If you can't be with the Stalker you love, then love the Stalker you're with. If you like your Stalker, you can keep your Stalker. Sigh.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Bill & Emma: What Lies Beneath Them
New York Times columnist Bill Keller and his lovely wife Emma are being rightly castigated for their twin columns castigating a woman suffering from Stage 4 breast cancer. You can read all about it here, here, here and here.... or wherever good journalism is sold without a paywall.
The gist is this: Bill and Emma, as members of the elite ruling class, are miffed that a mere blogger named Lisa Adams is horning in on the cancer discourse. When Angelina Jolie underwent a bilateral mastectomy and reconstructive surgery (as did Emma Gilbey-Keller) it was golden fodder for a New York Times op-ed and worldwide celebrations of her bravery. It's the bright-siding of cancer, and the miracles of technology usually only available to the very wealthy, the very well-connected, and the very insured.
When Lisa Adams Tweets about her unrelenting pain and how it feels better to be cuddled by a volunteer therapy dog at Sloan-Kettering, Bill Keller demands to know what it's costing him. Because when it comes to "entitlements" for ordinary people, he gets a real bee in his bonnet, as evidenced by his entire privileged body of work. A prime example is this piece of drivel, in which the entitled jerk calls the lesser people entitled jerks for wanting medical care and a secure retirement.
The snobbery of the Kellers is nothing new. What's new is that they finally crossed the line and aimed their unrelenting disdain at the wrong person. They kicked someone when she was not only down, but dying. They morphed from Marie Antoinette into the Marquis de Sade in one fell swoop.
Bill and Emma are a power couple of the New Gilded Age. He is the multimillionaire son of the former CEO of Chevron. Emma is no slouch either. A member in good standing of the British Peerage, she hails from the Gilbey Gin family and used to date Secretary of State John Kerry, himself a Boston Brahmin descendent of the Forbes Family of Chinese opium traders. Emma's cousin was a paramour of Princess Diana, whom he notoriously called Squidgy in a hacked and hilarious phone conversation.
Getting the surreal picture yet? To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Bill and Emma Keller are different from you and me. They are very, very rich, and very, very weird.
Julian Fellowes might even use CancerGate as inspiration for an episode of Downton Abbey. When the scullery maid gets run over by a truck and writes a best-selling memoir of her ordeal, Lord and Lady Grantham peevishly react by self-publishing a piece in The London Review of Books. They are veddy veddy miffed, because M'Lady had self- published her own literary account of that mishap in her Bentley only last year. And it just languished in the bargain bin at Selfridge's! This.... Cannot.... Be. It is a slap in the face to the whole established order of things.
So let Lisa Adams rest assured. She is just the latest victim of the serial rampant concern-trolling of the Keller Family. She devalued the Keller Family Values without even realizing it. And for that, she had to be punished by The Keller Family.
Back when he was still executive editor of the Gray Lady, Bill Keller would engage in the occasional noblesse-obliging with the hoi polloi. But when one hapless reader had the effrontery to ask him about his personal life, he let all his carefully-tempered disdain burst right out of his coddled thin skin:
Or, as Dean Baker put it, "The New York Times can't find credible columnists, so they hired Bill Keller."
The gist is this: Bill and Emma, as members of the elite ruling class, are miffed that a mere blogger named Lisa Adams is horning in on the cancer discourse. When Angelina Jolie underwent a bilateral mastectomy and reconstructive surgery (as did Emma Gilbey-Keller) it was golden fodder for a New York Times op-ed and worldwide celebrations of her bravery. It's the bright-siding of cancer, and the miracles of technology usually only available to the very wealthy, the very well-connected, and the very insured.
When Lisa Adams Tweets about her unrelenting pain and how it feels better to be cuddled by a volunteer therapy dog at Sloan-Kettering, Bill Keller demands to know what it's costing him. Because when it comes to "entitlements" for ordinary people, he gets a real bee in his bonnet, as evidenced by his entire privileged body of work. A prime example is this piece of drivel, in which the entitled jerk calls the lesser people entitled jerks for wanting medical care and a secure retirement.
The snobbery of the Kellers is nothing new. What's new is that they finally crossed the line and aimed their unrelenting disdain at the wrong person. They kicked someone when she was not only down, but dying. They morphed from Marie Antoinette into the Marquis de Sade in one fell swoop.
Bill and Emma are a power couple of the New Gilded Age. He is the multimillionaire son of the former CEO of Chevron. Emma is no slouch either. A member in good standing of the British Peerage, she hails from the Gilbey Gin family and used to date Secretary of State John Kerry, himself a Boston Brahmin descendent of the Forbes Family of Chinese opium traders. Emma's cousin was a paramour of Princess Diana, whom he notoriously called Squidgy in a hacked and hilarious phone conversation.
Getting the surreal picture yet? To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Bill and Emma Keller are different from you and me. They are very, very rich, and very, very weird.
Julian Fellowes might even use CancerGate as inspiration for an episode of Downton Abbey. When the scullery maid gets run over by a truck and writes a best-selling memoir of her ordeal, Lord and Lady Grantham peevishly react by self-publishing a piece in The London Review of Books. They are veddy veddy miffed, because M'Lady had self- published her own literary account of that mishap in her Bentley only last year. And it just languished in the bargain bin at Selfridge's! This.... Cannot.... Be. It is a slap in the face to the whole established order of things.
So let Lisa Adams rest assured. She is just the latest victim of the serial rampant concern-trolling of the Keller Family. She devalued the Keller Family Values without even realizing it. And for that, she had to be punished by The Keller Family.
Back when he was still executive editor of the Gray Lady, Bill Keller would engage in the occasional noblesse-obliging with the hoi polloi. But when one hapless reader had the effrontery to ask him about his personal life, he let all his carefully-tempered disdain burst right out of his coddled thin skin:
Q. I think a lot of young journalists and editors, myself included, are curious about what a day in the shoes of Bill Keller is like. Can you walk us through a normal work day for The Times's executive editor?
— Devin Banerjee, Stanford, Calif.
A. Really? You'd be interested in that? Well, I think my life is pretty much what you would imagine it to be.
I wake up most mornings to the telephone, invariably some world leader or international celebrity seeking my counsel. Lately it's been a lot of President Obama — again with the damn puppy? — but sometimes it's Richard Holbrooke to pick my brain about Afghanistan, or Bruce Springsteen asking if it isn't time for another Arts and Leisure cover story about Bruce Springsteen. The valet brings breakfast with the handful of newspapers that have not gone out of business. In the limo on the way to the office, I help Warren Buffett sort out his portfolio and give trading advice to George Steinbrenner, not that he ever listens.
At the office, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and I have our morning conference call with Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — plus Fidel Castro when he's compos mentis. Dictating the world's agenda entails a lot of conference calls. I've been encouraging the cabal to save some money by using iChat, but first we have to persuade Putin to wear a shirt.
Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it's my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O'Reilly. He's really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He's totally in on the joke. After a couple of cosmopolitans, he does a wicked impression of Ann Coulter. We usually spend the lunch working up outlandish things he can say about The New York Times and making fun of Fox executives. (Once Rupert Murdoch showed up for a lunch date, and O'Reilly had to hide under the table for half an hour.)
I spend most of the afternoon writing all the stories for the front page. (You knew those were all pseudonyms, right?) I write Tom Friedman's column, too, but, I swear, Bill Kristol wrote all his own stuff.
By then it's time for drinks and dinner. If you're reading this, Julian, I think the duck tonight. I had the foie gras for lunch. And no time for dessert. The Secretary of State is coming by to give me a back rub.That Bill Keller sure is one funny guy. His humor never fails to deliver a jab at the lesser people under the guise of satiric self-deprecating repartee.
Or, as Dean Baker put it, "The New York Times can't find credible columnists, so they hired Bill Keller."
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| Bill & Emma Keller Named Fun Couple of 2014 |
Monday, January 13, 2014
Will Nature, Young People and Future Generations Forgive Us?
By Jay - Ottawa
Earth
scientists have documented five mass extinctions. In simple terms extinction works like this: A
new world blooms, life flourishes for a while, a fatal problem develops and
most of that epoch’s creatures are wiped out.
Forever. Sometimes the die off is
swift, sometimes slow but relentless.
Despite
a handful of extinctions, Earth hasn’t turned into a Moon or a Mars. The vital spark has survived –– so far ––
through a few small, base creatures who survive one epoch to reanimate another
world full of life –– but always a new world that never quite replicates the flora
and fauna of the previous epoch. Humans
should take note: after a mass extinction, millions of years go by in recovery
before the Earth is inherited by different plant specimens and a different zoo of
creatures. For most vertebrates ––
and that would include the complex, high maintenance human race –– there is no
second chance of a comeback post extinction, anymore than there was for the
dinosaurs. If the number of a species is
reduced to zero by a mass extinction, too bad.
One chance per species per epoch seems to be the rule.
In
geological circles the most profound mass extinction was the Permian-Triassic
Extinction Event, also known as “The Great Dying.” It began a little over 250 million years ago
and unwound very slowly over the course of 80,000 years. By the time it bottomed out, 95% of all
marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species were gone.1
The
trigger for the Great Dying was not the impact of a big comet but rising global
temperatures. It took about ten million
years after Permian for the Earth to recover its healthy equilibrium for the
evolution of new life in abundance.
Ancestors
of the human race emerged around 1.8 million years ago in the Pleistocene Era
of the Quaternary Period. Around 200,000
years ago, evolution gave rise to homo
sapiens and, today, we humans number 7 billion. Since the Industrial Revolution, the human
race has rapidly developed the means to speed up its own encounter with
extinction –– either through the exchange of nuclear blasts in a war to end all
wars or through the insatiable pursuit of abundance during times of peace. Nuclear winter or global warming, take your
pick. Either calamity would set up
another Great Dying, our own.
Earth
scientists have begun sounding alarms in their journals. Our immediate descendants, they say, are at
risk of a lifetime of hardship followed by the extinction of our species. Once the buildup to extinction approaches a
tipping point, there will be too little time to take radical corrective action
on a global scale. Furthermore, the
environment is so complex it is impossible to know at exactly what level of
environmental stress runaway cascades will take over and bring us to the point
of “game over.”
What
do we care about the past five extinction events? Well, it seems “[w]e are currently in the
midst of what most scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in planetary
history, with between 150 and 200 species going extinct daily, a pace 1,000 times greater than the ‘natural’ or
‘background’ extinction rate.”2 This time our
human race and the other creatures of our
garden world are on the line.
Nevertheless, denial statements abound.
A sampling:
“Climate change is a hoax.”
“The market
place will make necessary adjustments in time.”
“It’s
absurd to think the human race will be included along with the extinction
off lesser creatures.”
“Fossil
fuels are indispensable: they create jobs and support
our
standard of living.”
“Maybe
we should do something, but nothing too radical and abrupt."
If
you suppose people who dismiss climate change are misinformed and short
sighted, you’re right. It may come as no
surprise to learn that political leaders are often beholden to special
interests, not the long-term interests of the larger society. Governments around the globe are presently
doing tepid little things, or nothing, in response to alarms about environmental
disaster. In fact, most advanced
countries are doing worse than nothing
by implementing policies that are totally in agreement with climate change
deniers. It is time we hold our
political class accountable to insure that government does not become the enemy
of society.
As
NASA’s James Hansen reminds us, nations are aggressively facilitating activity that
will intensify catastrophic climate
change and hasten the next generation’s encounter with extinction scenarios:
“Humans are now the main cause of changes of Earth’s atmospheric composition and thus the drive for future climate change…. More than 170 nations have agreed on the need to limit fossil fuel emissions to avoid dangerous human-made climate change, as formalized in the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, the stark reality is that global emissions have accelerated and new efforts are underway to massively expand fossil fuel extraction by drilling to increasing ocean depths and into the Arctic, squeezing oil from tar sands and tar shale, hydro-fracking to expand extraction of natural gas, developing exploitation of methane hydrates, and mining of coal via mountaintop removal…. The growth rate of fossil fuel emissions increased from 1.5%/year during 1980–2000 to 3%/year in 2000–2012, mainly because of increased coal use.”3
Extreme
global weather events are becoming more common and contributing to major
problems. Climate change is severely stressing plant and animal life
today. Fresh water is more scarce today.
The health of the oceans is declining as
they become more acid, anoxic and polluted and, because of rapid ice melt at
the poles and higher elevations, the oceans are rising to levels endangering
hundreds of millions of people living in coastal zones. At this pace of environmental destruction, crop
failures, displacement, famine and social chaos on a global scale could be upon
us within decades.
“Arctic sea ice end-of-summer minimum area, although variable from year to year, has plummeted by more than a third in the past few decades, at a faster rate than in most models, with the sea ice thickness declining a factor of four faster than simulated in … climate models. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets began to shed ice at a rate, now several hundred cubic kilometers per year, which is continuing to accelerate. Mountain glaciers are receding rapidly all around the world with effects on seasonal freshwater availability of major rivers.
The hot dry subtropical climate belts have expanded as the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere cooled, contributing to increases in the area and intensity of drought and wildfires. The abundance of reef-building corals is decreasing at a rate of 0.5–2%/year, at least in part due to ocean warming and possibly ocean acidification caused by rising dissolved CO2. More than half of all wild species have shown significant changes in where they live and in the timing of major life events. Mega-heatwaves, such as those in Europe in 2003, the Moscow area in 2010, Texas and Oklahoma in 2011, Greenland in 2012, and Australia in 2013 have become more widespread with the increase demonstrably linked to global warming…. These growing climate impacts, many more rapid than anticipated and occurring while global warming is less than 1°C, imply that society should reassess what constitutes a ‘dangerous level’ of global warming.”4.
Those
of us who are old may not be stung too badly by climate change. But a growing number of scientific papers
indicate that young people –– the younger generation walking around now, our
children and their children –– will be severely affected throughout their lives
unless the massive contribution to global warming by the human race is reversed
–– not slowed, not stopped, but reversed –– very soon. Reversed before key indicators reach “tipping
points,” which by definition are irreversible on the human timescale.
To
date, big corporations have not begun to reduce their contributions to plumes of
CO2 and methane, which are being released into the already saturated
atmosphere. “[C]arbon stays in the climate system for hundreds of thousands of
years. Thus fossil fuel carbon is the
crucial human input that must be limited.”5
Dare
we interrupt corporate CEOs busy in further saturating the environment with
toxins and waste for the short-term benefit of their stockholders? Dare we insist that political leaders work in
the interests of society, and not so much in the interests of their backdoor
paymasters in the corporate and financial world? How much longer can we afford to stand on the
sidelines waiting for someone else to take life-saving initiatives to protect
the coming generation, not to mention the animal, plant and insect life on
which we all depend?
Now
is the time to begin your “planet saving” lifestyle. Plant fruit trees, recycle all you can,
compost, install low wattage bulbs, use water twice: the water that washed your
salad greens can then water your indoor plants; install rain barrels to catch rain
water to water your garden; purchase local produce and avoid produce that
requires shipping from other countries.
It has been well documented that if all families around the world were to consume
like a “frugal” American family, we would need the resources of three earths.
If all the families of the world were to consume like a “typical” American
family, we would need the resources six earths.6
Can there be any question that current
levels of consumption in advanced economies are excessive and unsustainable?
Don‘t
stand by waiting for Washington, Peking
or Paris to do the right thing. It’s up
to you to act with your neighbors.
Organizations near you are working responsibly to reverse suicidal
corporate and government policies that are herding civilization down the path
to extinction. Get involved with an
environmental effort, like the
anti-fracking movement, and take
responsible action to save what’s left of the Good Earth. The human race is facing nothing less than an
existential threat. Intergenerational
justice calls you to get involved now to save our young people, the children of
their children and Nature itself.
FOOTNOTES
2 Dahr Jamail,
“The Climate Change Score Card.” Italics
added.
3 Hansen J. et
al., “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of carbon
emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature”
4 Hansen, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’”
5 Hansen, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’”
6 The number of worlds needed to sustain consumption
varies from source to source, depending on methodologies and timeframes. A good place to begin comparing national
footprints is here:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/Sunday, January 12, 2014
Poverty Gold
President Obama has marked the 50th Anniversary of LBJ's War on Poverty speech with yet another cynical dog whistle to Wall Street. In announcing the formation of "Promise Zones" in five carefully selected communities, Obama effectively assured the ruling class that their record windfalls will continue, unimpeded and unabated. There's gold in them thar blighted hills and dales, so the free market is cordially invited to line its pockets from so-called Poverty Pockets.
As CounterPunch's Mike Whitney so saliently observes (h/t AnneEnigma), Obama's promise zones are nothing more than corporate plantations designed to exploit the poor under the guise of helping them. And as I mentioned in my response to Paul Krugman's latest column, praising the pseudo-progressive War on Poverty:
If there's anything that CEOs crave, it's that the two right wings just get along and do what's best for CEOs. And Obama was only too happy to oblige last week, inviting both Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell to his latest staged production. Their state (Kentucky) is host to one of the five Promise Zones, and the two GOPers beamed their approval of Obama's plantation plan, which includes tax credits to businesses that, in theory, would trickle down toslaves residents providing all that cheap new labor.
Obama must have made them even happier when he surrounded himself with a backdrop of dark-skinned "those people" from Harlem, obligingly dog-whistling his contempt for them through jokes and remarks about their physical appearances. He singled out one young man for faint praise by quipping, "I used to have a haircut like that," before noting that the youth had come from a family of losers (including the demonized single mom, of course) before being saved by a charter school. He made sure that Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell know that these kids will not be getting government handouts, but trickle-down corporate hand-ups. And only if they work hard and free themselves from the Culture of Dependency.
Obama even told a bald-faced lie about charter schools: "Last year," he said, "a study found that students who win a spot in one of the charter schools score higher on standardized tests than those who don't in a neighborhood where higher education was once just something that other people did."
The truth is just the opposite. As education historian/activist Diane Ravitch points out, studies show that students from for-profit charter schools in New York City actually score lower on standardized tests than do those attending traditional public schools, with their better-paid unionized teachers. So I can't help but suspect that Obama's praise of charter schools, and New York City charter schools like the Harlem Children's Zone in particular, is also a subtle dig at Bill de Blasio. The new mayor ran on a campaign of stemming the growth of the charters.
And of course it is no accident that Geoffrey Canada was Obama's guest of honor at Poverty Fest. Founder of the Harlem charter, Canada is partnering with his college classmate, billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, in the plutocratic campaign to dismantle the New Deal based on the discredited "generational theft" theory. Last year, before embarking on a college tour to convince young people that Grandma is robbing them blind to hide the truth that Wall Street is robbing them blind, the bipartisan duo wrote an op-ed in (where else?) The Wall Street Journal:
(Obama, for his part, has not removed the Chained CPI plan for cutting Social Security and impoverishing seniors and survivors and veterans from his proposed budget. And the Dems are "pleading" with him to abandon the idea... out of selfless concern for their own electoral chances, of course.)
I'm actually kind of surprised that Obama didn't also give a shout-out to Druckenmiller at his performance last week. I'm also kind of surprised he didn't give a shout-out to their mutual friend, Chris Christie, whom Drucky is busy defending as a "once in a generation leader." I think Drucky is getting kind of confused over that whole Generation thing, don't you? I think he probably meant to say that Christie is a Thief for All Generations.
Meanwhile, Obama further reassured Wall Street that he is on their side by announcing he'll be inviting CEOs to the White House "not once, but twice!" this month so they can present their own ideas and represent their own front in the War On Poverty, a k a War on the Poor. Making poverty pockets attractive to big donor pockets is his highest priority.
"Thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of the American people, the economy is recovering," Obama hilariously proclaimed. (Austerity worked!). "And our businesses are booming."
He apparently did not see fit to burst the propaganda balloon by explaining that income disparity has widened to record levels under his personal watch. As a matter of fact, on the same day as his speech, the Census Bureau announced that fully one third of the American people had fallen below the poverty level for periods lasting at least two months during the first three years of his administration.
Meanwhile, the beatings will continue until morale improves. All Obama has to do is reach inside his cheap plastic tub for an unlimited supply of his fake buttery spread, slathering it with abandon over every social ill.
As CounterPunch's Mike Whitney so saliently observes (h/t AnneEnigma), Obama's promise zones are nothing more than corporate plantations designed to exploit the poor under the guise of helping them. And as I mentioned in my response to Paul Krugman's latest column, praising the pseudo-progressive War on Poverty:
If the erstwhile party of LBJ thinks that advocating for the poor is a winning political strategy, they sure have a funny way of showing it. Senate Dems just "compromised" with the GOP yet again, agreeing to cut another $9 billion from the food stamp program over the next decade, thus condemning a million more people to life-threatening hunger in the richest nation on earth.
Even the proposed deal to extend long-term unemployment benefits would hinge on extending the Sequester (another plutocratic front in the war on the poor) for another year.
It's the same old, same old: the millionaires in Congress aim to help the poor by robbing the poor. And they're not even trying to hide their true motivation, which is to protect their own pampered hides at the polls. The good cop/bad cop routine is wearing thin for people getting more disgusted by the day.
According a Gallup poll, 42% of voters now identify as independent. This has nothing to do with people's desire for "bipartisanship" and everything to do with the growing rejection of both corporate wings of the Money Party.
All they offer is an insulting $10 an hour minimum wage, and cynical "promise zones" filled with charter schools and tax breaks for businesses in "poverty pockets".
When it comes to the War on Poverty, the politicians are mostly AWOL. So let's give the slackers a dishonorable discharge. and become active draftees in our own war. Our survival depends on it.And Obama's own political survival depends on spewing the same propaganda over and over and over again for the next three years, hoping that Goebbels' advice (that the constant repetition of mendacity breeds belief) will also work out for him and both corporate branches of the uniparty. If Obama keeps insisting that income inequality is the defining issue of our time, maybe he'll convince a couple of rubes that he actually plans to do anything about it.
If there's anything that CEOs crave, it's that the two right wings just get along and do what's best for CEOs. And Obama was only too happy to oblige last week, inviting both Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell to his latest staged production. Their state (Kentucky) is host to one of the five Promise Zones, and the two GOPers beamed their approval of Obama's plantation plan, which includes tax credits to businesses that, in theory, would trickle down to
Obama must have made them even happier when he surrounded himself with a backdrop of dark-skinned "those people" from Harlem, obligingly dog-whistling his contempt for them through jokes and remarks about their physical appearances. He singled out one young man for faint praise by quipping, "I used to have a haircut like that," before noting that the youth had come from a family of losers (including the demonized single mom, of course) before being saved by a charter school. He made sure that Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell know that these kids will not be getting government handouts, but trickle-down corporate hand-ups. And only if they work hard and free themselves from the Culture of Dependency.
Obama even told a bald-faced lie about charter schools: "Last year," he said, "a study found that students who win a spot in one of the charter schools score higher on standardized tests than those who don't in a neighborhood where higher education was once just something that other people did."
The truth is just the opposite. As education historian/activist Diane Ravitch points out, studies show that students from for-profit charter schools in New York City actually score lower on standardized tests than do those attending traditional public schools, with their better-paid unionized teachers. So I can't help but suspect that Obama's praise of charter schools, and New York City charter schools like the Harlem Children's Zone in particular, is also a subtle dig at Bill de Blasio. The new mayor ran on a campaign of stemming the growth of the charters.
And of course it is no accident that Geoffrey Canada was Obama's guest of honor at Poverty Fest. Founder of the Harlem charter, Canada is partnering with his college classmate, billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, in the plutocratic campaign to dismantle the New Deal based on the discredited "generational theft" theory. Last year, before embarking on a college tour to convince young people that Grandma is robbing them blind to hide the truth that Wall Street is robbing them blind, the bipartisan duo wrote an op-ed in (where else?) The Wall Street Journal:
Yet, together, we recognize several hard truths: Government spending levels are unsustainable. Higher taxes, however advisable or not, fail to come close to solving the problem. Discretionary spending must be reduced but without harming the safety net for our most vulnerable, or sacrificing future growth (e.g., research and education). Defense and homeland security spending should not be immune to reductions. Most consequentially, the growth in spending on entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare—must be curbed.
(snip)
The government has an obligation, of course, to support needy seniors. But this pension system is ripe for common-sense reforms, including changing eligibility ages and benefit structures for those with greater means, ridding the Social Security disability program of pervasive fraud, and removing disincentives for those who would rather work in their later years.
I love the way these guys portray ordinary people trying to protect the safety net as "powerful vested interests" who not only want to snatch the food from the mouths of children, but are unfairly preventing tired older people from working till they drop. Plus, to think that retirees are stealing more assets than the Surveillance State and the War on Terror! Grandma is worse than the NSA and predator drones in her greedy quest for shelter and medical care. Who knew?Powerful, vested interests portray reformers as avowed enemies of seniors. But, the status quo is, in fact, tantamount to saddling school-age children with more debt, weaker economic growth, and fewer opportunities for jobs and advancement.
(Obama, for his part, has not removed the Chained CPI plan for cutting Social Security and impoverishing seniors and survivors and veterans from his proposed budget. And the Dems are "pleading" with him to abandon the idea... out of selfless concern for their own electoral chances, of course.)
I'm actually kind of surprised that Obama didn't also give a shout-out to Druckenmiller at his performance last week. I'm also kind of surprised he didn't give a shout-out to their mutual friend, Chris Christie, whom Drucky is busy defending as a "once in a generation leader." I think Drucky is getting kind of confused over that whole Generation thing, don't you? I think he probably meant to say that Christie is a Thief for All Generations.
Meanwhile, Obama further reassured Wall Street that he is on their side by announcing he'll be inviting CEOs to the White House "not once, but twice!" this month so they can present their own ideas and represent their own front in the War On Poverty, a k a War on the Poor. Making poverty pockets attractive to big donor pockets is his highest priority.
"Thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of the American people, the economy is recovering," Obama hilariously proclaimed. (Austerity worked!). "And our businesses are booming."
He apparently did not see fit to burst the propaganda balloon by explaining that income disparity has widened to record levels under his personal watch. As a matter of fact, on the same day as his speech, the Census Bureau announced that fully one third of the American people had fallen below the poverty level for periods lasting at least two months during the first three years of his administration.
Meanwhile, the beatings will continue until morale improves. All Obama has to do is reach inside his cheap plastic tub for an unlimited supply of his fake buttery spread, slathering it with abandon over every social ill.
 |
| You're In the Zone.... the Twilight Zone |
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Translation/caveat: Since every man, woman and child on the face of the planet is considered a threat to the security of the United Stasi unless proven otherwise ex post facto, the spying and the cyber-stalking will continue.
Other Orwellian tidbits in the speech: The NSA probably maybe won't continue storing all your communications, but rest assured that all your communications will continue to be stored. The mystery bureaucracy storing all your communications is yet to be determined, and will no doubt be handsomely funded by a black budget free from Congressional oversight.
Oh, and there will be no more secrecy unless "we" determine that there is a need for secrecy.
As I commented on a New York Times preview of the president's speech,
And speaking of cynicism, people noticed that Obama chose to give his speech defending the "patriots" of the NSA on the 54th anniversary of Ike's famous farewell speech warning of the impending Military-Industrial Complex and urging citizens to be vigilant against the anti-democratic machinations of our leaders. It was quite telling that Obama urged no such thing on the citizens whom he has the privilege of serving. His speech was strident, bellicose, defensive and paternalistic.
Just as cynical, in my view, is the fact that Obama delivered his creepy veiled threat of a speech mid-way through what he himself just proclaimed "National Stalking Awareness Month." Wrote the president:
Thanks to Edward Snowden (whom Obama peevishly refused to talk about in his speech, other than to seemingly blame the Snowden revelations for his own inability to quit droning all those brown terrorist people to death), all Americans now recognize the unmistakable signs and evidence of their own government stalking them. (Not to mention the relatively innocuous but nonetheless annoying email spam from the White House Propaganda Shop, the constant intrusion of Barack Obama on our TV screens, the rampant spammy fund-raising appeals from the Organizing for Action Obama Legacy campaign.)
A growing number of people are daring to acknowledge right out loud that the NSA is a criminal enterprise. Victims are suffering from anxiety as a result -- especially journalists and would-be whistleblowers. Like Snowden, the heroes exposing government crimes will be forced to move, chased and hounded by USA Mega-Stalker to the ends of the earth, till the end of their lives. There are even hit squads of Stalker Helpers who have publicly vowed to put a bullet in Snowden's brain.
So by all means, go ahead and believe Obama as he promises to create secure, supportive communities.... with a CCTV camera on every corner, antennae in every computer and beady little cyber-eyes on every last private email, medical report and bank statement.
And the lying continues right along with the harassment. Obama today once again claimed that the NSA "consistently follows protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people. They’re not abusing authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your emails."
Ummm.... As ProPublica points out in an article, posted only hours before the latest mendacity outbreak,
The Stalker-in-Chief must get so damned frustrated trying to drill into our heads that there's any difference between the NSA Stalkers and the Bad Stalkers, who exist only to frighten and harrass the womenfolk on the mean streets of America and throughout global cyberspace. If a civilian does it, it's a crime. If a spy does it, it's patriotism, with only the occasional, totally unintentional "mistake that was made" in the name of love. For your own good and protection, of course.