Another Nixon or Johnson, I think not.

So I was listening to Daniel Ellsberg on Gritt TV from Firedoglake. He was talking about how it was possible to drive first Johnson and then Nixon from power and I started to think that those who really pushed the whole thing, the Post and the NYT were and are all members of the power elite and were the pretty people the people who swung with the power and the other pretty people in D.C. The people the Daily Howler calls the Heathers. The school click except translated from ruling high school class to ruling in Washington. In just the same way.

Look at Johnson and Nixon. What were their real crimes? They were not as pretty or photogenic as the Kennedys or later the Reagans, now were they. I am wondering if our country hasn't been ruled since the middle 60s at least by a petty puerile little group of people whose favorite song would be I'm In With the In Crowd. So perhaps we have a new National Anthem?

UPDATE: I'd forgotten this.

We're Doomed

I was going to post about this book I just finished: The Black Death by John Hatcher and how some aspects of the period immediately after the first incidence of the Death in England seems uncomfortably like today. Mainly the inability of the ruling class to see past their preconceived ideas. The idea that the cause of the Death was the sinfulness of the people. Or the desires of the poor for more (which amounted to sinfulness in the minds of the clergy and wealthy), but more at a later time.

At any rate perhaps classic comedy is where we are at right now or at least that is the way it seems, except you know, for all the deaths and bankruptcies.

I've been sick for the last week and when I'm not feeling really bad I'm just feeling really tired. I've been to the doctor and gotten some meds and if they don't start working better soon, I'm going to go back. The last time I felt like this for an extended time I had pneumonia.

However, I just wanted to mention Obama and Emanual's HCRm which from what I see at Firedoglake among other places seems to increase the penalty for not buying insurance, keep the massive institutional supports for Big PhHRMA and the insurance companies and attempt to completely do away with a public option.

I know what they are accomplishing, but what I wonder is what they think they are accomplishing. With that thought I am out of here for the day or night, nite nite.

Trial Decision

OK, so the judge did make a decision and it is resoundingly guilty on all four counts. As an aside he said that he would probably not have found my guy guilty if it weren't for his confession. What a pisser.

Actually, without the confession they don't have much or anything. The 3 year old was caught masturbating by grandma and mom. However, no one else saw him doing anything like that including a baby sitter who watched him several times during the month of August.

The defendant and a different friend of the parents have the same name. The boy calls the friend [name] and the defendant uncle [name]. The kid told the nurse in the E.R. that [name] messed around with him. Very specifically not uncle [name]. The nurse then testified that the kid was very talkative and not shy at all when talking with her. The mother testified that the kid always calls the defendant uncle [name] and this other guy [name].

All great stuff then we get to my client's confession (or statement as I prefer). He goes into detail and admits everything. He says he was tired after 30 hours and just thought they'd let him go home.

Sentencing is in about three weeks.

Criminal Trial

Exhausted. Sinus infection, and the second half of that trial tomorrow concerning the client who is accused of fondling his 3 year old nephew. Finally got the subpoena served (the deputy sheriff was really helpful).

I will probably have 5 questions to ask the witness, none of which will be dispositive, but a witness my client desperately desires. The witness doesn't want to come, this should be fun. She hates him (they used to go out) and by this point she probably hates me. She wouldn't come without a subpoena, even when I told her he might go to prison for 10 years if she didn't testify.

Interesting family dynamics in this case. His entire family and all his [former] friends seem to hate him. I haven't figured out why since he does deny the crime, so you would think that at least some of the people would give him the benefit of the doubt. None of them will. His mother drives down from Canton just to watch the various hearings. She won't talk to the kid while she's here. He lies she tells me. About what, I ask? He told me he'd quit smoking, but he hadn't and he said he had insurance when he didn't she says. ?????????????????

He confessed, but he claims that was because he was up for 30 hours and held by the cops for 8 of those hours and just confessed to get it over with. The cops the children's services worker and his own father say that he wasn't up that long, but rather about 20 to 24 hours. Further he says the cops told him he could go home if he just confessed. A couple of things bother me. He'd been in some trouble before and been removed from the home as a 15 year old for 3 years. How he thought he could go home if he confessed is beyond me. That is irrespective of whether or not he did it.

I do think that he is the family scape goat, in the clinical sense of the word, someting along the lines of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery . Or at least that is all I'm able to come up with and it isn't a very satisfying answer. But I got nothing else.

Did he do it. I have no idea. He is old to have just started molesting children, but...............

We will let the judge figure it out tomorrow.

Aw Nuts

Thinking about the beginning of Yeats The Second Coming:

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

This and then the beginning of Auden's September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:

and wonder just how we got here. Those of us in the good ole USofA, seem unable to pull ourselves out of this tail spinl. Hell as a group we seem totally unable to even recognized what is happening and what reasonable steps should be taken.

New Post

I'd been thinking of writing another post about a writer, but this caught my attention. If 80% of self identified democrats think that Obama is doing a good job, then I now understand why we have such bad politicians. Particularly alleged liberal/progressive politicians.

UPDATE: Then of course there is this. The concept of liberal congress members giving large amounts of money to Blue Dogs, when real progressives are running against them is disgusting. They even have money raising events for them for god sakes. I could see if they didn't help outsiders who were trying to take incumbents' seats, but going out of their way to help the very people who are against everything they supposedly stand for, boggles the imagination. And not in the good sense.

I have been wondering for some time how we got here and how we get out and I really do not think that at this point any of the national progressive organizations are capable of doing much if anything.

NARAL has a believing Catholic as it's president. How is that possible? A woman who thinks that abortion is a sin is the head of the largest pro-choice organization in this country. And let us not forget that they (the national) backed Lieberman who is not really pro-choice against Lamont who was definitely pro-choice. Their goal is apparently to keep abortion safe and legal for wealthy women.

Now it appears as though HRC has to be prodded to take a position on DADT. How sad.

The unions keep their criticism of the guy muted because, why? They think that they will get good people on the NLRB? It seems that Obama is more than willing to trade those people away to whom? His bankster friends, I suspect. So the unions hold their collective breaths, well whats left of them at any rate. Hoping against hope that they will get card check through the congress along with a couple of pro-labor people on the NLRB. How's that working out for them after a year?

Unemployment at 10% at least, foreclosures proceed at a record pace with no bankruptcy protection for the home "owners," lots of money for the banksters and kind words from our president for the massive bonuses. And 80% of democrats are happy with his performance. I had always thought that advertising was more or less wasted money, but I'm beginning to think that perhaps I was wrong.

Obama puts the hammer down early in his presidency and ensures that the money dries up to the liberals groups who oppose his corporatist buddies and conservative democrats. And 80% of democrats think he is doing a good job.

I have never felt quite so hopeless. Of course that may just be the fact that I am coming down with a sinus infection, so I am a bit loopie, but I think that when I get better Obama will still be the incompetent (or incompetent and corrupt) butt head I think he is right now.

More LIterary Stuff

So I've been reading about Byah deciding not to run and hearing him described as a "moderate" or a "centrist." Which of course led me to think about George Orwell's essay on the misuse of the English language, Politics and the English Language.

The constant screams from the right calling Obama who is a conservative or at the most slightly moderate president a socialist are a perfect example of this. Of course, that language is being used by his political enemies. However, the idea that a person (Byah) who is by any objective definition conservative is called a moderate or centrist, (Google the news stories, I'm not in the mood), by the mainstream media, is a real corruption of the language by those who are employed by the so call objective media.

This has always been a problem, but in the past there have been media (newspapers mostly) that were owned by the unions, and which had truly progressive and others, like it should be remembered the New York Times which were not progressive at all, but rather quite conservative.

I suspect that these large northern dailys got their liberal rep when they were busy backing the civil rights movement against the cracker red necks who were just not nice enough to invite into your home don't you know. This continued, of course, with Nixon the president nobody liked and who certainly wasn't of their class.

The oligarchs have always understood that they should be the rulers, no matter how much they've screwed up int the past. They will go to what ever lengths necessary to continue to rule. Right now they are more than willing enough to bend the language to this need. I'm sure they would stop at that.

Strong and Tough vs. Brutal and Violent

One of my favorite American novelists from the second half of the twentieth century is James Jones. A great writer about men in combat and in situations of danger. Not so good when it comes to women and more mundane times. Although, I guess the latter criticism isn't completely fair since a lot of From Here to Eternity is about the day to day life of the pre-war Army and there is nothing but mundane in a peace time garrison army. The point for this thought game is that Jones was a man who knew what strong was and what brutal was and knew that they were not the same thing.

I've been thinking about one of his lesser works, which is I think called Go To The Widowmaker. Not, (as I remember it and it has been a long time since I read it) one of his better books, but one part, I remember from the book involves a character, a writer. This character has gone back to this writer's colony where he had spent time crafting his first novel, to try to get some help with his new novel. He is trying to make his main character strong and tough, but all that he is able to do is make him more brutal and violent. He knows this is not what he is trying for and he can't get the character to show this strength, just the brutality. The other people at the writer's colony didn't see or understand the problem and can't help with it. Well that is a minor sub-plot, if I remember correctly. But Jones is interested in this issue and recognizes the difference. Oh well, I guess it is only a plot in a novel after all.

On the other hand our current conservative leaders and commentators and tough men like Chaney, Emanual, Bush, Obama and a host of others. They think they are being strong and tough, and all they are, are brutal and violent. And there doesn't seem to be anyone in a position importance to point out the problem or to show a way to correct it.

This is an interesting post. Followed up by this one, if you have the time and stomach for it. Well not actually this post, but the links to it.

One of the things I've been trying to do is to really understand economics, a little late perhaps, but better late than never to coin a phrase? So anyway these are a couple of things that are shall we say-------------------verrrrry interesting.

Incidentally, I wrote most of this yesterday, but I am posting this today, I have no idea how to make the date today.

WTF Obama

Well I guess that will be where we will all end up.

I've been trying to get beyond posts that are simply repetitious or a variation on WTF Obama? Or WTF democrats in general? Alternative titles: Obama Corrupt or Incompetent or both Incompetent and Corrupt?

How Obama and the democrats have acted since the election has simply amazed me. Of course, Obama started from before the election with his vote for renewing the Patriot Act and pushing TARP, with no controls over the banksters. The we're doomed cries from Bush and Berneckie, but we will fight any new controls over our excesses, kind of rang hollow and still does. I did actually withdrew and argued with some of his people who tried to get me out there working. I did end up working for him simply because of two words: Sarah Palin.

Obama has been incredibly lucky in his opponents. Anybody remember who ran against him for Senator? Clinton was a little more of a challenge, but let's face it when you have your major campaign advisor thinking that the democratic primaries distribute delegates the same way the Electoral College does, you ain't got the brightest bulbs in the world running your campaign.

Then you finish up with the republican following the most incompetent (and one of the most dis-liked) presidents in history. And he runs by doubling down on the failed policies of his predecessor, and Obama still wins by single digits.

I've read that in order to have a victory like Cannae, it is not only necessary to have a Hannibal on the winning side, it is also necessary to have a Terentious Verro on the other side. Of course this election was no Cannae, it was a narrow win. There were a lot of explanations (I suspect racism had something to do with it, but that isn't the only explanation, I watched the campaign).

From the beginning Obama has shown that he is more than willing to use the language of progressives/liberals, but then he will not follow through. I thought originally that it was an inability to confront people, but now I think that he is simply a liar. And not a very good one at that. He does have an inability to confront people who are powerful conservatives, but not liberals, certainly.

What I have a problem understanding is I thought that politicans liked to win elections, but apparently not. Of course, Obama still seems to be popular, much like Clinton, on the other hand that didn't seem to help the other democrats. It won't this time either.

A Brain Transplant

Well the H.P laptop required a brain transplant and so now we are starting over. I'm trying to figure out how to make things work and to down load some stuff. Right now Open Office is coming in so, and then I guess I'll do CCleaner. I'm also trying to figure out how to put the bookmarks back in the order I want.

Well I guess it will keep me busy ignoring my trial for tomorrow. Down in flames we go.