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.

Please Take This Farm

It looks like more and more (although Taibbi certainly doesn't deserve the quotation marks) on the "left"  and even some on the "right" are commenting on what appears to be Obama's absolute desire to move the country further and further to the right in these budget talks.  On the other hand I'm not sure that will translate into votes and certainly, if a bat shit crazy republican is elected in the next election it will be the people who refused to vote for him or work for him who get the blame.  Not the guy himself, who has lost the confidence of his natural constituency (although it appears as though his natural constituency is actually Wall Street), though giving away everything that the working and middle classes want and need.

I was thinking today as it was being explained to me on another blog how Obama's brilliant negotiating style has brought us to the this point, which is apparently just where we should be at this time.  He is threatening to cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare (now, now, not slash it just cut it you know, you understand the difference right).  At any rate at this point while we are next, apparently, to defaulting on various government obligations Obama is letting the other side know that he is willing to cut the basic social safety nets in this country for the right kind of deal.

Now if he is some sort of liberal/progressive or even moderate then the kind of negotiation he is doing is a negotiation style with which I am not familiar.  I've been a lawyer for over twenty-five years.  Before that I was part of two different unions and participated in several contract negotiations.  I've also participated in several different seminars and trainings which dealt with how one engages in successful negotiations.  No where did I ever hear that one starts out by giving away the farm at the beginning, unless of course one's ultimate goal is to actually give away the farm.

I am not particularly glad that I can in fact recognize this, because I am going to be burned just as badly as the idiots who continue to insist that he really is trying to protect their interests (assuming that those individuals are not the top 1% then they are not idiots, but realists).  Actually, I'm in worse shape because I can see it coming and so I suffer from both the fore knowledge and the actually impact rather than say Balloon Juice, etc (no linky today) who do not see it coming and when it does hit will still have know idea that their hero did it to them and their children.   So I guess in one way ignorance is indeed blis.

Happy Monkey Trial Day To You

Well happy Scopes Monkey Trial Day.  I saw the movie Inherit the Wind while in high school, I think and become absolutely fascinated by Clarence Darrow and that trial.  Later I found out that the authors of the play kept it off the stage for a few years so they would miss the McCarthy nastiness.  Still later I learned that the ACLU had given lists of their members to the FBI during that same unpleasantness. 

So the movie and the ACLU kind went down hill in my mind, but never Darrow.  I still am nearly totally impressed by him even with the new "evidence" that he really did bribe juries in some of his labor trials.  That movie and the books I read about Darrow were probably a major influence on my choice of professions (well, OK Perry Mason was on TV every week while I was growing up, and who wouldn't want to be Raymond Burr with a secretary like Della Street back then, or for that matter now?).

I read the book Six Days or Forever by Ray Ginger when I was either in junior high or a freshman in high school.  I got to meet Ginger's ex-wife Anne Fagan Ginger when I was in law school, when I was going to NLG events.  I never had the nerve to ask her about her ex-husband (I didn't know they'd divorced then) and his writing.  It was probably better that way.

At any rate that book Six Days or Forever, started me reading about Darrow and I went on to read Irving Stone's book Clarence Darrow For the Defense.  That book introduced me to Darrow's other cases and particularly to his defense of various labor leaders and his involvement with the early unions.  An eye opener for a teenager who was growing up in republican mostly rural Ohio in a moderately conservative family. 

So my politics can be directly blamed on: Clarence Darrow by way of Robert E. Lee (the playwright not the general), Jerome Lawrence, Ray Ginger, and Irving Stone.  I am a perfect example of why there should be greater censorship of what children are allowed to read and see and some sort of limitation on what books are permitted in the libraries of this great country of ours.

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.

Lucky Me

 

Oooopsie we make booboo.

So it looks like I'm lucky and didn't do any posts, that I can find at least concerning the (former) head of the IMF and his little rape problem in New York.

It is a good reminder never ever to take the word of the prosecution in any matter.  Always wait until further evidence comes out.  If the reports are correct (another big if) it looks as though the alleged victim may have a few problems with honesty.  That doesn't make her allegations untrue, but it does mean that the case is much less than the slam dunk it originally appeared to be a first blush.

At this point then one is back to arguing about the weight of the evidence.  In other words, why would she lie about this when she has an asylum request pending?  Why would he actually try to rape her when he has access to so many without forcing anyone?

Although, if the prosecution actually does go through this and either dismiss or amend to a misdemeanor, it says a lot about what they think of the strength of their case.  

Other stuff being why is the head of the sex crimes unit "retiring" right now and why is this coming out right after his replacement was appointed head of the IMF?  Inquiring minds want to know.

A P.S. NOT AN UPDATE:  I'd forgotten that the guy was staying in a hotel room that cost $3,000.00 a night.  That was one of the reasons that I was so wishing that he was guilty.  I figured  he should be guilty.

REAL UPDATE:  Although this is another point of view, which perhaps I should have considered a little before posting above.  Apparently, the victim's attorneys still insist that the forensic evidence is consistent with rape and not consensual sex.  But, as you say Cujo, it will be pretty difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.

One and a Half Cheers for Democracy.

I've been thinking about this post since I woke up yesterday and found out that New York has legalized gay marriage.  It might be my general morose outlook on life, the fact I've been sick for about three weeks, or my accurate view of things.  On the other hand I see that Whiskey Fire kind of beat me to it.  

My thought was and still is that the powers who control the world, at this point do not give a fuck about you and me and are unable to see further than their next dividend check, or pay out from the Koch brothers (with the possible exception of Iceland if we are talking only about Europe and North America. 

The recent victories in kind of ending DADT (that I'll believe when I see it actually happen, that is more than the harrumph and more or less meaningless votes in congress) and now gay marriage in New York, cost our rulers nothing.  At the same time Coumo the Younger is set to seriously injure the workers and middle class (such as is left) in the Empire State he has a shinny new prize that he will give all us liberals.  Of course, in Ohio all we get is the financial fuck you without even the shinny bauble of some social progress. 

The problem with pointing this out is that it seems as though I'm saying that the right to marry is not important and we shouldn't care about it.  Once all this is said though, we come back to the fact that this is very important and a recognition that there should be no second class citizens in this country.  This is particularly important when one looks at the Rove strategy of the 2000 election of getting anti-marriage equality amendments on various state ballots to bring out the red necks to vote again' them and in passing vote against Gore too.  Even last year when the Iowa Supreme Court Justices were thrown off the court in an anti-marriage equality backlash.  So this is indeed, a big fucking deal.

But I've just watched today Inside Job the movie about the financial melt down in 2008 and beyond.  I think that it is a better movie than Michael Moore's Capitalism a Love Story.  Mainly because Moore was unable to bring himself to really do any criticism of his man Obama.  Inside Job is definitely a movie I strongly recommend, it makes the melt down and derivatives completely understandable.

There are a couple of  things that make it worth while.  First it was enjoyable was watching a few of the important economists come to the realization during the questioning that the guy asking  the questions wasn't the kind of namby pamby soft ball inquisitor they were used to.  None of the questions were particularly rude, but he did follow up.  In particular Frederick Miskin a former member of the Fed who seemed to stutter a lot when asked direct questions and Glenn Hubbard who seems pretty upset when asked about being paid for among other things a report he wrote for the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce.

Which leads to another issue, or perhaps it is the same issue in a different light, and that is that most of the economic professors seem to be bought and paid for by various Wall Street firms.  I'd guess that the response to that is:  Of course why not, shouldn't they get what the politicians are all getting?  I guess I'm a little naive here.  My thoughts on the matter were that good economics professors could make money investing, because they should now when to get in and when to get out.  But that is not true.  The amount of wishes can make it true economic thought is truly scary even after the crash, well that and the who could have known defenses.

Gottcha Two Minutes of Hate Right Here

Perhaps this is a little too inside baseball, but there you have it.  I've been drifting around and reading some of the sort of progressive sites.  Although to be fair they may more properly be called democratic or anti-republican sites.  Places like Balloon Juice and Tbogg at Firedoglake have provided some interesting commendatory, in the sense that crap is interesting, I guess.
Tbogg is straight forward: no matter how bad Obama is the other guy (whomever he or she may be) is so much worse that, you've just got to vote for Obama, and I guess work for him also.  Not a position that I believe in, but at least one whose point of view I understand (perhaps because that was my position on Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and finally Obama in 2008).  In fact Tbogg is very explicit in the cut off the nose to spite, etc., position.

But the posters on Balloon Juice are, to me at least, more interesting.  Because they (or at least Mastermix and ABJ) have come out with the total and complete Two Minutes of Hate thing about Firedoglake and Hampsher in particular..  First accusing them of being in the pocket of republicans, second of being racist, third of being in it only for the money, and always of being liars whenever they attack Obama.  Larded in there are arguments that FDLis also incompetent politically, so there too, but that isn't the important stuff.  It is necessary to insist that FDL (and at other times Greenwald) are evil and that they are motivated by racism.  If not just racism they are in the pay of the right wing, or both. Essentially, they simply do not deal with the merit of any arguments against Obama and his policies, they simply skip that and go directly to..........well as I said the Two Minutes of Hate. 

Kind of sad really.  I came to a conclusion after thinking about the Tbogg post for some time.  I am not going to work for Obama and in all probability not vote for him either, but it doesn't seem worth while to seriously debate the True Believers (well except perhaps for my own entertainment).  My position is that you go right ahead and you work your little heart out and then if he gets re-elected come and tell me how he couldn't do anything but gut Social Security and most of the other "safety nets" in our society.  I will have the admittedly thin gruel of having been right.

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.

My Saturday

Into the big city of Columbus for a Quilt show for the wife, reading for me, then the Gay Pride parade for both of us followed by Indian food.  Question from the wife who worked in a Hare Krishna kitchen for three years:  "Why does Indian food which is so cheap to make cost, so much in a restaurant?"

The fun thing about this parade was that she marched in the first one in Columbus thirty years ago.  The other fun thing about the parade in Columbus is that we stumbled on it last year (she has been living outside Columbus for some time and had lost touch with the gay community there) when I took her up to the Quilting Show for the first time, and the people at the show said that there was a parade outside, but we could just ignore it, which of course made us more interested.

This year was much better than last year and the anti-parade was less interesting.  All around a good thing. 

Joint Marshalls, the sign says it all

UPDATE:  I've been told that bible schools and church camps no longer have the kids do drawing and such of Noah because of the rainbow motif, apparently they are afraid that the kids will catch the gay.  And for some strange reason it brings this to mind:

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water the fire next time.

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:

Sick and Movies

Still sick and I feel like I'm either Camille or Doc Holiday.

Watched The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest last night and today.  I'd seen them before and I liked them, but wanted to see them again.  I've read all three books and it was interesting that certain scenes that I thought were in the movies weren't there, but some how I'd incorporated them into my memory of the movies.  I mean they were so clear that I actually saw the actors who played them in the movies in my memory.

After watching the movies it occurred to me that if this was a movie about the United States right now it would end with Lisbeth beeing being stripped down naked in a psychiatric hospital and all the staff of Millennium would be in prison.  Pretty fucking depressing.

More Blah

I tried to put this picture on three different ways.  It wasn't the picture, it was me.  Perhaps it is a good thing that I'm not in the office trying to keep my clients out of jail.

Day three of the kind of buzzed sinus infection week.  Started antibiotics on Monday and I really don't feel like I'm much better.  Are sinuses good for anything other than becoming infected and therefore causing me to spend money on my doctor and pharmacist  and the large pharmaceutical company that makes my drugs?  So essentially I'm being attacked by a neo-liberal corporatist disease. 

I am my own metaphor.

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.

The People' s Front

Drifting around and found an interesting critique of Christopher Hitchens criticism of Noam Chomsky which attacked Hitchens for attacking Chomsky and attacked Chomsky at the same time. Very confusing. I started out with Lawyers, Guns and Money and then followed their link to the article attacking Hitchens which also managed to take a swipe at Chomsky. Now these were all by left leaning writers, you under stand and there were some interesting swipes at Chomsky including one poster who suggested that Chomsky was probably no more right in his linguistic theories than he is in his political theories.  I find that an interesting comment since I would expect that it really would be impossible to criticize Chomsky's linguistic theories if one was less than an expert in the area, something the poster never claimed.

I did go to Chomsky's article which seemed to me to raise issues that I am not sure I buy into, but isn't really all that off the wall.  It is short and an easy read.   The gist is if you can drop 80 Navy Seals into a little compound to kill a guy who has in essence no protection then why can't you just capture him and bring him back for trial, since that is what we did with the Nazis.  There is also Chomsky's point (actually more of a suggestion), which is I suspect the thing that really irritated people, that Osama might have just taken credit for someone else's operation and perhaps wasn't the mastermind at all.   Now we all "know" that isn't right, but then it occurs to me that the only reason I know that is because that is what the government and bin Laden told me, and I know for sure that I can't believe one of them and I doubt the other one.

I sincerely doubt that Chomsky is always right, but I know he has been right a lot more than he has been wrong.  So why are these leftist/liberal/progressive types attacking him?  Perhaps he really is a member of the Popular Front for Judea.

Just a Belly Laugh

Memorial Day

Memorial Day Again. I've always liked this part of the movie Battleground. Perhaps it is a little hokey, but still it says something to me about what might be, or at some time in the not so distant past, was considered our kind of Shared American Religion. Don't believe it? Drive around the middle American states and look at the county courthouses built at the end of the nineteenth century and tell me that those are not a sort of temple built to a civil religion. Of course, that weird kind of civil religion excluded anybody who wasn't Christian or Jewish (or white), but it was still a big tent. It was also more of a kind of aspiration than a reality, but there you go that is mostly what life is after all.

People get all mushy and talk about the "Heroes" who are "Defending Our Way of Life:" freedom and democracy, don't ya know? It is impossible for most to accept that World War II was the last war we actually fought for some of those ideals (even though our most important ally was the Soviet Union, hardly a bastion of freedom). We have fought for nothing but Empire since WWII, with the possible exception of Korea. We have openly fought more than eight "conflicts" since WWII, including those three we are now involved in. I can't even begin to count our proxy wars and secret wars since the end of WWII.

As far as "heroes" are concerned, by the current definition which defines hero as everybody who ever served in the military I'm a hero. No bloody likely. Although as I get older my younger self becomes more and more heroic in my mind, but then I would guess that includes just about everybody.

So each soldier's death is a personal tragedy for the dead and for the family, but those deaths, all of them since at least 1953 and perhaps since 1945 have done nothing to preserve our or anyones' freedoms. I would like people to know and accept that, but that is a little much to ask, I guess.

More Not Politics and From Here To Eternity

One click in.  Thanks Slobber and Spittle.

So at any rate in my attempt to alienate the two or three people who actually read what I rite.  We picked up and watched the movie From Here to Eternity the other night.  It had been years (decades?) since I had seen it last and my wife never had.  It held up very well.  Since the novel even as it was originally released was quite a bit too explicit for the movies it was interesting to see how they did it.  No V.D. as we used to say it, nor S.T.D. as is the current acronym would have it nor any whores.  But still the writing and acting are so good that I cannot imagine another version ever being made.  The acting of the five main characters (and Fatso Judson) is close to perfect.  The writing, given the limitations of the time, is as good as one could, I think get.  Debra Kerr and Donna Reed both play against type, so that casting increases the impact of the movie for those of us who remember particularly Donna Reed as the perfect mom.

It started me thinking about other movies from books which haven't been remade because they are so good.  The Maltese Falcon, I think.  Which incidentally was the third version of the book to be put on film.  Gone With the Wind, perhaps although the book and the movie are so racist that I can't see it being remade is just for that reason alone.  But to be fair the movie is as good as it gets if you look at it as just movie making, and ignore the accepted racism of the period, although I no longer am able to do that.

I suggest the T.V. version of Dicken's A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott, but I suspect that will be remade again and again no matter how perfect one version is just because for some reason they seem to think the story can be improved on for the movies. (Looking this up on Amazon, I see there is a Jim Carey version, I'll pass, thanks.)  Although the Scott version follows the book nearly page for page.  There are constant remakes of Call of the Wild and The Great Gatsby, but those all "improve" on the book, so none of those are much good.  With the exception of the Clark Gable version which is so far removed from the book, that the movie stands on its own.  I'm told that the James Dickey version is true to the original book, but I have not seen it, and I'm sure that won't prevent it from being remade.

I'm probably showing my parochialism limiting myself to American movies of novels written in English, but there you go.  My ADHD or ADD (now called something else, I guess) kind of limited my ability to learn foreign languages (or at least that is my excuse and I'm sticking to it) and I seem unwilling to put forth the effort now.

No Real Politics

Just finished Gore Vidal's Lincoln and I'm starting James Jones' unexpurgated From Here to Eternity plished in ereader form by Open Road Media.  I wonder if Vidal writes as he does naturally or he gets there with massive rewrites?  I read somewhere that Fred Astaire would not let anyone watch him practice: "Never let 'em see you sweat."

The question about Vidal was brought about by reading Jones and the different styles of Jones and Vidal.  Jones does not seem to have that same ease with language that Vidal does.  And since I've just read Williwaw I think that the comparisons are fair since both of these books (Williwaw and From Here to Eternity) were written at around the same time and when the authors were about the same age, and Williwaw does have that apparently easy facility with words.

I thought I had read Lincoln when it first came out, but now I'm not sure, there is so much in it I don't remember.  The book is fascinating for its depiction of the mature Lincoln and his political skill and the politics of the time, which from what I get from the histories of the time is pretty accurate.  A Civil War book with no (or almost no) battles.  One sees what the people who lived in Washington, D.C. saw, and little more.  We see Grant and Sherman when they visit Washington, and not in the field.  The politics are what are important to Vidal.

Well at any rate, now I'm trying to figure out how to load a Barnes and Noble ebook The Hammer of Thor onto my Sony ereader.  For the most part when there is a difference in price both Nook and Kindle are cheeper than Sony.  Also, and this is the first time this has happened, I've been looking for a good book about the Norse myths and there are more than a few that are on Kindle which are not on other ereaders.  First attempt a failure, but will try again.  Thank god for Google.

Current politics are simply too depressing.  The nursing homes in the area have combined to put the county home out of business, because to quote the CEO of one the county home doesn't charge enough.  Then there is this from one of the Common Pleas judges in town.  I had thought that he was one of the least bad, well perhaps he is the least bad, but what does that make the rest.  Not that the FOP is a model of a progressive union, but still.  Back into my paper worlds (or perhaps some more Charlie Chan).

Interestingly enough could not find a photo of Vidal writing, also most of his pics were of him in more or less "dressed up" outfits.  Jones the opposite, and most in worker or casual clothing.

Picture and Words, Not Mine

Stolen from Down With Tyranny from a post the rest of which I don't agree with, so I'm being petulant and only linkingto the site.

Bah Humbug

Things are too  much with me near and far.  For some reason this article pushed me over the edge.  Or perhaps just further over the edge.  I have no desire to help anybody or vote for anybody in the up coming elections, although maybe that is their (you know: them, those, whatever) plan.

We had a friend over for about four days after she put her adult daughter into rehab.  Very frustrating.  The friend would explain to us how she had to watch and control everything her daughter does in order to keep her safe and off the drugs.  This is the third time the daughter has been arrested and at least her second (I think more like fifth or sixth) time relapsing.  The mother insists that the Court "must" do certain things and if she just tells the judge, well he will understand. 

Luckily, she lives about 130 miles away so she ended up with another lawyer in her home city.  The guy did a great job for her daughter on her first charges getting her a great deal, and now the daughter may have screwed it up.  It is of course, not the daughter's fault, but rather the guy she was with.  Having some experience in that area both professionally and personally I tried to explain to the Mom the way things are and simply couldn't get through to her.  One of the counsellors at the rehab asked her how that was working for her.  My friend thought he was rude.

The one fun thing was that she brought her four or five pound chihuahua with her (well it would have been more fun if she had house trained her dog).  Watching my 180 pound St. chase her dog and then her dog turn around and chase the St. was hilarious.

I'm disappearing into the written word again, trying to run away from the here and now I guess.  I love my e-reader, although I might have gotten a Nook if I knew what I know now, but the Sony is great.  I downloaded Gore Vidal's Lincoln which was just released in e format (if it is available on one e format, it is usually available on all of them).  Then last night I downloaded James Jones' From Here to Eternity.  Of course, From Here to Eternity has all the original four letter words and the homosexual bits put back in.  I also see that there appear to be several of Faulkner's novels coming out in e format within the next week.  That and finding both Canadian and Australian sites which have (what are in those countries) books that are out of copyright and I am in hog heaven especially when one combines them with Gutenberg.org. 

Not my guy, but pretty much the way it was.

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?

No Question About It