Hey, I Though It Was Just A Novel

Wow. So the powers that be are after Assange. One of the ten most wanted for what is apparently an allegation of date rape, maybe. Not that date rate is anything that should be blown off. On the other hand, I find it interesting that this is a guy who is on Interpol's Ten Most Wanted List. I am sure it has nothing to do with WikiLeaks, no suree bob.

In the meantime our great and powerful "leaders" (yes I'm being snarky, thank you) like president Lieberman assist Amazon in finding its patriotism and blocking information concerning what our country is doing all over the world.

The interesting thing is in the way that the government has reacted to this most recent leak. In a way that is out of all proportion to what the leaks contain, at least to those who have read them. And by government I mean the ruling junta which includes the media and the corporate power boys (and yes some girls), not just our (more or less) elected and appointed rulers. I suspect that our rulers believe that this stuff is going to keep coming and that eventually people are going to start paying attention.

Greenwald has been all over this for the last couple of days.

There is no question that there is now a full court press against Assange and that the various governments of the world will not rest until the guy is in custody and the hope is, of course, that he is really not just the face of WikiLeaks, but the real moral authority there and that getting rid of him will get rid of this pesky irritant. It will also have the added benefit of scaring others who might consider doing something similar in the future. (Paging Scott Ritter and Eliot Spitzer anyone?)

Just watched The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest last weekend and have now seen all the Millennium Trilogy and read two and a third of the books. It certainly does give one pause. I did not think that the various government agencies would take the books as a How To, rather than as a warning against harming innocent citizens, silly me. Another interesting thing is that it was difficult, but not impossible, to find a link other than Amazon, that handles the books. Well I guess sex crimes are better at smearing people than the good old fashion drugs and violence, do not want to hew too closely to the printed page in the adaptions, now do we.

I'm Really Getting Tired of the News

Hey, welcome back.

I've been listening to NPR some while I drive to and from home to work and when I say some I mean until I become so enraged that in order to drive I have to turn the radio off. One reason we have no TV is that my wife got tired of me yelling at the thing during the various news casts.

I used to watch CNN Headline News because the first fifteen minutes or so was decent hard news, even if the last fifteen or ten was fluff. Then one day I realized that I had watched two cycles of Headline News and seen no news at all just fluff from beginning to end. Well I guess that was better than my reaching for my trusty six shooter to blast the carn sarn piece of devil's equipment to hell. I would not have been able to endure Dancing With Stars with or without Bristol. I have had the unfortunate experience of seeing part of a Duggers episode when I was at another persons house, and that was just weird.

At any rate to get back to the original thought today I listened to someone from The Wall Street Journal explain that Obama has taken the last election as a sign from the voters that they want more bipartisanship in government. The discussion was that this was a not unreasonable position for him to take. That was when I turned the radio off.

Well we are certainly living in interesting times, I guess. I have no doubt that Obama has taken the election as proof that he was doing just what the voters wanted, just not enough. What I have a difficult time understanding is how anyone outside a completely bunkered facility, somewhat like the place Hitler was in the final days of WWII, could believe this.

Well perhaps not really believe this, but say it at least. And sound like they believe it. How is that possible? I guess they could be brilliant actors, but other than that I really do not understand this. You lie and don't deliver on much of anything that you promised, but you make sure that the people who opposed you in the last election get everything they want.

The other strange thing is that many of the original Obama supports continue to support him no matter what he does, but some how believe what he says even though he never (or almost never) delivers on his promises. Drifting over and around the various blogs it appears as though Tbogg has decided that Obama is simply incompetent rather than malicious or evil where I think that he is incompetently evil. Trumka and the AFL-CIO is just disturbing, what are they thinking they support the guy and get nothing of substance from him? Once again discussing this with people who will not give up on him is..............what? Certainly not illuminating and it is getting less and less interesting as one can give them literally dozens of major examples of issues that he has lied about and/or failed to deliver on and it doesn't seem to matter.

I Want My Scroll Back

There are days that I think I am almost monk like in my attempt to comprehend our electronic world. Perhaps I would be in better mental shape if I just took a little time and surfed the web and read some simple books concerning the stuff that goes on inside these little thingies.

Incitatus

I've been thinking about the current state of our once and future government and realizing that it is just going to get worse and I hate to say it worse.

I remembered that Caligula had appointed his horse as a counsel if I recall correctly, and I do. It does not at this point seem to me to be a bad idea right now. I mean how bad could a senate or house or presidency of one or more horses be compared to what we have now? I mean at least we'd get a complete horse then, wouldn't we?

BEFORE:

AFTER:
REALLY AFTER:

Don't Touch My Junk

Reading a post on Greenwald's blog about the "Don't Touch My Junk" guy. The interesting thing is that it takes off from an article in The Nation which essentially smears the guy.

And strongly defends Obama. In reality The Nation has been nothing, but a well kept "leftist" piece of democratic infrastructure since at least 1996. Why do you ask do I say 1996?

Because I remember reading an article which was an attack piece on Dole at the time. The article attacked Dole for waiting to be drafted rather than leaving college and joining and then attacked him for not being appropriately wounded. He happened to get seriously wounded by being hit by an artillery shell (as did most) rather than heroically leading an assault on ........well something or the other.

They also were willing to cut and run on the single payer idea early on.

Oswald Garrison Villard would be very disappointed.

TSA

It is a depressing day here, for many personal reasons, but politically the new TSA stuff is just sad. I almost wrote disappointing, but in reality there is no disappointment, since to be disappointed one would have to be surprised at the new rules and at the general publics response to this sort of thing. I am reminded of the Simpsons episode where the city of Springfield buys a stealth bomber to protect the city from bears, of which there was one in the entire history of the city. It is truly hard for satire to keep ahead of reality these days.

NPR today ran what can only be described as an "Ask the Frisker Segment" where "concerned real[?] people got to ask questions about whether their nine year old might be frisked, or whether they could still carry on frozen meat and pies, but not puddings or cranberry sauce. Play dough however is approved because the cracker jack security checkers know the difference between play dough and plastic explosive.

I hope that this has answered all those questions of the concerned brain dead American citizens concerning travel this holiday.

The thing that really makes me sad, is that all the problems with this will eventually blow away. I plan on driving south the next time I go. Although, I suspect that it is only a matter of time before we have full body screens at all on ramps for the Interstate.

Ubuntu?

A crush of work, worry about my office mate, a general feeling of malaise and my normal sloth have prevented me from writing much recently. Many things have caught my eye including the report from that well known reporter, Anonymous concerning the apparent belief by the congressional democrats that the only reason they lost was that the people just didn't know how much they had indeed done and that they just couldn't get their message out there. And that because and therefore they got their asses handed them on a platter.

I have worked with people who were in an active stage of an incapacitating delusional mental illness, and they were not, I believe, as delusional as that. There are certain things believed or statements made by a person which I normally feel I cannot respond to because the statement made or belief held is so far from an even fleeting brush with reality that that person does not exist in the real world and that without entering that (kind of) parallel universe: A democratic senator thinking that they have performed admirably in the last two years and the only reason they lost was because they didn't explain it well enough to me; is just one of those things. (Some one arguing that the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or Yeman are necessary for our nation's safety is another. The continuing war on the use of marijuana is another, at least when some one insists that marijuana is a dangerous drug.) I suppose these later two things can be justified because they help the powerful get and maintain control over the hoi poli. Not, however for the reasons put out there.

But a democratic politician thinking that his party lost because they were unable to explain their governing brilliance to the electorate is a level of delusion that is simply breath taking. It evidences an ignorance that is just well, special.

Now one other reason I haven't been writing much and the cause of the title of this little piece is that I have been coming home at night and attempting to install Ubuntu on to one of my older computers to see how I would like it. It is I am told no problem at all, but I cannot get it done and now I am in a quest mode sort of like Arthur or Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Vacation, if you will.

Curse you Bill Gates. (Incidentally this is being written on a version of Linux called Xandros if you are interested.

UPDATE: My wife points out that perhaps I should have used the Google and typed in say: "Installing Ubuntu on an older computer." But I think that that would have been cheating don't you?

Obama Can't Fail, He Can Only Be Failed

Obama can't fail, he can only be failed.

I wish I could say that I invented that saying, but I can't. On the other hand I can't remember if I heard it or read it somewhere, so I can't say I stole it either.

There is a Brecht line about the people losing the confidence of the state. Other than that I'm not sure where I picked it up. I use it regularly when I cruse True Believe sites. Used it today at Balloon Juice, where Cole was whining about no one getting Obama's back on the trial of the sheik that was scheduled for New York and is now in all probability cancelled. Got the expect number of nasty hits, but also (surprise, surprise) got a few people who agreed.

I find the justifications for Obama bailing on a position before he is actually beaten to be kind of interesting. Now, truth be told, I kind of believe that at this point Obama couldn't get laid by a crack whore if he had a $2,000.00 rock (I know where I stole that one). He has spent so much time blatantly screwing the other members of his party, that he has no political authority left. Whether or not he had any to begin with is another question, but I do think that he did. For at least a few months after the election. He chose not to use it to push what was needed to go through concentrating on helping his corporate masters, and continues to concentrate on it without helping peope who really need it. Still is.

Two And A Half

November 11. Honor me. Horse shit.

I remember being out side a whore house in Sattahip and walking through a massive crowd of relatively small children most if not all under the age of eight. Several of us throwing change, mostly pennys, and watching the kids run from one spot to the other chasing after them. It seemed quite funny at the time.

So what is two and a half? Easy the number of war that we fought that can be called just or good:

The Revolutionary War. Probably if only because of the fact that it inspired others to try to create democracies around. It still inspires I say. Of course, we did have to keep our slaves you see.

The Civil War. That would be the half. Let's face it the destruction of slavery was a great thing, but then we were fighting against ourselves, so there you are half a just war at best.

World War II. That seems to be the one shining example and one that everybody holds out as a really good war. Although, probably good isn't the correct word, perhaps just fits it better. Maybe nearly necessary. The problem is that we have decided that we were on the side of the angels that time and that therefore, we are always on the side of the angels. (I always have a time figuring out how to spell angels and often I misspell it with an le, but that would probably have been right to.)

If one argues that the Spanish American War helped our little brown friends get out from under the Spanish yoke. I'd suggest reading Mark Twain about that. The Mexican American War, I'd go with Grant on that (or read the entire Autobiography, it is very good). Perhaps the Korean Conflict (not war don't you know). I'm not sure that the eventual outcome forty years later justifies any war. The others pointless (1812) or variations of colonial adventures. Let's face it the Indian Wars were real colonial wars, instead of doing what the English and French did we did what the Israelis are trying to do now. Kill 'em all and then just move in. It was nearly impossible even in the nineteenth century.

So there you have it over 200 years and just two and a half just wars, in a nation that calls itself peaceful, but has been at war for almost all of its existence.

Oh yea, around the corner from where I live there is a sign up that says: "Welcome home Vietnam Vets." I am beginning to think that we will never stop fighting that war and trying to justify it to ourselves. "Me think the lady doth protest too much[?]"

Why I Am Completely Unhinged About Obama

There is still a lot of stuff going on at work and I'm still doing a couple of people's jobs, but it does keep me out of the pool halls and off the streets, I guess. I've been thinking about trying to put everything down about why I think that Obama and the democrats are probably at least as bad as and possibly worse than Bush and the republicans. Worse because they make you think they will do some good and then...........

At any rate why I hate Obama and the democrats:

1. His vote on TARP, while he was the party leader and insisting that it be passed with no banking controls at all;

2. His vote on FISA, which to be fair to me caused me to stop doing anything for him for a couple of weeks, until Palin skeered me so much that I got out and actually worked for the son of a bitch again (my mistake).

3. His appointment of Rham, that guy who helped steer NAFTA and GATT through and lost the democratic party control of the congress for two decades (you can't fail, you can only be failed in big time politics).

4. Rick Warren, or as I lovingly refer to him the fat homophobe.

5. Summers, Geither, Paulson. The very people who torpedoed the economy. Oh yeah, let's not forget Secretary of Defense Gates the good Bush soldier.

6. Inaction on DADT and DOMA, except to defend them in the courts (when he didn't have to and appeal them when he didn't have to).

7. Total inaction on card check, thus assuring that it would not be passed. Now why is it that unions are backing him again?

8. Dawn Johnston and other recess appointments that he might have made while the republicans blocked his candidates including two union members of the NLRB, whom he ended up appointing only when he desperately needed union support for HCR (or the great pharmacy and health insurance bazaar give away).

9.Van Jones firing and his treatment of his long time pastor.

10. Shirley Sherrod (although to be fair here, the NAACP deserves at least as much contempt).

11. Walking back on his statements about the cop being stupid concerning Skip Gates.

12. A complete willingness to turn tail and run when any conservative or republican yelled boo (although to be fair that seems to be the current attitude of any liberal/progressive group [see 10 above]).

13. "Health Care Reform." I would say that this was a sell out to the industry, but I think that the phrase "sell out" refers to someone having a position that they then caved on.

14. The Stimulus, being half what it needed to be and by so doing causing people to believe that government spending can't really help them after all, no matter what the New Deal and WWII prove.

15. Out never ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his determination to continue them no matter what the cost.

16. His determination to control all funding for all advocacy groups on the left (and their willingness to go along with him).

17. His inability or refusal to lead.

18. His complete political incompetence, which is really surprising in the first African American president.

19. His complete ability to lie, to say that he is fighting for the repeal of DADT at the same time fighting to maintain it in court, or his promise to fight for single payer at the same time promising the insurance industry to prevent it from being seriously considered by congress, for instance. Now to be fair here, it might just be that the number of people on the so called left, who are willing to jump right in there and tell you that he couldn't have tried to do more because it just couldn't have happened no matter what might be what pisses me off the most.

20. His willingness to protect torturers at all levels (of our government only) and to completely deny any kind of due process to those arrested and held in our prisons on charges of terrorism. Well except of course to give these people trials if and only if he is sure that he can convict them and to announce that even if they are found not guilty he can still hold them for as long as he wants. Stalin would have been proud.

That is a brief list, in no particular order, of the things that cause me to feel nothing but hatred for Obama and the current crop of democrats. If I think of more things I will do updates as they come to mind.

UPDATE: Oh yes, I forgot.

21. Obama's complete and continuing lies (sense a pattern here?) concerning how he would encourage whistle blowers, and instead using every power at his disposal to crush them and anyone who helps them.

22. If I did not make this clear his embrace of the national security state in it most malignant form, which might just be a redundant redundancy come to think about it.

23. Cat Food Commission.

Word For The Day

Feck-less ('fek-les) adj.:

Nixon vs. Obama

I was in the comment sections of a couple of blogs today. Digby and Tbogg. Being my usual serious self, but there wasn't a lot of push back, so I suspect that perhaps I am not so out there after all, damn.

Tbogg's original post was an attack on people who vote third parties and who refuse to vote for the democrats because they are not good enough. Essentially beating up a straw man, in my opinion. It might have been a reasonable argument with Humphrey vs. Nixon, but I don't think it flies this year with these democrats. That was the point of a poster, that Humphrey was better than Nixon and those of us who are talking about not voting for the democrats are in the same position as those who refused to vote for Humphrey (who incidentally I did vote for, for the first time ever in a presidential election).

Then it occurred to me it is true that Humphrey was better than Nixon, but then really Nixon was better than Obama. Now, that is a real bitch.

VOTE?

So there are more and more slightly hysterical cries to get out the vote to liberals/progressives. That is to say you've got to vote for any democrat simply because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. Digby has a very nice video up called I Remember and it is all about the bad things the republicans did and how these people remember. Except, I also remember just how the democrats went along for the ride, or like TARP aggressively backed it while running for president and helped prevent any increased oversight so that it could be put in later at a more leisurely pace. Fucking liars.

I call bullshit. The time to start working is tomorrow to try to get better candidates to run in a couple of years and that won't happen if the democrats keep their majorities. God knows what will happen in the mean time if the republicans get real power. And I mean that sincerely, but I simply can't think of any other way to try to get something better for the average American than to throw the bums out. Elections are a blunt instrument, but they are the only instruments we have at this point.

With the exception of a very few democrats, who for the most part are not getting institutional party support there is no one to vote or work for this late in the game. Well, I've sent more money than I have ever sent to an old friend in Columbus, who is a liberal and will probably get slaughtered, but it is the least I can do. Since she voted for the final version of HCR, if I were a purist I would not support her, but I do understand the necessity of helping those who do not completely live up to our ideals. Even though I am an unreasonable, silly radical who demands too much. Way more than the average politician dare to deliver.

Aw fuck.

The Stupid It Burns

Welcome to election eve or rather the continuation of the rolling horror show that has become our government. We had a meeting tonight and were planning on having Halloween candy as treats, but completely forgot about it, so I was sent to get the candy, which I assumed would be pretty cheap since it is the day after Halloween, right? Wrong. It turns out that all that was available was Christmas candy, go figure.

So I made the mistake of having NPR on and a woman whose name I'd missed but who was identified as a senior political correspondent (no that is really how she was identified) was pontificating and I quote: "Independents are getting upset with the political parties which are becoming more homogeneous. The republicans becoming more conservative and the democrats more liberal. Independents are looking for something more in the middle."

This may be true in the sense that independents might think that democrats are becoming more liberal, but then one would think that a "senior political correspondent" might be cognisant of the fact that that is not in fact true and that both parties are much more conservative than they were 50 years ago, even 30 years ago and would say as much. Further, that the ruling party (not you'll notice parties) has been moving right almost without let up since 1968. But then if she could have that kind of a thought, she could not of course, be a "senior political correspondent." Not even for NPR.

Reformation Sunday

Cleaner than I suspect they actually were.

So it's Halloween, is it just too trite to comment on the up coming election and Halloween like terrors it holds? Yeah, I guess so, but then I already have haven't I?

Out today and into Columbus for the ordination of a guy who was the visiting pastor at my wife's church. Very nasty fights at that church over the direction this specific church is going. The congregation, on the whole, loved the guy, but the elders hated him and wanted their own. So this guy was out and they gave the "call" to the one the elders wanted and he turned them down.

We drove up, but there was also a bus from the church taking about 50 people. Very interesting, most of the big money people were there and the elders can't figure out what is happening and why they are unable to make their budget currently. Still it is just so much like what is going on at a national level that I am kind of amazed at the similarities.

In the last several years my wife's church has had several pastors (they call them in the Missouri Synod as opposed to ministers in the Presbyterian, where I grew up). One whose wife was into heavy metal and goth and writing about the congregation by name on the Internet. Then one who wouldn't baptise a kid because he was a bastard (the kid, not technically the pastor), one who didn't want to move out to our town and who didn't like visiting sick people and wanted not to do the Christmas service because it was a time for him to be with his family. They have really been without a pastor for several years. One also announced from the pulpit that if people didn't vote for George Bush they were violating God's laws. Him they didn't fire, but he left to go full time as a military pastor.

I hear this stuff from my wife and I find it very interesting. Particularly since it doesn't affect me at all as this is the first time I have been in a church (unless attending a wedding or funeral) in probably ten years. Don't figure that there is much there that is worth much so why go. Never was much interested not from since I was a kid. Don't care.

I was brought up in the Presbyterian church, as I said and just last week at a funeral, I found out why Presbyterians say "forgive our debt as we forgive our debtors" instead of trespass in the Lords Prayer. According to the minister it is because the Scots are more interested in money than land.

Oh yeah, in addition to it being Halloween it is also Reformation Day the day that Luther nailed his thesis to the church door. A big deal for Lutherans I guess.

I Loves Me the Moral Absolutes of the Democrats

So I guess that this is some of what I mean by soft fascism as perpetrated by our government. They (our client states) "employ" children as soldiers and we respond by giving them more money with which they will buy our weapons to give to the children so that they can kill, it turns out, other children. It is necessary, you see, to protect us.

I guess that an old skin head stomping a woman's head to the curb is a hard fascist, but then that may only be because the perp. and vic. are good white Americans much like ourselves. Plus of course, it is closer and we get to see it on our teevees and computers and cell phones. The other not so much although those kids are dying just as surely as I sit here typing this. I remember a long time ago National Lampoon (when it was funny) producing an entire Sunday Dacron Daily News. The headline was: "Dacron Woman Killed on Trip to Japan" the sub headline was: "Japanese Islands Submerged in Title Wave."

So you seen that I also can see the woman stomped and see a real threat to us all here in this lovely and exceptional land of the free, but then I start to think about just who we are killing both directly and indirectly, and I am brought back to .... what just. I do like living here and being able to write and say these things out loud without worrying about being assaulted by the government (unless of course I more or less threaten an office holder or indicate my support for a group that may be on some sort of terrorist list). And in the end that may be the final definition for our time at least, of what makes a not-fascist nation. It won't last, because it always has to be ratcheted up.

As Greenwald pointed out today, many on the right are calling for the assassination of Assange. Think about that for a minute, is that not the essence of fascism and probably a hard fascim at that, stoping just short of carrying out the deed. For what? For revealing the past acts of a government lieing to a people to get them into a colonial (and in the case of Iraq, perhaps a personal) war.

So that is where we are right now. So you will want to vote democratic so that you can rest assured that Obama will continue to ...... well not continue to protect our liberties. But at any rate he will be better than the alternative, which is probably true, but a some point it is a choice between death by hanging and death by firing squad. Take your pick.

Your Duty As An American Blah Blah Blah

Voted today. Did vote for the Socialist candidate for senate. I'm sure that will have a major effect on the election out come. My wife told me that she also voted socialist so that will give the guy two votes from this county. I am told however that the (kind of) lesser of two evils, the democrat has already thrown in the hat. That would be Lee Fischer the guy who has been beaten and beaten again by about every republican in the state so of course he was the guy who was backed by the party machine in the primary this time.

Jennifer Brunner who is the current secretary of state and would have had a much better chance in the general election lost to him in the primary. Of course, this might be a good thing for her in the long run since I suspect that it would be very difficult for any democrat to win in this election, especially one who openly backs Obama as both of them do.

My pretty much pointless vote was me doing my civic duty. Voted for my congressman because of what he promised on Social Security and voted to the governor because I hate Kaisch with a passion that knows no bounds.

Voting is a habit with me, but I had a hard time doing it at all this year. I really do believe that if the democrats win they will learn nothing, and if the democrats lose they will learn nothing.

Well on that cheery note, I'll leave you all (both of you).

Soft Fascism Vs. Hard Fascism, You Choose

As frantic as I am about work and stuff, and the fact that I am reading (listening really while I drive back and forth to work) a mystery book called Beautiful Lies the goal of which seems to be to create the most irritating main charater ever in a book. I think the author is succeeding so that if that is what you are looking for go out and buy it.

Let's see where was I? Oh yes, politics. Liberal and democratic (definately not the same thing) blogs are becoming more and more agitated as the election becomes more and more imminant and is looking more and more like the Titanic about fifteen seconds before hitting the little piece of ice. It is a little too late to be thinking about turning that wheel or that perhaps we should have veered to the left a little sooner than we have. Actually it is almost like Capt. Smith ordering an increase in speed and aiming directly at that berg (stop that metaphore).

Obama and his people have doubled down (a phrase I am growing to love) on their opposition to DADT and DOMA at the same time telling the LGBT community that they really are working with their best interests at heart, they just don't understand the politics in all this.

They have come out opposed to a foreclosure moratorium, or Cram Down which would permit bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages, at the same time they are telling those who owe the mortgages that they are working with their best interests at heart, by apparently attempting to re-inflate the housing bubble.

They have decided that their job is to protect torturers and those who violated the various amendments to the constitution concerning cruel and unusual punishments (it's only a punishment if you've been convicted after all and if we hold you for decades without trying you then you haven't been convicted and aren't being punished, right), the sanctity of the home and privacy and well just all the stuff that you learned about in school (oh, you didn't?), after all he is a constitution law scholar, trust him. They not only want to protect those people, but they want to expand on the various constitutional (no caps) violations until their is no privacy left. But hey, if you have nothing to hide than why worry, right?

On top of all this is something else I've been thinking about: Obama is increasing the size of the private armies we have working for us right now in the field C.A.C.I., Blackwater/Xe etc. Well we know how well that worked for the Romans or the Germans, don't we?

Which brings me to my new concept (or maybe I stole it from someone else, I don't remember). The idea of soft fascism vs. hard fascism. Clearly the republicans like those in Kentucky who stomp a woman's head into the curb and then demand an apology from her, or the ones in Alaska who are active duty military personnel and employed by the senatorial candidate who arrest a reporter for asking questions are real hard fascists. You don't agree? Then fuck you, you are an ass hole.

But then we look over at the kinder gentler democrats. As I say above they go along and go forward with the same programs increasing the size of the security state while decreasing the various "protections" provided by the Constitution, but they do this incrementally. At the same time working with an amazing energy to destroy what is left of the middle class, a group that existed in this country in large numbers from around the late 1930s until a couple of years ago. Moving to place all real power (if it hasn't already happened) in the hands of a few plutocrats or oligarchs, whatever you want to call them. Not only do the democrats appear to be unable to change this arc, they do not seem to want to.

Hard fascism/soft fascism; sooner rather than later. My position should be I guess, given my age that we should push it as far into the future as possible with any luck I won't be around.

Wikileaks

All clean what we get to see.

What Wikileaks and the rest of the world sees.

I predict that the effect of the latest round of Wikileaks leaks will be to cause the U.S.of A. to double down on more or less (with the accent on less) accurate drone attacks that will continue to kill the number 2 (or is that number 3, I never can remember) man in the Taliban or Al Quada or whatever, plus of course, various innocent civilians who will be with any luck children so we don't have to deal with them when they grow up.

The later information concerning the kids will not of course be known here in America because the "citizens" just don't want to hear it and our rulers don't want us to know, so the vast (as in really vast) majority of us won't take the time or trouble to go look it up by clicking on foreign news sources, so there will be no need to do any real censorship.

In addition, all the people involved with Wikileaks will be charged with multiple sex crimes in many different countries (all of this will be extensively reported to the American public).

Finally, many very serious people, who were completely convinced that there were WMD in Iraq and who are now convinced that Iran is just a breath away from a nuclear bomb which they will drop on D.C. because then American won't retaliate will tell us that there is nothing new here, we already knew this and therefore we should pay no attention to it. Anyway these leaks will cause if they haven't already caused more death an destruction than all America's military and CIA attacks have caused in the last ten or twenty or thirty years.

Oh yeah, lookie lookie lookie at what CNN did to their "interview" with Assange who walked off the set when they refused to speak with him about the facts raised by the latest leaks. Instead they kept trying to do an interview about his personal life. He left their interviewer looking like the dork she was.

So there, take that you unserious dirty hippies when we don't want you to see it we make sure you don't.

I'm Drowning Here

Mental illness affects more than just those with the disease. This may seem like a simple concept and it is until you've got someone next to you who is having a serious break down. In a small office of three people two of whom have to be popping in and out several times a day to go to court and to check things at the clerk's office, when one of those two has a serious break down then the other has to more than double up.

It becomes even more difficult when the alleged professional who is treating the sick one, decides that that person can come back to the office and work half a day, but can't got to court and needs to be carefully monitored by the others in the office. The tension, to coin a phrase, could be cut with a knife.

I am simply exhausted, I nearly pass out every night at 8:00 p.m. and my gout has started to act up again. I had my first experience with it about three or four years ago when I was going through another period of intense and unusual emotional turmoil (that time of my own making). If you haven't had gout it is lovely. Imagine that one large strong man holds one of your feet up and another one smashes the large toe repeatedly with a sledge hammer for about two hours.

Right now the mentally ill person is driving the narrative and is completely controlling the play. I cannot for the life of me figure the position of the doctor, does she not under stand how a law office functions, particularly a law office where the attorneys are both trial lawyers and got to court frequently? I suspect not. Most everyone is in denial to a greater or lesser degree, including me who just hopes it will go away.

Trying to do much of anything is nearly impossible.

I Live In The World You Deserve

I'm drifting around and around today and I've been as I said earlier reading and watching about the upcoming elections. As usual things are getting more and more frantic as we come closer and closer to the actual election day.

Greenwald today and Ehrenstein yesterday both touch on issues that directly affect the LGTB community. Greeenwald writing about Obama's defense of DOMA and Ehrenstein writing about, well his general disgust with Obama and the democrats, which mirrors mine or visa versa.

I find it interesting that Obama argues (without a lot of real legal support) that he is required to defend any law (in this case both DOMA and DADT) passed by congress (something that no other president in recent history has argued carte blanch). Assuming for the sake of argument that is true, then why does he insist on appealing when he loses and why does he feel the need to fight to stay the lower court orders?

If one jumps to the various I do too believe in fairies and Obama blogs one sees the ability of the easily led or the true believers or the ones who are part of the tribe and proud of it writers defending both the laws' defenses and the appeals and even the battles over the stays. Obama as best I can figure out is just the poor president who has so little power himself that he must to the death apparently (well at least to the death of the party he suposeldy is the leader of) defend laws he really really really wants to just go away, please.

Depressing Elections

I am not a happy camper. Work is like not good at all at this point. When I became a lawyer I really didn't know that I would also need a degree in psychology. Stuff has been happening with clients and with others in the office so that I am at a point where my small ability to suffer fools gladly (one of the reasons I thought it would not be a good idea to go into the health care field[s?]) has shrunk to an area that just might be viewable on a neutron microscope, perhaps.

Drifting over the news today, oh boy. Some stuff is interesting to me in the "This is news?" kind of way that I so often get any more. Crooks and Liars has a story about Mitch McConnel admitting that the republicans only want to break Obama and the democrats. Firedoglake has a similar essay.

Although, I did say that what interested me more were the groups who continue to support Obama after he has screwed them over, still I really wonder about what is going on in the mind of the democratic politicans who run the party. Did they not see what happened to Clinton? Was it not clear to anyone with a brain who watched how things started to play out after the first couple of months after the inauguration? Still, these are the people who tell us that they really did believe Bush about the WMDs in Iraq and those are the major pundits and the people who are running the democratic party right now, speaking of mental illness.

I'm watching the hysterical wrap up of an two year election cycle where the democrats did nearly everything wrong and the republicans are poised to take advantage. Now I'm not prepared to suggest that the republicans did everything right, in fact their successes might not be as impressive as they would other wise be simply because the people they have nominated in so many races are so dangerously crazy that people might vote against them rather than for the democrat, but the out come would be the same.

David Ehrenstein makes the point that no one in the LGBT community should be voting for the democrats because they will simply enable the people who want to screw that community. I'd say the same argument holds true for the rest of us progressives/liberals.

Well as I say I do remember who came after Weimar, and that certainly looks like those are the people (those who came next I mean) who are lining up to take advantage of the democrat's complete sell out. Never in the history of American politics has a political party accomplished what the Obama democrats have accomplished in so little time.

Decline And Fall

I have always found the death of empires and states (and I guess people when I think about it) more interesting that their birth or growth. Spain after the Armada rather than England during the same years, for instance.

I do try to keep reminding myself of Gore Vidal's warning to middle aged writers that they try not confuse their own personal mental and physical decline with that of the nation's. But I'm becoming fairly certain that that isn't the case here, I'm passed middle age at any rate. I find myself comparing today with my younger days and wondering just when I stopped being cool, though.

I look around and see decline and fall every where with little or no apparent desire to move us in a different direction. States replacing asphalt covered roads with gravel roads because they are easier and cheaper to maintain, raising the costs of going to college so that the lower economic classes (and in time, probably a short time the middle classes) presidents looking around and deciding that we have to cut benefits and "safety nets" in the middle of the second greatest economic down turn we have ever experienced in the face of all intelligent economic recommendations. The very people who drove the country to this drop off, being given positions of authority to continue to direct the nation: Geither, Paulson, Sumner. Listening to the war monger neo-liberals who got us where we are in two wars we seem to be unable to either win or end, or for that matter want to end and maybe not even want to win.

Then the nearly complete co-option of liberal groups (including unions) and liberal commentators by a clearly conservative (not moderate) democratic party and president. People who seem to be totally unself aware of what they did to get us where we are and what needs to be done to get us back from the brink (oh hell perhaps we are really past the brink now and in free fall, who knows) are in charge.

Jeremiah (without god).

Oh yeah, I started this four days ago and I can't make it copy or move the date so it will go up as if it has been here for four days.

History Lesson

I've been thinking about writing this for a couple of days. I've been on some of the blogs I mentioned in the previous posts, ones that support Obama no matter which one of his supporters he and the rest of the democratic party screws today. I leave comments and engage in, oh I don't know, spirited exchanges with other commentators.

There are a few points that seem to come up repeatedly. First, I would have attacked both FDR and LBJ because they weren't pure enough, in particular FDR and his treatment of African Americans and LBJ and Vietnam. Second, neither FDR or LBJ accomplished much during in the first few months of taking office.

The first arguments is sort of personal and I would have to say that I would hope that I would not have engaged in pointless snipping at either of those presidents. On the other hand I would hope that I would have opposed FDR and the conservative politics he adopted in his first weeks of office before he turned hard left and I would hope that I would have opposed his Internment policies during WWII. As far as LBJ is concerned when I got back from Southeast Asia I did become part of the anti-war movement and did participate in anti-war activities, although not as much as I should have.

The second point is one that shows an amazing ignorance of Twentieth Century American History. My undergraduate areas of concentration were Twentieth Century American History, Political Science, and Literature (which is why I am now a lawyer). It was almost a truism that if a president was going to get major programs through it would have to be within his first two years. Now that didn't work for FDR, he had his first and second New Deals, but the most famous period in American legislative history is FDR's "First One Hundred Days."

As far as Johnson is concerned, I remember being in Washington D.C. in the summer of 1964 on a trip after my graduation. This would have been about seven months after LBJ took office and watching the leadership of the senate announce the filibuster had been broken. Now one can argue that this was legislative, but anyone who is aware of history knows the influence LBJ had on the senate at that time and the fact that he did lead (and push and threaten and cajole and use his power and popularity) in getting this through the senate. The elections of that fall swept the democrats into power and immediately most of the last major social and civil rights legislation was passed, before the 1966 elections when the democrats lost big time.

A couple of good reads on FDR are Eric Rauchway's The Great Depression & The New Deal: A very short history, and for a longer read one could do worse than Arthur Schlesinger's three volume The Age of Roosevelt.

Of course these complaints are coupled with: Just you see how much Obama has accomplished this is more (in the case of HCR it is argued) than any other president has ever been able to accomplish. It is really difficult for me to take this argument seriously, given what the out come was and how what was done was done. In particular how Obama and the "leadership?" of the democratic party aborted the most popular parts of reform and sought to stifle any popular support for the bill there by letting the right wing get control of the narrative as they did. The rest, money for bankers, fumbling (on purpose) chard check, not providing real help for people whose homes are being foreclosed on, and on, and on, and on. History will tell, but I think that I know already what history will tell and as I've said before it will compare Obama more closely with Hoover than with FDR, although I'm beginning to think that it may be Buchanan he most closely resembles.

The final point is that I am simply too pure to understand how politics really operates and that is why I take these kind of positions. Kind of difficult for a person who has voted for the lesser of two evils all my adult life (starting with Hubert Humphrey) and who was the president of two small local unions to take these criticisms very seriously.

I'm Just Confused

Reading around the blogs today, I see quite a few defenses of Obama still from people who claim to be "progressive" (whatever that means any more). Defenses of his appeal of the DADT case and attempts to stay the enactment of the court's order.

Let's see: he's got to act like Jackie Robinson, he's required by law to appeal, if he doesn't appeal then whenever the republicans get power back they will be able not to appeal decisions they like, if he appeals then it will force the congress to get rid of it, he is just appealing to keep the case from being decided until after the elections when the senate will pass the repeal. All of the foregoing being bullshit, of course.

I'm not so sure that I much care what Obama's reasons are, his actions in this thing are in keeping with who he is and who he is isn't very nice or very smart. One would think one would try to be one or the other wouldn't one?

Nope, what I am more interested in are the people who write the articles and essays and comments attempting to justify what Obama is doing at the same time they are claiming that they are for repeal and that Obama is for repeal. It is just you know, that he has got to go against everything he believes in here, and health care, and Afghanistan, and torture, and TARP, and, HAMP, and abortion rights, and well whatever he does to screw the people who worked and voted for him. I cannot figure out how they are able to continue to delude themselves into believing that Obama is in any way even moderately liberal or progressive (sorry liberal is a bad word now isn't it?).

Now I understand about the so called liberal columnists who supported Bush's Iraq adventure, because they are simply part of the most corrupt ruling class we have ever had, and if they do not follow the approved script they will lose their place at the table (no matter how far below the salt they are).

The various different liberal lobbing groups are a little harder to understand (Veal Pen inhabitants though they may be), HRC being the most obvious today, although the others seem to be fighting for pride of place on any given day by trying to not ask (as opposed to demand like the NRA) for too much so they won't be disliked and they will still get their invites to those parties, I guess.

The hardest to understand are the regular people who put time, effort, and money into those groups and into the campaigns of Obama and other democrats. Not the bosses or the people who think they are the bosses at any rate. I would think that if you give a couple of spare hours or a few spare bucks to some advocacy group or politician then you would be the kind of person who would read and search out independent information and question why the people you gave that time and that money to aren't able to do diddly for you or the interests you hold dear. But hey that is just me. Watch out there's a scary republican over there who will take away that right to ........ oh never mind we just gave it freely to the democrat so we won't have to worry about it.

And yet out there they go. Aw hell.

Maybe Not A Horse Race After All

Thanks for the image Susan, I think.

I've been wondering for a long time why the republicans are so crazy about Obama. Now I understand that he is Black, but still it is the same way they acted about Clinton. I was an adult when Clinton was first elected and the insanity thrown at him amazed me at the time. I couldn't figure it out, and to be honest I still can't. Not that he was a great president, but that he was a complete corporate shill as were his people (like Rham). NAFTA, GATT, cutting welfare, weakening unions. Still the left fought for him beyond all reason.and the right attacked him far beyond all reason. I cannot for the life of me figure it out. I only know that because of Clinton and his relatively incompetant politics and policies we got a good 20 years of republican control of the congress and eight years of the worst president since at least Hoover and perhaps Buchanan.

Now we seem to be back in the same place and we seem to be repeating history. I'm not sure what Marx would make of it since the first time certainly wasn't tragedy, it was more like farce, god knows what that would make it this time.

I'm thinking that the general democratic campaign sloganthis year is: Vote For Me, Things Could Get Worse. I am sure that they can, but I have confidence in the democrats and believe that they can make things worse all by themselves.

The combination of the apparent cluelessness of the administration in matters political (leaving aside for the minute their actual competence, or rather lack of, at really governing) seems to be matched by the large liberal "independent" advocacy groups, like for today HRC. Of course that is just for today. The unions are out carrying water for the democrats even though, the issue that should have been make or break for unions was card check, and we all know that is going no where.

When the old Romans fought each other for the throne at least the supporters of the winner could expect to get some spoils out of it. We have I guess progressed beyond that as the supporters of the winner (at least if that winner is a democrat can expect nothing, except more promises).

The question I have is what are these people fighting for? The answer I have is that it is really nothing except money for nearly all of them, except for the craziest of the tea baggers. I had originally written personal power, but now that I think of it they have no real power that power resides in the corporations that own them.

So why the incredible amount of money spent of these elections? Damned if I know, unless the spoils really are distributed to different corporations depending on who holds the offices. And of course it is sort of bread and circuses for the rest of us (with out the bread of course).

Writers

Off posting for a week and seem to be overwhelmed by work again. A couple of permanent custody cases coming up soon and just after that a client who didn't, stab her ex-husband at a seriously drunken party involving a couple of 17 year olds and significantly faulty memories decreased by alcohol and other things. There is no chance that this last case is going to do anything other than go to a jury trial. I got the client off probation last month early because she couldn't stop using. There is no way she will agree to go back on in some kind of a deal.

Today went to a writer's conference here in town. My wife had started this writers group about eight years ago and about three years ago they started to put on this conference. She decided that she didn't want to be in charge after the conference last year (too much politics and it interfered too much with her writing), but we still went today. It is kind of nice to go to one of these things when they are put on fairly well. And this one is put on quite well given that we are in a rather small city and pay the presenters no money.

The first year there was no money except the money we put in ourselves for our own registration. We discovered something very interesting: Writers (for the most part, not the big boys and girls, but those a little farther down the food chain) will travel quite a distance for free for a table to hustle their books from, throw in a free lunch and they are more than willing to talk for an hour about how it is done.

There isn't a lot of quality control, but some are very good. You can never tell before hand, last year the one with the biggest rep. was the weakest presenter.

One of the presenters today told my wife (who is very short and handicapped) that he hoped that she would meet some people here and possible she might even begin to try to write some little something. My wife has both solid aluminum crutches and a temper, I generally try to move out of the range of those things when discussions of this sort start. But for some reason she decided to respond with a: "Why, thank you kind sir, I shall do my best." I'm not sure the guy picked up on it, but I thought it was a remarkable show of restraint. Otherwise the thing went off without a hitch and a good time was had by all.

Deep Thoughts

I wonder just how well the democrats are going to do this November. The people who are running as republicans in the high profile races seem to be very crazy and very scary so that it is just possible that there will be enough democratic voters to prevent the landslide that looks to be coming. If that is so then that will, of course, prove to the powers that be that their policies are right and that they need to stay the course. Which will move us a little closer to the perfect oligarchy/plutocracy of their dreams.

If democratic voters don't turn out and the crazies do get elected it will prove to the powers that be that the DFHs have taken over the base of the democrats and the average democratic voter just doesn't understand what is going on and what needs to be done. And that the party leaders need to stay the course to let things work out. In the mean time the crazies will be accepted and will turn out, in the eyes of the media not to be so crazy. Moving us a little closer to the perfect oligarchy/plutocracy of their dreams.

It is a good thing I'm not even a D list blogger and no one reads me because I think that is probably necessary that the democratic party as it is currently configured get it's ass handed to it on a platter. Then it might be possible to start building from more or less the ground up. The real question is whether or not it would be possible to build from the ground up or whether it is already too late.

Horse Race

I have been coming into work a little late and have been listening to the Diane Rehm show on NPR.

Horse race talk for the last couple of days. Today it was some folks, Mark Helprin was one, who were talking about the campaign and discussing ways for the democrats and Obama to pull out of the very bad hole they are in. They were commenting on how surprised the White House has been that people hate so much of what they've done. I think that there is no better definition of living in a bubble, if these people really are surprised that most people don't like most of HCR,
TARP, the stimulus and other things (I know that the bank bailout happened under Bush, but Obama completely supported it and supported the way it happened). I thought that these people (that is the people who got Obama in) were supposed to be brilliant political operatives, and say what you will about Obama's opponents all being weak sisters (and I have) still he is Black and he is president.

I was thinking that there might be some explanation as to why the White House so miss-read the electorate, but there wasn't. Just the bland statement that the people in power had no idea that those who vote would be so pissed. Since, that conclusion (the the White House had no clue) is fairly obvious to anyone with a TV or a computer or radio or I-Phone, I'm not sure what the purpose of the discussion was.

A thought I had was that when Clinton managed to screw up Health Care and force through NAFTA and GATT it was a disaster for America and for the democrats, but the people in charge never got hurt at all. Rham is once again in power and Clinton is incredibly popular. I suspect that if Obama gets reelected and Rham becomes mayor of Chicago both he and Rham will be congratulating themselves on their brilliance, and wondering who could possibly think that they are not the most brilliant of politicians.

So Obama is more or less out and more or less exciting the base. Apparently, cutting back on their former tack of insulting the base, although time will tell. The commentators seemed to be surprised that he waited until so late in the game, but isn't this his modus operandi? Coming in late with a couple of pretty good speeches, I think so.