We're Fucked (Why be creative?)

"There might be a difference between Obama and Romney, but no matter who gets elected things are going to get worse."  Not me, but a friend of my wife's (no not a cab driver).  Just an average middle class middle aged woman.  Although she may not actually be average since she can clearly see which way the wind blows.

So I re-posted this thing from Daniel Ellsberg on Facebook about how one, if one lives in a "swing state" needs to cast a vote for Obama.to make sure that Romney doesn't get in, not because you want Obama, but because Romney is too bad to contemplate.  Chomsky made essentially the same point in 2008 about McCain.  Although to be fair to Chomsky we had not seen specifically how Obama would govern right then, there were his promises, and I suspect that even Chomsky couldn't believe just how much Obama was lying at that time.  We all expected him to be somewhat more conservative then he talked, but to have him nearly completely turn his back on everything he said was a little much (okay maybe only a 165 degree swing as opposed to a 180).

It is a hard choice, although to be fair to leftists like myself in all probability it doesn't matter.  It would be the red necks and the low information voters and those who thought they were going to get help from a democratic administration who didn't who will decide the election if Romney does win.  But it will be us loud mouthed leftists who will get the blame.  I've said it before, but it is interesting that people who complain and who point out that the emperor has no clothes who will get the blame if Obama loses, not the naked emperor himself.  Left wingers are constantly being blamed for Gore's loss, even though Gore ran to the right and backed everything that Clinton did including NAFTA and gutting welfare. But apparently, I wasn't supposed to believe him.  Silly me.  At any rate how one governs should really have no consequences as far a getting votes from the left if you are a democrat because if you are left you gotta vote for him (or her) no matter what  because the republican will be so much worse.

There are a couple of areas on which Obama seems to be better then Romney:  LGTB issues and the right of women to control their bodies.  Neither of  those issues will affect the money men.  And the LGTB issues will only peripherally benefit those who are being helped.  With women's issues, as Sanger said the ability to regulate pregnancies is absolutely necessary to ensure freedom for women.

Otherwise we march forward inexorably with our permanent war on just about anybody we feel like.  And as for various economic issues, oh hell.  ACA is better then what existed a couple of years ago, but the way we do it is to pour money into the pockets of the wealthiest insurance companies now, so it is another means of transfering money from the poor and middle class to the wealthy and as a side effect some people get medical care, who wouldn't have otherwise.

The Grand Bargain is still out there and watch, what happens after the election, no matter who wins.  Bye bye social security as we know it.

I would guess that the worst will take a little longer under Obama then under Romney, there is a value of having bad things happen twn years from now as opposed to five years from now.  We all rejoice that Tiny Tim survives even though we all know that he's long dead by now (and yes I do know that it is a novella).

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

I've been thinking about this movie for some time or at least the end.  Well I guess that is the point.  So who are you?  The blind townsfolk, Warren Beatty defending his little capitalist empire, or the thugs?

What is Perfect After All

I started to write at another location that if Obama was re-elected the things would not be getting quite as bad quite as quickly, but they would be getting as bad eventually.  Perhaps the republicans would eviscerate us, but the democrats would merely slit a vein and hang us up to let us bleed out.  I'm not sure about that any more they are both out to bleed us dry.    Why wait? 

Now with the more or less simultaneous raids on the various OWS encampments. None of which were assisted or coordinated by any federal government agency at all. Add that the medical marijuana busts along with our militaristic foreign policy and what just is the major difference again?  Oh yes, forced private insurance, with no provisions for abortions.

And yet still people are defending the bastard in the Oval Office.  I've been wondering around a few of the more "main line?" blogs.  Balloon Juice and Lawyers, Guns and Money.  The pure hatred of most of the commentators at Balloon Juice concerning OWS and when that is not right out there then their not particularly well hidden contempt for the demonstrators is breath taking.   Their disdain for the people who are out there doing something is depressing. A great deal of the anger at the OWS crowd seemed to be because of the way they dress.  Same sort of stuff that they say about the hippies and anti-war people from the 60s and 70s.  God I guess that war will never end.  "If people would just dress nice and act like ladies and gentlemen then the powerful will listen to you and you will be able to sit down and reason together."   That is the reason the anti-war crowd didn't end the war sooner back in the day and that is why the powerful won't listen to the OWS people today. Well I guess it is a way to deny their actual powerlessness and to avoid blaming their betters.

I can understand how people who have put all their belief into a party and system that have completely let them down now feel the need to cling to those people and that system even more as that system  basically kicks them in the teeth (or nuts as the case may be).  Clinging to their god and party I guess.  Where their god is Obama.

More frustration

So I went to Lawyers Guns and Money to get my fair share of abuse.  Once again Lemieus is arguing that the presidency is in fact very limited in its powers domestically and that what Obama did with his health care legislation was all he could have done.  Lemeius’s posting is in response to Atkins at Hullabaloo.

This defense of Obama by Lemieus and other is always that Obama didn’t have the votes for something that he never tried.  Why didn’t he try it?  Because if he had tried it he would have lost and then it woud have been a disaster for the democrats and progressive politics in general.  This argument works for everything apparently:  the stimulus for instance could not have been bigger because then it would not have been passed and things would be really badright now.  It goes on and on.

These arguments are nuts. Among the very first people Obama appointed were Summers, Geither, and Emmanuel. What does that tell one? That he had progressive goals?  None of Obama's policies in my mind were ever developed as anything other then massive wealth redistribution upwards to the rich.

Well that is what he did and he did it such a ham handed fashion that he gave the country back to the republicans just two years after his “land slide.”

I like to think of Obama as the 1919 Chicago Black Sox or if one wants to be more generous as someone who rides to work every day on the short bus


Of course the other response to this entire argument is that it really doesn't matter if Michelle Bachmann is president, if what they argue is true.

UPDATE:  I went back and commented on Obama's choices of Emmanuel, Summers and Geither as his top advisers as far as economics and domestic matters went.  Pointing out that these should have showed us all just what Obama was about and that his real goal was to transfer money into the hands of the wealthiest.  One person pointed out that was OT, which is more or less correct, although I would now think that in fact it really isn't since LG&M argument is that Obama was trapped by circumstances into do what he has done with most of his domestic stuff.  This would indicate that is just what he really wanted to do.  


However, what was more interesting was at three (I haven't bothered to go back since last night, so it might be more now) people said that really those were the people that he needed to choose since he needed people who had the expertise in Wall Street and had the Street's confidence.  I did ask if they were sure that Krugman wasn't available, but that was really just snark.  The more I think about it the more I think that it is impossible to have a rational discussion with people who think that way.  


Obama appoints two people (more but let's talk about only Geither and Summers) one of whom let the crash happen on his watch the other of which was working for those industries that caused the crash, not to mention that Summers has his own issues with equality of the sexes.  In other words Obama dug deep into the effluvium of the ruling class to get his most trusted advisers and these posters are cool with that.


ONE LAST DAMNED UPDATE AND THEN TO WORK:  I did make the mistake of going back and reading more comments.  The arguments seem to be that he couldn't have done anything else and these were the best people he could have really gotten. That's it.   And if I believe anything else, even for a second then I just do not understand what goes on in the real world.


If the argument is that a president (black or white) other than Obama couldn't have done more and gotten better people than it is bullshit.  If the argument is that Obama couldn't have done more or gotten better people then I'll buy it.

Obligatory 9/11 Post Because I would Be A Traitor If I Didn't

This isn't the guy?  Are you sure?

Happy 9/11 Day.  Does that sound just weird?

We could have gone in an taken out the people responsible for the whole thing within a year, but we choose to invade another country and began (accelerated?)  the destruction of our own country and what was left of our own ideals instead.  Although to be honest I'm thinking we were so far gone by 2001 that there was no going back and people just started to notice after a while.

Let us not forget that the president we had in 2001 actually lost that election and there were no real protests when he was appointed by his dad's buds.  Not that the other guy was any prize winner.

So we continue in Afghanistan because we can't leave (yet), we try to continue in Iraq because we can't leave, we will probably be putting money into Libya because NATO can't leave and they have their own economic problems and since they are marginally more intelligent than us they are going to insist that we help them out financially.  I guess it is possible that the Libyan oil will pay for it, hahahaha.

So although he is now dead Bin Laden has pretty much accomplished everything he hoped to accomplish after all, so I guess somebody should be celebrating.

Poli Sci 101

The president really doesn't have much power.  

Also, the majority party in congress really has no power either. It is only the minority party that has the power unless the minority party is democratic, then the minority party has no power.

Therefore, if the republicans gain power they will have absolute control and be able to do many bad things.   The democrats really do want to do something, but they can't, because a couple of years ago they only controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency.  Now however they can't do anything because they only control the Senate and Presidency, but the republicans control the House so the democrats have to do everything the republicans want.  Which they also had to do when the republicans were also a minority in the House. 

Therefore, if you do not vote the democrats back in and allow them to control both houses of congress and the presidency the republicans will do bad things and then things will be really bad, even though the democrats really can't do good things when they control everything.

I posted this at Slobber and Spittle and I liked it so much I expanded it and then posted it here.

Various Stuff Before I Start Cutting Wood Again

Not been doing much about writing this week.  My Mother had to have serious surgery on Wednesday.  Well, the surgery was to correct a serious problem, a seven centimeter aneurysm on her aorta, but the surgery itself wasn't apparently major  She is in Florida with two sister-in-laws and one brother.   I'm going down later this month.  The thing was found by accident when she went in to have x- rays for her back pain.  It turned out that the pain was being caused by the pressure of the aneurysm on her spine. 

At any rate the surgery took about an hour through the groin area, micro, I guess.  Out of the hospital by Saturday and back home.  Now if we can only get her to do something about her one eye (cataract which can be easily fixed, and then something about the fact that she is deaf as a stump, something that can also be easily fixed by out patient surgery) she'll be as good as a 75 year old.  I think eight-nine is the new seventy-five, isn't it?

I was drifting over the net and completely forgot that yesterday was the anniversary of Hiroshima:  Happy Nuclear Power Day.

Then I went to Executed Today a site that I "enjoy" starting my day with.  Kind of, oh I don't know, just interesting.  And found out that apparently there was a time in our history when a president did not feel able to go to war without congressional approval.  Now I do admit that we were apparently getting ready to kill each other at a rate we hadn't before considered possible, but still it is an interesting factoid, isn't it?

I have little or nothing to comment on the S & P downgrade with the two trillion mathematical error.  Still, I am kind of a little bemused by it all.  I am still reading as much as I can find out about economics, but perhaps the guy I work with said it all:  "Learning about economics right now, is as useful as learning about hydrology while you are going over Niagara Falls in a barrel."

I find it interesting that S & P is still considered an organization that has any relevance at all to anything at all in the economic world.  The other thought is how is it that these private corporations have the power to say whether or not a government's bonds are safe.  Added to the fact that since these corporations are licensed in the U.S.A., these guys should be concerned that today they could be dragged from their homes and kept in prison until they decide that they rating is going to be AAA.

We live in strange times.  Obama is not a particularly smart guy, but given the fact that he is surrounded by mental midgets, he appears relatively impressive.  I guess, I personally don't think so, but then I knew that there were no WMDs (an acronym I hate) before we invaded Iraq. 

I kept expecting the Media to recognize just how stupid Bush and his advisers were, but didn't happen.  My thought is that they are all so inbred at this point, that they are something like sheep in the intelligence field.  But with nice fluffy wool because that is apparently what they are bred for.  Not only that but I suspect that they actively seek to keep out those who see things clearly and are more intelligent then they are because smarter people in positions of power are a threat to the ruling class. 

As for their supporters generally, as they say half of the population is of below average intelligence.  Then there are those who simply feel a kind of need to tug at their forelock when their "betters" pass by.  And there you are.  A few outsiders are let into the class (Obama again) but they are the types who believe (or should I say BELIEVE) in the system as it is.  The same thing went on during the middle ages, but they had the advantage of continuous wars and disease to regularly cull the ruling classes and allow new blood in and even that didn't work for ever.

Guy Maddin - Sissy boy slap party

You know I'm thinking that this is just what we saw happening in Washington.

Happy You Are Really Fucked, And Nobody in Power Gives a Shit Day

I guess my problem, any more, with the kind of thing I have been for the most part writing about is that it tends to get old:

AVERAGE PERSON SCREWED AGAIN, MONEY GIVEN TO THE WEALTHY.  BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES ARE BUSY FUCKING YOU OVER!!!!!! FILM AT 11.

I guess that one needs to point this out over and over and hope that on the hundredth or four hundredth repetition it will click in the (for want of a better term) average voter's head.  But it does get tiresome after awhile.

I realize that we aren't the only country that this is happening in, but that doesn't make it any better (except of course for the misery loves company aspect).  In the latter part of the Twentieth Century we were told that democracy (or republican with a small r government or representative democracy) had won the day.  Now it becomes obvious that it didn't matter.  We can elect anybody we want and they will just do whatever the ruling plutocracy (it looks like everyone else is linking to Matt Tabbi, so I guess I will too) wants them to do.  Then they will explain that: well couldn't do anything else, but the other guys would have been much worse, don't you know?  And the vast majority of voters will buy it.  Christ.

Now various "liberal" blogs are telling me:  "It could have been worse.  After all they only cut off your left hand it could have been your right."  Although, I am kind of happy to see that Digby has seen the writing on the wall, and appears at least for a day to have quit her "if only Obama understood, if only Obama was a better negotiator" bullshit.

UPDATE:  The news just gets better and better for our overlords.  Apparently they have convinced most of the democrats that the real problem is the deficit and we need to cut spending.  Then them jobs will just appear.  Perhaps we really do have the government we deserve (although to be completely honest I don't think I have the government I deserve). 

Geezus

So I am wondering around the Internet and what do I behold, but the end times.  As somebody said, I'm going to be really pissed when the end comes not from the rapture, or a giant asteroid, or nuclear holocaust, but a god damn debt ceiling economic crash the final parts of which are ushered in by a second rate bag man for the Wall Street bankers, people we've been warned about for over a century. 

I guess we just didn't listen.  I'm waiting for a little while and then I think I'll drift on over to some of the Obama, Obama, sis boom bah, rah, rah, rah sites, that I offered to apologize to when Obama saved SS and Medicare and Medicaid and ask if they would consider apologizing to me.  Although I have had a short discussion with a guy on Facebook. I know him from law school and the Guild and he asked me "Who would you be able to support other than Obama?"  Obviously, I'm not going to vote for Bachmann or for that matter any of the sociopaths from the other party, but then why should I vote for a sociopath from the party I used to consider myself a member of?  In fact that attitude is just the one the democrats are counting on according to Greenwald today.  I have no doubt.  The other half of that is the blame will go to those who refuse to support the people who are screwing us right now, rather than the people (Al Gore/Florida anyone) who participated in the screwing.  Always blame the victim never the never the victimizers.

So any way what I had started to write about isn't at all what happened in the above two paragraphs.  Because, what I was really interested in writing about (well when I'm trying to forget that my world is falling apart around me through no fault of my own) is books or rather books and book stores.  We went to Columbus this week and I spent the morning in trainging and then we had planned on going a dropping by some friends a couple of places one can only find in a big city and one of the Borders since they are closing.  Went to one that I remembered and it was closed tighter than a drum we later learned it had been closed for a couple of weeks.  So we ended up going to another store and just kind of drifted around.  I hate to admit it, because I think I lose my leftist cred, but I like Barnes and Noble.  Although I do like local book stores and little places like that.

Where I grew up was mostly small towns with no real book stores.  Although one could get interesting paper backs at drug stores back when I was a kid.  Got Taras Bulba in a drug store, another had The 20th Maine.  The library would allow me to check out anything I wanted from the time I was about twelve so I could get their entire stock and since they had many of the major 20th Century American writers I got to read Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. 

Definitely not the cover that attracted me.

One of the more interesting stores that sold books in Van Wert was the Hospital store.  It was located down town and people would bring in what ever and the store would sell it and the proceeds would go to the Hospital.  People would dump off old books there.  I got a copy of Sartor Resartus there.  They  also had a number of paperbacks and back in the 50s and maybe the early 60s the covers of the paper backs were kind of risque, to put it mildly.  The cover did not necessarily accurately reflect what was inside.  Which brings me to how I became acquainted with Graham Greene.  I had heard of him, but wasn't really familiar with him.  I had seen the screen version of The Quiet American on the late show, the one with Audie Murphy.  So my understanding of Mr. Greene's politics was possibly a little off.  At any rate I saw a copy of The End of the Affair in paperback.  One can imagine what the cover looked like.  Boy was I shocked to find out it was the story of an incredibly depressed non-believing Catholic and his love for someone who might have been called a saint.  

The Catholicism didn't bother me and I identified with the depression, so I ended up reading most of his novels and a great deal of his non fiction work and found out that I also identified with his politics.

And that is it for today I guess.

Tending My Garden

Wow, over two weeks since my last post.  I haven't really been interested in commenting on the on going debt ceiling crisis, since no matter what happens it is going to be bad for the vast majority of people around these parts, including me and mine.

I have a difficult time finding different ways (that would even interest me) of saying that our rulers are scum and sociopaths, who might not be very bright.  Although I'm not sure about the bright part, I am sure about the scum and sociiopath part.  If (as I believe) their goal is to crush the average person, they do not care if they have more money in the absolute sense of more hard numbers, that is $20,000,000.00 rather than $30,000,000.00, but rather they want more money in the relative sense of they've got a higher percentage of the wealth than they did last year or week.    I remember the English movies I would see years ago that took place in the early part of the 20th Century where five pounds was half a years salary for a worker.  But the distance between the monied class and the rest of the country was much greater than then now.   Now everybody gets more money, but the difference between the wealthy and middle class is narrower.  Or at least it was until a few years ago.

Our government is set up to be a republic, or a democracy, or a represetative democracy.  It doesn't matter what you call it, it isn't any more.  It is amazing that a large majority of people could want something and the ruling class just says nope even though, theoretically we do elect them and they are our representatives, but they clearly do not represent us.  Unfortunatley, years of propaganda and now months or weeks of even more intensive propagand from our rulers have apparently begun to convince people that we need to cut the buget and government spending to make more jobs.  Even though it has never happened before in the world nor is it happening in Greece, England, Protugal, Spain or Ireland right now.  And when we spent when we apparently had not enough money to do so (See New Deal, WWII) we spent our way out of a depression.

I had a discussion with another attorney a couple of days ago who absolutely believes that inflation is a greater danger then what is happening right now.  When I pointed out that some inflation is a good thing and that at any rate inflation is incredibly low right now, he didn't even hear, I don't think.  A point I made was that we need a real stimulus to put people to work and then those people could pay taxes to cut down the deficit if that is really what he wanted, he argued that we shouldn't be paying people to be building things like bridges and railroads because people had no money so they didn't need bridges and railroads because they were not going to go anywhere, because they had no money.  I do not think he was trying to be funny.  Apparently, the New Deal and World War II never happened.

So I continue to build bookcases.  Perhaps another this weekend.  If so that would be four.  Or perhaps I should tend my garden.

This is kind of how I feel when I think of what influence I have on the assholes in D.C.  On the outside looking in.

Let Us Trust and Change Our Position As Our Leaders Instruct

If Obama gets his grand bargain then the rest of us are screwed, but if Obama doesn't get his grand bargain then the rest of us are screwed.

Now I see that the Obama deadenders have for the most part completely changed their position on these debt ceiling discussions.  Originally, they were making fun of those of us who were raising a stink about Obama putting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on the table for cuts, because "He would never do that, dummy!"  Since, it now appears that he does in fact want to cut benefits their new position is: "Well its not that big a deal and any way its been done before and you didn't complain then."  When Clinton did it I did indeed complain, but it was with a telephone call rather than through the computer.  I'm not sure I had a computer, or if I did I am almost positive I didn't have one at home.  For quite awhile the internet was only through dial up.  For a long time in the city I lived any internet was long distance. 

So there too.  I am still an idiot for not trusting our Dear and Glorious Rulers to rule well and in our best interests.  They have done so well for us in the past.

Shock Doctrine

We are ruled by not very bright sociopaths.  Well, if one considers "we" as the human race as a whole and not just the U.S.  I heard today on the B.B.C. radio news that Italy is going through the same things that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have all gone through.  Cutting budgets, cutting stuff for the workers and middle classes and paying off the banker's debts.

Further, I heard the reporters interviewing, for the most part, the very wealthiest who explain that this is all good.  There were a few interviews with workers and union people but the most amount of time was given to the wealthy, as was the last word.  I guess that in an emotional way since Italy is being ruled by a quasi-fascist party, it shouldn't be experiencing as much cognitive dissonance as say Spain or Greece, with their socialists.  Not that that makes the end result any more comfortable for the the people who are getting screwed, but still I guess it is something to help warm one over the Sterno fire.

I would guess that one should think of this part of the great mandala of life.  You know in cruder language: what goes around comes around.  We have allowed the bankers in the IMF do just this to the third world for decades and watched as their tiny safety nets were destroyed to permit the bankers to make big buck, so when it comes back on the first world (say who is the second world any way?) there is a certain justice there.  Except of course, our real rulers do not suffer at all.

As far as the budget ceiling talks in D.C. are concerned, for the most part, people who are writing about them seem to feel a need to take what is being discussed by the people there as some sort of serious discussion of what needs to be done economically.  Even many of  those who a few months ago argued that we need more deficit spending, are now discussing the relative merits of the various cutting spending and raising taxes proposals.  The end result is going to be that the economy goes (further) south, no matter whose proposals are accepted and put into place.  I guess one could talk about it in a kind of horse race or football analogy, but not as far as the merits.  Since no position in these discussions has any merit. 

Although, I guess if one views this as a kind of global implimentation of Shock Doctrine then I guess one could see the merit of the thing, if that is one is indeed a sociopath.  Destroy, destroy, destroy.

Woodworking 101

I am sure that there are studies out there that can explain how people think about their heroes and the very clay feet of those heroes, which they don't actually ignore, but rather deny the existance of, but gee.

One can make the point again and again, that Obama has failed to deliver on almost every level (except for more wars of course) and still people respond by telling me that I do not understand how politics work in this country and he can't rule by fiat (except apparently in foreign policy and war, but not actual military rules, go figure).

When one points out that in fact Obama got almost everything he asked for and pushed for in his first two years.   Or that he did in fact enter into secret negotiations with the pharmacy industry, hospital industry (oops Oxford comma is no more I guess) and the insurance industry, after saying he would never do that.  Or that he has from the first hired and kept around him either minions of the banking industry or people above minion status, when there are at least two Noble Prize economists who are Americans who were recommending different policies.  Well, (other than questioning my ability to form a complete sentence since and think, there seem to be several incomplete sentences up there) one can wonder how his defenders think.

I would think that it is one thing to agree that we have got to help billionaires make more money so this is what needs to be done by golly, but it is quite another to argue that Obama is trying to do progressive things, and is really doing the best anyone could expect.  When all the anti-progressive things he is doing are pointed out people still tell me I just don't understand American politics.  Or FDR wasn't that great a progressive either. It is an amazing situation, when people continue to back a guy who clearly doesn't give a shit about them.

I may have mentioned before (but am too lazy to check) the discussions about Grant and the Civil War on a couple of comment threads in Salon.  One commentator kept putting up "facts" that with a couple of minutes of Googling were shown to be completely false.  I'm not talking things like Grant was a corrupt president, but things like:  there were more slaves in New York state in 1860 then in any other state (it takes little time to go to the census for 1860 and find out that New York was a free state, therefore there were no slaves).  People kept responding with the actual facts and this (these?) people (person?) would just put up another piece of false information.  Until the inevitable:  I'm tired of arguing with you, post.  Of course that is a little more obvious than the people who simply insist that You Don't Understand.  Or alternatively that apparently neither hear or read you, but engage you in debate while ignoring the specific information one puts out there.

Imagine that you are at a movie and there is a kind of wavy fade out and then another wavy fade in.

This is more or less what I"m doing without the religious figure

Well, I'm back from doing some manual labor this afternoon, I started to build a bookcase.  Some fun.  I built several back in my hippy days, but none recently.  My friend David Cohen and I once built one on a wall of a friend's place in Yellow Springs.  The reason I remember it so clearly (well the incident, not exactly the specifics) is that we would go over to her place on a Sunday morning and when we arrived she would immediately bring out the weed.  After we smoked some it seemed to us a good time to have a great home made breakfast and look at the wall and imagine what we were going to do.  It took about a month until David refused both weed and food one morning and started to actually build the thing.  It took about two hours to finish.  Good times.

One last thought, kind of my own, but she says it much better than I have.  This is scary and incisive and I think she is right.  If she is, it explains everything that is going on.  He wants to destroy the America we all grew up in.

Bits And Pieces

So, once again I am really happy that I do not have cable and get all my news from the inter tubes.  I had no idea who Casey Anthony was until about ten days ago.  I wondered what the people on Facebook were arguing about. 

To be completely honest I did watch the Simpson trial and I was probably the only middle aged (at the time) white guy who wasn't on his legal team who thought he didn't do it. 

I was also privileged to watch a couple of minutes of Nancy Grace in the deli.  I understand that her fiancee was shot.  After watching her I suspect that he took the bullet on purpose.

So now all over Facebook people are posting shit about remembering little Caylee, if I may call bullshit.  Run after that shiny bubble while your country disintegrates around you.  Although, perhaps that is the way one should be right now.  Let's face it is it really worth actually watching while one's country burns itself to a crisp?  Well at least they are doing it all over the world, and we did not name one of our political parties "Socialist" and then get to watch them give their country to the banksters.  Well we get to watch our country being given to the wealthy, but at least it isn't being done by people who call themselves socialists.

So now it appears as though Willie Nelson's plea bargain has been rejected by the judge.  It is important to imprison people for smoking weed, in order that we may show the world that we care, about something or the other.  An asshole prick judge wants to get her name in the paper and I'm sure she will.  Plus we can watch this for a few days and see what happens while Obama sees what more the boys in the back room want.

I have seen people argue that Obama's position on DOMA and DADT show that he really is one of us, one who wants to see progressive things happen.  My response is to point out that neither of these positions costs any of Obama's big money boys any money, nor does it put any money in the pockets of people who need it.  As far as the "repeal" of DADT I say that Obama managed to do it in about the ugliest way possible and in fact it still isn't done (although apparently the 9th Circuit, may have decided other wise).  I'd suggest that Obama stepped in at the last possible moment and managed to delay what had been a quick and sure thing.  I'd also argue that Obama gave the military in essence a veto over what should have been an enactment of a civil right by either the executive and or the legislature (of course the legislature went along).  WTF, if I may, and I think I may.

I need to get busy on that screen play that will make me half a billion, since a million isn't enough any more.

A Hiccup

We lived in a hiccup of history I think.  I was born in 1946 and in reality it was the beginning of the explosion of the middle class.  We would all go to college if we wanted to.  My uncle did, he was the first in either family.  Right out of the Army.  My Dad learned to fly and bought his house on the GI Bill.  He never graduated from high school, but ended up middle management in insurance, quit that and formed his own business (something he had also had shortly after he had gotten out of the Army). He had worked in a factory for about three days my Mom told me, but couldn't stand it.

I went to college, off my version of a GI Bill, a little stingier than the one my father's generation had, but still enough to take me through a good state school and with enough left over to party on.  One brother went to college on loans and with my parents' help then joined the Army as an officer (I was in the Air Force, an enlisted man, I worked).  He got out and we both went to good law schools at the same time.  Both graduated the same year, 1983.  But I do think that was right around the time things started to go really wrong.  Or at least when I started really notice just how bad things were going.  Reagan was in and I remember telling my girl friend that "They could run the country with 25% of us out of work, and they think it would be better that way."  Of course the push had been on since at least Nixon, but it wasn't as obvious at least to me as it became with Reagan.

My third brother inherited the business, but the other businesses they sold the nuts and bolts to were going out of business themselves or in reality moving out of the country, so nobody to sell the nuts and bolts to and the business goes out of business.

My brother the other lawyer worked for high priced law firms on the wrong side, and maked major amounts of money and goes back into the Army and quits a colonel in the reserves and gets a job. Finally with a mercenary firm working for the government and becomes a vice-president, where he was until three days ago when he was laid off one year short of the time he could have retired from the Army.

Of seven nephews and nieces, three are without jobs and not because they want to be, one is still in school, so I guess she would count as not having job and two have jobs.  Neither of my brothers have jobs nor do their wives, and they are all from six to twelve years younger than I am.

We came from a working family and we all worked (although to be completely honest I never really wanted to) from at least the time we graduated from high school and some of us sooner.  We are all relatively intelligent (although again my brothers seem to think that we just need to be a little more self reliant and then we will get all the good things the republican Jesus promises).  We are all fucked even the ones of us who still have jobs.

Whatever

I read the news today, oh boy.  if Firedoglake is correct AARP has thrown its weight behind destroying what is left of the American "safety net."  It is another example of the way an organization is able to gain power for a purpose and then the managers essentially sell out their people.  With the exception of a few unions, I think that every progressive organization I am familiar with has done that. 

I don't mean to imply that AARP is or ever was progressive, but its purpose was to lobby for the elderly and to support their needs.  It has become little more than a corporation that has a lot of things to sell old people.  And another lobby for the corporations.   

I move on and see that the Greek prime minister is "shaking up" his cabinet because of the riots against the austerity programs his old cabinet put into place at the direction of Rulers of the Universe.  There is of course no indication that there is going to be any change in the austerity programs.  Which I guess is another example of the old saying:  "in a democracy the people do eventually get the government they deserve" being wrong.   

Our government is busy throwing around its dick in ways to further the wants of our personal ruling class, there is no cost benefit analysis that involves any rational evaluation of our nation's needs, but rather if there is any, it is one that involves the needs of the corporations who really run this country.  There may not be even any remotely rational cost benefit analysis at all.  Look at all the stuff all around concerning the world wide caliphate that is just around the corner, which will be caused by the alliance of the liberals and Muslim fundamentalists.   Our excuse for continuing to bomb the Afghans, I guess.

I also see that the president's people have decided (not that I mean to imply that they have just decided) that the Austrian School knows how to handle recession and depression and Lord Keynes is just silly.  I'm really not that well educated in economic issues although I've taken a few courses, so I may be over simplifying things, but what the hell.  The 30s in the United States never happened, WWII never happened we never spent ourselves out of a depression with a lot of deficit spending which we they mostly paid off with huge taxes on the wealthiest.  Never happened, doesn't work.  It is as if these people are jumping around with their fingers in their ears going nah,nah,nah I can't hear you.  They have decided what they need and in order to give lip service to the idea of democracy, they dress it up in a dress.

Of course there are books that argue that what happened really didn't happen it was all an illusion.  Crap.

Right at the moment the only country I can think of that is any different is Iceland, but then they no longer have anything we really want, so they are allowed to go their own way.  There may be the other problem (as far as our government is concerned) of the people being highly educated and so relatively impervious to our bullshit.

On the other hand this gives me a chance to segue into a brief movie review of Jar City, an Icelandic murder mystery I saw last night after another blogger on Balloon Juice recommended it and Netflix was streaming it.  Like most of the mystery movies and mystery books from that part of the world that I have seen it is bleak and depressing and very good.  (For a long time I thought that all Australian films were good since those were the only ones they exported to the U.S., but I was younger then.)   I understand that they are in the dark for six months out of the year so I guess I can understand that they are a kind of brooding race.  But in any case it was good and none of the people in it have to pay their bankster's bills for them.  And it gives me a reason to post the trailer and a kind of way to end this rambling:

Oh Hell Why Not

So while we obscess about this:

This goes on, on a daily basis.

And nobody even remembers

And their little tax issues which have been getting more and more interesting.

Welcome to the Battle of Fredericksburg Fun Ride

Maybe I've been reading a little too much about the Civil War, but I am starting to compare Obama with at least two of the commanders of the Army of the Potomac.  McClellan or Burnside are my first choices.  McClellan because of his obvious empathy for the South and his inability to follow through when he had the ability and power to end the thing.  Or perhaps Burnside because of his idiotic continuation with a policy long after it was clear that policy should not be forced even though it might have been successful when originally planned, but is now not worth it because the other side has figured out how to prevent it.

There is a real growing fascist movement in this country, that chooses not to call itself fascist because it understands that word is not accepted anymore, even by people who happily would identify themselves with all the ideals and tenants of fascism as long as it is called something else.  These are the people Obama likes best even if he isn't an outright fascist himself (and his stance on assassination of Americans, the Patriot Act, his attacks on whistle blowers and permanent war are certainly in line with a fascist world view).

So perhaps I should hope that he is only as incompetent as an Army of the Potomac commander.

UPDATE:  Well if this story is accurate then perhaps the correct historical analogy is the nineteen century czarist secret police.

Grant

I was reading this article in Salon about Grant and then I went to the letters section and was quite interested in several of the letters there.  

One person wrote that there were more slaves in New York than in any of the southern states at the time of session.  I didn't slide across that until later and it was even later that I looked it up.  It is not hard to find just Google: slaves in New York in 1860, or even easier the 1860 census which is on line.  It turns out that there were no slaves at all in New York in 1860 as New York was a free state.  Interestingly enough no one caught it and responded.

Other people started to post things that then people were responding to.  One said that both Lincoln and Grant owned slaves while Lee and Jackson and other confederate officers didn't.  Others said that Grant had refused the surrender of Vicksburg until July 4th thereby causing unnecessary civilian deaths and that Grant had refused to exchange prisoners after a certain battle even though Lee wanted to.   Now these were in addition to the usual arguments concerning Grant's allegedly more corrupt administration and his profligacy with the lives of his troops (these arguments although I think they can be refuted are positions that can be defended, albeit not well, in my opinion).

The interesting thing in so many of these arguments is that with really little research on can find out that these points are simply not true.  One can read the battle field notes between Grant and Lee about the wounded on that battlefield.  One can read the histories of the Vicksburg campaign and see that Pemberton was the one who chose the day of surrender.  One can fairly easily check out the histories and see that Lincoln never owned slaves and that Lee did own slaves as did most of the southern commanders.  One can see that Grant was given a slave from his wife's family and that the Grant's freed the guy even though they were in hard times and it would have been financially better to have sold him as far as they were concerned.

So the question is why make these points?  It can't be because the people really care about the truth.  So what is it?  It is I guess possible that they are just lazy and heard bogus stuff when they were in high school or a second rate history department at a second rate university and don't feel like looking it up.  But then why do they continue to defend these positions?