rational thought processes to be subsumed, whether by mindless allegiance to an authoritarian, attractive symbol of power, or by fear of "the other" -- be it nonexistent homegrown terrorists, or right-wing lunatics who want to crush the birth control pills of every woman in America, or whatever -- Democracy is doomed. Otherwise sane people literally lose touch with reality in their desperate quest to normalize the abnormal. Obama apologists now trying to justify legalized bribery fall into this category. Orwell calls such rationalizing an "indifference" to reality. The same good, intelligent people who condemned the Bush War crimes, secrecy, and civil rights abuses, are turning a blind eye to the Obama crimes:

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.

Should we even bother fighting back against this awfulness? Absolutely, says Orwell. Half the battle, he says, is to recognize the cognitive dissonance that is part of modern politics and life in general, to recognize that we all have biases, but never to allow these emotional defense mechanisms to trump rational thought. In other words, giving up at this point is just not an option, even though fighting back seems like crying out alone in the wilderness in these crazy times.

Fight on. Resist. Occupy.

Update: Speak of dancing with the devil. Glenn Greenwald blasts the repulsive hypocrisy of so-called progressives who are just fine with Gitmo, warrantless wiretapping and assassinations. We knew Orwell was prescient. We just didn't how pin-pointy accurate he would turn out to be. As Greenwald says, the liberal pundits who blasted the war crimes of Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld now owe them a huge apology.

Occupy Your Inner Orwell

Help the President Help the More Fortunate

2012-02-06T15:09:00.004-05:00

I was a little late getting to President Obama's weekly radio address. But since the message keeps reverberating in much the same form, vis a vis the desperate plans of his Administration to "settle" with the criminal bankster class over their "mistakes" in defrauding homeowners, I think it's worth a parse. So, in case you still haven't had enough of the droning of Built to Last, here we go:

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been traveling around the country and talking with folks about my blueprint for an economy built to last. It’s a blueprint that focuses on restoring the things we’ve always done best. Our strengths. American manufacturing. American energy. The skills and education of American workers.

Built to Last replaced the losing Winning the Future, in case you hadn't noticed. And now it's got the added gimmick of a blueprint, because I just love that idea. I got it from the Republican side of the aisle from friends like Paul Ryan and his Mediscare blueprint. It makes me seem like an architect who builds things. Like a Ford truck..... but really more like a commercial for a Ford truck. Rugged, leaderly, tough, nationalistic. Home Sweet Homeland.

And most importantly, American values like fairness and responsibility. We know what happened when we strayed from those values over the past decade – especially when it comes to our housing market. Lenders sold loans to families who couldn’t afford them. Banks packaged those mortgages up and traded them for phony profits. It drove up prices and created an unsustainable bubble that burst – and left millions of families who did everything right in a world of hurt.

Let us never forget the families who did everything wrong. It is important that I not alienate the conservative-leaning voters of the battleground states here. A lot of folks still buy into the canard born in the CNBC rant of Rick Santelli, post meltdown in 2009, that welfare queens and unemployed Mexicans getting liar loans caused the whole crisis. So I am going to compromise, wallow in a little phony centrism, and mendaciously give that canard just a wee tad of presidential cred. Families who bought houses they couldn't afford are just as venal as the banksters. Families who got regular mortgages they could afford were hurt by irresponsible, subprime poor families. You think only Republicans can create phony wedge issues? Hah!

It was wrong. The housing crisis has been the single biggest drag on our recovery from the recession. It has kept millions of families in debt and unable to spend, and it has left hundreds of thousands of construction workers out of a job.

I won't mention the inconvenient truth that unfettered capitalism and unregulated banks caused the housing crisis, and are still a drag on the economy. Reinstating Glass-Steagall is just too hard. Supporting Elizabeth Warren as chief of the Consumer Protection agency she created? Just too hard. Construction workers are unemployed because the hoarding banks won't give out construction loans. Even though I keep politely asking.

But there’s something even more important at stake. I’ve been saying this is a make-or-break moment for the middle class. And the housing crisis struck right at the heart of what it means to be middle-class in this country: owning a home. Raising our kids. Building our dreams.

I am not bothering with you lesser people who rent their homes, either from choice or from necessity. Or, God forbid, folks who live in their relatives' basements or shelters.Let's define our terms. "Middle class" as defined by my campaign strategists means The Monied Burbs: employed professional people who can actually afford to get married, buy a house, and have 2.3 kids. And a dog. Maybe not a purebred Portuguese Water Dog like Bo, but at least a LabraDoodle or a Golden Retriever.

Right now, there are more than 10 million homeowners in this country who, because of a decline in home prices that is no fault of their own, owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Now, it is wrong for anyone to suggest that the only option for struggling, responsible homeowners is to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom. I don’t accept that. None of us should.

I am not mentioning that 10 million out of a 330 million population is rather a small demographic. And that by relentlessly harping on fault, I am signalling my utter disdain for irresponsible losers. Hardworking Heartland independents pride themselves on the work ethic. Let's face it: I am in campaign mode here. The monied suburbanites saddled with million-dollar homes now worth maybe eight hundred thou are the ones whose votes and donations and phone-banking I am counting on. Responsible: code for employed professional.

That’s why we launched a plan a couple years ago that’s helped nearly one million responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages and save an average of $300 on their payments each month. Now, I’ll be the first to admit it didn’t help as many folks as we’d hoped. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.

Yeah, it didn't work because our hearts just were not in it at the time. It was not an election year. Plus, it would have been too hard on the Wall Street banks. Since my Administration never tried to penalize the banks for failing to help folks, they really had no incentive to go along, did they?

That’s why I’m sending Congress a plan that will give every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgages by refinancing at historically low rates. No more red tape. No more endless forms. And a small fee on the largest financial institutions will make sure it doesn’t add a dime to the deficit.

A small fee on the largest financial institutions... vague, unspecified, but it sounds good in a campaign speech. And I just can't help myself! Even though my handlers told me to curtail it on the austerity theme, I just had to get the D Word (deficit) in here somehow. Please don't forget that my plan will help only a select few mega-homeowners who pay their bills on time. If you own a modest home and have been paying late, you're out of luck. And if you're out on the street, you won't vote anyway. You are so screwed, in too many ways to count. So you don't count.

I want to be clear: this plan will not help folks who bought a house they couldn’t afford and then walked away from it. It won’t help folks who bought multiple houses just to turn around and sell them. What this plan will do is help millions of responsible homeowners who make their payments every month, but who, until now, couldn’t refinance because their home values kept dropping or they got wrapped up in too much red tape.

Ad nauseum, ad infinitum! I keep repeating myself, just so I can hammer home my point. My campaign is geared toward well-to-do people who are not financially strapped, and never have to rob Peter to pay Paul. I am not interested helping people who chronically have their cable or electricity shut off. If you don't pay your bills on time, you are just not responsible. If you're hurting, it's really kind of your fault. But since I'm a Democrat (or so I am told) I just can't be as blatant about it as my friends in the other wing of the Uniparty.

But here’s the catch. In order to lower mortgage payments for millions of Americans, we need Congress to act. They’re the ones who have to pass this plan. And as anyone who has followed the news in the last six months can tell you, getting Congress to do anything these days is not an easy job.
That’s why I’m going to keep up the pressure on Congress to do the right thing. But I also need your help. I need your voice. I need everyone who agrees with this plan to get on the phone, send an email, tweet, pay a visit, and remind your representatives in Washington who they work for. Tell them to pass this plan. Tell them to help more families keep their homes, and more neighborhoods stay vibrant and whole.

In order for me to help this small segment of well-to-do Americans who own a lot of house, I need you to join my campaign even if you merely aspire to homeownership at this particular time. Are you in? Call Congress (Dems or Pubs, they're all alike) and send me your email address. Don't let Falls Church Va or Westchester County go the way of central Florida! Keep the lifestyle liberals and their possessions strong and confident, vibrant and whole.

The truth is, it will take time for our housing market to recover. It will take time for our economy to fully bounce back. But there are steps we can take, right now, to move this country forward. That’s what I promise to do as your President, and I hope Members of Congress will join me.

Pay no attention to what Paul Krugman wrote today in The New York Times, about everything not being o.k. and how it's wrong for governments to keep saying austerity is important. Forget about the cloud of economic depression on the silver lining of a few thousand more minimum wage jobs for which I take total and unabashed credit. Forget that I listened to Tim Geithner and didn't break up the banks and didn't demand adequate stimulus. If you will just call Congress and Tweet your hearts out, we can move forward just like my MSNBC offshoot tells you to. It will give you the illusion of doing something. It will once again suck you into the Cult of My Personality.

The Jim Crow Guide to Fine Dining

2012-02-05T13:16:00.008-05:00

Even the plutocrats of One Percent Nation have to eat. They eat well, they eat regularly, and they dine out. A lot. Because the Long Depression has not affected the pocketbooks of the wealthy, the high-end hospitality business is one of the few booming industries in this dismal economy. One out of every 12 private sector jobs is in restaurants. It is also very likely that when Richie Rich Congressman or K Street Kleptocrat sits down at, say, the Capital Grille, his server will be white.

Brown and black employees rarely get table-waiting jobs in fancy restaurants. They're usually relegated to the clean-up crew, the dishwashing detail, or at best, to the crummy tables in the back of the room. The restaurant employment watchdog group ROC (Restaurant Opportunities Center) says that in an industry already notorious for its poverty level wages, black employees earn an average of $4 less an hour than whites.

A 2009 study revealed that hiring discrimination in high-end New York City restaurants, where workers can earn up to $100,000 annually, is also common. The wealthier the clientele and the pricier the menu, the likelier it is that your server will be fair-skinned and accent-free. Unless, naturally, it's a French accent.

Now, a federal lawsuit against the Darden Group, a huge restaurant chain with a reputation for serial discrimination, has been filed in Illinois. Minority workers in the chain, which includes Olive Garden, Red Lobster and the tonier Capital Grille, claim that they are paid less than minimum wage, are often forced to work off the clock, and are denied promotion. One restaurant (the Capital Grille in Washington) allegedly fired a group of black servers en masse because it was suddenly decided they didn't meet optical standards. How ironic, considering that Darden CEO Clarence Otis Jr is himself a well-regarded African American businessman. He used to work for JP Morgan, and is also a member of the Federal Reserve in Atlanta.

Otis, judging from an indignant editorial he wrote recently on the CNN website, finds it annoying that his wage slaves want to be treated with dignity. An Obama donor, he also reportedly met personally with the president to kvetch about how hard it is out there for job creators providing all those thousands of fantastic minimum wage jobs, only to have their largesse and civic-mindedness abused by burdensome government regulations eating into bottom lines and investor dividends. We have no idea whether Obama told him off, placated him, laughed uproariously, or what. It was private. But here is what Otis actually had the chutzpah to whine about publicly:

Regulatory mandates flowing from federal health care reform may be the most visible, but the list also includes measures such as new mandatory paid leave provisions that require us to change the way we accommodate employees who need to take time off when they are ill and ever more unrealistic requirements regarding employee meal and rest breaks that, in California for example, force our employees to take breaks in the middle of serving lunch or dinner.

Otis, who makes $7.16 million a year, actually did get one of the many Obamacare waivers absolving him from having to fully cover his part-timers. Yet, according to the lawsuit filed last week in Chicago, he doesn’t even pay some of them minimum wage. Color of Change, an African-American advocacy group, is outraged:

Darden runs nearly 2,000 restaurants nationwide and boasts annual sales of $7.5 billion. But the few Black workers who make it into the big leagues there often don't stay very long. According to reports from two Black servers who worked at Darden's Capital Grille in DC -- a restaurant patronized by politicians, lobbyists, and others in the Washington elite -- Black front-of-the-house staff were let go en masse within a short period of time because they “didn’t fit the company image.” They were all replaced by White workers.
Despite the pattern of racial discrimination, Darden -- the world's largest full-service restaurant company -- ranks in the "Top 100 Places to Work," an annual list published by Fortune Magazine. The company gets high marks for a diverse workforce (of course, there's no mention of who works which job.) At a time when Black unemployment is nearly twice the national average and the private sector is being heralded as our greatest hope, Darden's pattern of relegating Black workers to lowest wage work is unconscionable.

Despite the lawsuit, Darden will get a dollop of free positive publicity this week when First Lady Michelle Obama celebrates the second anniversary of her "Let's Move" anti-obesity campaign at a Texas Olive Garden restaurant. Darden is among the corporations which have pledged to gradually (they get five years) start reducing the salt and fat content of the food they sell and to add healthier sides.

But I digress. If you're wondering whether your own favorite restaurant is among the many which treat its employees like crap, ROC has put out a handy Zagat-type rating guide to help you. (You can also sign Color of Change's petition telling Mr. Wonderful's Darden chain to cut the crap, right here.)

The Guide evaluates more than 150 popular restaurants and chains nationwide against 3 criteria: provision of paid sick days, wages of at least $9 per hour for non-tipped workers and $5 per hour of tipped workers, and opportunities for internal advancement.
These are good criteria. I don’t want a sick person handling my food, nor do I want them to lose wages or jobs because they’re sick. The minimum wage for tipped workers has remained at a measly $2.13 per hour for nearly 20 years, so every day consumers have to push for a higher standard since Congress won’t. And finally, racial and gender hierarchies are a fact of life in the restaurant industry, with white men getting the best paying jobs at the front of the house. Across the country, ROC United has found that a system that enables internal promotion so that back of the house workers can get access to front of the house jobs, is a key element of restaurants that don’t discriminate.
The Guide goes further than telling you where to go. Since it doesn’t cover absolutely every one of the millions of restaurants in this country, ROC United asks diners to simply take a look around and ask a few questions when they eat out. Just opening our eyes will tell us who works where. Are all the waiters white? Are all the bussers Latinos? Are there no black people or women anywhere? It isn’t difficult to ask your waiter what his hourly wages are. And if the restaurant doesn’t meet the standards listed above, there are tear out cards in the back of the guide that you can leave with management to let them know where they can get help to do better.

Let Them Eat Cake... Or Not

2012-02-03T16:45:00.004-05:00

Urban legend has it that Twinkies have a shelf life of decades: not only do they contain no actual food, but one ingredient is the same chemical used in embalming fluid. Even though this claim is ~~probably~~ bogus, all you Hostess junkies (and you know who you are) might want to start hoarding your supplies. In what has become a tried and true tactic of vulture capitalism, the private equity firm that bought out Hostess several years ago, and already forced it into bankruptcy once, is at it again. Wonder Bread, that miracle of unhealthy enzyme-enhanced sculptable softness beloved by kids, is in danger too. Either the worker bees cave, or Hostess may shut down for good.

It seems that the debt-riddled owners (they have been predatory, many, and varied) sloppily forgot to eviscerate the union's pension plan last time around, and are heading back into court to force the Twinkie-transporting Teamsters and the factory food workers to give up their contracts. Hostess executives from the Texas HQ went judge-shopping, and finally settled on a friendly New York bankruptcy court.

The judge with the reputation for coercing concessions from unions in bankruptcies to make the capitalist vultures happy and whole is one Robert D. Drain. I am not kidding. This guy is a living legend in the world of legal union-busting for fun and profit. Writes labor journalist Robert Vail:

Between 2005 and 2009 Drain presided over the infamous Delphi auto parts bankruptcy, in which the United Auto Workers saw its Delphi membership decimated.
More recently, he has been overseeing the case of the A&P supermarket chain. Just six weeks ago, about 30,000 grocery clerks and store employees represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers union were forced into broad concessions under circumstances just like those faced by the Hostess workers.

The workers are being asked to give up $659 million in wages and benefits over three years, in addition to relinquishing their pensions. All for the good of the bottom line, of course. Management will apparently try to appeal to the employees' sense of junk food junkie grass-roots solidarity and job security. They might even stir up anti-union sentiment by threatening to raise the price of SnoBalls to $5 for the already-struggling ~~indigent~~ middle class. Divide and conquer -- works every time.

The union boss is not having it. He represents the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union. (Not to editorialize or anything, but the combo of Twinkies and cigs doesn't exactly inspire sympathy. On the other hand, it is pretty cruel and irresponsible for a company whose products contribute mightily to America's bloated health care costs to cut the medical benefits of its own employees. I call this the WWDBA-- the WalMart Way of Doing Business in America). Anyway, the union boss's name is Frank Hurt, and he is mightily pained:

I find it deeply offensive and highly disingenuous for the company to claim that its financial woes are the result of its union contracts and pension and health benefits obligations. We contend that the company is in dire financial shape because of a string of failed business decisions made by a series of ineffective executives who have been running the company for the past decade.

For a junk food company, you'd think they'd know better than to indulge in that no-no of snacking: the double-dip. It previously filed for Chapter 11 in 2004, when it was known as Interstate Bakeries. The company also named a new chief executive, James R. Elsessor, who had taken over as CEO for Charles Sullivan, replaced by Tony Alvarez. Confused yet? Mitt Romney, amazingly enough, is nowhere to be found in this labyrinth, but that doesn't mean he's not lurking nearby. Interstate Bakery's stock, which had been at one time $34/share, fell to $2.05/share as they declared bankruptcy.

At the time it was the longest bankruptcy in U.S. history. During that time, it fought a 2007 bid from Mexican baked goods giant Grupo Bimbo and ex-Bill Clinton vulture capitalist pal Ron Burkle of the Yucapaipa Companies. With the leadership of Craig Jung, the company emerged from bankruptcy as a private company on February 3, 2009. The plan included a 50 percent equity stake by Ripplewood Holdings and lines/loans by General Electric Capital and GE Capital Markets, Silver Point Finance and Monarch Master Funding. Interstate's union workers made contract concessions in exchange for equity. Since declaring bankruptcy in 2009, Interstate closed nine of its 54 bakeries and more than 300 outlet stores. It also reduced its work force from 32,000 to 22,000 people and pulled out of some markets. (Wikipedia).

The next trial in New York's Southern District Bankruptcy court is scheduled for next month.

While you're waiting, do read the wonderful Charles Pierce's "In Defense of Twinkies", a masterpiece of junk food gourmandism and caloric history. An excerpt:

   The Twinkie's formidable shelf life has aroused curiosity among bored undergraduates, the scientific community, and people who are, well, members of both. Most seriously, the Twinkie was subjected to a grim series of experiments eight years ago by a pair of young scientists at Rice University in Houston. They tested Twinkies for artificial intelligence (the cakes failed), electric resistivity (the filling bubbled a little, but that was all), and gravitational response, in which test a Twinkie was launched from a sixth-floor window, with the result that, upon contact with the sidewalk, only a small crack opened on the Twinkie's side. The pair also performed a solubility test, immersing a Twinkie in a glass of tap water. After 24 hours, they reported "the beginnings of a creamy ooze at the surface of the water."
     "After 48 hours in the water," they continued, "the Twinkie had not changed any more in size. However, the creamy filling somehow oozed out of the center and was collecting on the surface of the water. The water itself was a very dark brown. When we attempted to pour the water out of the cup, it quickly became apparent that the Twinkie had no structural integrity at all. It ... turned into a lump of goo in the sink."
     Pity. You should probably eat them if you're going to do anything with them. Or not.

Okay, I think it's time for a Twinkie run. Watch out for vulture capitalists scarfing up the supplies in the snack aisles, and attack if you must. I won't tell if you don't.

In Election Year, Poverty Swept Under the Rug

2012-02-01T14:25:00.005-05:00

The politicians and the press, for the most part, will not cover poverty in this country. If you hold your breath waiting for that to happen, you're just going to die. -- Bob Herbert, former New York Times columnist, speaking at the Spotlight on Poverty Opportunity Forum.

Herbert is right. Although 88% of Americans believe that poverty should be an issue in the presidential campaign, media coverage of it is pretty much limited to whatever hateful outburst erupts from a GOP candidate on any given day. Newt Gingrich got plenty of press for suggesting poor kids work as janitors in their schools. Yet, major news organizations didn't fall all over themselves racing to a crumbling school in a poor neighborhood to actually talk to the kids to find out what they thought. As Bob Herbert points out, there have been no hard-hitting investigative pieces on faulty plumbing or wiring in public schools. Just a lot of "wow, can you believe what Newt just said?" from the so-called liberal media, who just can't get enough of wingnut psychopathology.

Today it was Mitt Romney's turn to generate some red meat buzz. The MSM was faux-shocked when he allowed how he is not all that concerned about "very" poor people, because they're already protected by a social safety net. The point he was most likely trying to make is that you have to be literally in the gutter before qualifying for Medicaid, so where's the beef? Or, more likely, Romney is not concerned about the poorest of the poor because they have a tendency not to vote. The corporate stenography slant: OMG, what will come out of this guy's mouth next? The numbers, the polls, the numbers!

Since the Democrats have transformed themselves from being champions of the poor to groveling before Wall Street to get that all-important campaign cash, President Obama doesn't talk much about poverty at all. He is more inclined to characterize the indigent as the "struggling middle class", not the nouveau-poor. The backdrops of his campaign speeches always include well-dressed, well-fed "folks" right out of sitcom suburbia. He did not involve himself in last summer's progressive caucus "Poverty Tour" with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. When he does go to Detroit, it's to visit an auto plant, not an inner city neighborhood. When he causes massive traffic gridlock during his romps to Harlem, it's for canoodling with the slumming rich. Even the "cheap" seats at his recent Apollo gig went for $100.

(Actually, he did visit a ghetto last year. But it was Rio de Janeiro's notorious slum, as a photo-op during a "free" trade mission/family vacation with the wife and kids. You see, despite the fact that almost half of all American families are just a paycheck or two away from dire straits, poverty does not and cannot exist in the greatest superpower on earth).

The Obama Version of a Poverty Tour: A Foreign Country

It was not always thus. As recently as the 2008 post-election transition period, the Obama team dared use the "P" word. There is a whole page still up devoted to the subject of poverty. In those days, the president was a "lifelong advocate for the poor." President-elect Obama wanted to prevent prison recidivism by providing substance abuse counseling for ex-cons. The reality? The War on Drugs is bigger than ever, minority youths are filling what are increasingly private prisons at record rates and black unemployment is well above 16%. He promised to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011. Oops! He vowed to increase affordable housing for poor people. Instead, he cut neighborhood block grants and home heating assistance. He did this without the Republicans even asking. He offered.

Meanwhile, nearly half of all children live on the brink of poverty and one-quarter actually do live below the poverty level. Data released by the Census Bureau last year put about one-third of Americans at the poverty level.

Stephen Gray of Time wrote about last summer's pre-Occupy poverty tour --

"Poverty and poor people are an afterthought" said (Tavis) Smiley. "For many folks in this country – politicians – they’re disposable, they’re invisible.” Poverty rarely stirs powerful political forces. There’s no major Washington lobby for the poor. There are few major Congressional figures with the stature of Ted Kennedy or Daniel Patrick Moynihan who’ve made poverty issues central to their political identities. The term “poverty” has taken on baggage, evoking in some images of the Cadillac-driving “welfare queen” introduced by Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign. Earlier this year, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, released a study questioning the plight of the nearly 44 million Americans whom the Census Bureau categorizes as impoverished, but also own appliances such as air conditioners and TVs.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne was also a panelist at this week's poverty forum. "In politics" he said, "I think there are two obvious coalitions. One is when the middle class allies with the folks below them, and one is when the middle allies with the folks above them."

Since neither political party identifies with the "lower folks" Occupy has served to fill the vacuum. Republicans and Democrats both love to pontificate about aspiring to that American Dream of consumerism, property ownership and moolah. The OWS movement has stepped up to talk about social injustice. It has brought the homeless and poor population to public attention, and that does not sit well with the political elites of either Wall Street-serving party. Mainstream coverage has carefully and dutifully not concentrated on the poverty aspect.The camps have been broken up by paramilitary thugs, and so the extreme poor and homeless are back where they came from. Out of sight, out of mind.

(You can read the entire transcript of the poverty forum, as well as watch the video, here.)

Update: the president talked to struggling homeowners in Falls Church, Va today about how his plans for mortgage relief are better than Romney's. The median family income in Falls Church: $97,225. I rest my case.

Stock Shlock

2012-01-30T21:07:00.002-05:00

Well, nobody in the Senate dared vote against insider corrupt stock trading, unless you count professional contrarian Tom Coburn, who votes against everything from healthy lunches for school children to a museum honoring women. And a North Carolinian named Richard Burr also nixed bringing it to a final vote this Thursday. I don't know why, and I don't care. He was probably just trying to be a thorn in Harry Reid's side.

As per usual, this bill has a cute and easy-to remember acronym: STOCK -- standing for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge. Not as sexy as SOPA and PIPA, but very catchy and righteous-sounding. As in, Congress is finally taking stock of itself before the citizenry goes all tar and feathers and puts them in the stocks. For a minute I thought it meant "stop counting on congressional intelligence if you want the country to function", but that's another bill for another day. Since Congress seems hell-bent on defunding and privatizing education, I was rather surprised they are having much of anything to do with something so entitle-y/elitist as knowledge. As God warned Adam and Eve and the right wing nihilist Republicans, don't eat ye the apple of the Tree of Knowledge, of Good and Evil. Stay stupid and stay safe.

Senator Reid obeyed his master Barry and immediately scheduled the vote to make it seem like they're really not all a bunch of crooks, and so the prez has something to run on besides Lilly Ledbetter and killing bin Laden. From The Hill:

Reid said the legislation would help restore confidence in Congress by stipulating that profiting from privileged political intelligence is illegal.

"Members of Congress and their staffers have the duty to the American people," Reid said. "They may not use privileged information they get on the job to personally profit. [This bill] will end any confusion over whether members of Congress can be prosecuted for the serious crime. They can be."

Thank God, because I was feeling mighty jittery and befuddled, wondering if Nancy Pelosi would end up going scot free because of all the Visa stock she and her multimillionaire husband bought right before she made sure that credit card debt would not be included in tough new bankruptcy legislation.

Lawmakers were shaken when 60 Minutes ran a report recently about Pelosi and practically everybody in Congress making some heavy-duty bucks from insider trading. Most of them professed shock that it was going on, and that they were doing it. Again, from The Hill article:

"I was shocked by this report, I think we all were," (Mass. Sen. Scott) Brown said. "[M]embers of Congress should not be lining their pockets on insider information. Serving our country is a privilege. I believe we must level the playing field and show the American people that the United States Congress does not consider itself to be above laws that apply to everyone else.”

When the bill passes Thursday and goes on to the House for approval, no doubt the nouveau- and olde-riche millionaires will be back-slapping each other in another orgy of self-congratulation. I can already see their 9 percent approval rating skyrocketing off the charts as the engaged public audience applauds their courage and honesty.

And to be fair, 60 Minutes did not really break this story. All its information came from a little book published in November called "Throw Them All Out", written in the best old-fashioned muckraking tradition. A journalist named Peter Schweizer actually looked through votes and stock trades and their timing, and put two and two together. The info has been hiding in plain sight for decades, if not centuries.

Congressional corruption, says Schweizer, puts lie to the notion that the two political parties are engaged in a constant battle royal. Of course, we knew they were really two phony factions of an oligarchic uniparty, especially when it comes to funding wars, the security state, indefinite detention and anything and everything that does not make life better for their constituents. "Republicans and Democrats are not so different as you think", he writes. "They work together to enrich themselves. They have designed the system to work so that they can make lots of money doing things that would get the rest of us sent to jail".

Schweizer is painstakingly bipartisan and absolutely relentless in exposing both Democrats and Republicans. Besides Pelosi, he puts the spotlight on John Kerry; Tom Carper; Melissa Bean; Jared Polis; James Oberstar; Jeb Bradley; John Boehner; Jim McDermott; Amo Houghton; Johnny Isakson; Sheldon Whitehouse; Max Baucus; Jim Moran; Dick Durbin; Rahm Emanuel; Gary Ackerman; Dennis Hastert; Carolyn Maloney; Judd Gregg; Ken Calvert; David Hobson; Heath Shuler; Bennie Thompson; Maurice Hinchey; Jerry Lewis.... and last but least, Harry Reid!!

The bill will pass, and then Congress will hire its own lobbyists to punch it to shreds with the obligatory loopholes. Or they won't bother to fund it, or they'll appoint Joe Lieberman their impartial watchdog when he retires next year.

Throw the bums out.

Ye Olde Village Stocks

Hegemon-omania

2012-01-30T11:12:00.010-05:00

Via Josh Rogin, we are just now finding out that the inspiration for President Obama's ode to American imperialism in his speech last week came from, of all people, Mitt Romney's NeoCon foreign policy adviser! According to Rogin, who writes for Foreign Policy magazine, Obama just can't get enough of Robert Kagan's screed in the The New Republic, which says the good old days of American superiority are here to stay. People have always kvetched that the USA is in decline, even when it was in its fetal stage and Patrick Henry despaired. It wasn't true then, says this cheerleader for the Iraq surge -- and it isn't true now. Depression, shmepression. Economic inequality is just a bothersome and distracting subplot in the continuing saga of of American superiority over all other nations. We are built to last, people!

And the title of Kagan's piece is just too damned cute for words: Not Fade Away. Nothing like co-opting The Rolling Stones* to make the case for endless hegemony. (Personally, I would have called it Sympathy for the Devil) Here are some of the mendacious snippets:

The present world order—characterized by an unprecedented number of democratic nations; a greater global prosperity, even with the current crisis, than the world has ever known; and a long peace among great powers—reflects American principles and preferences, and was built and preserved by American power in all its political, economic, and military dimensions.

(Pay no attention to decades-long wars, the rise of the security state and the greatest income disparity the world has ever known. It's been peace, love and rock n roll all along.... reality is only for wimpy pessimists. As long as the 1% get along within their own elite cliques, who cares about the little people and the little countries).

Some of the pessimism is also due to the belief that the United States has lost favor, and therefore influence, in much of the world, because of its various responses to the attacks of September 11. The detainment facilities at Guantánamo, the use of torture against suspected terrorists, and the widely condemned invasion of Iraq in 2003 have all tarnished the American “brand” and put a dent in America’s “soft power”—its ability to attract others to its point of view.

The fact is, Kagan seems to argue, is that the rest of the world has always gone through these periods of hating us, just like small children who, when throwing tantrums, scream that they hate their parents. But they don't really mean it, and everything always ends up sweetness and light because Father Knows Best. Kagan lists example after example of countries falsely hating the USA to their own detriment, case after case of past predictions of American decline never coming true. The Cold War is over, Communism was destroyed, we shall prevail. America has survived all the blows to its reputation abroad: the McCarthy witch hunts, racial discrimination, The Ugly American depicting Uncle Sam as a big fat bully, assassinations, Kent State, riots at conventions, Vietnam, Watergate.

If one wanted to make a case for American decline (Kagan continues) the 1970s would have been the time to do it; and many did. The United States, Kissinger believed, had evidently “passed its historic high point like so many earlier civilizations.... Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed.” It was in the 1970s that the American economy lost its overwhelming primacy, when the American trade surplus began to turn into a trade deficit, when spending on entitlements and social welfare programs ballooned, when American gold and monetary reserves were depleted.

More examples follow of America not being to control external events: even the world paternalist could not make Israel and Palestine get along. The rest of the world continued to complain about American overreach throughout the 80s and 90s. So what if we don't have complete and total world dominion every minute of every day, Kagan retorts. Whoever said the people we dominate have to love us? We still got de power! We're in it for the long haul. Here is possibly the most nauseating paragraph in the whole article:

Today the United States lacks the ability to have its way on many issues, but this has not prevented it from enjoying just as much success, and suffering just as much failure, as in the past. For all the controversy, the United States has been more successful in Iraq than it was in Vietnam. It has been just as incapable of containing Iranian nuclear ambitions as it was in the 1990s, but it has, through the efforts of two administrations, established a more effective global counter-proliferation network. Its efforts to root out and destroy Al Qaeda have been remarkably successful, especially when compared with the failures to destroy terrorist networks and stop terrorist attacks in the 1990s—failures that culminated in the attacks of September 11. The ability to employ drones is an advance over the types of weaponry—cruise missiles and air strikes—that were used to target terrorists and facilities in previous decades. Meanwhile America’s alliances in Europe remain healthy; it is certainly not America’s fault that Europe itself seems weaker than it once was. American alliances in Asia have arguably grown stronger over the past few years, and the United States has been able to strengthen relations with India that had previously been strained.

(Translation: we killed hundreds of thousands of people to make up for the murder of 3000 on 9/11. And we will continue to kill countless thousands more. Nothing is our fault. The global banking cabal headquartered on Wall Street has bolstered our strength even as it has crushed our own citizens).

And finally, Kagan considers economic crises irrelevant to our continuing status of World Superpower. He continues the GOP lie that "entitlements" will destroy our nation faster than any war. Watch for this paragraph to be included, in some form, in an upcoming column by David Brooks:

What about the financial expense? Many seem to believe that the cost of these deployments, and of the armed forces generally, is a major contributor to the soaring fiscal deficits that threaten the solvency of the national economy. But this is not the case, either. As the former budget czar Alice Rivlin has observed, the scary projections of future deficits are not “caused by rising defense spending,” much less by spending on foreign assistance. The runaway deficits projected for the coming years are mostly the result of ballooning entitlement spending. Even the most draconian cuts in the defense budget would produce annual savings of only $50 billion to $100 billion, a small fraction—between 4 and 8 percent—of the $1.5 trillion in annual deficits the United States is facing.

So yeah, since war is cheap, let's blame Grandma for eating more than her share. This is the theme hammered away in countless forms by Brooks. And as an aside, how's this for a Tale of Three Davids: Obama campaign operative David Axelrod told David Gregory yesterday that David Brooks is one of the country's "great public thinkers."

This perfectly gels with Barry's new man-crush on Kagan. But maybe man-crush is too intense a characterization, because Kagan is already taken. He is married to Dick Cheney's former deputy national security advisor, Victoria Nuland. And just to show how much Obama is truly the embodiment of Bush's Third Term, Nuland was appointed spokesman for the State Department last summer. She replaced P.J. Crowley, who was fired after criticizing inhumane treatment of war crimes whistleblower Bradley Manning.

Ezra Klein elaborates on Obama's enthusiasm for his newfound hero:

In a recent, off-the-record meeting with news anchors, Obama spent more than 10 minutes "going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed." National Security Advisor Tom Donilon was dispatched to Charlie Rose to "discuss Kagan's essay and Obama's love of it." So it's not just the president who likes Kagan's article. It's the White House communications team who likes the idea of letting people know the president likes Kagan's article.

Okay, it's official. Barack Obama is a NeoCon and he wants everybody to know it. So rest easy, Republicans despairing over losing this year's election: you have already won.

* The Rolling Stones did a cover of "Not Fade Away" in 1964, and that version is listed in the 500 greatest hits in rock history. It was originally recorded by Buddy Holly in 1957. Thanks, Marina.

Occupied Winter of Our Discontent (continued)

2012-01-28T11:51:00.009-05:00

I have to admit that when President Obama tapped New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to lead a brand spanking new investigation into banksterism, my first cynical thought was "co-optation." Schneiderman would be just the latest in a long line of Democratic malcontents and holdouts to be taken on a figurative ride on Air Force One, emerging chastened, rewarded and mouthing "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" platitudes.

But there is reason to hope today that the pending sweetheart deal between the banks and the Obama administration may not be as sweet as the Big Five Banks had been hoping for. Schneiderman last night announced a relatively limited proposal: in exchange for a $25bn payout to victims of the robo-signing foreclosure fraud, there will be no criminal prosecution from the states which agree to the deal. But the blanket perpetual immunity from punishment for the entire panorama of financial felonies apparently is not to be. The state agreement would not preclude the feds (read: Schneiderman and his posse of IRS and FBI agents) going after mortgage fraudsters.

Some of those skeptical that Barack Obama would ever go after the banking hand that feeds him were expressing mild shock today that there might be a Grand Perp Walk of Bank CEOs after all. Remember, the president has stated time and again that he had no interest in punishing the banks. But then something called Occupy Wall Street came along, and made him an offer he couldn't refuse: investigate and prosecute, or we will hound you wherever you go. Plutocracy or not, the United States still requires that presidents be voted into office. And savvy politician that he is, Obama knows which way the wind is blowing.

Sam Stein of The Huffington Post reports that banks will still be vulnerable in the following categories:

Criminal liability.
Tax liability
Fair lending, fair housing, or any other civil rights claim.
Federal Housing Finance Agency or the GSEs [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]
CFPB claims for the period after they came into existence in July 2011
SEC claims
National Credit Union Association Claims
FDIC claims
Federal Reserve Board claims
MERS claims

Early reports from the banking sector in the wake of Friday night's announcement and the revelation that Schneiderman's task force has already issued subpoenas show them to be borderline-panicked and indignant. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post ran a McCarthyesque red scare editorial screaming that Schneiderman was "shaking down the banks" and how dare he leave the door open to future criminal prosecution after the banksters pay up in good faith? It's the same old canard used by Timmy Geithner and Co.: if you upset the too-big-to-fail banks, the whole world will collapse. From the right-wing Post:

Besides, the prospect of future court action, should Schneiderman prevail, sure won’t help the economy.
On the other hand, demonizing financial institutions in populist fashion might help rile up the left — which, no doubt, is what Obama and Schneiderman care about most.
New York’s union cat’s-paw, the left-wing Working Families Party, is already tickled pinko — er, pink — with Schneiderman’s appointment, calling it “a big victory for the 99 percent.”
For America and New York, a world financial center, it sounds more like disaster.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone is cautiously optimistic that Obama's back may finally be up against the wall on Wall Street. He says the robosigning scandal is really small potatoes compared to what really went on and what remains unpunished:

The securitization offenses were massive criminal conspiracies, identically undertaken by all of the big banks, to defraud investors in mortgage-backed securities. If you’re looking for an appropriate target for a massive federal investigation, one that would get right to the heart of the corruption of the crisis era... well, they picked the right target here. If they were to do a real clean sweep on securitization, the federal prisons would end up literally teeming with senior executives from the biggest banks. A lot of very big names would end up playing ping-pong and cards in Otisville and Englewood.

It may end up being a case of Neopopulist Obama being forced to act upon his own words as much as it pains him to do so. Taibbi adds: "One thing we do know: Obama’s decision to tap Schneiderman publicly, and dump Geithner, and whisper about a millionaire’s tax, signals a shift in its public attitude toward the Wall Street corruption issue. The administration is clearly listening to the Occupy movement. Whether it’s now acting on their complaints, or just trying to look like it’s doing something, is another question. It’s way too early to tell. But it’s certainly very interesting".

And as for Schneiderman's being co-opted, Dave Dayen of Firedoglake writes that the AG has promised to publicly disavow the task force and publicly walk away if he is in any way impeded. I think the only thing we can do for now is give him some time to put his money where his mouth is. But not too much time.

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times has written an excellent piece on Obama's task force for her "Fair Game" series about the nefarious banking system. The upshot: if they don't do something big very soon, what little credibility they have left will be shot.

Another glass-half-full observation: for the first time in its elite 0001% history, the World Economic Forum at Davos has heard the "inequality" word uttered. Occupiers are camped out in igloos. Severe income disparity may not be so healthy for capitalism. Greed may not be so good after all, even for the greedheads. The parasite eventually bleeds the host dry. The cancer dies right along with the victim.

The Right Stuff

2012-01-26T22:10:00.005-05:00

By Jay - Ottawa

Following events like an American presidential election can be a test of mental endurance and a challenge to the biliary tract. After a while, one begins to lose faith in humanity. Anyway, that was my day, until I came across an article about another president -- until late December, one our contemporaries, but from elsewhere and now gone forever. We still have his legacy. I’m speaking of Václav Havel (1936-2011). You may have seen him in the past on the News Hour (PBS), or read one of his books, or seen one of his strange plays. As a leader enmeshed in the tough choices of managing a country, he proved politics need not be one part lies and one part venality supported by greed. Havel was different.

A Toronto writer and translator, Paul Wilson, went to Havel’s funeral in Prague. His full account is linked above. Here are a few quotes in case you can’t take the time to read it all, but still need a boost as we continue to push through the big muddy of 2012 American politics.

Wilson describes a poster that went up all over Prague around the time of Havel's funeral, “a shot of Havel with his back to the camera, walking toward the ocean.” On the poster was a quotation summarizing “one of Havel’s most deeply held beliefs”: Then this paragraph near the end of Wilson’s tribute:

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

As I said, Václav Havel was different. It is not madness or naiveté to insist upon -- and to push a little harder for -- that difference.

Like many great Czechs before him, Havel insisted on the importance of truth, but with a difference. “Truth and love,” he was fond of saying, “must prevail over lies and hatred.” He was often ridiculed for what seemed like a Hallmark sentiment (“Why love?” people asked), but he defended the slogan by referring to one of his greatest insights: truth, by itself, is a malleable concept that depends for its truthfulness on who utters it, to whom it is said, and under what circumstances. As a playwright, Havel turned this insight into a dramatic device: in most of his plays, the main characters constantly lie to one another and to themselves, using words that, in other circumstances, would be perfectly truthful. Truth by itself is not enough: it needs a guarantor, someone to stand behind it. It must be uttered with no thought for gain, that is, in Havel’s words, with a love that seeks nothing for itself and everything for others.

SOTU, Barackus?

2012-01-25T00:10:00.001-05:00

"One place to start is serious financial reform. Look, I am not interested in punishing banks, I'm interested in protecting our economy. A strong, healthy financial market makes it possible for businesses to access credit and create new jobs. It channels the savings of families into investments that raise incomes. But that can only happen if we guard against the same recklessness that nearly brought down our entire economy". -- Barack Obama

Okay, okay -- that was from last year's STFU, pre-Occupy edition. How he pretends that things have changed, because now the president has directed Attorney General Eric Holder to whip up a financial crimes unit to punish the banks. As former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer told Keith Olbermann Tuesday night, there are already dozens and scores of financial crime units floating in the ozone. This may be either a lot of empty rhetoric, or it may be a way to appease/co-opt the state attorneys general who are refusing to go along with that sweetheart deal I wrote about in a previous post. Time will tell.

He also suggested a ban on Congressional insider trading, which was met by thunderous silence from the millionaire congress critters. And his much-touted big applause line: "No bailouts, no handouts, no copouts" did not evince so much as one hand clapping.

I was disgracefully way off the mark in my prediction that Obama would utter the word "folks" two dozen times. He only used it twice -- once when he referred to millionaire folks like himself, and the other about the poor slob brand of folks on Main Street. I should have known he would never refer to Congress as folks.

Other than that, the main phrase was "built to last". I counted five times. I just couldn't get the Ford truck commercial out of my head for the whole damned speech.

And did he really say he would still work with Republicans to reform (code for cut) Medicare and Social Security? Are you kidding me?

And to give us a preview of his bellicose chest-thumping campaign theme, he began and ended the speech with the celebration of the assassination of Osama.

All in all, a totally predictable orgy of self-celebration by the political subdivision of the criminal oligarchy.

The Sun Reigns Supreme

2012-01-24T12:46:00.002-05:00

Monday's Supreme Court decision that it's a no-no for police to slap a GPS device on a car without a warrant may be rendered moot by an event outside the control of even the almighty United States Government. A massive explosion on the sun is now showering the earth with enough radiation to knock the entire Global Positioning System on its ass. From CNN:

The largest solar storm for seven years is expected to send a shower of radioactive solar particles racing towards Earth at almost 1,400 miles a second this week, according to NASA.The flare, caused by a huge eruption on the sun's surface on Sunday, is expected to affect GPS systems and other communications when it reaches the Earth's magnetic field on Tuesday.Solar flares are our solar system's largest explosive events and can last from minutes to hours, according to NASA, releasing up to a billion tons of matter in the process.

The National Weather Service has issued a rare major geo-magnetic solar storm warning, which sounds more ominous that it really is. You will not experience bodily harm unless you count acute withdrawal symptoms from disruption of your cell phone service, internet, electricity and TomTom device. Will Old Sol also disrupt drone strikes from Nevada trailers? Let's hope!

More information can be found here.

Solar Flare Photographed by NASA 1/23/12

Whitewash Delayed is SOTU Spin Denied

2012-01-24T11:25:00.002-05:00

Thanks to pressure from activists and a few stalwart attorneys general, President Obama has been denied the chance to belch out a major whopper at tonight's State of the Union address. It would have been a moment in which a whole chorus of "You Lies!" from the gallery would have been entirely appropriate.

Obama apparently had hoped to proclaim himself the middle class champion who went after the big bad banks to get a relatively paltry $20,000 slashed from each of the loans of a relatively small number of underwater homeowners He was planning to spin a sweetheart deal with foreclosure fraudsters at five too-big-to-exist banks into a victory for the middle class. And that would have been a major fib, because the money would have come not from the banksters themselves, but from pension funds containing bundled mortgage securities. It would have given to the middle class by taking from the middle class. The deal would not have sent one banker to jail, nor taken one nickel from the bloated bonuses of the likes of Jamie Dimon and Brian Moynihan.

The Obama Administration had summoned the state attorneys general to Chicago on Monday to try to persuade them to leave the criminals alone and to forget about extracting justice for their constitutents. From today's New York Times:

The housing secretary, Shaun Donovan, met on Monday in Chicago with Democratic attorneys general to iron out the remaining details and to persuade holdouts to agree with any eventual deal. He later held a conference call with Republican attorneys general. But as he renewed his efforts, Democrats in Congress, advocacy groups like MoveOn.org and several crucial attorneys general said the deal might be too lenient on the banks.....

Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa, said Monday that an agreement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial — would not be reached “anytime this week.”

In a letter to administration officials, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio said the settlement as reported — its details were not fully known — was too small and would allow banks to pass on the cost of the settlement to “middle-class Americans” whose pension funds hold soured mortgage securities.

In addition to disagreements over the total amount, negotiations have been held up over the question of how much latitude authorities would have in pursuing investigations into mortgage abuses before the housing bubble burst in 2007. The banks are pushing for a broad release from future claims, but several attorneys general, including prominent figures like Eric Schneiderman of New York and Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, have demanded a tougher line on the banks.

A three-pronged pushback against the Administration from activists, legislators and the attorneys general created a major disruption of negotiations. The uproar, although relatively ignored by the mainstream press (The Times story was buried in the rubble of the GOP primary trainwreck) was reminiscent of the massive protest last week against SOPA/PIPA that had craven congress critters scampering for their burrows.

Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith, who has provided some of the best coverage on the background and details of this story, thinks the collapse in negotiations Monday may spell doom for any hope the banks and Obama had for a whitewash going forward -- ever. Obama apparently was counting on the party bosses of the recalcitrant AGs putting pressure on them to fall into line. That didn't happen. The AGs in question didn't bother showing up at Chicage HQ. Writes Smith:

We will hopefully get more intelligence (or maybe just better attempts at disinformation) but I read this as an indication the deal agreed between the Federal regulators and the biggest servicers somehow came unglued. Possibilities include: someone exposed a definitional/drafting flaw (the Feds thought it meant one thing and the banks thought it meant another); someone (one of the banks?) retraded the deal; the Administration has assumed it could rely on a certain minimum number of AGs to fall in line and they regarded that minimum number as essential, and the pow wow today exposed that they are below that level.

The beauty of protest movements like this is that they act like magnets for the timid and uncommitted. Fighting back against the oligarchy has become chic -- and safe. People just couldn't get onboard the anti-foreclosure settlement train fast enough:

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka said today “We call on the administration to reject any deal that insulates banks from full responsibility.” Bob Borosage of the Campaign for America’s Future said “This is a fundamental question of justice and democracy. The law is respected only if it is enforced. No one who robbed a bank would be offered immunity, a modest fine and no admission of guilt – before there was an investigation into who stole the money and how much they took.” The co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva, said “It’s past time we stand up to Wall Street and show the American people that no bank executive is above the law."

In case you missed it, here is a clip of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer on the foreclosure fraud background and White House involvement on Sunday's Up With Chris Hayes.

Have you got your bullshit detection meter charged up for tonight's State of the Union theater of the macabre? Are we all fired up and ready to scream? Digby says we should take a drink every time Obama says "frankly." I, on the other hand, am now taking bets on how many times he will utter the word "folks." My guess is an even two dozen. I'll have paper and pen handy, keeping score.

Human Rights Report Card Out

2012-01-23T10:10:00.003-05:00

Human Rights Watch, the international watchdog agency, has just issued its annual report, with the main story of course being the Arab Spring, and how the international community is (or isn't) supporting the burgeoning democratic movements in repressive countries. You can download the whole report, or browse through it, country by country.

The United States. a putative democracy and thereby expected to lead the rest of the world by example, got an unsurprising dismal review. HRW did, however, take note of a few efforts at improvement under the Obama Administration:

In one of the few rights-protective immigration reforms in 2011, DHS (Dept of Homeland Security) announced that it will undertake case-by-case reviews of over 300,000 pending deportation cases and cases deemed to be low-priority will be administratively closed, allowing some potential deportees to remain in the country with temporary legal status. In identifying low-priority cases DHS will weigh non-citizens’ family and community ties, military service, and whether they arrived in the US as children.

According to a piece in the New York Times last week, a pilot program testing out the new leniency policy revealed approximately one of every six undocumented workers swept up by DHS has been granted a reprieve -- but is still barred from working and driving in the United States. So I guess limbo is better than hell, although not by much.

The report also noted that draconian immigration policies in Arizona and Alabama and a few other states have been only partially enjoined by the federal courts.

And despite having our first black president, institutional racism is still alive and well in America, especially in the criminal justice system. We have the largest prison system in the world and the highest per capita incarceration rate. From the report:

Whites and African Americans engage in drug offenses at roughly equivalent rates, and African Americans account for only about 13 percent of the US population, yet African Americans comprised about 33 percent of all drug arrests in 2009. Not surprisingly, higher arrest rates lead to higher incarceration rates. For example, 45 percent of inmates in state prisons for drug offenses in 2009 were African American; only 27 percent were white.
Persons of color comprise 77 percent of all youth serving life without parole sentences. And for the first time in the country’s history in 2011, people of Latin American origin made up the majority of federal prisoners in the US, due to the federal government’s increased focus on prosecuting unauthorized immigrants.

On a related note, there has been only the slightest improvement in humane treatment of prison populations:

In February 2011 the DOJ issued its long-overdue proposed standards to implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). While some standards meet the 2009 PREA Commission recommendations, several proposed standards are significantly weaker. For example, the proposed DOJ standards do not clearly require facilities to be staffed sufficiently to prevent, detect, and respond to the sexual abuse of prisoners. The standards would leave survivors of sexual assault without legal remedy because they were unable to comply with unduly strict internal grievance procedures. The proposed standards also explicitly exclude immigration detention facilities from coverage. At this writing the final PREA standards have not been issued.

And this year, three more states decided to do away with the practice of shackling pregnant prisoners, bringing the grand total to (only) 14 with such policies.

The report also takes note that more states are attempting to take away workers' collective bargaining rights, and that federal child labor laws are not regularly enforced as they pertain to migrant farm workers' children. (So Newt Gingrich is not so far out of the mainstream after all when he suggests it would be just fine if kids worked as janitors.) The United States is one of the few civilized nations that has no paid maternity leave policy, contributing to health problems in both mothers and infants.

The HIV infection rate continues to rise in this country, which HRW ascribes in part to states' bans on needle exchange programs for addicts.

Some improvements were noted in gay rights policies: Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed and the government is no longer defending the Defense of Marriage Act. New York State passed the Marriage Equality Act.

And last but not least, the Obama Administration gets poor grades for its indefinite detention policies and secretive drone killings abroad, and its continuing failure to investigate and prosecute torture by the Bush Administration.

Barry Does Disney Does Newt

2012-01-20T14:18:00.001-05:00

I am not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but I do love a string of coincidences -- or, in this case, a loosely tangled web of a week's worth of unfortunate events.

First, the timeline:

Saturday: The White House signals that it will not back SOPA and PIPA -- the twin bills meandering through Congress that would censor the internet and make it harder to do the cyber version of sneaking into a movie theater without paying.

Wednesday: a national day of protest and dissent against SOPA and PIPA. Congressional sponsors of the bills drop like flies. Hollywood millionaire ex-Senator Chris Dodd goes ballistic and says Big Entertainment will cut off Barry's Big Entertainment money. Waaaaaah.

Thursday: Barry goes to Disney World to ~~soothe Donald Duck's ruffled feathers~~ be a tourism shill and promote the theme park to rich people (not Americans). You see, the Disney people also had gone ballistic over the treason of its bought and paid for politicians running away from the anti-piracy bills that Disney helped pay for. Especially since Obama is the biggest single political recipient of Disney money. As a matter of fact, Disney donates to Democrats over Republicans two to one. WTF!!

Thursday Night: ABC (a Disney subsidiary) airs the juicy interview with the second Mrs. Ex-Newt. Newt goes ballistic.

Where does one even start? First, let me disabuse you of any notion that I am defending Newt Gingrich. I loathe everything about this dangerous, mean little man. He must never become president. But I find it strange that as soon as Newt started gaining on Mitt Romney in South Carolina this week, ABC/Disney suddenly has this big scoop of an interview with the former wife. (It is common knowledge that the Obama campaign would rather fight Mitt than nasty Newt any day.) The network execs were said to be absolutely agonizing over whether they should even run it, because they have consciences and stuff. But after about an hour, they started leaking out dribs and drabs of clips, and they ran the whole thing immediately after Thursday's debate. Which Newt had handily won. His smackdown of CNN's odious John King was worth the price of admission. These kinds of withering smackdowns are what Obama '12 can ill-afford.

Everybody was shocked, shocked, shocked that Newt wanted an open marriage. But there is only one problem with this scenario. Not only was this no scoop, it is very old news. Of course, people actually have to be readers to realize how stale this stuff is, so I guess the point is that few people bother to read in this Age d'Information. Especially those vaunted "swing" voters.

As John H. Richardson points out in an Esquire blogpost, Marianne Gingrich spilled her guts to him more than a year ago, leading to his own lengthy real scoop of an ignored article. And ABC/Disney is taking credit for its own blockbuster of non-originality? So now, it is serious journalism's turn to go ballistic:

Her portrayal of Gingrich (writes Richardson) was devastating, complex, nuanced, and compassionate. She held nothing back. And we continued talking after the piece was published, a conversation that continues (more on that in a moment.)

And so it's kind of funny, actually, seeing news that you broke a year and a half ago being blasted out on the Internet as some kind of world exclusive. Why, it's as if we're all amnesiacs. All last night and into today, alarmed headlines have blared across the masthead of the Drudge Report. SHOCK CLAIM: Newt moved for divorce just months after she had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.... Or: Gingrich Lacks Moral Character to Be President, Ex-Wife Says... Bitter Marianne Gingrich Unloads, Claims Newt Wanted Open Marriage... Or: Adviser: Marianne 'very bitter'...
Follow those links and you arrive at breathless stories about Marianne Gingrich's "first television appearance," which will be aired tonight on ABC. She will say that Gingrich "lacks the moral character to serve as President" because "his campaign positions on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family values do not square with what she saw during their 18 years of marriage."

That's Disneyfication for you. It's all about the family values glitter, glitz and glamour of forcing an old coot's dirty laundry down our throats. But
back to the Disney/Barry/DNC connection. Obama is a master at fence-straddling. I can just picture the conversation he had with his miffed Hollywood bundlers-not-lobbyists over his pretend defection from the piracy bills. (wink,nod..."It's an election year, so I can't be too obvious about helping you guys out till I'm safely back in the WH. This SOPA/PIPA thing, we just gotta kick the can down the road for a little while.... but how about I jet down to Orlando and do a giant commercial for you guys in the meantime.... and hey, how can your people help my people with the Newt problem?)

The Center for Responsive Politics has the whole scoop on the Disney Company's political heft and generous giving. It spent $3 million on lobbying Congress last year, mostly to pimp out PIPA/SOPA. (John Podesta, listed as one of the Disney lobbyists, is also the founder of Obama's favorite centrist think tank, the Center for American Progress). Disney has "officially" given $28,800 to Obama's re-election effort this cycle, with Rick Perry coming in with sloppy seconds of only $2500. And poor Mitt got only two grand from Mickey Mouse and friends. Newt got nada. Unless you count the free publicity Disney gave him last night.

And going back to Obama's Cinderella photo-op: the announced purpose of his Florida visit was to make it easier for rich foreigners to come here and drop their cash, being that about half of Americans are either in or close to poverty and theme parks are beyond their means. Isn't tourism promotion one of the main functions of dictators in Banana Republics? Defined by Wikipedia, a banana republic is "a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by the collusion between the State and favoured monopolies, whereby the profits derived from private exploitation of public lands is private property, and the debts incurred are public responsibility". Sound familiar?

One of the main profit drivers in third world economies is tourism. The rich foreigners self-indulging and spending their currency in Disney World need never see the surrounding squalor of Florida, with its blighted neighborhoods of foreclosed homes and destitute citizens and private jails full of minority victims of the War on Drugs. But with the increased tourism the president is touting and increased profits to his political backers, the upside (we are told) is that the cute Disney "cast members" might see a nickel or two extra trickled down in their wage-slave paychecks.

No word yet on when Obama might fly back down to Disney to dedicate its new Anti-Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Unhappy Birthday to You, Citizens United!

2012-01-19T12:34:00.002-05:00

Yet another Black Friday will dawn in America tomorrow. The infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision will enter its Terrible Twos and toddle its corpulent corporatist self into a third year of obscene existence.

More than a hundred raucous birthday parties will be hosted and attended by demonstrators protesting the unprecedented infusion of billions of dollars of democracy-destroying anonymous money into politics. From Move to Amend, the activist group which has spearheaded the drive for a constitutional amendment to overturn C.U. --

Inspired by our friends at Occupy Wall Street, and Dr. Cornel West, Move To Amend is planning bold action to mark the second anniversary of the infamous Citizens United v. FEC decision!

Follow the link above for a grab-bag of tools of the activist trade for tomorrow's day of dissent. Move to Amend has instructions for getting a permit, courthouse maps, constructing a freeway banner, making costumes, the lyrics to "The Corporate Personhood Song", even a skit to perform, complete with downloadable sound effects.

Occupy the Courts will be a one day occupation of Federal courthouses across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Friday January 20, 2012. Move to Amend volunteers across the USA will lead the charge on the judiciary which created — and continues to expand — corporate personhood rights.

Americans across the country are on the march, and they are marching OUR way. They carry signs that say, “Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT Speech!” And they are chanting those truths at the top of their lungs! The time has come to make these truths evident to the courts.

Approximately 110 events have been planned thus far. In New York City, Occupiers were appealing a denial of their permit request to gather at the Foley Square federal courthouse complex, on grounds that it would interfere with both a citizens' and judge's swearing-in ceremonies.

In Washington, D.C., participants will gather on the steps of the Supreme Court just before noon to perform a song and dance routine by "The Supremes" with a giant 28th Amendment sign as a backdrop.

It's estimated that the 2012 edition will go down in history as the most staggeringly expensive presidential campaign ever. It's already proving to be not so much a battle between two right of center puppet conservatives vetted by the oligarchy, but a true Battle of the Billionaire Oligarchs, with the prize going to the biggest spender -- who, thanks to the corrupt Supreme Court, can remain anonymous. The putative contenders and their campaigns are already being rendered superfluous -- a fact brilliantly satirized by Stephen Colbert and the SuperPac over which he has no legal control.

Celebrating Assassination from a Church Pulpit

2012-01-18T11:12:00.002-05:00

There has been plenty of criticism from the usual right-wing suspects about Obama Adviser Valerie Jarrett's campaign speech in Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church this past Sunday. (Martin Luther King Jr's real birthday). The complaints centered around her using a place of worship to blast Republican recalcitrance, and whether the sacred separation of church and state rule had been violated. Conservative pundits are calling for the Atlanta congregation to be taxed because of its long history of mixing politics and religion. Ebenezer even has the nerve to conduct regular voter registration drives within its holy walls! Big horrific deal.

But here is what the reactionaries aren't reacting to, and what lifestyle liberals are ignoring: Jarrett used a church pulpit to celebrate the assassination of Osama Bin Laden and the killings of other unnamed "terrorists." She co-opted King's message of peace and turned it into a pep rally for Obama's War on Terror and the cancer that is the Homeland Security State. As Secret Service agents hovered all around, Jarrett enthused about how her president has made everyone feel so safe. She made it fairly obvious that presidential chest-thumping will be a major part of the re-election strategy.

Am I the only one nauseated by this use of a Christian church to brag about killing people? Would Democrats be howling had Karl Rove given a church sermon on King's birthday to spin about the Iraq invasion and torture during W's re-election campaign? You betcha! MoveOn and the pragmatic progressive veal pen would have been crashing computers nationwide with pleas for money bombs and petition signatures.

Jonathan Turley, who has been among those legal eagles leading the charge against Obama's continuing evisceration of the Bill of Rights, found Jarrett's choice of words a tad strange as well:

At some point, this becomes a bit distasteful like a modern version of the old system of quartering enemies and sending his body parts around the country to thrill the populace. William Wallace was displayed in separate parts in Newcastle upon Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stirling, and Aberdeen. I have no grief for Osama bin laden who is no William Wallace and frankly I am glad he is no longer with us. However, the use of his killing as a campaign theme is a bit off-putting.

Turley says the conservatives do have a valid point about it being illegal for tax-exempt churches to be involved in polital campaigns.

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

But again, the Atlanta congregation's long tradition of political campaign involvement is nothing new. Whether Jarrett and the church ran afoul of a tax code should not be the main story. The main story is the co-optation of the original pulpit of a civil rights leader who abhorred war into a platform for the celebration of a president who has abused civil rights on a terrifying scale, and who is being given a pass because he belongs to the preferred political party.

Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic has written a trenchant piece asking why "Obamabots" are so insistent on focusing on the president's minor accomplishments and ignoring the big reality of his "scandalous transgressions against the rule of law." It echoes what Turley and Chris Hedges and precious few others have been saying.

Clip of the Jarrett "sermon" is here.

The Church Lady

Heads Up for White House Doublespeak

2012-01-17T11:38:00.004-05:00

How does a DINO president stay true to his hardcore fiscal conservatism and still run a populist re-election campaign in the age of OWS? It will be hard, but it doesn't mean he won't continue to try to pretend that we can all tighten our belts and prosper. He'll just have to mask the planned austerity with Hooverisms such as "prosperity is just around the corner and meantime you'll all have to starve because of Republicans while I tout jobs, jobs, jobs."

Or, as Stephen Colbert puts it in his satiric SuperPac slogan: "A Better Tomorrow Tomorrow."

The White House is ham-handedly attempting to ease the purist ideologues of the left into accepting the bullshit. First of all is today's leak that "the base" is not going to like his proposed budget, to be outlined at next week's SOTU speech. Reading between the lines in a report in The Hill this morning, it appears that the President will practice the fine art of doublespeak by attempting to translate spending cuts into jobs, jobs, jobs and economic growth. Anybody who reads Paul Krugman on a regular basis knows that you don't cut back government spending in an economic recession or depression. Obama will use the usual ploy of claiming his hands are tied because of that deal with the devil he made last summer during the debt ceiling negotiations, in which agreement was reached for a $1.047 trillion spending cap. The Hill's Alexander Bolton writes:

Obama staffers sought to present their budget plan as a glass half full. According to sources familiar with the briefings, they promised that the president will focus on jobs and the economy, instead of deficit-cutting, which dominated last year’s debate on Capitol Hill. Obama has signaled in recent weeks that he plans to run a populist reelection campaign. He will need to keep liberal activist and labor groups — important parts of the Democratic base — energized for his strategy to work.

Bolton reports that even though Obama has made vague suggestions for taxing financial institutions to increase revenue and reduce the deficit, the Administration is still adamantly opposed to a transaction tax on speculative trades. The reason? "Administration officials worry Republicans could frame the proposal as a tax on 401(k) retirement funds, a potentially damaging election-year charge".

Wow. Re-election trumps the public good. Who knew? So much for talking the populist talk. He is still walking the same old craven political walk. The curtain rises on Act II of Osawatomie Kabuki theatre.

The excuse about agreed-upon spending caps tying the hands of nouveau-populist Barack is pure malarkey. Ranking Democrat of the House Appropriations Committee Norm Dicks tells The Seattle Times that the automatic spending cuts due to take effect in the wake of the SuperCommittee fail are bad policy -- and that Republicans and Democrats may be close to reaching a deal to avoid them."Austerity isn't going to get people back to work," said Dicks, who ranks 10th in seniority among the 435 House members. "It's going to increase unemployment, and it's just so obvious."

Since Obama has vowed to veto any end-run around the triggers, it will be interesting to see if he succeeds in fiscal can-kicking until after the election. In the meantime, make sure you have fresh batteries in your bullshit detection meters in time for The Speech this Tuesday.

MLK Day/Open Thread

2012-01-16T11:45:00.006-05:00

He would have been 83 yesterday, but in order for Americans to get their three day weekend, the federal government officially honors the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the third Monday in January.

This year MLK is garnering more attention than usual. His long-delayed memorial in Washington was finally dedicated, just at about the same time the civil rights movement of the 21st Century -- Occupy -- was gearing up. The class war based on gross income inequality has entered the national political conversation. Civil rights are being sacrificed in the name of a trumped up War on Terror, War on Drugs, War on the 99% by the Oligarchy and the government duopoly.

Jonathan Turley has written a powerful op-ed called "10 Reasons Why America is No Longer the Land of the Free" in the Washington Post. Dr. King, you might recall, was hounded and spied upon by the government himself for his anti-war, pro-labor stance.

The Christian Science Monitor outlines how we can mark the day by making it a time set aside for service to others.

Chris Hedges marks the day by performing the public service of suing the president over the illegal and inhumane National Defense Authorization Act.

"How Fares the Dream?" asks Paul Krugman in a New York Times column. He writes "Goodbye Jim Crow, Hello Class System" -- to which I reply that Jim Crow is still lurking if we look all around us. (I copied my response-comment in the Comments below this post).

Finally, here is King's classic Letter from the Birmingham Jail:

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your 6-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a 5-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

Please share your own thoughts, along with more suggested reading.

(PS -- I have included the new Bill Moyers site in the Blogroll to your right. You can view his first show by clicking the link).

SOPA & PIPA Do the Capitol

2012-01-14T14:43:00.006-05:00

In the brothel that is Congress, there possibly has never been a more expensive pay-to-play romp than the marathon escapades of those high priced hookers known as Sopa and Pipa. The lobbyist pimps are raking in and forking over
the cash, and the voracious congressional johns just can't get enough. SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and her twin PIPA (Protect IP Act) seemingly have taken up permanent residence in the decadent chambers of the House and Senate, respectively. They are the 21st Century D.C. madams.

Sopa had originally been booked as a quickie earlier this fall, but bill sponsor Lamar Alexander (R-LA) abruptly pulled back on the scheduled vote, saying the process needed to be more drawn out to give more experts a chance to languish in the details. The process, with its endless parade of pro and con lobbyists and their fat wallets,was proving to be way too pleasurable, and could be extended even when Congress withdrew for its long winter break.

At first it appeared that a climactic vote this month might be inevitable. But the White House chimed in just this morning, urging more "study." (read: more lucrative can-kicking, more K Street pimps to help rewrite the legislation from scratch, more money for the bottomless partisan campaign war chests and individual bank accounts).

Sopa and Pipa, in case you haven't heard, were created by the Hollywood money machine, ostensibly to prevent illegal downloading of movies from foreign filesharing websites such as The Pirate Bay. From Wikipedia:

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

Opponents of the bills, and they are legion (mega-rich Google and Facebook among them), have a whole laundry list of complaints -- enactment would result in suppression of free speech; would constitute a threat to websites that host user content, leading to de facto government censorship without due process; would expose users of even legitimate uploaded content to potential criminal charges. Additionally, say critics, the proposals on their face are ineffectual against piracy. And then there's that lack of transparency we have come to expect under the current regime:

Brooklyn Law School professor Jason Mazzone warned, "Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation." (Wikipedia).

ProPublica, meanwhile, is living up to its name by launching a tool for us to track the tawdry exploits of Sopa and Pipa as they slink through the maze of soundproof rooms in the D.C. whorehouse. It's called SOPA Opera, and through it we can discover just how bipartisan the corruption truly is. Says creator Dan Nguyen:

SOPA Opera's tally of congressional supporters and opponents is based on factors including whether they've sponsored the legislation, whether they've voted for it in committee and their public statements about it. For each legislator, we're tracking what they've said or done so far about SOPA. We're also tracking campaign contributions to each legislator from the entertainment and Internet industries (using data from the Center for Responsive Politics).

Using the API and data from OpenSecrets [9] and the Center for Responsive Politics, we included the reported campaign contributions (as categorized by OpenSecrets [3]) from the "Movies/Music/TV" and "Computers/Internet" industries for the 2008 to 2010 election cycles. 2012 is not yet available through the OpenSecrets API yet. The totals here may differ compared to other SOPA-tracking sites because of the different timespans involved.
While many other groups, including labor unions and pharmaceutical companies, are also joining the SOPA/PIPA debate. We focus on the entertainment and computing industries because they have so much at stake financially and therefore have the biggest incentive to use money to influence politicians.

What's in your congressperson's wallet? Is your rep in SOPA or PIPA's little black book?

Speaking of which, at least one professional lady is very much against the anti-piracy legislation, fearing that it might have the nefarious and unintended purpose of shutting down her own website, called "Diary of an Escort." (Hear that, David Vitter? And no, I am not providing a link, even though the site is very discreet and tasteful and non-pornographic).

Lawmakers and lobbyists could take a tip from "Thierry", a pimp who dishes on the niceties:

Before the start of the session, it is very important for you to make sure you have the cash available for the beautiful lady (politician), not paying an escort (pol) upfront is very disrespectful. You should always make sure you have enough money to cover the time scheduled.... and some extra because you might find that you arrive you are so charmed.... you might want to spend more time with her then expected.
Under no circumstances should she have to ask you for her donation. Payment must be made before all sessions begin. Instead of handing her the money when she walks through the door, it is better etiquette to place the money in a visible envelope that is in an obvious spot where she can see it when she walks in.

Brisbane Trampled by Thundering Herd

2012-01-12T21:30:00.008-05:00

Poor Arthur Brisbane just can't get no nuance. In a column that critics are calling a parody straight out of The Onion, the New York Times public editor plaintively asked readers today if they think the paper should bother calling out lies. The commentariat, whom Brisbane has infamously derided in a past column as "the thundering herd", trampled him but good in their 200-plus universally scathing and outraged responses. By the time reader Denis N. alerted me to the column a few hours after it hit the site, comments had already been slammed shut by the shaken p.e.

Brisbane, apparently, was stunned that readers were stunned he had even needed to ask if reporters should be nit-picky in checking their facts and the veracity of those they quote. And he obviously thinks readers are just as stupid as they were a year ago when he wrote his "Thundering Herd" column* (a/k/a "Readers With Plenty to Say") Here is what he huffily emailed to media critic Jim Romanesko today:

I have to say I did not expect that so many people would interpret me to have asked only: should The Times print the truth and fact-check? Of course, The Times should print the truth, when it can be found, and fact-check. What I was trying to ask was whether reporters should always rebut dubious facts in the bodies of the stories they are writing. I was hoping for diverse and even nuanced responses to what I think is a difficult question....I often get well-reasoned complaints and questions from readers, but in this case a lot of people responded to a question I was not asking.

Take that, thundering herd! Artie gives you a D for conduct and effort, despite the fact that the Gray Lady has seen fit to reduce the length of reader responses to a paltry 1500 characters (three or four very short paragraphs), so nuance is kind of hard. Nuance is also totally unnecessary and inappropriate when responding to drivel. A quick eff you would have sufficed. Speaking of effort, a typical Arthur Brisbane Sunday column consists of cut and pasted letters from the readership. That's it. He slaps up the missives and does not even deign to respond. He usually receives but a handful of reader comments, so today's deluge might have had him sputtering.

Brisbane does have at least one semi-defender in the person of Esquire scribe Charles P. Pierce, who writes that reporters in this digital age are up against constant deadlines, cutthroat competition, and editors who often side with the lying liars. The bottom line trumps truth and accuracy:

Most newspapers -- most especially, the New York Times -- have forced upon their reporters what are called "ethics codes," but which, in reality, are speech codes written to prevent the beancounters and careerists from having to answer angry phone calls from wingnuts. I am not kidding -- under some of these abominations, a reporter literally can be disciplined for spouting off about, say, Willard Romney in a bar, if someone heard the reporter, and called the beancounter to complain. The campaign buses are filled now with young reporters who know full well that, given sufficient pressure from either inside or outside "the company," their bosses do not have their backs.

There is some truth(iness) in this. When I was working as a cub reporter at the dawn of time, when they still had manual typewriters, I got into big trouble once for being a bit too obsessed with veracity. I had the poor taste to write an article on a something I'd come across in the police blotter that morning: the son of a mayoral candidate running on a law and order platform was arrested on vandalism and burglary charges. Somehow my scoop slipped past the editor's mangle and got into print. The candidate stormed in, livid. I got a dressing-down from my boss for having done a nasty bitchy thing by not keeping a private family matter on the QT. In the end, it didn't matter: she won the election.

So, yeah... I can imagine Pinch Sulzberger's phone ringing off the hook because one of the bitchy reporters hurt Mitt Romney's feelings by calling him out on a fib or hundred. It's all about access, not alienating the advertisers and the rich and powerful -- and nuance. Journalists are as expendable as the wrapping for last night's fish.

Which is why I am perfectly happy to be a poor blogger in my dotage. People can complain all they want (and they do). But nobody can fire me.

*Art interviewed me for that piece. He made me the lede Elsie too! He even gave me his private cell phone number. I kept it, just in case I ever need a rich guy to bail me out of jail.

Rombama Theater

2012-01-11T20:08:00.003-05:00

You have to hand it to Newt Gingrich. Since the Democrats won't go for Mitt Romney's jugular, Gingrich will do it for them. The worst epithet I have ever heard Barack Obama use against Wall Street bankers is "fat cats". As he is wont to frequently point out, the Wall Street kitties have a lot of business savvy and didn't actually do anything illegal.

Not Newt. He has laid into Romney like a rabid mountain lion disemboweling a pampered Angora. Gingrich does severe damage, calling him a vulture capitalist job killer in the withering tone that only he can pull off. In a few days he has dared to go where the Obama crowd has thus far feared to tread, succeeding in putting the entire private equity industry on the defensive. Not so Obama, who probably will remain purring and preening for the primary duration. Even DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not known to be a shrinking violet, will only call Romney a "job cremator." Capitalist pig is, unfortunately not in the neo-lib capitalist lexicon.

Newt's characterization, while vicious, is entirely accurate. Here's the famous infomercial funded by a NewtPac now playing in South Carolina. It's called "When Romney Came to Town" I learned a thing or two -- for instance, I had no idea Bain Capital was behind the destruction of the Kaybee Toy Store chain! That makes him a hater of little children and teddy bears as well as a greedhead who makes Gordon Gekko look beneficent. I guess Newt Gingrich could well be called the DNC's useful idiot.

Of course, if you believe as I do that the Rombama match-up is just more Kabuki presented for our torture by the oligarchy, Romney is simply playing Bad Cop to Barry's Good Cop. Mitt is fulfilling his duty of calling Obama a European Socialist, so the president can blithely defend himself as a PragProg (pragmatic progressive, a/k/a lifestyle liberal and a fiscal conservative) stealing OWS rhetoric and hoping to get away with it. In this interview with Matt Lauer today, Romney presumes to hand the Occupy crown to Obama on a velvet jewelry tray:

ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as ‘envy,’ though?
ROMNEY: Yes, I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.

He is probably right, because the real story and the real power is with Occupy Wall Street. The barriers to Zuccotti Park have been removed and the protesters have moved back into their space. The northeast winter has been very good to this movement. Not one flake of snow on the streets. Membership in Climate Change World has its privileges for the underprivileged.

As Matt Taibbi put it in a recent blogpost:

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.
In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

According to The White House, Obama was to have flown from Washington to Chicago tonight for three separate fundraisers (including one at the home of a private equity firm mogul) -- and then jet back home in time for bed. It is estimated that he is already, this early in campaign season, spending between 10 and 20% of his working hours speechifying and canoodling with his rich bundlers-who-are-not-lobbyists.