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.

All's Well That Ends Well

I've been wandering around reading stuff about the up coming elections (no really it is going to happen) and the kind of school teacher like chastising of the liberal base by the Obama people.

I've come across a couple of points from different blogs. One on Crooks and Liars points out that most if not all of the liberals are not going to be going around telling people not to vote. What is going to happen is that people are not going to work for these candidates nor give them money. And in my case probably not vote at all.

Another other point made by a commentator on another site (I wish I'd marked it and I didn't) who pointed out that the democrats could accomplish nearly nothing that they wanted with super majorities, so how will the republicans with smaller majorities, probably in only one chamber and no control of the White House accomplish anything? Or perhaps I missed the sarcasm.

I know I know. Republicans can do every thing while democrats can do nothing, unless the republicans let them. Still it is an interesting point.

But do remember: First, and most important is the naming of a scape goat who is not the president; Second, and almost as important is to make people think that Obama is not a minion of our very own plutocracy but is prevented by ...............someone or something he has no control over. (Cough bullshit cough).

True Believers

Well, maybe I can't leave it alone, I am trying to work out my thoughts on just why Obama and the democratic party are not worth my support as they are now and why so many people become so angry when one dares to seriously criticize them. I would guess that the thing that bothers me most about the "enthusiasm gap" is not so much the attitude of the politicians themselves who simply can't understand why we don't love them any more, but the attitude of so many of their supporters.

Greenwald wrote a pretty good essay (again) not succinct, but insightful dealing with the issue of political leaders actually attacking their base for not being enthusiastic enough and questioning how they think this will help with the enthusiasm gap. "Does it help to insult the people who might be your voters when you are already going out there with the message, We're not quite as bad as the other guy?"

The other thing that interests me is the need to believe by the Obama centrist voters. Perhaps I should go back and re-read Eric Hoffer.

When I go and argue on other blogs I find that the people are angry with me for criticizing the president and angry with me if I threaten to use the only weapons I have against him: my vote, my energy and my money (little as it is).

"You do not know how serious things are going to become if you do not get out and work and vote for the people who wouldn't do a whole lot for you before."

Been watching World at War videos and in one of the early ones there was an interview with a German who was not in Hitler's thrall. He talked about going into a speech to see if there was anything to hear and it was all the same nonsense he said. He said he looked about him and wished he could believed like the others there, but could not. That is kind of how I feel.

And No Obama is not Hitler, he is not even like Hitler, except they both give good speeches. I am talking about the followers being willing to excuse anything.

Perhaps I Should Give It A Rest

Mary McCarthy

I have started a new folder in my Yahoo bookmarks called Fake Progressive, Rumproast was the first placed there, there will be others.

Going to Rumproast and engaging in the comments section as I mentioned before was interesting to say the least. OK, not interesting irritating in the extreme, OK not irritating in the extreme it pissed me off and made me wonder about the ability of the commentators to grasp reality. Also, being accused of being an ivory tower purist and unrealistic "progressive" just pisses me off, given that I've voted for and worked for the (marginally) lesser of two evils in almost every election that has been held since I was 21. That would include Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry and people too numerous to mention or remember in various congressional and state races. Obama I actually thought was different at first (boy was I dumb), by the time it got closer to the election, I was just afraid of Sarah Palin. It looks like McCain would have survived so I might as well have voted for him.

The positions for the other side boil down to: Obama couldn't really accomplish any real progressive stuff, Obama did accomplish real progressive stuff, Obama accomplished the most progressive stuff he could given the make up of the country/congress. I am an asshole (which begs the question really), I am too purist, no one could be good enough for me. No one has explicitly told me to take the crumbs from the rich man's table and be happy, yet.

UPDATE: I went back and read the comments after my last comment and yes they did essentially tell me to take the crumbs from the rich man's table, if not in those specific words then that was the specific meaning. The brutal attacks on bloggers who strongly criticized from the left were amazing. There was an interesting and wilful ignoring of the control that oligarchs and plutocracy has over our election process.

I am reminded of an essay by Mary McCarthy (I wish I could remember which one) where she talks about leftist intellectual life in the 1930s. She talks about the arguments over Stalin's show trials. People would defend Stalin against all kinds of arguments that marshaled large amounts of evidence showing that the allegations could not be true and it would not matter. Then sometimes, some small bit of information would get through and the next week the person who had been adamantly defending Stalin, would be on the other side. She said that it was often only a small thing. I guess I can hope for the same thing for these folks because I just don't think I can grab each one by the collar and shake them until they see reality.

Hiring Half the Working Class

I drifted over to Rumproast from No More Mister Nice Blog to read the essay concerning Susie Madak and her calling out Obama mouth piece Axelrod on the way Obama and the whole democratic party treats progressives. I think she told him that the administration treated progressive bloggers like the girl they hooked up with under the bleachers and don't want to be seen with out in public with. The vapors flew fast and furious. Although to be fair the metaphor was an only slightly cruder version of "You should dance with them what brung ya."

People pointing out failures doesn’t turn off the base, it is the failures themselves who turn off the base. Well that and the clear contempt shown for those of us who are progressives and who worked for the democrats. The vast majority of commentators seem to have spent their energy attacking the messenger.

The lists of bills passed have a lot of nice names, but the bills themselves leave more than a little to be desired. Let us not forget (or have we already) that HCR started out with secret deals (that turned out not to be so secret) with Big Pharma and went down hill from there. It was the real left that pointed out that this bill was going to be a disaster in terms of electoral strategy. It isn’t progressive complaints that are destroying the party at this point.

Continuation of two wars,secret detention, arguing against repeal of DADT in court with little or no real support for repeal in congress, expanding executive privilege, refusal to deal with torture ordered and justified at the highest levels, assassination of American citizens, fighting against regulation of the FED, fighting against real credit card reform, developing a foreclosure policy that doesn’t work and appointing the three people who basically lead us into this economic mess as his main economic advisers. And of course, if you want to simply point to form over substance lets look at the Fat White Homophobe who gave the invocation at the inauguration.

Combine all this with an insane attack from the right that claims that Obama is a crazed leftist communist and Obama has managed to destroy progressive politics for a generation.

It is the left the administration spends most of their time attacking not the right, and by anyone's definition that was the people that got them their jobs.

It is one thing to see the failures of Obama and the democrats, and by failures I not only mean the bills not passed, but the attempts not made. It is another to see the people who will come out in droves to fight those of us who point out the emperor's lack of attire. Fight with vicious attacks. "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. In the land of the insane the sane man is hanged." These people are so invested in Obama that they cannot back off.

Just Crap

So ......... once again Obama and his tactics have proven to be brilliant now that the repeal of DADT has been stopped dead in it's tracks. Although they will bring it back in December when I am sure the senate will be more than willing to pass it after the democrats are decimated (possibly an entirely literal description of what will happen in November) in the coming election.

There seems to be an argument amongst those on the left (who count as opposed to people like me) as to who to blame for this specific fiasco as opposed to the fiascoes involving health care, the stimulus, financial reform, etc., etc., etc. I suspect that there is more than enough blame to go around myself. Also, when assigning blame one assumes that Obama wanted a different outcome than the one he got. If he got the outcome he wanted then clearly there can be no blame assigned to him. At least none concerning his abilities to get his programs through or prevent those he doesn't want to get through from getting through.

The democrat leadership in the senate has to be nailed to the wall for not aggressively attacking the rules that currently run that house. Do we blame the republicans for holding on to their power and attacking their enemies (or at least those they consider their enemies) I guess the same way one attacks any right wing reactionary, but they have accomplished just what they want to accomplish.

There really appears to be no leadership at all as far as the White House is concerned, unless as I say, Obama continues to get just the outcomes he is looking for. Although in that case I think that one could argue that he isn't doing a very good job since he is looking like an asshole and an incompetent. If his goal is to screw his base and get them to think he wasn't that doesn't appear to be working very well either.

So we are back to the age old question: Obama incompetent, corrupt, drunk, or all of the above?

UPDATE: Of course that leaves out a similar question concerning congressional democrats. Would that I could make money betting against them, but I don't think anyone would take the other side.

God I Hate This

Over the weekend I got a mailer from the SEIU telling me what a prick my congress man Zack Space for voting against HCR. Nearly contemporaneously Space sent an email telling folks that under no circumstances will he vote for lowering Social Security benefits (including raising the retirement age).

I called the SEIU this morning and got a person after several tried who said complaints was over there and sent me to a message machine. I called Space and told the person that given the SEIU mailer and his position on Social Security I would be voting for Space, although up until all this I was simply not going to vote.

I've been on a couple of blogs and made comments about the mailer, but no one has commented back on it.

My point is that it is a waste of money for the SEIU to send out something like this which will only depress the turn out of people likely to vote democratic in this house district, up and down the ticket. They could have spent this money on Mary Jo Kilroy in Columbus if they wanted to spend money in a congressional election in Ohio. I live in congressional district 18, Bob Ney's old district. The only real candidate running against Space is a conservative republican and if that candidate gets elected then he will be the representative here from now until the end of time (or until he is arrested, whichever comes first).

I didn't even go into the problems with HCR or about how it is a conduit for middle class income and taxes to be funnelled into the pharmaceutical and insurance industries in near unlimited amounts to help about half the people who are currently uninsured, fore instance.

But the over reaching point is that it seems that the union is not really thinking this thing through and has decided it must punish him for what is really a pretty poor reason, believe me there are a lot of reasons to dislike him. There are enough really serious problems with HCR, that this isn't one.

Unless of course it is a double reverse flip, and since HCR is so disliked sending out this mailer attacking Space for voting against HCR is a secret way to help him. Hmmmmmmmm?

UPDATE: Although my imput was important to them and they will get back to me as soon as they possibly can, they haven't been able to do so yet I guess they are pretty busy in the complaints and concerns section.

I Loved The 60s and 70s, But Oh You Kid

That's the main buildings at the time, I can't find photos of the dorm.

So I graduated from Wright State University in 1975 in no particular class. That is I kind of stumbled on graduation after having completed the necessary credit hours in my major: History, American. It seemed easy enough and no real competence in a foreign language was actually required.

I wasn't really in a class as I said, and didn't attend any graduation ceremony, although I guess they thought I was (PTSD: too much alcohol and too many whores in Thailand). They mailed me my diploma which is on the wall of my office where I had to go and look in order to see what year I really graduated. See I moved into the co-ed dormitory (at that time the only dormitory) after my second year at a branch campus. I was one of about 300 students who lived on campus in a college of about 4000 at the time. We were a little different. Ok, there were an incredible amount of great drugs in that dormitory and you could go from one room to another and enter different drug experiences all without leaving the building. Most people's grades dropped by about one point on a four point scale, mine went up one point.

Today, I opened Community, The Magazine of Wright State University and turned to the Almnotes and the first thing I see are notes about someone from my graduation year and then from two years latter from a couple of Jesus freaks who are clearly religious nuts attacking the Daily show and another church of god guy.

I remember being there (no I really do) the group I hung with were major drug users and dealers and we thought that we were the college representatives. I guess not. Or perhaps we were at the time, but the Christians have actually survived.

UPDATE:




OK, here is a photo of the front door and part of the outside looking in at the rooms. It is now called Hamilton Hall, when I was there it was called The Dorm. Just like the team is now called the Timberwolves and when I was there they were called the Raiders, I think.

So anyway about six hours later. If you look to your right, no your right that would be the women's wing the men's wing was at a 90 degree angle back from the door and on the third floor of the men's wing lived the WSU men's basket ball team. That was as close as I got to a game, but I was a good friend of several of the players and also an even better friend of the team dealer. Well ok, he wasn't the only team dealer, but he was the dealer for most of the team. No drug dogs, no drug tests, just drugs. They were all more or less up for all the games.

The first two quarters the dorm was open at 10:00 p.m. men had to leave the women's side and women had to leave the men's side of the dorm (interestingly enough most did). What that meant in practice was that we would meet in the lounge and continue the many private parties as a public one until 1:00 or 2:00 unless it was the weekend when we would not stop until sometime Monday. I don't remember many (ok any) of us stopping to go to church.

Fuck You Hippy

I am now officially confused. My congressman, Zack Space has sent me an email that says that he will not vote for any cuts in Social Security Benefits and as part of that pledge, he promises to vote against raising the retirement age.

Now just two days ago I loudly announced for the two or three people who read this stuff that I will not vote in the election. I am kind of re-considering that position right now, at least as far as Space is concerned. He is a blue dog, but he took the right positions on possible the two most important domestic issues: Health Care (he voted against the final bill, he now claims that was because there was no single payer or Medicare buy in) and Social Security, that have been out there since the last election. His positions on other issues suck, but then so do those of his opponent. The opponent is a main line republican who won because at least three and maybe four (I don't care enough to look it up) teabag candidates fought it out among themselves for the really obviously crazy part of the primary vote.

In other (not really) news Obama takes time out at a $30,000.00 a plate dinner to tell his base that liberals are whiners and just like to bitch when they don't get their perfect world. This coming on the heals of Biden telling us that we have got to get enthused about the mid-terms. Not because we've got anything to be enthused about, but by-god because we've got to, damn it. And Dean telling us that we shouldn't get mad until after the elections.

The press then goes all gooey and giggles like three year old girls about the administration's hippy (I know the main stream spells it with an 'ie' instead of a 'y,' but fuck 'em, I was one and I'll spell it any way I want) punching.

I guess I can understand how the democratic party leaders would simply not understand how it is that some people want their leaders to really work for the issues they ran on. They have no firm or real beliefs so that they can turn on a dime, except they are not turning in their minds, they are simply following their buds and the money, something they have done all the time. Of course, if the party leaders look around at the people they hang with they can see what is most important to their people, now can't they? The masses who came to the rallies and worked and voted, why we are merely extras in the movie of the important, with definitely no speaking parts.

Loyalty to the leader or the party is valued above all so even those who were screwed over by this president will keep their mouths shut and go quietly (Van Jones/ Dawn Johnsen). If they do that then they will still have some influence, certainly more than the little people with those non-speaking parts, although not as much as the big money people. I remember when Clinton was president only a couple of mid-level people resigned in protest over some of his policies.

Well fuck.

Step Right Up Rubes

So Elizabeth Warren has been appointed a special advisor to our glorious leader and Geither. Whoop fucking eee. I will make a prognostication. She will be gone before the 2012 election season is even remotely underway and some plutocrats' suck up will be named the head of the bureau that is to protect us consumers, but won't.

Now if I could just figure out how to make some money out of this most recent round of fuck the average American and make liberals (or progressives, if that is what you want to be called so conservatives won't make fun of you too loudly) think that they are getting something out of Obama, that would be helpful, to me at least and isn't that what this great country is all about?

How About A Fix Instead

I would welcome some serious drugs for my extended personal use at this point in the history of my country. Something I can take and just drift away into some Cloud Cuckoo Land. I'm reading at Salon and Greenwald about how the President has said that if we don't kill that dude (Anwar Al-Awlaki) who has as far as I've been able to figure out not really done anything, but encourage people to, well not to put too fine a point on it, but to kill American citizens. Then we should maybe charge him with something and arrest him.

Now apparently that is a crime (Fire Crowded Theaters, etc. , a bad decision written by Holmes and expanded by the vile little fascists currently on the court) now. It just isn't a capital offense. Not that that seems to matter to most Americans and to no people with real power in the government (not I think "our," certainly not "my" government).

Therefore, when I say that I will not vote in the next election (probably for anybody, but certainly not in the congressional race) it is not because I have any illusions about who is running against the current office holder (Congressman Space), but that I have no illusions about any of the current office holders either.

I understand who came after Wiemar. But to be honest I just do not see how the current crop of corporate shills who call themselves democrats can lead this country in any direction except down, even if the down is not as steep as the teabagger or republican down, it is just as deep. So I guess really that I should just STFU and vote democratic and hope that I die of natural causes before the entire country really goes down the shitter.

Souls For Sale

It occurs to me that after the elections this November, if the republicans sweep, the exact same thing will happen that happened after the Massachusetts' senatorial election. Those at fault will be the DFHs who refused to vote for warmed over cat piss. Or the democrats in Obama's image as I like to think of them. Those people who sold their souls to our corporate masters. I would guess that is the difference between the republicans andthe democrats: the democrats have souls to sell, the republicans never had them to begin with.

Then I read at Crooks and Liars that the republicans are outspending the democrats almost 10 to 1 and I sware that it was only a few months ago that I was reading how the democrats were awash in fat cat cash which they were getting for the afore mentioned selling of souls on various issues such as health care and others too numerous to mention. They were going to be so flush with cash that they didn't need us peaons out there working for them, they were going to get by without us. What happened anyway? Where did all that money go?

So essentially the republicans aparently have their souls (if they have any, which is a real question) on permanent lease to the big boys, where as the democrats, no matter how much they really want be owned by the plutacrats who run our country can never be trusted to stay bought I guess.

I'm Just Living In A Bad Novel

This world would simply not make it as a movie or novel .Well, it might, but it would be called unbelievable and not worth watching or reading.

We've got a president who was elected to end a couple of pointless colonial wars control the wealthiest 1% put people back to work and give the average person a safe and secure old age not endangered by overwhelming medical bills. A small d democrat who immediately turns around and doubles down on two colonial wars and decides to protect the people who started those wars and everything that went with them. Domestically he cuts deals with large corporations so that money can be funneled directly from his supporters to these corporations against all that he claimed to be in favor of and what the people who voted for him really wanted. He does all this more or less openly or ineptly (secret meetings that turn out to be so unsecret that they become known within weeks of their occurring).

He fills his administration with people who are "very important people," but people who have been wrong in everything they have attempted or proposed in their public lives.

While all this is going on and during all the debates on his programs he personally strongly discourages his supporters from demonstrating in favor of what were thought to be his positions and therefore allows the opposition to grab and control the message and to whip up anti-administration fervor.

He makes no real attempt to pass legislation that will help the majority of people who voted for him. But then all the stops are pulled out to pass legislation that in its final form is widely hated by large numbers of his supporters.

Top this off with a fan base that essentially remains loyal no matter what the leader does and we have a very bad political novel or movie I think.

If I were to read this I would simply throw it down half way through and say unbelievable.

Labor Day?

Alicublog takes us through the hate that is being spewed out by the current crop of those who can be hired in this day and age to (so far only metaphorically) kill the other half of the working class. Not to suggest that those who write that crap are working class, but they would certainly not be considered part of the ruling class, at least not by the real ruling class. Rather, they are considered by the ruling class their lackeys. At any rate these are the people Jay Gould referred to when he made his rather nasty, but I suspect accurate comment.

So we start the day, called Labor, with a little remembrance of how bad things are right now (and were except for a few decades recently passed) and how both the political parties have joined together to screw the working man and woman, but by god we will see that you all get a three day weekend to drink beer and cook out. On the other hand, it does certainly follow the original concept of labor day as conceived by Grover Cleveland, another great progressive democratic politician.

Oh yes, please forget that other labor day that is celebrated by most of the rest of the world, on May 1, as a commemoration of a little something that happened in Chicago back in 1886 right around the time of our previously mentioned heroic democratic president's term in office:

So maybe it's a good idea to remember that in almost all the rest of the world that is what labor day is all about: the killing of union demonstrators who were asking for an eight hour day, by police thugs. Now they were good old American police thugs who were killing foreigners so we should be proud I guess about how far we've come, right?

In the mean time we go from Triangle to the most recent mine disaster in a non union coal mine in West Virginia.

Have a happy holiday, and don't hold your breath for card check, the unions worked and voted for the guy, and his co-president still says; "Fuck the UAW." Welcome to post class America we only have two classes here the very wealthy and those of us who are just too lazy. And if you are reading this (unless you are a computer owned by the NSA) you are definately not one of the very wealthy.

On the other hand I guess we could celebrate the birthday of Jane Addams something good out of Chicago.

Isn't the Hole Deep Enough Yet?

Was over at Balloon-Juice earlier to read a post and some comments on the post about, well the post was "we" (we being liberals, I guess) shouldn't worry as much as we are because really the democrats are quite possibly not going to lose as badly as is now thought in the up coming elections (this linked to another post, but anyone who is interested can go over and follow it there).

My very first thought, which I kept for a nano second, was whew, thank god maybe the democrats will keep control. But that thought was followed almost immediately by "Who cares?" I am somewhat embarrassed by the first thought, no matter how short it was, but I am proud that I almost immediately rejected that and moved on to the who cares.

I have no doubt that control by republicans and tea baggers will make things worse and perhaps worse than I can imagine right now. But, I also have no doubt that the people who are in control now will make things worse and I do think worse than I can imagine, although probably not quite as quickly as the republicans, but who knows.

My position is still that things will have to get worse (I used to think just some worse, but now I think a lot worse) before they will get better. And no matter who wins the next election things are going to get worse given the candidates out there. Of course, it is not at all assured that things will get better after they get worse. But that's all we've got.

UPDATE: So after I write this I go over to Greenwald for an all in one place explanation of why it doesn't matter, at least not in the sense of choosing between living in a plutocracy or kleptocracy, which seems to be the only choice we are being given anymore.