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March 29, 2008

Obama and the Class Question

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , — Volt @ 4:37 pm



Richard Florida, The Globe and Mail, March 29, 2008

For the past two weeks, all eyes have focused on Barack Obama and race. A couple of weeks ago, it was Hillary Clinton’s gender. A month before that, it was all about the Obama surge among young voters.

Pundits on all sides have framed this election – and especially the Democratic primary – as turning on the traditional fault lines of race, gender and generation.

The talk shows go on and on about how Mr. Obama is attracting black and young voters and how Ms. Clinton finds her voice among women and baby boomers.

But what is seldom discussed and yet most interesting about this election is not any young-vs.-old, black-vs.-white, or male-vs.-female dynamic.

At bottom, both the Democratic primary and the upcoming general election turn on an even deeper economic and social force: class.

Read More Here

March 27, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Throw Them All Under the Bus Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:27 pm

This, That and Other Scat

– “Throw under the bus”: Isn’t it time to throw this exhausted Mediocracy line under the bus and back over it a few times for good measure?

– The country’s deeply in the debt and borrowing money to keep afloat, our economy’s ‘under the bus,’ and our military is near the breaking point, yet I didn’t hear McCain asked even one question regarding how he intends to pay for his endless war in Iraq, nor how he plans to find fresh bodies to sacrifice to his vague idea of victory over there.

– Will Tonya Harding object to her tactics of ‘knee-capping’ Nancy Kerrigan being compared to Hillary Clinton’s going negative against Obama? I can hear Tonya now, “I’m voting for that McCainey guy – I don’t truck with them pinko liberal commies like Clinton.” (Side note: Will Hillary be appearing on “Celebrity Boxing” in a few years?)

– Speaking of Hillary, what could she be thinking by proposing to alleviate the housing crisis by dragging in Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan to fix it? Rubin is the ultimate Wall Street insider and rinky-dink deals by his Big Money cronies caused the crisis in the first place while Greenspan’s fetid policies as Fed chief set the stage for the economic disaster we’re wallowing in now. Would a President Hillary invite McCain and Cheney in to help her during a Middle East crisis?

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March 24, 2008

Nancy Pelosi’s Bad Karma

Filed under: Commentary — alex @ 10:26 am

from breadwithcircus.com

I read a news story this morning entitled…

Pelosi Urges World to Condemn China

To this I have only one response…

DO YOUR DAMN JOB AND STOP THE IRAQ WAR!!!

Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, a position comparable to Prime Minister in other countries. She is the leader of the Democratic Party’s majority of seats in the US Congress, a majority which could, if it wished to, end the Iraq war, impeach the criminals in the White House and perhaps conduct a real, non-whitewash investigation into 9-11. She could stop the Bush agenda, if only she dared to.Instead of doing her job and standing up for the American people who gave her the power she holds, (but never uses) Nancy Pelosi is going to grandstand and go after China, underwriter of the massive US Debt that has kept the US economy (barely) alive since Bush decided that every billionaire needs a tax cut.

The Tibetans are an inherently likable people who have been oppressed for half a century. I have nothing but respect for the Dalai Lama. However, Madame Speaker, it is not your place to go after Chinese thugs (biting the hand that feeds) while ignoring the criminals across the aisle from you, the ones that you actually do have the power to stop.

Here are some quotes from the article. I’ll respond.

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March 23, 2008

World Should Condemn China’s Actions In Tibet, Make Olympic Size Statement

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — N @ 7:07 pm

The Chinese government’s overreaction by murdering protesters during independence protests in Tibet this week has thrown a black cloud over the Summer Olympic Games this summer in China. The insane actions of the communist government against the Tibetan people requires a strong condemnation from the world and those nations that are set to participate in this summer’s games.

The Chinese reaction to the protest was an act against humanity and the Chinese government needs to be harshly punished internationally for its actions. However, in regard to this Summer’s games, I agree with recent comments from the president of the International Olympic Committee when he said that politics should not play a role in the games. I do not believe that athletes that have trained their whole lives to try to compete for an Olympic medal should be punished because their government or the government of a host country are engaged in less than humane actions. However, the IOC would be able to avoid any problem like that currently occurring in Tibet if they chose countries to host the Olympics that do not engage in conflict with other nations or suppress their own people. That of course would exclude the United States for our invasion of Iraq.

So while I do agree that athletes should not be used in situations like this for political gain, there is nothing that says the governments of participating nations cannot make statements of disgust. One idea that has been floated recently is a boycott of the opening ceremonies by the leaders of participating countries, many of which are heads of state. This is a positive action that would not hurt athletes and would be seen worldwide as a condemnation of China’s tactics in Tibet.

While China is an emerging economy that everyone wants a part of, China’s leaders needs to be shown that if they truly want China be part of the modern world community they can no longer suppress, oppress and in this\case kill their citizens for voicing their displeasure with the government’s actions.

Frank Rich: The Republican Resurrection

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , , — Volt @ 9:43 am

Frank Rich, The New York Times, March 23, 2008

The day before Barack Obama gave The Speech, Hillary Clinton gave a big speech of her own, billed by her campaign as a “major policy address on the war in Iraq.” What, you didn’t hear about it?

Clinton partisans can blame the Obamaphilic press corps for underplaying their candidate’s uncompromising antiwar sentiments. But intentionally or not, the press did Mrs. Clinton a favor. Every time she opens her mouth about Iraq, she reminds voters of how she enabled the catastrophe that has devoured American lives and treasure for five years.

Race has been America’s transcendent issue far longer than that. I share the general view that Mr. Obama’s speech is the most remarkable utterance on the subject by a public figure in modern memory. But what impressed me most was not Mr. Obama’s rhetorical elegance or his nuanced view of both America’s undeniable racial divide and equally undeniable racial progress. The real novelty was to find a politician who didn’t talk down to his audience but instead trusted it to listen to complete, paragraph-long thoughts that couldn’t be reduced to sound bites.

In a political culture where even campaign debates can resemble “Jeopardy,” this is tantamount to revolution. As if to prove the point, some of the Beltway bloviators who had hyped Mitt Romney’s instantly forgotten snake oil on “Faith in America” soon fell to fretting about whether “ordinary Americans” would comprehend Mr. Obama.

Mrs. Clinton is fond of mocking her adversary for offering “just words.” But words can matter, and Mrs. Clinton’s tragedy is that she never realized they could have mattered for her, too. You have to wonder if her Iraq speech would have been greeted with the same shrug if she had tossed away her usual talking points and seized the opportunity to address the war in the same adult way that Mr. Obama addressed race. Mrs. Clinton might have reconnected with the half of her party that has tuned her out.

Read More Here

March 21, 2008

Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead (William F. Buckley)

Filed under: Commentary — Volt @ 4:42 pm

Gore Vidal, TruthDig, March 21, 2008

I can recall that day in the 1930s when a “news” (sic) magazine appeared in Washington, D.C.; it was called Newsweek: meant to be a counterbalance to Time Magazine’s uncontrollable malice. In due course the two became sadly alike as Vincent Astor morphed into Henry Luce: Was it something in the water? I once asked Henry Luce why he called Time a news magazine when it was simply Uncle Harry’s means of venting his rage (this was 1960 or so) at liberals, and “degenerate art” like the plays of Tennessee Williams-he had no answer. At Newsweek Vincent Astor was far too stupid to answer any such complaint. Now here we are in the Newsweek of 2008, and it’s still lousy. There have been a few decent writers in between that were less nutty than today’s Newsweek hacks.

But why is Newsweek currently lousy? Here’s an example provided by an editor who keeps a sharp eye on their crimes. He sent me their recent obituary of William F. Buckley, a hero to those who feared democracies.

Buckley bridled at bullies [we are assured]. But one of the rare times he lost his temper was debating Gore Vidal, who “got under his skin,” says son Chris. When Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” Buckley responded, “Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” But usually his public manners were genteel [I think they mean gentile]. With “Firing Line” guests who seemed nervous or over their heads, Buckley was gentle. Behind the scenes, he could show remarkable kindness. In 1980, a rising conservative star, Congressman Bob Bauman, was soliciting a 16-year-old [male] for oral sex. Bauman had been a gay-basher, and he instantly became a pariah. The next day, knowing what lay ahead for the disgraced congressman, Buckley quietly gave him an envelope containing $10,000. “He was a knightly man,” says Chris.

Read More Here

Paul Krugman: Partying Like It’s 1929

Filed under: Commentary — Volt @ 11:46 am

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, March 21, 2008

If Ben Bernanke manages to save the financial system from collapse, he will — rightly — be praised for his heroic efforts.

But what we should be asking is: How did we get here?

Why does the financial system need salvation?

Why do mild-mannered economists have to become superheroes?

The answer, at a fundamental level, is that we’re paying the price for willful amnesia. We chose to forget what happened in the 1930s — and having refused to learn from history, we’re repeating it.

Read More Here

The Tattlesnake – Yet More Scenes from the Neocon Paradise Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , — RS Janes @ 10:49 am

Where Government is Tiny and Everything is Privatized…

“Hello, Commercial Water Distribution Corporation, how can I help you?”

“Hi, my name is…”

“Got it right here on the AT&T surveillance screen: Winston Smith, 1984 Enron Lane, Planktonville. You’ve got a wife and two kids, work two full-time jobs, one at the Mega Mall on Route 15 and the other at the Burger Bandit, and you earn a collective total yearly wage of $41,000, and you had what you thought was a bad case of the flu last week but was actually food poisoning from that meatloaf your wife made from downed-cattle beef that wasn’t inspected by the USDA. What can I do for you, sir?”

“Jesus, you got all that from my phone number? Anyway, look, since you took over our municipal water system last month, my water bill has shot up from ten bucks a month to fifty. How do you expect working people to afford this? This is an outrage!”

“That’s the cost of making your water system more efficient and profitable.”

“More efficient?! Since you took over the water is brown and rusty-tasting – it used to be clear and sweet!”

“I assure you, sir, reputable scientists have certified that the water coming out of your pipes is absolutely safe to drink.”

“What scientists?”

“Scientists from the Independent Water Institute.”

“I heard about that group – it’s owned by the for-profit water industry – in other words, it’s owned by your company and other companies like it.”

“Be that as it may, it is now the only organization that certifies safe drinking water, since we finally managed to drown government, and their scientists, in a bathtub some years ago – not to make a water-related joke. You should be happy that all of America is an unregulated competitive free trade zone these days.”

“This isn’t free trade, this is crazy – you don’t have any competition!”

“CWDC is run by some very smart people who bought out the competition – it’s all completely legal and aboveboard.”

“Yeah, well, nobody asked me if I wanted a privatized water system!”

“According to your records, you’ve voted straight Republican since you first cast a ballot in 1980. What did you think you were voting for? Didn’t you want the government off your back?”

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March 19, 2008

Robert Scheer: Bush’s Legacy of Failure

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , — Volt @ 6:00 pm

Robert Scheer, TruthDig, March 19, 2008

That idiotic “what, me worry?” look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again, there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq was being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his Treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government’s bailout of a failed bank, George Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling.

Failure suits him. It is a stance he learned well while presiding over one failed Texas business deal after another, and it served him splendidly as he claimed the title of president of the United States after losing the popular, and maybe even the electoral, vote. It carried him through the most ignominious chapter of U.S. foreign policy, from the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to an unprecedented presidential defense of torture.

The totally unwarranted assurance was there this week as the once proud dollar fell into the toilet and the debacle of Iraq and Bush’s other failed Mideast policies pushed oil prices to record highs. The Europeans, who didn’t support the U.S. imperial intervention, are doing much better, not having to pay for guarding besieged oil pipelines while U.S. taxpayers are saddled with trillions in future debt, not to mention 4,000 U.S. military deaths and 30,000 U.S. injuries in a war the administration had promised would be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues. Even in Baghdad last week, there wasn’t enough oil to keep the lights on for more than a few hours.

But the president is happy because his legacy issue, the war on terror, is intact. No matter that this week the Pentagon was forced to release a report conducted over the last five years that concluded, after surveying 600,000 official Iraqi documents captured by U.S. forces, that there is “no smoking gun” establishing any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The report was so embarrassing that we taxpayers, who paid for it, were not going to be told of its existence, even though the explosive conclusions were totally declassified, until ABC News forced its posting online.

Read More Here

The Tattlesnake — Random Humor, Tumor Rumors and Fat Scat Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , — RS Janes @ 5:52 pm

– If you want Republicans to vote for universal health care or anything else beneficial for the average American, just name the bill the Investigating Domestic Instigators, Objectors and Terrorists (IDIOT) act and it will sail through Congress. Make the bill thick and wordy enough and you can guarantee no Republican will ever read it past the title.

– The Republican Constitution and Bill of Rights: The GOP is drafting its own Constitution and Bill of Rights in Cheney’s private bunker. However, to protect national security, since Islamofascist terrorists and other enemy combatants might find some loophole like habeas corpus or due process to defend themselves in court, its exact contents will be classified and kept from the public. So, you’ll still have your Constitutional rights, you just won’t know what they are!

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March 18, 2008

Obama Tries To Cover His Lies About Jeremiah Wright

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — N @ 3:35 pm

So finally some shit has stuck to Obama. His lame excuses over the last two days over bigoted and racially insensitive comments by his pastor Jeremiah Wright may be enough to sink his chances to win the Democratic nomination at the convention in August. Today, Barak Obama tried to diffuse the situation but all he ended up doing was acknowledging that he had lied two days ago when he said he never heard Wright utter these types of rants in church.

For 20 years Obama sat in Wright’s church in Chicago. When the story of Wright’s bigotry broke, Obama denied hearing any of these kinds of words from Wright that are in constant rotation on Youtube and the news. Now, today, in a speech in Philadelphia he says he did hear some blatant racist and inflammatory comments from Wright but took his bad with his good. Sorry Obama, having your pastor, the man who married you and baptised your children say that America should be damned by god, is completely inexcusable and shows again that your judgement is poor. There is NO WAY white America is going to get past this.

Whatever chance Obama had being the Democratic nominee and beating John McCain in November are now gone. Obama may well still get the nomination but he can not beat McCain with clips of who he now calls “his former pastor” spitting out anti-white and anti-America rhetoric flashing on tv screens across America. Or as Wright called the country, the US of KKKA.

It is interesting that when Obama wasn’t running for president Wright’s comments were okay, but now that he is running, Wright is no longer his pastor. A convenient political decision of the kind that he criticizes Hillary Clinton for.

Now the Democratic Party must move and move fast to ensure that Obama is not the nominee. The GOP will play the race card no matter what, and now Obama himself has provided them with the anti-white, anti-America rants from Wright, his pastor, that they can use to scare white people from voting for him. Call it what you want but that is politics. The smart thing for Obama to do now is to leave the race and help to unite Democrats behind Hillary Clinton.

March 17, 2008

Bush kills off financial sector and economy, vows to leave nothing left of America

Filed under: Commentary,News,Opinion — N @ 7:23 pm

It just get worse. Since the moment George W. Bush step foot in the White House the United States has gone straight to hell. Everywhere you look pieces of what have made this country the great country it has been since our independence are falling and smashing to pieces. Now another piece, our vaunted financial system is about to shatter.

Bush’s policies in every single area important to the Federal Government have been absolute shit. Bush has trashed everything from our once untouchable prestige in the world, to the environment, to education, to civil liberties, to a long and bloody illegal war. Unfortunately he apparently wasn’t done fucking up the country. Now our financial system seems to be teetering on the edge of collapse not just a mortgage crisis. Bush’s icing on the cake.

In today’s New York Times, columnist and respected economist Paul Krugman, speculates that this is just the beginning. Krugman seems to believe that the government will have to do a full scale bailout of the financial system much like they did in the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the crash of the 1930s. That means billions of our tax dollars to bail out the system. Example. Friday the Federal Reserve bailed out financial biggie Bear Stearns and today allowed JP Morgan and Company to by Bear for $2 a share. Nice. While the fat bastards Bush made rich by taking a blind eye to the financial services industry get away with it and stay rich, the regular people take the beating.

So there you have it. One more colossal fuck up by George W. Bush. I wonder how all those folks out there that voted for Bush because they felt he would be more fun to have a beer with feel about him now. Might be tough to feel good about having a beer with the guy when you living in your fucking car because you lost your job and your house was repossessed.

Daily Kos Writers’ “strike” Gets Ugly

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , — Volt @ 4:52 pm

Alex Koppelman, Slate, March 17, 2008

On Friday, a diarist at the liberal blogging landmark Daily Kos put up a new post calling for Hillary Clinton supporters to launch a writers’ “strike” at the site.

In the post, diarist “Alegre” wrote:

I’ve been posting at DailyKos for nearly 4 years now and started writing diaries in support of Hillary Clinton back in June of last year. Over the past few months I’ve noticed that things have become progressively more abusive toward my candidate and her supporters.

I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our on-line community has tried to accomplish in this world. No more. DailyKos is not the site it once was thanks to the abusive nature of certain members of our community.

I’ve decided to go on “strike” and will refrain from posting here as long as the administrators allow the more disruptive members of our community to trash Hillary Clinton and distort her record without any fear of consequence or retribution. I will not be posting at DailyKos effective immediately. I will not help drive up traffic or page-hits as long as my candidate — a good and fine DEMOCRAT — is attacked in such a horrid and sexist manner not only by other diarists, but by several of those posting to the front page.

Read More Here

Paul Krugman: The B Word

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , , , — Volt @ 6:53 am

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, March 17, 2008

Last week, Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, and John Lipsky, a top official at the International Monetary Fund, both suggested that public funds might be needed to rescue the U.S. financial system. Mr. Lipsky insisted that he wasn’t talking about a bailout. But he was.

It’s true that Henry Paulson, the current Treasury secretary, still says that any proposal to use taxpayers’ money to help resolve the crisis is a “non-starter.” But that’s about as credible as all of his previous pronouncements on the financial situation.

So here’s the question we really should be asking: When the feds do bail out the financial system, what will they do to ensure that they aren’t also bailing out the people who got us into this mess?

Let’s talk about why a bailout is inevitable.

Between 2002 and 2007, false beliefs in the private sector — the belief that home prices only go up, that financial innovation had made risk go away, that a triple-A rating really meant that an investment was safe — led to an epidemic of bad lending. Meanwhile, false beliefs in the political arena — the belief of Alan Greenspan and his friends in the Bush administration that the market is always right and regulation always a bad thing — led Washington to ignore the warning signs.

Read More Here

March 16, 2008

Maureen Dowd: Bush’s Soft Shoe in Hard Times

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , — Volt @ 9:28 am

The New York Times, March 16, 2008

Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood.

The dollar’s crumpling, the recession’s thundering, the Dow’s bungee-jumping and the world’s disapproving, yet George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly, tap dancing and singing in a one-man review called “The Most Happy Fella.”

“I’m coming to you as an optimistic fellow,” he told the Economic Club of New York on Friday. His manner — chortling and joshing — was in odd juxtaposition to the Fed’s bailing out the imploding Bear Stearns and his own acknowledgment that “our economy obviously is going through a tough time,” that gas prices are spiking, and that folks “are concerned about making their bills.”

He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown “a interesting moment” and ended by saying that “our energy policy has not been very wise” and that there was “no quick fix” on gasp-inducing gas prices.

“You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch,” he said. “If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch.”

Read More Here

The Tattlesnake — Obama’s Wright Wing and McCain Trained Monkeys Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:46 am

“But as I travel around this big ol’ world,
There’s one thing that I most fear:
It’s a white man in a golf shirt
With a cell phone in his ear.”
– From “Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall?” a Tom Russell song.

Obama’s Wright Brother Flap: In responding to the media furor over Jeremiah Wright’s remarks on rich, white people and the reasons why this nation was attacked on 9/11, Obama should have said that, while he disagrees with his pastor and old friend on some things, he supports his right to free speech, and to openly express his opinions, just as he would support the right of any American or theologian to speak out freely, even those with whom he profoundly disagrees. Rather than go on the defensive, Obama should have made this a free speech issue, which it is, instead of the ‘judgment’ issue the Punditrocracy is trying to frame it as. And, incidentally, someone tell Chris Matthews to quit mischaracterizing Wright’s comments as ‘blaming the victims of 9/11′ – Wright did no such thing. Note to the Big Media: Stop playing Wright’s “God damn America” line out of context. A lot of Americans might agree with Wright if they heard the 120 seconds preceding the ‘offensive’ three words, but, of course, you knew that, didn’t you, you little McCain Trained Monkeys.

Quotable: “Let me be clear on this: This is only a problem for Barack Obama in that there are still a lot of pinheads around that don’t understand that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. And he’ll distance himself from it because he has to and because Wright’s style isn’t his. It’s not how Obama rolls. But there’s nothing untrue about Wright’s statements in and of themselves.”
– From “Truth Time: Wright Is Right,” by DF, TPM Cafe, March 15, 2008.

And, BTW, when does the BM go after McCain for accepting endorsements from such certifiable fruitcakes as John Hagee, Rod Parsley (wasn’t he once a porn star?) and the late Jerry Falwell?

“All I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support.”– John McCain on Feb. 27, 2008.

Here’s what McCain is “very proud” of: Hagee babbles nonsense like, “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. … I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” (So why did Katrina devastate areas of heterosexual Republican Mississippi as well? God has poor aim?) He has also condemned the Catholic religion as “The Great Whore” and the “anti-Christ,” thinks Harry Potter books are propaganda for Satan, and held a ‘slave sale’ in 1996 to raise job funds for high school seniors. In his Cornerstone Church’s newsletter, Hagee publicized the event with, “Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone!” and “Make plans to come and go home with a slave.” If this idiot worked a real job, his employers would have fired him by now.

God’s Rod Parsley has hallucinated that our Constitution somewhere says our national mission is to destroy Islam, and Falwell was so far over the edge that he, like Hagee, thought we were attacked on 9/11 as a judgment from God for allowing gays and women basic civil rights, among other head-slapping nutballery from the creepy far-right fringe of his reptilian brain.

– Speaking of McCain (from Jamison Foser at Media Matters):

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