After finishing a distant 3rd in what amounted to a ‘beauty contest’ on the Democratic side of the Florida Primary, former Senator John Edwards announced that he was bowing out of the presidential contest. His time upon the national stage was altogether too brief. Many, with far less justification, have been given greater roles in our national pageant; but few, in our time, have touched our soul as has the Senator from North Carolina. John Edwards became our conscience; a voice we can ill afford to lose.
He came out of nowhere in 2004, talking about poverty in America. He talked about two Americas, the wealthy and the rest of us, and the growing polarization of this country as the middle class shrinks back into poverty. He captured the imagination of those who had grown weary of pseudo-Democratic administrations serially ratifying the slow dismantling of the New Deal. He was the first candidate for president to take his campaign into the ghettoes since Bill Bradley, and the first since Robert Kennedy to “dream of things that never were and ask, why not?”
He rose to prominence by capturing the imagination and breathing new life into what remained of the Robert Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party. Latching on to John Kerry’s rising star as the Vice Presidential nominee in 2004, he unfortunately could not bring his home states into the Democratic column. Moreover, he did not frontally challenge Cheney over secrecy, torture, or energy policies in his debates with the Vice President. While an able advocate for social justice, John Edwards has not proven himself to be adept at the rough and tumble of politics necessary to give life to change. Nevertheless his was a lonely voice for social justice, in a country where there have been too few such voices, inspiring us to reach out to what Michael Harrington called “The Other America” and to once again seek a newer world. His departure diminishes our public discourse, and leaves us a poorer nation.
Jan 31, 2008
January 29, 2008: Follow the Money, Mayor of Gomorrah, Trouble at Daytona, That's a Fine Machine You Got There Orville...
It is voting day in Florida and as of this writing the returns are not yet in. The last polls had McCain and Romney neck and neck with about 30-32% of the vote each followed by either Huckleberry and Giuliani, or Giuliani and Huckleberry, depending on which poll one cites, each with support in the mid teens.
This was not the way it was supposed to go. Six months ago Giuliani, on the strength of name recognition as “America’s Mayor”, had commanding leads in the polls and was seen by many as having the inside track to the nomination. He had captured the support of the Bush family’s Texas connections and big oil money that promised to fund a juggernaut that would sweep him to the presidency. But something happened on the way to the Speedway.
Giuliani, after leaving the Mayor’s office, had started several successful businesses on the strength of his political connections, foremost among them was a partnership with Bracewell & Patterson called Bracewell & Giuliani. Bracewell is a mid-sized Texas law firm described by Ari Berman (The Nation, October 29, 2007 “Rudy’s Dirty Money” page 11) “with a client list as long as the plume from a smokestack”. Bracewell represented such clients as Southern Company, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (which represents more than 450 oil companies), Chevron Texaco, Valero Energy and Enron. It was this lobbying firm working with former RNC chair Haley Barbour that pressured the incoming Bush administration to reverse its campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide. According to Berman, Bracewell “offered a gateway into the lavish world of Texas Republican fundraising and easy access to the same titans of industry who helped make the Bush family rich and propelled W. into the White House.”
By the middle of last year Rudy had raised more money in Texas than any republican candidate, over four million dollars, and recruited 37 of W’s Pioneers and Rangers, those who raised at least $100,000., and $200,000. respectively for the Bush campaigns. And Giuliani had “accepted more money from the energy industry--$477,208 through the first half of 2007—than any other presidential candidate” (Page 14). With such backing, Rudy built the ultimate campaign bus, a machine that would take him all the way to the White House.
Larry Hamp is an old friend of mine. We met in college, where we spent the hours between classes talking about politics and life; he being eleven years older and at the time more experienced in the ways of the world. One afternoon he related a tale about one of his former incarnations when he was an award-winning salesman for a Massey-Ferguson farm equipment dealership. On a bright August day the sales manager took his force out into a field to show them the brand-new combine that the company was introducing. As Larry told the story, it was a magnificent machine. It had all the bells and whistles, air conditioning, and latest sound system. It was bright, clean and polished, glistening in the morning sun. After laboriously explaining all the changes in engineering and all the new features of this latest model, the sales manager then had an attendant start it up to demonstrate its prowess. The machine began its perorations, shaking, rattling, with blades furiously moving back and forth. It was, by Hamp’s account, a magnificent spectacle. As the hot noon sun began to bear down on the newly initiated, the sales manager asked his charges what they thought of this majestic addition to human technology. “That’s a fine machine you got there Orville,” Hamp blurted out, “but you’ll never get it off the ground”.
And so it is with the Giuliani Machine. However smooth and shiny, however expensive, however powerful, it was a machine ill suited for the task at hand. No amount of money, no technological advances in polling and communication, and no Madison Avenue advertising agencies could mask the fact that this was a candidacy of a big city mayor for President of the United States, seeking the nomination from a party that loathes urban America. Nothing could mask the fact that Giuliani had stood, as any big city mayor must of necessity stand, for gun control. In addition Giuliani had compromised positions on abortion and gay rights. Intolerance is not a luxury that a mayor of a large city can indulge. Moreover, New York City, Gotham, the Big Apple, is to rural, conservative, Republican America second only to San Francisco as a hotbed of sin and iniquity. If it is not Sodom it is at least Gomorrah. The point here is that it seemed ludicrous on its face, and now with near 20/20 hindsight, that the Republican Party would nominate as its standard bearer the Mayor of Gomorrah. Ask John Lindsay, a much more articulate, attractive and successful figure who likewise found that being the Mayor of Gotham gets you no traction on the Republican circuit. And Lindsay was not up to his ass in Big Oil, did not have an ethically challenged police chief, and did not announce his impending separation and divorce with his wife at a mayoral news conference.
Richard Nixon used to ask, as a gauge of public acceptance, whether something would “play in Peoria”. Here Nixon was recognizing the natural base of the Republican Party: rural and suburban rather than urban, conservative, and Main Street. Clearly there is no way in hell that Rudy was going to “play in Peoria”; no way that the Giuliani machine was going to get off the blocks.
There was trouble right out of the box as rural America early registered its revulsion. Rudy campaigned in Iowa and withdrew well before the caucus sensing humiliation in the wind. In New Hampshire he spent 3 million dollars and hosted over 100 campaign events—more than any other candidate-- only to again withdraw well before the primary, finishing down in the second tier of candidates. He chose not to compete in South Carolina saying he would meet whoever emerged from the early primaries in Florida where he would make his stand.
As the campaign in Florida was heating up to a final climax, and the big guns from the Northeast and the West came south to duke it out, Rudy was seen driving his campaign bus on a ‘victory’ lap around the racetrack at Daytona, before largely empty seats. It was a sad metaphor for what had happened to “America’s Mayor”. Emerging triumphant from his bus, and speaking in the pits to a small group of reporters about the victory at hand, Rudy was approached by a mechanic. “That’s a fine machine you got there mayor,” he said, “but you’ll never get it off the ground.”
This was not the way it was supposed to go. Six months ago Giuliani, on the strength of name recognition as “America’s Mayor”, had commanding leads in the polls and was seen by many as having the inside track to the nomination. He had captured the support of the Bush family’s Texas connections and big oil money that promised to fund a juggernaut that would sweep him to the presidency. But something happened on the way to the Speedway.
Giuliani, after leaving the Mayor’s office, had started several successful businesses on the strength of his political connections, foremost among them was a partnership with Bracewell & Patterson called Bracewell & Giuliani. Bracewell is a mid-sized Texas law firm described by Ari Berman (The Nation, October 29, 2007 “Rudy’s Dirty Money” page 11) “with a client list as long as the plume from a smokestack”. Bracewell represented such clients as Southern Company, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (which represents more than 450 oil companies), Chevron Texaco, Valero Energy and Enron. It was this lobbying firm working with former RNC chair Haley Barbour that pressured the incoming Bush administration to reverse its campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide. According to Berman, Bracewell “offered a gateway into the lavish world of Texas Republican fundraising and easy access to the same titans of industry who helped make the Bush family rich and propelled W. into the White House.”
By the middle of last year Rudy had raised more money in Texas than any republican candidate, over four million dollars, and recruited 37 of W’s Pioneers and Rangers, those who raised at least $100,000., and $200,000. respectively for the Bush campaigns. And Giuliani had “accepted more money from the energy industry--$477,208 through the first half of 2007—than any other presidential candidate” (Page 14). With such backing, Rudy built the ultimate campaign bus, a machine that would take him all the way to the White House.
Larry Hamp is an old friend of mine. We met in college, where we spent the hours between classes talking about politics and life; he being eleven years older and at the time more experienced in the ways of the world. One afternoon he related a tale about one of his former incarnations when he was an award-winning salesman for a Massey-Ferguson farm equipment dealership. On a bright August day the sales manager took his force out into a field to show them the brand-new combine that the company was introducing. As Larry told the story, it was a magnificent machine. It had all the bells and whistles, air conditioning, and latest sound system. It was bright, clean and polished, glistening in the morning sun. After laboriously explaining all the changes in engineering and all the new features of this latest model, the sales manager then had an attendant start it up to demonstrate its prowess. The machine began its perorations, shaking, rattling, with blades furiously moving back and forth. It was, by Hamp’s account, a magnificent spectacle. As the hot noon sun began to bear down on the newly initiated, the sales manager asked his charges what they thought of this majestic addition to human technology. “That’s a fine machine you got there Orville,” Hamp blurted out, “but you’ll never get it off the ground”.
And so it is with the Giuliani Machine. However smooth and shiny, however expensive, however powerful, it was a machine ill suited for the task at hand. No amount of money, no technological advances in polling and communication, and no Madison Avenue advertising agencies could mask the fact that this was a candidacy of a big city mayor for President of the United States, seeking the nomination from a party that loathes urban America. Nothing could mask the fact that Giuliani had stood, as any big city mayor must of necessity stand, for gun control. In addition Giuliani had compromised positions on abortion and gay rights. Intolerance is not a luxury that a mayor of a large city can indulge. Moreover, New York City, Gotham, the Big Apple, is to rural, conservative, Republican America second only to San Francisco as a hotbed of sin and iniquity. If it is not Sodom it is at least Gomorrah. The point here is that it seemed ludicrous on its face, and now with near 20/20 hindsight, that the Republican Party would nominate as its standard bearer the Mayor of Gomorrah. Ask John Lindsay, a much more articulate, attractive and successful figure who likewise found that being the Mayor of Gotham gets you no traction on the Republican circuit. And Lindsay was not up to his ass in Big Oil, did not have an ethically challenged police chief, and did not announce his impending separation and divorce with his wife at a mayoral news conference.
Richard Nixon used to ask, as a gauge of public acceptance, whether something would “play in Peoria”. Here Nixon was recognizing the natural base of the Republican Party: rural and suburban rather than urban, conservative, and Main Street. Clearly there is no way in hell that Rudy was going to “play in Peoria”; no way that the Giuliani machine was going to get off the blocks.
There was trouble right out of the box as rural America early registered its revulsion. Rudy campaigned in Iowa and withdrew well before the caucus sensing humiliation in the wind. In New Hampshire he spent 3 million dollars and hosted over 100 campaign events—more than any other candidate-- only to again withdraw well before the primary, finishing down in the second tier of candidates. He chose not to compete in South Carolina saying he would meet whoever emerged from the early primaries in Florida where he would make his stand.
As the campaign in Florida was heating up to a final climax, and the big guns from the Northeast and the West came south to duke it out, Rudy was seen driving his campaign bus on a ‘victory’ lap around the racetrack at Daytona, before largely empty seats. It was a sad metaphor for what had happened to “America’s Mayor”. Emerging triumphant from his bus, and speaking in the pits to a small group of reporters about the victory at hand, Rudy was approached by a mechanic. “That’s a fine machine you got there mayor,” he said, “but you’ll never get it off the ground.”
January 27, 2008: The Empire Strikes Back, Politics in Black and White, South Carolina Snake Pit, The Once and Future Queen
Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields, appearing last Friday on his weekly segment of PBS’ “News Hour” with Jim Lehrer, made the point that former President Bill Clinton has consciously and intentionally worked to diminish Obama by maneuvering to make the Democrat from Illinois increasingly the ‘Black Candidate’. Through surrogates such as the founder of the Black Entertainment network who referred to Obama’s drug use as a teen and through frontal attacks where the former President openly questioned Obama’s credentials and vision. Clinton, playing the Spiro Agnew to his wife’s Richard Nixon, continued to spin the events in South Carolina saying that Obama had a lock on the primary because he was the ‘Black’ candidate in a state where half the primary voters are black.
It got a lot uglier. In a heated exchange at this week’s debate, Hillary touted her fight against misguided Republican policies “when you were practicing law and representing your contributor…in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago”. Referring to ‘Tony’ Rezko a longtime Obama contributor who has been charged with fraud, attempted extortion and money laundering in what prosecutors charge was a scheme to get campaign money and payoffs from those seeking to do business with state government. (AP story posted on Charter cable news 1/22/08). There it was—out in the open: slum landlord business, inner city, Chicago. Like Jesse Jackson before him, Barack Obama springs from the ‘inner city,’ the South Side. He is, in a word ‘The Black Candidate’. He is no longer a candidate for president who happens to be black.
Hillary also got some help from the media. In the debate at Myrtle Beach sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and CNN, Obama was asked by the moderator if he agreed with the famed black novelist Toni Morrison who called Clinton ‘the first black president’. Obama stepped right into the trap. “I would have to investigate more of Bill’s dancing abilitities and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother”. Here, in a sound bite that was endlessly repeated through the following day’s news cycles, Obama reassures us that he is a ‘brother’, here defined in the most stereotypical terms—how one dances--leaving Bill’s acceptance into the ‘hood’ as uncertain. The distinction had been drawn in black and white for all to see. When the debate was over Hillary and Bill laughed all the way back to the hotel, kicked off their shoes, leaned back, sipped some red wine and began singing “Happy Days are Here Again.”
“The one where the players are acting surprised
Saying race is just a four letter word
Between forcing smiles, and the knives in their eyes
Well their actions become so absurd”
Last night’s election returns gave Barack a sweeping victory, 55% to Hillary’s 27%. Today the buzz concerned Barrack’s smashing victory and the momentum leading up to Super Tuesday on February 5. Everyone had expected a hotly contested and close race, the late movement toward Barack and the margin of victory surprised and delighted the insurgents. But there is trouble in the numbers.
Beneath the general election returns lurks the meaning of yesterday’s South Carolina Primary. Barack won over 80% of black votes continuing a trend of recapturing Black support from the Clintons, but he won only 1 of 4 white votes with Hillary splitting the white vote with John Edwards. By Election Day in South Carolina, Barack had truly become the Black champion, a much less transformational figure, a much more diminished candidate.
Back in the icy snows of Iowa, as the Clintons were mulling over their defeat, a hard decision was reached. Hillary would trade becoming the woman’s candidate for Barack becoming the ‘Black’ candidate. Women are, after all, a majority of the population. Blacks make up 11 per cent of the electorate. In a war of attrition, where each candidate risks marginalization, the Clinton’s had the numerical advantage. And so, ruthlessly, relentlessly, purposefully they went about to ‘marginalize’ Obama by using the race card.
CNN, in it’s build-up to the coverage of the South Carolina Primary announced that not since its creation in 1980 has a Republican gone on to win the nomination unless he has won in South Carolina. On the Democratic side the results are not so stark but on this night Hillary may have won the nomination by losing the primary; Barack may have lost the nomination by winning it. Such is the snake pit of South Carolina politics where 6 is 9 and Hillary emerges as the once and future queen.
“So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie too.” ---Elton John “I’ve Seen That Movie Too”
It got a lot uglier. In a heated exchange at this week’s debate, Hillary touted her fight against misguided Republican policies “when you were practicing law and representing your contributor…in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago”. Referring to ‘Tony’ Rezko a longtime Obama contributor who has been charged with fraud, attempted extortion and money laundering in what prosecutors charge was a scheme to get campaign money and payoffs from those seeking to do business with state government. (AP story posted on Charter cable news 1/22/08). There it was—out in the open: slum landlord business, inner city, Chicago. Like Jesse Jackson before him, Barack Obama springs from the ‘inner city,’ the South Side. He is, in a word ‘The Black Candidate’. He is no longer a candidate for president who happens to be black.
Hillary also got some help from the media. In the debate at Myrtle Beach sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and CNN, Obama was asked by the moderator if he agreed with the famed black novelist Toni Morrison who called Clinton ‘the first black president’. Obama stepped right into the trap. “I would have to investigate more of Bill’s dancing abilitities and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother”. Here, in a sound bite that was endlessly repeated through the following day’s news cycles, Obama reassures us that he is a ‘brother’, here defined in the most stereotypical terms—how one dances--leaving Bill’s acceptance into the ‘hood’ as uncertain. The distinction had been drawn in black and white for all to see. When the debate was over Hillary and Bill laughed all the way back to the hotel, kicked off their shoes, leaned back, sipped some red wine and began singing “Happy Days are Here Again.”
“The one where the players are acting surprised
Saying race is just a four letter word
Between forcing smiles, and the knives in their eyes
Well their actions become so absurd”
Last night’s election returns gave Barack a sweeping victory, 55% to Hillary’s 27%. Today the buzz concerned Barrack’s smashing victory and the momentum leading up to Super Tuesday on February 5. Everyone had expected a hotly contested and close race, the late movement toward Barack and the margin of victory surprised and delighted the insurgents. But there is trouble in the numbers.
Beneath the general election returns lurks the meaning of yesterday’s South Carolina Primary. Barack won over 80% of black votes continuing a trend of recapturing Black support from the Clintons, but he won only 1 of 4 white votes with Hillary splitting the white vote with John Edwards. By Election Day in South Carolina, Barack had truly become the Black champion, a much less transformational figure, a much more diminished candidate.
Back in the icy snows of Iowa, as the Clintons were mulling over their defeat, a hard decision was reached. Hillary would trade becoming the woman’s candidate for Barack becoming the ‘Black’ candidate. Women are, after all, a majority of the population. Blacks make up 11 per cent of the electorate. In a war of attrition, where each candidate risks marginalization, the Clinton’s had the numerical advantage. And so, ruthlessly, relentlessly, purposefully they went about to ‘marginalize’ Obama by using the race card.
CNN, in it’s build-up to the coverage of the South Carolina Primary announced that not since its creation in 1980 has a Republican gone on to win the nomination unless he has won in South Carolina. On the Democratic side the results are not so stark but on this night Hillary may have won the nomination by losing the primary; Barack may have lost the nomination by winning it. Such is the snake pit of South Carolina politics where 6 is 9 and Hillary emerges as the once and future queen.
“So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie too.” ---Elton John “I’ve Seen That Movie Too”
January 26, 2008: Blood Lust in The Rat’s Mouth, Easter Eggs of Mass Destruction, I've Seen That Movie Too
Boca Raton—translated, “rat’s mouth”—Florida. The Republican candidates met at Boca Raton for another in the long series of debates agreeing to not disagree. In fact they fell over each other praising ‘Ol Two-Cows’ vying for the right to carry the party standard unadulterated by either reason or inconvenient truth. Marshall McCain led the pack declaring success in Iraq thereby committing his party, through nomination, and his country, through election, to an open ended commitment to endless war. Openly declaring that not a single general has found fault with the present military campaign, the good Marshall of Tombstone called for vigorous military operations. Not to be outdone, Huckleberry Mike looked into the camera and with a straight face told us bluntly that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, we just didn’t find them. Having hid them like Easter eggs on the White House lawn, he spirited them away to ‘Jordan’ as we invaded the country. This was a complete revelation to the intelligence community, not to mention King Abdul of Jordan—a staunch ally of ours—who is either rolling in laughter or terrified beyond imagination at the prospect of radical groups harboring such weapons, heretofore unbeknownst to him, within his own borders. No one present challenged such boldface assertions. Romney simply nodded and Giuliani muttered ‘ditto’ into an open mike.
“I can see by your eyes you must be lying
When you think I don’t have a clue
Baby you’re crazy
If you think that you can fool me
Because I’ve seen that movie too”
Flashback to 1966-67. General Westmoreland assuring the President and the nation that there is ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. The President lifts these statements uncritically from the General’s remarks and repeats them to a wary nation desperately wanting to believe that the worst had passed. Then, in early 1968, came the Tet Offensive shattering the illusions of war and forcing the nation to realize that we had not taken the first step toward a solution. So much wasted life, so much wasted treasure, so very far to go.
Historically this country has not done well when dealing with insurrections. It took decades and, by some estimates, over a million lives to establish some kind of stability in the Philippines. Nor were we a marked success in Nicaragua or Cuba. We are not alone. The British experience in Iraq, Israel, and elsewhere; the French experience in Algeria and Indochina; the Belgian experience in the Congo, reveal the long and bitter struggles of the Western powers to impose their will by force. These wars exhibit surprisingly similar characteristics: low intensity urban conflict, unconventional warfare, political and economic destabilization, immense loss of life—especially to the civilian populations—and they go on for very long periods of time.
The military has now been stretched, by some Pentagon estimates, to the ‘breaking point’. All know, including our adversaries, that this escalation—this so-called ‘surge’—cannot be sustained. Troop strength must be reduced to pre-surge levels by the fourth quarter of this year. It remains to be seen what will happen when our force level is reduced. Will the Iraqi government step up and take our place? Will we be able to ‘stand-down’ as they ‘stand-up? Our experience in Indo-China, Afghanistan and elsewhere is not encouraging for we have not, historically, been very good at counterinsurgency—at least not since the days of Kit Carson.
What is troubling about Marshall McCain is that he leaves no room for diplomacy; no room for negotiation. Historically the British ended up negotiating with Collins and the IRA; the Israeli’s ended up negotiating with Arafat and the PLO; the French ended up negotiating with the insurgents in Algeria; and both the French and the Americans ended up negotiating with Ho Chi Minh, and the Viet Minh, in Viet Nam. There are no military solutions to our quagmire in the Middle East; there are only political solutions. In the absence of supporting or establishing a genuine regime enjoying popular support we must talk with our adversaries. Instead, Marshall McCain—who has never met a war he didn’t like—led the republican pack in the blood-lust for continued war.
Meanwhile, ‘Ol Two-Cows’ made the predictable pilgrimage to the Middle East, in an erstwhile effort to establish some kind of ‘legacy’ by searching for the ‘Holy Grail’—that ever elusive peace accord. His trip was cut short as he rushed back to Washington to soothe a jittery investment community. It was announced last week that an agreement had been reached with Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on a 150 billion dollar stimulus package. All the Republican candidates expressed support, except Congressman Ron Paul who was a Libertarian in a former incarnation. Indeed most of them called for greater spending to head off an impending economic downturn. Romney headed this discussion but the most telling and perceptive comment of the night came, perhaps, from Huckleberry. Pointing out that we will probably end up borrowing the 150 billion dollars from China and spending the 150 billion dollars on Chinese imports, the Arkansan rightly asked “whose economy is going to be stimulated”? A very prescient point once again demonstrating that out of the mouth of babes comes an occasional word of wisdom; for such is our present predicament.
And such was the high-point of the Republican understanding of our economic troubles. Romney held the stage with long digressions on his economic experience genuflecting before the free market and chanting the Republican tax cut mantra promising that if Hillary is elected she will raise taxes and spending. This is red meat to the party faithful but does nothing to further the conversation about precisely how one gets out of this woeful economic mess. It does nothing to explain how more corporate tax cuts are going to help the struggling middle class. It did, however, give Romney a chance to hold the stage, demonstrate superior mastery of conservative economic misunderstandings and look presidential. He also got a chance to lead the Republican pack in savaging the Clintons who are not contestants in this race. This latest audition, straight from the rat’s mouth, left me empty-handed. Romney and McCain looked slick, Huck played the court jester, and Giuliani looked like he wanted to be back in the swamps.
“So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie too.” ----Elton John, “I’ve Seen That Movie Too”.
“I can see by your eyes you must be lying
When you think I don’t have a clue
Baby you’re crazy
If you think that you can fool me
Because I’ve seen that movie too”
Flashback to 1966-67. General Westmoreland assuring the President and the nation that there is ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. The President lifts these statements uncritically from the General’s remarks and repeats them to a wary nation desperately wanting to believe that the worst had passed. Then, in early 1968, came the Tet Offensive shattering the illusions of war and forcing the nation to realize that we had not taken the first step toward a solution. So much wasted life, so much wasted treasure, so very far to go.
Historically this country has not done well when dealing with insurrections. It took decades and, by some estimates, over a million lives to establish some kind of stability in the Philippines. Nor were we a marked success in Nicaragua or Cuba. We are not alone. The British experience in Iraq, Israel, and elsewhere; the French experience in Algeria and Indochina; the Belgian experience in the Congo, reveal the long and bitter struggles of the Western powers to impose their will by force. These wars exhibit surprisingly similar characteristics: low intensity urban conflict, unconventional warfare, political and economic destabilization, immense loss of life—especially to the civilian populations—and they go on for very long periods of time.
The military has now been stretched, by some Pentagon estimates, to the ‘breaking point’. All know, including our adversaries, that this escalation—this so-called ‘surge’—cannot be sustained. Troop strength must be reduced to pre-surge levels by the fourth quarter of this year. It remains to be seen what will happen when our force level is reduced. Will the Iraqi government step up and take our place? Will we be able to ‘stand-down’ as they ‘stand-up? Our experience in Indo-China, Afghanistan and elsewhere is not encouraging for we have not, historically, been very good at counterinsurgency—at least not since the days of Kit Carson.
What is troubling about Marshall McCain is that he leaves no room for diplomacy; no room for negotiation. Historically the British ended up negotiating with Collins and the IRA; the Israeli’s ended up negotiating with Arafat and the PLO; the French ended up negotiating with the insurgents in Algeria; and both the French and the Americans ended up negotiating with Ho Chi Minh, and the Viet Minh, in Viet Nam. There are no military solutions to our quagmire in the Middle East; there are only political solutions. In the absence of supporting or establishing a genuine regime enjoying popular support we must talk with our adversaries. Instead, Marshall McCain—who has never met a war he didn’t like—led the republican pack in the blood-lust for continued war.
Meanwhile, ‘Ol Two-Cows’ made the predictable pilgrimage to the Middle East, in an erstwhile effort to establish some kind of ‘legacy’ by searching for the ‘Holy Grail’—that ever elusive peace accord. His trip was cut short as he rushed back to Washington to soothe a jittery investment community. It was announced last week that an agreement had been reached with Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on a 150 billion dollar stimulus package. All the Republican candidates expressed support, except Congressman Ron Paul who was a Libertarian in a former incarnation. Indeed most of them called for greater spending to head off an impending economic downturn. Romney headed this discussion but the most telling and perceptive comment of the night came, perhaps, from Huckleberry. Pointing out that we will probably end up borrowing the 150 billion dollars from China and spending the 150 billion dollars on Chinese imports, the Arkansan rightly asked “whose economy is going to be stimulated”? A very prescient point once again demonstrating that out of the mouth of babes comes an occasional word of wisdom; for such is our present predicament.
And such was the high-point of the Republican understanding of our economic troubles. Romney held the stage with long digressions on his economic experience genuflecting before the free market and chanting the Republican tax cut mantra promising that if Hillary is elected she will raise taxes and spending. This is red meat to the party faithful but does nothing to further the conversation about precisely how one gets out of this woeful economic mess. It does nothing to explain how more corporate tax cuts are going to help the struggling middle class. It did, however, give Romney a chance to hold the stage, demonstrate superior mastery of conservative economic misunderstandings and look presidential. He also got a chance to lead the Republican pack in savaging the Clintons who are not contestants in this race. This latest audition, straight from the rat’s mouth, left me empty-handed. Romney and McCain looked slick, Huck played the court jester, and Giuliani looked like he wanted to be back in the swamps.
“So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie too.” ----Elton John, “I’ve Seen That Movie Too”.
January 21, 2008: No Gold in Nevada, Snorkeling in the Cesspool, Politics Can Be Such a Demeaning Business
Last weekend’s voting in Nevada and South Carolina produced no clear frontrunner on the Republican side, and has left the Democratic race in a stalemate. In Nevada, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, defeating Obama 51%-45%, with John Edwards garnering a mere 4% of the vote. However, because of the way the delegates are allocated, Obama actually received more delegates. The election here began what promises to be a trend toward the constituent groups of the party lining up behind their favorite candidate. In this case Obama garnered 80% of the black vote, with Hillary winning women and the lion’s share of the party regulars. In South Carolina, polls now show Obama has reversed the situation of last October getting 60% of black support to Hillary’s 40. Each candidate is beginning to look less and less as a transcendent figure as the constituent elements of the party line up to do battle.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, coming off his victory in Michigan won more than 50% of the vote in a multi-candidate field. Libertarian Ron Paul finished second, narrowly edging out John McCain for second place, followed by Thompson and Huckabee. With over half his support coming from his Mormon base, Romney cruised to an easy victory. Not so in South Carolina, where John McCain prevailed with 33% of the vote to Mike Huckabee’s 30%.
The lesson in last Saturday’s ballots was that no candidate has yet to forge a coalition of the willing. Romney, while leading in the delegate count, has had to rely heavily on his roots, his family name and his religion to get this far; McCain is only now beginning to emerge as something other than a flash in the pan, and Huckabee has reached the limits of his fundamentalist base.
The losers in last Saturday’s polling were John Edwards who barely made a dent in Nevada and Mike Huckabee who in the process of whoring for votes has revealed himself the worst kind of charlatan since Elmer Gantry. Campaigning in the snake-pit that is Republican South Carolina politics, Huckabee postured as a “progressive, compassionate conservative” called for the enactment of the so called “Fair Tax”, a flat sales tax proposal that savages the working classes. Spouting Bible passages about the need to take care of the least of us, here was ‘Ol Huckleberry Mike” posturing as a disciple of a new fundamentalism while lending support to the most regressive tax proposals.
It got uglier. There is something unseemly about a man of the cloth snorkeling in the cesspool of what are racial politics in America. Huck’s campaign quickly became a race to the bottom, the kind of race-baiting that would have made Strom Thurmond proud. Once again raising the state flag issue, an issue the good people of the Palmetto State had thought they had put away years ago--- Huck sought to re-open that wound for short-term political gain saying that in Arkansas if people “came down here and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole”. This is what happens, I guess, when you have Chuck Norris advising you on matters political. Then there were the dark murmurings about the need to change the Federal Constitution so that it would more readily comply with “god’s laws”; whatever the hell that means.
So we have Huckabee in South Carolina laying out the Christian Conservative agenda of flat tax and constitutional amendment, and Willard Romney speaking of the need not to divide church and state with each now reduced to messages that increasingly speak only to their limited constituencies. In Nevada it gained Romney a victory but left him well down in the pack in South Carolina. In South Carolina it could yield Huck only second place. This leaves John McCain as the only candidate now leading the Republican pack who has a chance at building a national coalition.
It’s too bad. Both Huck and Mitt could have taken a page from John Kennedy. When confronted with heated religious issues, Kennedy campaigned and won in heavily protestant West Virginia and demonstrated his ability to represent all Americans. He also went down to Houston Texas and addressed a group of fundamentalist and protestant ministers. There he spoke of the need to separate church and state, and that as a practicing catholic he would take no instructions from his church. He would not be a catholic president but a president who happened to be catholic. Given the secular constitution of our republic and the plethora of religious practices in this country it is important for our leaders to be so understood.
What Kennedy did in Houston and what Obama did by not involving himself with the crisis in Jena Mississippi is put some distance between themselves and their core constituencies. This is necessary if one is to become a truly national candidate. What Willard and Huck should have done is assume the support of the Mormons and the Baptists and go about the business of addressing the larger nation. Instead each has now been tagged, and rightly so, as the Mormon candidate or the Christian Conservative candidate. Each may, though it is increasingly unlikely, gain the nomination but it is hard to see how each would prevail in a general election unless either they are confronted with a Democrat with similar limitations or they soon begin to speak to a national audience.
This week did not look promising. A few short weeks ago Hillary and Obama and the hapless Huck had broader support crossing gender, class and racial lines. The votes in Nevada and South Carolina have shown a re-alignment rendering them less transcendental. The same is true on the Republican side with Romney and Hucklabee winning support of greater shares of smaller parts of the whole.
Politics can be such a demeaning business.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, coming off his victory in Michigan won more than 50% of the vote in a multi-candidate field. Libertarian Ron Paul finished second, narrowly edging out John McCain for second place, followed by Thompson and Huckabee. With over half his support coming from his Mormon base, Romney cruised to an easy victory. Not so in South Carolina, where John McCain prevailed with 33% of the vote to Mike Huckabee’s 30%.
The lesson in last Saturday’s ballots was that no candidate has yet to forge a coalition of the willing. Romney, while leading in the delegate count, has had to rely heavily on his roots, his family name and his religion to get this far; McCain is only now beginning to emerge as something other than a flash in the pan, and Huckabee has reached the limits of his fundamentalist base.
The losers in last Saturday’s polling were John Edwards who barely made a dent in Nevada and Mike Huckabee who in the process of whoring for votes has revealed himself the worst kind of charlatan since Elmer Gantry. Campaigning in the snake-pit that is Republican South Carolina politics, Huckabee postured as a “progressive, compassionate conservative” called for the enactment of the so called “Fair Tax”, a flat sales tax proposal that savages the working classes. Spouting Bible passages about the need to take care of the least of us, here was ‘Ol Huckleberry Mike” posturing as a disciple of a new fundamentalism while lending support to the most regressive tax proposals.
It got uglier. There is something unseemly about a man of the cloth snorkeling in the cesspool of what are racial politics in America. Huck’s campaign quickly became a race to the bottom, the kind of race-baiting that would have made Strom Thurmond proud. Once again raising the state flag issue, an issue the good people of the Palmetto State had thought they had put away years ago--- Huck sought to re-open that wound for short-term political gain saying that in Arkansas if people “came down here and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole”. This is what happens, I guess, when you have Chuck Norris advising you on matters political. Then there were the dark murmurings about the need to change the Federal Constitution so that it would more readily comply with “god’s laws”; whatever the hell that means.
So we have Huckabee in South Carolina laying out the Christian Conservative agenda of flat tax and constitutional amendment, and Willard Romney speaking of the need not to divide church and state with each now reduced to messages that increasingly speak only to their limited constituencies. In Nevada it gained Romney a victory but left him well down in the pack in South Carolina. In South Carolina it could yield Huck only second place. This leaves John McCain as the only candidate now leading the Republican pack who has a chance at building a national coalition.
It’s too bad. Both Huck and Mitt could have taken a page from John Kennedy. When confronted with heated religious issues, Kennedy campaigned and won in heavily protestant West Virginia and demonstrated his ability to represent all Americans. He also went down to Houston Texas and addressed a group of fundamentalist and protestant ministers. There he spoke of the need to separate church and state, and that as a practicing catholic he would take no instructions from his church. He would not be a catholic president but a president who happened to be catholic. Given the secular constitution of our republic and the plethora of religious practices in this country it is important for our leaders to be so understood.
What Kennedy did in Houston and what Obama did by not involving himself with the crisis in Jena Mississippi is put some distance between themselves and their core constituencies. This is necessary if one is to become a truly national candidate. What Willard and Huck should have done is assume the support of the Mormons and the Baptists and go about the business of addressing the larger nation. Instead each has now been tagged, and rightly so, as the Mormon candidate or the Christian Conservative candidate. Each may, though it is increasingly unlikely, gain the nomination but it is hard to see how each would prevail in a general election unless either they are confronted with a Democrat with similar limitations or they soon begin to speak to a national audience.
This week did not look promising. A few short weeks ago Hillary and Obama and the hapless Huck had broader support crossing gender, class and racial lines. The votes in Nevada and South Carolina have shown a re-alignment rendering them less transcendental. The same is true on the Republican side with Romney and Hucklabee winning support of greater shares of smaller parts of the whole.
Politics can be such a demeaning business.
January 20, 2008: The Ballad of Rudy
“He was tall and thin and rode out of the East
With a Mogen David on his silver breast
He was mean and nasty right clear through
Which was kinda weird, ‘cause he was yellow too
They called him Rudy
Big Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big, tall, scrawny Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
He came from the old Bar Mitzvah spread
With a 10-gallon yarmulke on his head
He always followed his mother’s wishes
Even on the range he used two sets of dishes.
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sissy Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
A hundred and forty-one could draw faster than he,
But Rudy was looking for one forty-three
Walked into Sols Saloon like a man insane
And ordered three fingers of two cents plain
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sport Rudy
The hundred and fort-second fastest gun in the race.
One day Mike Huckabee came to town
His aim was to shoot that scarecrow down.
Mad Mike said “Draw, and draw right now!”
And Rudy drew, drew a picture of ‘0l Two-Cows”
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big gunfighter Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Marshall McCain’s boys was comin’ to New Hampshire at first sun,
And the people said “Rudy, we need your gun”
When the Marshall arrived at the break of dawn,
Rudy’s gun was there, but Rudy was gone.
Rudy
Big Tall Rudy
Big help, Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Well, finally Rudy got three slugs in the belly
It was right outside the Gator Deli.
He was sittin’ there twirlin’ his gun around,
And butterfingers Rudy gunned himself down!
Rudy.
Big, tall Rudy
Big, Dum-dum Rudy.
Big, Dum-dum dead Rudy.
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
---- Parody of “The Ballad of Irving”, by Frank Gallop
With a Mogen David on his silver breast
He was mean and nasty right clear through
Which was kinda weird, ‘cause he was yellow too
They called him Rudy
Big Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big, tall, scrawny Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
He came from the old Bar Mitzvah spread
With a 10-gallon yarmulke on his head
He always followed his mother’s wishes
Even on the range he used two sets of dishes.
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sissy Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
A hundred and forty-one could draw faster than he,
But Rudy was looking for one forty-three
Walked into Sols Saloon like a man insane
And ordered three fingers of two cents plain
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sport Rudy
The hundred and fort-second fastest gun in the race.
One day Mike Huckabee came to town
His aim was to shoot that scarecrow down.
Mad Mike said “Draw, and draw right now!”
And Rudy drew, drew a picture of ‘0l Two-Cows”
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big gunfighter Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Marshall McCain’s boys was comin’ to New Hampshire at first sun,
And the people said “Rudy, we need your gun”
When the Marshall arrived at the break of dawn,
Rudy’s gun was there, but Rudy was gone.
Rudy
Big Tall Rudy
Big help, Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Well, finally Rudy got three slugs in the belly
It was right outside the Gator Deli.
He was sittin’ there twirlin’ his gun around,
And butterfingers Rudy gunned himself down!
Rudy.
Big, tall Rudy
Big, Dum-dum Rudy.
Big, Dum-dum dead Rudy.
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
---- Parody of “The Ballad of Irving”, by Frank Gallop
January 18, 2008: Stay of Execution, Health Care and Steel, We Can’t Give Up Our Jobs the Way We Should, Our Ancestors Were Never Such Fools.
Mitt Romney gained a reprieve last Tuesday. The stay of execution was administered in the good state of Michigan with a victory of nine percentage points over Marshall McCain, who hobbles south with a now bandaged foot, brandishing a now tarnished badge. This was a must-win situation and Romney knew it. Heralding his roots in Michigan and the auto industry, railing against intrusive government regulation, blaming Washington’s CAFÉ standards for the current predicament, and invoking the memory of his father, Mitt was able to prevail in this shootout with the Marshall from Tombstone.
Oh if it were only that easy: a mere trade off on global warming to keep those jobs. But this canard must not be allowed to stand, it is the kind of shameless nonsense that propelled Reagan to power and has since been the main course on the rubber chicken circuit. Actually had Washington enforced rather than relaxed the CAFÉ standards, had we compelled automakers to develop fuel efficient technology, had we followed Republican Senator Howard Baker’s advice and issued a “clarion call to reinvent the automobile”, we could have restored our global competitive edge. While foreign auto companies put money into research and development our domestic auto manufacturers put money into top notch legal firms and lobbyists to oppose any new regulations and to rid themselves of old ones. The result, as in the 1970s, is that we are once again well behind the curve as the industry adjusts globally to the changes in fuel prices and environmental concerns. And so Romney, ever reading yesterdays papers, tore a page from an old Reagan press release and made it his own. The problem is that we are a quarter of a century closer to a global catastrophe with little time now to spare.
A few weeks ago it was announced that Toyota sells more automobiles in the United States than Ford. This speaks not only to the lack of competitiveness, but of the results of decades long practice of allowing foreign imports to flood our domestic market. Clearly someone in the world will meet the demand for global surface transportation by way of automobiles and trucks. In our youth, this demand was largely met by American auto manufacturers. We have forfeited our advantage by allowing our domestic industry to languish; to buy it’s way out of upgrading and making itself more globally competitive; and by underwriting our foreign competitors by allowing them not only to infiltrate but to inundate our market.
The American industrial order is characterized by two salient facts: First we are the only industrialized country that does not have a clear, compelling and cogent economic policy. Instead we are left, in the words of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, to rely on “incantation, admonition and prayer”; kneeling in the church of “free trade” and genuflecting before the stock markets while imploring distant gods to save our collective ass. This has, predictably, led to incredibly stupid and ignorant policies of opening our borders to foreign goods that have gutted the old industrial base of what was once the “Arsenal of Democracy” and the wholesale flight of jobs and capital as those markets have been globalized. Secondly, we are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have socialized medicine. Ford regularly tells us that when figuring the cost of producing an automobile more is spent on health care than on steel. Ford, Chrysler and GM must compete in an international market that now not only favors foreign producers, because ‘ol two-cows’ has destroyed the value of the dollar in international markets, but they must also carry the additional burden of health care for their workers. Imagine the improvement in competitive advantage of what is now left of the old-line manufacturing sector—steel, autos—furniture—appliances—if these firms, like their international competitors, could be relieved of the burden of maintaining the cost of the health care of their workers and their families. Any Democrat now seeking the presidency should be busy about the business of lining up the executives of Ford, Chrysler, GM, General Dynamics, General Electric and many, many others and announce the nationalization of health care as a means of reclaiming our competitiveness and restoring America’s position as the greatest industrial and commercial power on earth.
“This place has changed for good
Your economic theory said it would
It’s hard for us to understand
We can’t give up our jobs the way we should
Our blood has stained the coal
We tunneled deep inside the nation’s soul
We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theories make no sense”----Sting, “We Work the Black Seam”
Let me repeat: there is no reason on earth why we should give up our auto industry— or any of our manufacturing base—to foreign competitors. We need to establish a clear and cogent and compelling national industrial policy. We will protect and foster our national industries. We will impose import duties on foreign products, we will subsidize those industries deemed critical to our national interests, and we will assume as a nation the cost of health care for the workforce. In exchange we will demand that the export of capital and jobs cease, that ownership by foreign nationals in any company under the aegis of protected industry be limited to less than twenty percent, and that the companies in question agree to meet the guidelines concerning environmental protection, worker wages and safety, and research and development targets in order to improve global competitiveness. If we can put a man on the moon we can certainly build automobiles and other durable goods in these United States.
In those areas where industries, such as the clothing industry, have fled wholesale, we must move to foster start-up projects and nurture them as we did in the past. Our ancestors were never such fools, they freely chose winners and losers in the marketplace; they never would have stood passively and watched the markets alone decide questions of such importance. They understood the need to protect and nurture domestic enterprise and so invoked the imposition of tariffs to protect everything from shoes to machine parts; they used land grants to build railroads, and price supports to save the family farm. By the middle of the twentieth century they had, by these means, built an economic engine that would not only dominate but feed the world.
Romney is, of course, not on the road to Damascus and is not likely to experience such an epiphany any time soon. He is, in fact, the very product of Wall Street, an investment impresario who made his billions by creating ever greater concentrations of wealth. He did not create the wealth; he was simply a parasite that created ever greater concentrations of it. He made himself rich doing it and it is not likely to see anything wrong with it, regardless of how much pain he witnessed walking through the boarded up main streets of Michigan. His answer: More of the same old bromides… But Romney, thanks to the good citizens of Michigan who last Tuesday exhibited more heart than sense, will live to fight another day…..it’s on to Nevada where his prospects are suddenly much brighter.
Oh if it were only that easy: a mere trade off on global warming to keep those jobs. But this canard must not be allowed to stand, it is the kind of shameless nonsense that propelled Reagan to power and has since been the main course on the rubber chicken circuit. Actually had Washington enforced rather than relaxed the CAFÉ standards, had we compelled automakers to develop fuel efficient technology, had we followed Republican Senator Howard Baker’s advice and issued a “clarion call to reinvent the automobile”, we could have restored our global competitive edge. While foreign auto companies put money into research and development our domestic auto manufacturers put money into top notch legal firms and lobbyists to oppose any new regulations and to rid themselves of old ones. The result, as in the 1970s, is that we are once again well behind the curve as the industry adjusts globally to the changes in fuel prices and environmental concerns. And so Romney, ever reading yesterdays papers, tore a page from an old Reagan press release and made it his own. The problem is that we are a quarter of a century closer to a global catastrophe with little time now to spare.
A few weeks ago it was announced that Toyota sells more automobiles in the United States than Ford. This speaks not only to the lack of competitiveness, but of the results of decades long practice of allowing foreign imports to flood our domestic market. Clearly someone in the world will meet the demand for global surface transportation by way of automobiles and trucks. In our youth, this demand was largely met by American auto manufacturers. We have forfeited our advantage by allowing our domestic industry to languish; to buy it’s way out of upgrading and making itself more globally competitive; and by underwriting our foreign competitors by allowing them not only to infiltrate but to inundate our market.
The American industrial order is characterized by two salient facts: First we are the only industrialized country that does not have a clear, compelling and cogent economic policy. Instead we are left, in the words of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, to rely on “incantation, admonition and prayer”; kneeling in the church of “free trade” and genuflecting before the stock markets while imploring distant gods to save our collective ass. This has, predictably, led to incredibly stupid and ignorant policies of opening our borders to foreign goods that have gutted the old industrial base of what was once the “Arsenal of Democracy” and the wholesale flight of jobs and capital as those markets have been globalized. Secondly, we are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have socialized medicine. Ford regularly tells us that when figuring the cost of producing an automobile more is spent on health care than on steel. Ford, Chrysler and GM must compete in an international market that now not only favors foreign producers, because ‘ol two-cows’ has destroyed the value of the dollar in international markets, but they must also carry the additional burden of health care for their workers. Imagine the improvement in competitive advantage of what is now left of the old-line manufacturing sector—steel, autos—furniture—appliances—if these firms, like their international competitors, could be relieved of the burden of maintaining the cost of the health care of their workers and their families. Any Democrat now seeking the presidency should be busy about the business of lining up the executives of Ford, Chrysler, GM, General Dynamics, General Electric and many, many others and announce the nationalization of health care as a means of reclaiming our competitiveness and restoring America’s position as the greatest industrial and commercial power on earth.
“This place has changed for good
Your economic theory said it would
It’s hard for us to understand
We can’t give up our jobs the way we should
Our blood has stained the coal
We tunneled deep inside the nation’s soul
We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theories make no sense”----Sting, “We Work the Black Seam”
Let me repeat: there is no reason on earth why we should give up our auto industry— or any of our manufacturing base—to foreign competitors. We need to establish a clear and cogent and compelling national industrial policy. We will protect and foster our national industries. We will impose import duties on foreign products, we will subsidize those industries deemed critical to our national interests, and we will assume as a nation the cost of health care for the workforce. In exchange we will demand that the export of capital and jobs cease, that ownership by foreign nationals in any company under the aegis of protected industry be limited to less than twenty percent, and that the companies in question agree to meet the guidelines concerning environmental protection, worker wages and safety, and research and development targets in order to improve global competitiveness. If we can put a man on the moon we can certainly build automobiles and other durable goods in these United States.
In those areas where industries, such as the clothing industry, have fled wholesale, we must move to foster start-up projects and nurture them as we did in the past. Our ancestors were never such fools, they freely chose winners and losers in the marketplace; they never would have stood passively and watched the markets alone decide questions of such importance. They understood the need to protect and nurture domestic enterprise and so invoked the imposition of tariffs to protect everything from shoes to machine parts; they used land grants to build railroads, and price supports to save the family farm. By the middle of the twentieth century they had, by these means, built an economic engine that would not only dominate but feed the world.
Romney is, of course, not on the road to Damascus and is not likely to experience such an epiphany any time soon. He is, in fact, the very product of Wall Street, an investment impresario who made his billions by creating ever greater concentrations of wealth. He did not create the wealth; he was simply a parasite that created ever greater concentrations of it. He made himself rich doing it and it is not likely to see anything wrong with it, regardless of how much pain he witnessed walking through the boarded up main streets of Michigan. His answer: More of the same old bromides… But Romney, thanks to the good citizens of Michigan who last Tuesday exhibited more heart than sense, will live to fight another day…..it’s on to Nevada where his prospects are suddenly much brighter.
January 15, 2008: Race Card, George Wallace Teaches a Lesson, Giuliani Slithers South
As the contest for the presidency spills out now over the landscape from Michigan to Nevada to South Carolina, it is becoming increasingly ugly on the Democratic side. This week the race card was played by the supporters of Hillary Clinton with the former president musing about Barrack’s lack of experience, and the founder of the Black Entertainment Network introducing Hillary by pointing out that while Hillary was fighting the fight for civil rights, Barack was doing what all teenage boys in the projects do at that age—referring to his admitted use of cocaine. This has set off a firestorm and has caused some serious back peddling by the Clinton operatives trying to insulate the candidate from the worst of it. This does not portend well and will probably produce a backlash in places like South Carolina giving Barack a boost.
I must admit that I am not an enthusiast of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Although she will be hands-down preferable to any conceivable Republican nominee, it is difficult to see her candidacy as anything than an open invitation by the Democrats to the Republicans to take the presidency.
The problem with Hillary is not that she is a woman. I have supported and managed political campaigns for women, helped get them elected to office and when elected happily followed their leadership. My problem with Hillary is that she is a Clinton and as such is besmirched not only with unseemly campaign contributions, but a marked propensity to turn in the wind and readily compromise principles well before they need to be compromised. Her record on health care reform was a disaster and she has not distinguished herself in the senate by championing any cause other than the advancement of herself unto the national stage. She also carries a lot of baggage.
George Wallace, the old banty rooster was a politician who fought the fight of the old industrial working class. But no matter how ‘progressive’ his politics he is forever frozen in the national consciousness standing at the schoolhouse door blocking the admission of young black students into the University of Alabama and shouting “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever…” No matter what his position on race in America on the day he died, no matter how much he recanted or repented, he will forever be remembered as one of the great voices of racism in America. Nothing he did in later life could change that.
First impressions matter. First impressions stick. First impressions are hard to live down. For 15 years the Rescumlicans have been savaging the Clintons and Hillary has been a central target of their attacks. Millions of dollars have been spent in investigations of her role in stock deals, White House travel office firings, and god knows what else. The result is that she began this primary season with personal negatives, by some polls as high as 47%. Two things follow from this. First and obviously, it is not a far step from 47% to 50% plus one to elect one’s opponent. Secondly, as George Wallace, or George Romney—who never recovered from his first national exposure when he quipped that he had been ‘brainwashed’ by the military while touring Vietnam—demonstrate that one rarely, of ever, overcomes first impressions. And Hillary’s first impressions have been burned into the national consciousness for 16 years now.
For the record, it is more than interesting to note that Hillary has the backing of Rupert Murdock and has been touted by ‘Ol Two-Cows’ and his henchman Karl Rove as the likely Democratic nominee. The truth is that the Republicans have spent more than a decade and many millions of dollars getting Hillary’s negatives this high and they don’t want to see their investment go to waste. Hillary Clinton is the candidate they most want to run against for they have made such a divisive figure of her that she has now become a wedge issue unto herself. This is the Achilles heel of the Clinton campaign for should she gain the nomination the Rescumlicans have to move the ball only a few yards down the field to win another term in the White House.
The brouhaha over race that erupted this week did little to polish her tarnished image, for it reeks of a Macheivelian willingness to grasp for power by any means necessary, even the savaging of the most faithful base of the Democratic Party. Here Hillary lives up to her reputation for overreaching and unprincipled political expediency. In short the kind of tactics one would expect from the other side.
Speaking of the other side….As the campaigns in Michigan wind down and those in Nevada and South Carolina heat up, Rudy Giuliani has crawled his way through the Okeefenokee and has been reportedly sighted crossing interstate 10 near Jacksonville where his tail was run over by Marshall McCain’s campaign bus. As we speak he is slithering through the tall grass, feeding on the lowest form of animal and vegetable life, as he makes his way toward the everglades—his natural habitat.
I must admit that I am not an enthusiast of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Although she will be hands-down preferable to any conceivable Republican nominee, it is difficult to see her candidacy as anything than an open invitation by the Democrats to the Republicans to take the presidency.
The problem with Hillary is not that she is a woman. I have supported and managed political campaigns for women, helped get them elected to office and when elected happily followed their leadership. My problem with Hillary is that she is a Clinton and as such is besmirched not only with unseemly campaign contributions, but a marked propensity to turn in the wind and readily compromise principles well before they need to be compromised. Her record on health care reform was a disaster and she has not distinguished herself in the senate by championing any cause other than the advancement of herself unto the national stage. She also carries a lot of baggage.
George Wallace, the old banty rooster was a politician who fought the fight of the old industrial working class. But no matter how ‘progressive’ his politics he is forever frozen in the national consciousness standing at the schoolhouse door blocking the admission of young black students into the University of Alabama and shouting “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever…” No matter what his position on race in America on the day he died, no matter how much he recanted or repented, he will forever be remembered as one of the great voices of racism in America. Nothing he did in later life could change that.
First impressions matter. First impressions stick. First impressions are hard to live down. For 15 years the Rescumlicans have been savaging the Clintons and Hillary has been a central target of their attacks. Millions of dollars have been spent in investigations of her role in stock deals, White House travel office firings, and god knows what else. The result is that she began this primary season with personal negatives, by some polls as high as 47%. Two things follow from this. First and obviously, it is not a far step from 47% to 50% plus one to elect one’s opponent. Secondly, as George Wallace, or George Romney—who never recovered from his first national exposure when he quipped that he had been ‘brainwashed’ by the military while touring Vietnam—demonstrate that one rarely, of ever, overcomes first impressions. And Hillary’s first impressions have been burned into the national consciousness for 16 years now.
For the record, it is more than interesting to note that Hillary has the backing of Rupert Murdock and has been touted by ‘Ol Two-Cows’ and his henchman Karl Rove as the likely Democratic nominee. The truth is that the Republicans have spent more than a decade and many millions of dollars getting Hillary’s negatives this high and they don’t want to see their investment go to waste. Hillary Clinton is the candidate they most want to run against for they have made such a divisive figure of her that she has now become a wedge issue unto herself. This is the Achilles heel of the Clinton campaign for should she gain the nomination the Rescumlicans have to move the ball only a few yards down the field to win another term in the White House.
The brouhaha over race that erupted this week did little to polish her tarnished image, for it reeks of a Macheivelian willingness to grasp for power by any means necessary, even the savaging of the most faithful base of the Democratic Party. Here Hillary lives up to her reputation for overreaching and unprincipled political expediency. In short the kind of tactics one would expect from the other side.
Speaking of the other side….As the campaigns in Michigan wind down and those in Nevada and South Carolina heat up, Rudy Giuliani has crawled his way through the Okeefenokee and has been reportedly sighted crossing interstate 10 near Jacksonville where his tail was run over by Marshall McCain’s campaign bus. As we speak he is slithering through the tall grass, feeding on the lowest form of animal and vegetable life, as he makes his way toward the everglades—his natural habitat.
January 14, 2008: Marshall McCain, Yesterday’s Papers, Without Benefit of Clergyt
“Who wants yesterday’s papers
Who wants yesterday’s girl
Who wants yesterday’s papers
Nobody in the world”----The Rolling Stones
The voices of yesterday echo and collide with each other in the dark corridors of the Rust Belt. John McCain is hoping to recapture the magic of the straight-talking, hip shooting days when as a gunslinger from the west he briefly captured the imagination of America. But it has been 8 long years since he was caught in that nasty crossfire at the South Carolina Corral. He’s older now and, like Marshall Dillon, walks with a noticeable limp but he’s lost none of his ability to return fire. The problem with John is that he has always had a marked propensity to shoot first and think later; and to shoot at anything that moves which, on occasion, is his own foot. So, when asked by a reporter about the manufacturing jobs that have fled Michigan, Marshall McCain quipped “ I got news for the people of Michigan…They (the jobs) ain’t comin’ back.”
This shot struck the soul of the Great Lakes State. I was born and raised in Michigan. I lived my first 50 years in the water wonderland. I know her back roads, walked her shorelines and her main streets, and worked her farms and her factories. I have campaigned and run for office there and I have talked politics with tens of thousands of her citizens. I know Michigan like the back of my left hand. Michigan knows these jobs ain’t commin’ back and does not need any more painful reminders. As Michael Moore, also a native of my home state has pointed out: with the last downsizing General Motors now employs fewer workers nation-wide than it used to employ in his home town of Flint. Michigan has paid a frightful price for the success of her auto industry. In boom times Michigan was at the industrial center of the world. Jobs were begging for workers and Michigan lent a helping hand to generations of poor blacks and southern whites who came north in the twentieth century in order to get a foothold on the middle class. Michigan could afford to be generous as it gave truth to the American Dream. I know this firsthand: my step-father came north as a young man from Missouri to take his place in her factories. But for the last three decades, driven by corporate greed and inspiringly stupid national economic policy, the lights have been turned out throughout the water-winter wonderland and will not be lit again in our lifetime.
It’s too bad…McCain had been enjoying a slight lead over Mitt Romney until he opened his mouth. Romney is the son of former Michigan Governor and, briefly, 1968 Presidential Candidate George Romney. George, like most in Michigan, had made his living in the Auto industry, rising from salesman to president of American Motors, then the third largest automaker in America. Under George’s tutelage American Motors thrived, introducing the Rambler, with its novel feature of having the front seats fold down into a mobile bed. This turned our rest stops and drive-in theatres into passion pits and brought profits to the company. And as what was good for General Motors is good for America so what was good for American Motors was good for Michigan. George parlayed his stint in the corporate world into the governorship of Michigan which, though less successful, had the merit of introducing to state-wide office a politician from Traverse City, gentleman Bill Milliken.
Bill Milliken is a thoughtful man, articulate, handsome and, for a Republican surprisingly moderate and public spirited. His family made their fortune in the retail industry with the Milliken Department stores in and around Traverse City and Bill, with a sense of noblese oblige, entered politics as a young man. Besides revamping Michigan’s aging constitution the single most important thing George Romney ever did was make Bill Milliken his Lt. Governor. Romney was elected three times to the governor’s chair and then moved up to join Nixon’s cabinet during his third term in early 1969. Bill Milliken took his place and began his stint as Michigan’s longest serving governor.
I remember, in 1970, Sander Levin, now congressman from Michigan and brother of Michigan’s Democratic Senator Carl Levin, was challenging Bill Milliken as the governor ran his first campaign to be elected in his own right. I was chairman of the College Democrats at Grand Valley State then with the second largest membership of any such group in Michigan. Sandy came to ask for our support touting his anti-war posture in what he supposed would automatically win over our support. I was left unimpressed and did not move my organization to formally endorse or take part in the campaign for I could not see how replacing Bill Milliken would materially bring about a more enlightened Michigan.
I say this because the voice of Gentleman Bill still echoes down the corridors of state politics. He came out of retirement long enough to endorse Jennifer Grandholm, Michigan’s current governor and a Democrat in her two successful campaigns in an effort to undo and bring some balance to state government after John Engler’s wretched 12 years in office. Milliken is yet another reminder that this is not your grandfather’s or even your father’s Republican Party.
John McCain has got the endorsement of Bill Milliken. The man who ran with Mitt’s father some 40 years ago and succeeded him to office is now endorsing the man from Arizona. McCain had taken the Romney legacy in Michigan from the uncertain hands of George’s own son.
Mitt Romney had been reduced to Yesterday’s papers, like his father an obscure historical footnote in presidential politics until Marshall McCain shot himself in the foot with a cruel and flippant reminder of what has become of the great State of Michigan. And now the election is up for grabs, as of this writing too close to call.
The odd man out, in the Republican contest in Michigan, will be Mike Huckabee who is exploring the outer geographical limits of fundamentalist appeal. He will discover that those of us who hail from Ludington’s old fourth ward like our whiskey strong, our talk straight, our women loose, and our children and our politics without benefit of clergy.
Who wants yesterday’s girl
Who wants yesterday’s papers
Nobody in the world”----The Rolling Stones
The voices of yesterday echo and collide with each other in the dark corridors of the Rust Belt. John McCain is hoping to recapture the magic of the straight-talking, hip shooting days when as a gunslinger from the west he briefly captured the imagination of America. But it has been 8 long years since he was caught in that nasty crossfire at the South Carolina Corral. He’s older now and, like Marshall Dillon, walks with a noticeable limp but he’s lost none of his ability to return fire. The problem with John is that he has always had a marked propensity to shoot first and think later; and to shoot at anything that moves which, on occasion, is his own foot. So, when asked by a reporter about the manufacturing jobs that have fled Michigan, Marshall McCain quipped “ I got news for the people of Michigan…They (the jobs) ain’t comin’ back.”
This shot struck the soul of the Great Lakes State. I was born and raised in Michigan. I lived my first 50 years in the water wonderland. I know her back roads, walked her shorelines and her main streets, and worked her farms and her factories. I have campaigned and run for office there and I have talked politics with tens of thousands of her citizens. I know Michigan like the back of my left hand. Michigan knows these jobs ain’t commin’ back and does not need any more painful reminders. As Michael Moore, also a native of my home state has pointed out: with the last downsizing General Motors now employs fewer workers nation-wide than it used to employ in his home town of Flint. Michigan has paid a frightful price for the success of her auto industry. In boom times Michigan was at the industrial center of the world. Jobs were begging for workers and Michigan lent a helping hand to generations of poor blacks and southern whites who came north in the twentieth century in order to get a foothold on the middle class. Michigan could afford to be generous as it gave truth to the American Dream. I know this firsthand: my step-father came north as a young man from Missouri to take his place in her factories. But for the last three decades, driven by corporate greed and inspiringly stupid national economic policy, the lights have been turned out throughout the water-winter wonderland and will not be lit again in our lifetime.
It’s too bad…McCain had been enjoying a slight lead over Mitt Romney until he opened his mouth. Romney is the son of former Michigan Governor and, briefly, 1968 Presidential Candidate George Romney. George, like most in Michigan, had made his living in the Auto industry, rising from salesman to president of American Motors, then the third largest automaker in America. Under George’s tutelage American Motors thrived, introducing the Rambler, with its novel feature of having the front seats fold down into a mobile bed. This turned our rest stops and drive-in theatres into passion pits and brought profits to the company. And as what was good for General Motors is good for America so what was good for American Motors was good for Michigan. George parlayed his stint in the corporate world into the governorship of Michigan which, though less successful, had the merit of introducing to state-wide office a politician from Traverse City, gentleman Bill Milliken.
Bill Milliken is a thoughtful man, articulate, handsome and, for a Republican surprisingly moderate and public spirited. His family made their fortune in the retail industry with the Milliken Department stores in and around Traverse City and Bill, with a sense of noblese oblige, entered politics as a young man. Besides revamping Michigan’s aging constitution the single most important thing George Romney ever did was make Bill Milliken his Lt. Governor. Romney was elected three times to the governor’s chair and then moved up to join Nixon’s cabinet during his third term in early 1969. Bill Milliken took his place and began his stint as Michigan’s longest serving governor.
I remember, in 1970, Sander Levin, now congressman from Michigan and brother of Michigan’s Democratic Senator Carl Levin, was challenging Bill Milliken as the governor ran his first campaign to be elected in his own right. I was chairman of the College Democrats at Grand Valley State then with the second largest membership of any such group in Michigan. Sandy came to ask for our support touting his anti-war posture in what he supposed would automatically win over our support. I was left unimpressed and did not move my organization to formally endorse or take part in the campaign for I could not see how replacing Bill Milliken would materially bring about a more enlightened Michigan.
I say this because the voice of Gentleman Bill still echoes down the corridors of state politics. He came out of retirement long enough to endorse Jennifer Grandholm, Michigan’s current governor and a Democrat in her two successful campaigns in an effort to undo and bring some balance to state government after John Engler’s wretched 12 years in office. Milliken is yet another reminder that this is not your grandfather’s or even your father’s Republican Party.
John McCain has got the endorsement of Bill Milliken. The man who ran with Mitt’s father some 40 years ago and succeeded him to office is now endorsing the man from Arizona. McCain had taken the Romney legacy in Michigan from the uncertain hands of George’s own son.
Mitt Romney had been reduced to Yesterday’s papers, like his father an obscure historical footnote in presidential politics until Marshall McCain shot himself in the foot with a cruel and flippant reminder of what has become of the great State of Michigan. And now the election is up for grabs, as of this writing too close to call.
The odd man out, in the Republican contest in Michigan, will be Mike Huckabee who is exploring the outer geographical limits of fundamentalist appeal. He will discover that those of us who hail from Ludington’s old fourth ward like our whiskey strong, our talk straight, our women loose, and our children and our politics without benefit of clergy.
January 13, 2008: Banana Republic, Transcendental Meditation
In his acceptance speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Senator John Kerry pointed out that the middle class controlled a smaller share of the national economy than at any time since before 1929. He could have run on that issue alone in 2004 and won the presidency but decided instead to refight the Vietnam War. With median household purchasing power declining by $1,500. Annually the situation has not improved.
What has improved, since the last election cycle, is that all of the Democrats and Mike Huckabee have discovered it. Even Mitt Romney, as he visits at last the gutted remains of the Michigan he once knew, has discovered the fearful plight of the old working class as he tries to inject some air into his gasping campaign. This is important not as a partisan issue, nor is it important solely as a class issue, it is an important political issue that speaks to the condition of the very soul of the Republic.
What distinguishes us from the classic banana republic is that advanced democratic societies have a large, vibrant and controlling middle class. This is no accident. Emerging under the crushing oppression of the old feudal order, modern democratic systems arose to challenge the feudal aristocracies not only for political power but to use that power to improve their own condition. The result was both peaceful and violent. Relatively peaceful in England with the Reform acts of 1832, extending the franchise, and violent in America and France with their respective revolutions. The result was, broadly speaking, the same. Political parties made up of the new urban and industrial professionals, labor unions, and Farm groups replaced the old aristocracies and in varying degrees went about the business of constructing—through a sometimes painful century long process—a vibrant and controlling middle class. In America the process had a head start with some 80% of the electorate originally middling ‘yeoman’ farmers who quickly organized behind the aristocratic Jefferson to oppose the monied ‘eastern interests’ represented by Hamilton and the Federalists. To varying degrees American politics, a balance between conflict and consensus, has since been a contest between these two factions with the modern middle class taking it’s form with the New Deal and the monied interests having long since taken refuge in the Republican Party. Democracy then creates the middle class because politics are driven by numbers, Jeremy Bentham’s dictate that the purpose of any society is to provide the most benefit for the most people. Majorities have used their political strength to oppose concentrations of economic power, break up monopolies, regulate economies, redistribute wealth and construct safety nets for the elderly, impoverished and infirm. The middle class had become so controlling that both parties have had to pay homage to it for the privilege of exercising national power. So the Republicans pushed the expansion of the franchise, busted the trusts, began the environmental movement under Teddy Roosevelt, the Democrats under Wilson advanced on that theme then under FDR began the wholesale restructuring of the middle class after the debacle of the 1920’s. Not only has the democracy created a commanding middle class but the middle class has a vested interest in defending democracy. This was a point entirely missed by Her Hitler.
It is important for the Middle class to be strong enough to counter the weight of the extremes of poverty and wealth. If wealth is concentrated in too few hands then it will simply buy power, as is increasingly the case in the United States. If the poor begin to outnumber the middle class and society is bifurcated into two camps, the wealthy few and the impoverished masses, then the democratic experiment is bound to fail, as in the classic example of the banana republic or the French Revolution. The masses vote and elect huge majorities which quickly demand a redistribution of the fruits of society. The wealthy call out the military and the democratic experiment ends in failure. This is why it has been such a long and painful process to establish representative government in so many parts of the world. And this is why our Founding Fathers understood that the most important function of government is to prevent the rise of a new aristocracy. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in his “Age of Jackson” the revolution in America was not simply a question of home rule but who would rule at home.
Benjamin Franklin, so the legend goes, was stopped on the street as deliberations ended on the new Constitution: A woman walked up to him and asked “What kind of government are we to have Mr. Franklin?”
“A republic if you can keep it”, replied the old inventor.
If we can keep it….the founders knew this was an historical experiment, they knew their creation was a fragile one and many did not expect the republic to outlive them. As Schlesinger points out many not only distrusted the Eastern Mercantile interests but understood from their reading of history that a true republic must be born of a large and controlling class of middling station. And so in their reading of history the great undoing of the early experiments in Greece and Rome was not slavery but empire, and the consequent concentrations of economic power into fewer hands. The Lees and Henry’s of Virginia, not to mention Jefferson, understood the need for a middle class not only to create but be nurtured by a democratic process that would, as Bentham would so eloquently state a century later, bring the most benefits to the most people: A middle class by definition. This had the singular advantage of creating an umpire strong enough to mediate between the extremes of wealth and poverty, to create opportunity with as little oppression and exploitation as decent society will allow. They were quite explicit about this: Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that one of the most important reasons for adopting the proposed constitution is to regulate the economy. Writing in Federalist No. 22 of the defects rendering the Articles of Confederation “altogether unfit for the administration of the affairs of the union”, Hamilton continued, “The want of a power to regulate commerce is by all parties allowed to be of the number…It is indeed evident, on the most superficial view, that there is no object, either as it respects trade or finance, that more strongly demands a federal superintendence…”, something entirely overlooked by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society as they foist their reactionary vision of freedom to mask their agenda of exploitation.
Last week CSPAN televised a forum at the University of Oklahoma featuring, among others, the likes of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, Gary Hart and former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. The topic was political discourse with the general consensus being that partisan politics have poisoned the well making it difficult to govern in the United States. I have much respect for the members of this panel but I must respectfully say that they have it precisely wrong.
The vitriol that now courses through the veins of American politics has been a long time in the making and whose origins can be traced to the opening statement of Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Taking his place at the podium to address a national audience as he accepted his party’s nomination for president of the United States, Goldwater’s screed ended with:
“Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”.
The house came down as the throng that had booed and hooted Nelson Rockefeller from the stage rose as one to cheer their new champion as he prepared to make war on the national consensus that was the New Deal. Goldwater had stormed the ramparts and taken the party. He had driven the eastern establishment, represented now by Rockefeller who, as Eisenhower and Nixon before him, had accepted the tenets of the New Deal and in their 8 years in power so no reason to lower capital gains taxes of 80% and upper income taxes in the high 90’s. Nor had they tried to tamper with Social Security, privatize the TVA as Wilke would have done, or break the unions. The Cons went down to historical defeat at the hands of the arch-liberal Lyndon Johnson and all was well with the world.
But they had given birth to vermin. Stink tanks arose housing those who would lie sleepless at night masturbating to visions of taking America back into the 19th century, and recreating the working conditions of the Chicago slaughter houses. Foremost among them were William F. Buckley whose national socialist review became a mouthpiece for the new religion. Then there was Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. These curmudgeons fought for a decade and a half to gain entrance to the corridors of power but were blocked by the likes of Richard Nixon, perhaps America’s last liberal president. Finally, in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, the surtax and the stagflation, the country was introduced to a new element into the political arena, given legitimacy by a peanut farmer from Georgia, the religious right. Vaulting Carter into the presidency, Jimmy managed in four short years to alienate both his religious conservative base and the liberal wing of the party---for inflation, as noted earlier, is a cruel mistress. The result was that what would become the “Christian Coalition” bolted the Democratic Party and crossed the isle to become the foot soldiers in Ronald Reagan’s assault on the ramparts of the old guard. The rest, as they say, is history. Suddenly the Cons found they had an army at their disposal and could now match the democrats in the field. And so talking the talk of compassion, promising an eternal ‘morning in America’, the Reaganaughts marshaled their army to do battle against the old New Deal. The problem was that to do battle with the New Deal is to do battle with the middle class. To wage war on the New Deal is to wage war on the middle class. To wage war on the New Deal is, in the absence of another middle class Magna Carta, to wage war on the Republic itself.
And so it has been. Beginning with the war against organized labor, the Cons and their Larvae the Neo-cons have destroyed the bargaining position of the middle class in the marketplace. Moreover they have systematically dismantled the “countervailing power”, to use economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s term, of Labor to Corporate America. In the partisan war between the parties the Conservatives have waged a relentless war against the economic foundation of the New Deal not only reducing union membership to levels not seen since before the Wagoner Act was passed but making it imperative that the Democrats, in order to compete, seek funding from the same lobbyists and interests as the Republican Party.
This has produced, on the Democratic side, a complete disconnect between rhetoric and reality. While posturing rhetorically as the tribune of the people the Democrats have substantively offered up agenda’s and enacted legislation that can be characterized at best as “Bush-Lite”. In fact in the 1970’s, even before Reagan, it was the Democrats who championed deregulation and taxed unemployment benefits. But such bi-partisan consensus, born of the near Dictatorship of Capital, cannot mask the growing destruction of the old American Consensus that lies underneath and increasingly clamors to be heard manifesting itself in the tactics of ‘cut and burn’ that has been our politics in recent decades. In fact it has become increasingly important for the elites—representing now only the wealth—to use ever draconian measures to keep their hold on power. Reagan had to negotiate with the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. Bush used Willy Horton and the race card, tried to drive wedges into every fissure at the base of the republic to win temporary political advantage. ‘Ol Two-Cows” had to savage several war heroes and commit the outright theft of two national elections to get and hold power. And now, like any respectable banana republic we now have foreign observers monitoring our elections. It remains to be seen what outrages await us as this election cycle proceeds. Already Dennis Kucinich is questioning the ballot in New Hampshire, pointing out that Hillary won on electronic voting machines, Obama on the paper and mechanical ballots. Harbinger of things to come?
As our language becomes more strident you can hear the indignation from Fox Noise and the Neo-Con spin machine about fear mongering and ‘class war’, conveniently overlooking the fact that the wealthy have been waging war on us for three decades now. But the Liberals are not yet waging war on the rich. No one in the race has called for anything like socialized medicine or even a return to the tax codes of Harry Truman or even Dick Nixon. Still the rhetoric is heating up and will, in the succeeding election cycles, become white hot as the middle class goes the way of the pterodactyl. It cannot be otherwise. For the truth is that it is not the rhetoric that creates the class divisions but class divisions that give voice to the rhetoric. The panel had it precisely on its head. One does not heal class divisions by toning down the rhetoric; one turns down the rhetoric by healing class divisions. Read any speech By FDR referring to the “malefactors of wealth’ or his diatribes against bankers and Wall Street. But FDR healed the nation. In this context the panel at Oklahoma and Barack’s campaign ring hollow. If Barach is to be the transformational figure he portends, he must confront with righteous indignation as Martin, FDR and Lincoln did before him. He must introduce, like Bobby, the ‘other America’ and take his campaign and the cameras to the Mississippi Delta and the slums of New York, to the rural poor and the Indian reservations; foremost he must show the country what it already knows and walk, with the press in tow, the boarded up main streets of America. And he must do it in ways that inspire.
What has improved, since the last election cycle, is that all of the Democrats and Mike Huckabee have discovered it. Even Mitt Romney, as he visits at last the gutted remains of the Michigan he once knew, has discovered the fearful plight of the old working class as he tries to inject some air into his gasping campaign. This is important not as a partisan issue, nor is it important solely as a class issue, it is an important political issue that speaks to the condition of the very soul of the Republic.
What distinguishes us from the classic banana republic is that advanced democratic societies have a large, vibrant and controlling middle class. This is no accident. Emerging under the crushing oppression of the old feudal order, modern democratic systems arose to challenge the feudal aristocracies not only for political power but to use that power to improve their own condition. The result was both peaceful and violent. Relatively peaceful in England with the Reform acts of 1832, extending the franchise, and violent in America and France with their respective revolutions. The result was, broadly speaking, the same. Political parties made up of the new urban and industrial professionals, labor unions, and Farm groups replaced the old aristocracies and in varying degrees went about the business of constructing—through a sometimes painful century long process—a vibrant and controlling middle class. In America the process had a head start with some 80% of the electorate originally middling ‘yeoman’ farmers who quickly organized behind the aristocratic Jefferson to oppose the monied ‘eastern interests’ represented by Hamilton and the Federalists. To varying degrees American politics, a balance between conflict and consensus, has since been a contest between these two factions with the modern middle class taking it’s form with the New Deal and the monied interests having long since taken refuge in the Republican Party. Democracy then creates the middle class because politics are driven by numbers, Jeremy Bentham’s dictate that the purpose of any society is to provide the most benefit for the most people. Majorities have used their political strength to oppose concentrations of economic power, break up monopolies, regulate economies, redistribute wealth and construct safety nets for the elderly, impoverished and infirm. The middle class had become so controlling that both parties have had to pay homage to it for the privilege of exercising national power. So the Republicans pushed the expansion of the franchise, busted the trusts, began the environmental movement under Teddy Roosevelt, the Democrats under Wilson advanced on that theme then under FDR began the wholesale restructuring of the middle class after the debacle of the 1920’s. Not only has the democracy created a commanding middle class but the middle class has a vested interest in defending democracy. This was a point entirely missed by Her Hitler.
It is important for the Middle class to be strong enough to counter the weight of the extremes of poverty and wealth. If wealth is concentrated in too few hands then it will simply buy power, as is increasingly the case in the United States. If the poor begin to outnumber the middle class and society is bifurcated into two camps, the wealthy few and the impoverished masses, then the democratic experiment is bound to fail, as in the classic example of the banana republic or the French Revolution. The masses vote and elect huge majorities which quickly demand a redistribution of the fruits of society. The wealthy call out the military and the democratic experiment ends in failure. This is why it has been such a long and painful process to establish representative government in so many parts of the world. And this is why our Founding Fathers understood that the most important function of government is to prevent the rise of a new aristocracy. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in his “Age of Jackson” the revolution in America was not simply a question of home rule but who would rule at home.
Benjamin Franklin, so the legend goes, was stopped on the street as deliberations ended on the new Constitution: A woman walked up to him and asked “What kind of government are we to have Mr. Franklin?”
“A republic if you can keep it”, replied the old inventor.
If we can keep it….the founders knew this was an historical experiment, they knew their creation was a fragile one and many did not expect the republic to outlive them. As Schlesinger points out many not only distrusted the Eastern Mercantile interests but understood from their reading of history that a true republic must be born of a large and controlling class of middling station. And so in their reading of history the great undoing of the early experiments in Greece and Rome was not slavery but empire, and the consequent concentrations of economic power into fewer hands. The Lees and Henry’s of Virginia, not to mention Jefferson, understood the need for a middle class not only to create but be nurtured by a democratic process that would, as Bentham would so eloquently state a century later, bring the most benefits to the most people: A middle class by definition. This had the singular advantage of creating an umpire strong enough to mediate between the extremes of wealth and poverty, to create opportunity with as little oppression and exploitation as decent society will allow. They were quite explicit about this: Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that one of the most important reasons for adopting the proposed constitution is to regulate the economy. Writing in Federalist No. 22 of the defects rendering the Articles of Confederation “altogether unfit for the administration of the affairs of the union”, Hamilton continued, “The want of a power to regulate commerce is by all parties allowed to be of the number…It is indeed evident, on the most superficial view, that there is no object, either as it respects trade or finance, that more strongly demands a federal superintendence…”, something entirely overlooked by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society as they foist their reactionary vision of freedom to mask their agenda of exploitation.
Last week CSPAN televised a forum at the University of Oklahoma featuring, among others, the likes of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, Gary Hart and former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. The topic was political discourse with the general consensus being that partisan politics have poisoned the well making it difficult to govern in the United States. I have much respect for the members of this panel but I must respectfully say that they have it precisely wrong.
The vitriol that now courses through the veins of American politics has been a long time in the making and whose origins can be traced to the opening statement of Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Taking his place at the podium to address a national audience as he accepted his party’s nomination for president of the United States, Goldwater’s screed ended with:
“Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”.
The house came down as the throng that had booed and hooted Nelson Rockefeller from the stage rose as one to cheer their new champion as he prepared to make war on the national consensus that was the New Deal. Goldwater had stormed the ramparts and taken the party. He had driven the eastern establishment, represented now by Rockefeller who, as Eisenhower and Nixon before him, had accepted the tenets of the New Deal and in their 8 years in power so no reason to lower capital gains taxes of 80% and upper income taxes in the high 90’s. Nor had they tried to tamper with Social Security, privatize the TVA as Wilke would have done, or break the unions. The Cons went down to historical defeat at the hands of the arch-liberal Lyndon Johnson and all was well with the world.
But they had given birth to vermin. Stink tanks arose housing those who would lie sleepless at night masturbating to visions of taking America back into the 19th century, and recreating the working conditions of the Chicago slaughter houses. Foremost among them were William F. Buckley whose national socialist review became a mouthpiece for the new religion. Then there was Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. These curmudgeons fought for a decade and a half to gain entrance to the corridors of power but were blocked by the likes of Richard Nixon, perhaps America’s last liberal president. Finally, in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, the surtax and the stagflation, the country was introduced to a new element into the political arena, given legitimacy by a peanut farmer from Georgia, the religious right. Vaulting Carter into the presidency, Jimmy managed in four short years to alienate both his religious conservative base and the liberal wing of the party---for inflation, as noted earlier, is a cruel mistress. The result was that what would become the “Christian Coalition” bolted the Democratic Party and crossed the isle to become the foot soldiers in Ronald Reagan’s assault on the ramparts of the old guard. The rest, as they say, is history. Suddenly the Cons found they had an army at their disposal and could now match the democrats in the field. And so talking the talk of compassion, promising an eternal ‘morning in America’, the Reaganaughts marshaled their army to do battle against the old New Deal. The problem was that to do battle with the New Deal is to do battle with the middle class. To wage war on the New Deal is to wage war on the middle class. To wage war on the New Deal is, in the absence of another middle class Magna Carta, to wage war on the Republic itself.
And so it has been. Beginning with the war against organized labor, the Cons and their Larvae the Neo-cons have destroyed the bargaining position of the middle class in the marketplace. Moreover they have systematically dismantled the “countervailing power”, to use economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s term, of Labor to Corporate America. In the partisan war between the parties the Conservatives have waged a relentless war against the economic foundation of the New Deal not only reducing union membership to levels not seen since before the Wagoner Act was passed but making it imperative that the Democrats, in order to compete, seek funding from the same lobbyists and interests as the Republican Party.
This has produced, on the Democratic side, a complete disconnect between rhetoric and reality. While posturing rhetorically as the tribune of the people the Democrats have substantively offered up agenda’s and enacted legislation that can be characterized at best as “Bush-Lite”. In fact in the 1970’s, even before Reagan, it was the Democrats who championed deregulation and taxed unemployment benefits. But such bi-partisan consensus, born of the near Dictatorship of Capital, cannot mask the growing destruction of the old American Consensus that lies underneath and increasingly clamors to be heard manifesting itself in the tactics of ‘cut and burn’ that has been our politics in recent decades. In fact it has become increasingly important for the elites—representing now only the wealth—to use ever draconian measures to keep their hold on power. Reagan had to negotiate with the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. Bush used Willy Horton and the race card, tried to drive wedges into every fissure at the base of the republic to win temporary political advantage. ‘Ol Two-Cows” had to savage several war heroes and commit the outright theft of two national elections to get and hold power. And now, like any respectable banana republic we now have foreign observers monitoring our elections. It remains to be seen what outrages await us as this election cycle proceeds. Already Dennis Kucinich is questioning the ballot in New Hampshire, pointing out that Hillary won on electronic voting machines, Obama on the paper and mechanical ballots. Harbinger of things to come?
As our language becomes more strident you can hear the indignation from Fox Noise and the Neo-Con spin machine about fear mongering and ‘class war’, conveniently overlooking the fact that the wealthy have been waging war on us for three decades now. But the Liberals are not yet waging war on the rich. No one in the race has called for anything like socialized medicine or even a return to the tax codes of Harry Truman or even Dick Nixon. Still the rhetoric is heating up and will, in the succeeding election cycles, become white hot as the middle class goes the way of the pterodactyl. It cannot be otherwise. For the truth is that it is not the rhetoric that creates the class divisions but class divisions that give voice to the rhetoric. The panel had it precisely on its head. One does not heal class divisions by toning down the rhetoric; one turns down the rhetoric by healing class divisions. Read any speech By FDR referring to the “malefactors of wealth’ or his diatribes against bankers and Wall Street. But FDR healed the nation. In this context the panel at Oklahoma and Barack’s campaign ring hollow. If Barach is to be the transformational figure he portends, he must confront with righteous indignation as Martin, FDR and Lincoln did before him. He must introduce, like Bobby, the ‘other America’ and take his campaign and the cameras to the Mississippi Delta and the slums of New York, to the rural poor and the Indian reservations; foremost he must show the country what it already knows and walk, with the press in tow, the boarded up main streets of America. And he must do it in ways that inspire.
January 12, 2008: The Lizard Strikes, Obama Express Hits a Siding, Dark Night for the Sons of Brigham Young
All did not go well for the forces of reform or religious fundamentalism. Like Napoleon before Moscow the insurgents suffered serious reversals of fortune in the icy snows of New Hampshire. With the backing of Ms Democrat Jean Shaheen, former Democratic Governor and now candidate against Senator Sununu, the well-heeled Clinton Machine prevailed over the strong challenge of Barack Obama outpolling him by three percentage points. Such was the upset that the mainstream media altogether missed the central story: for the first time in the history of the republic a woman had won a presidential primary.
It was not supposed go this way. As noted earlier the latest polling had shown Barack with a commanding lead going into Election Day. These polling figures were confirmed by the internal polling done by the candidates themselves with the Clinton camp showing their candidate losing by 11 percentage points and Obama’s campaign reporting a 14 point lead. What brought about the 14-17 point last minute swing?
I suggest, in large measure, the Bradley factor. Back in the 80’s Tom Bradley, Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, faced off against George Deukmejian, in the contest to become Governor of California. Late polling showed a commanding lead similar to Obama’s only to evaporate on polling day. The same was true of Harvey Gant’s South Carolina Senate race as he opposed Strom Thurmond’s re-election bid in the 90’s. Both candidates had commanding leads which evaporated on Election Day. The similarity: both were black men, and both ran up against the ‘race factor’---that 15% of the electorate who will not reveal their racial bias but will instead tell pollsters that they are supporting a certain black candidate and then, in the privacy of the voting booth, vote the other way. This is the Achilles heel that plagues the Obama campaign. Barack, should he gain the nomination, will begin the campaign with a 10-15 point handicap that is race in these United States. He must, by his very physical presence. confront a racial divide that is perhaps not the gaping chasm of yesteryear but is now showing itself to be clear and present.
The vote in New Hampshire also saw a “boomer” turnout, especially “boomer” women who supported Hillary in large numbers. Obama still captured the vote of those who yearn for ‘change’, but it was clear that the party regulars, now populated by ‘boomers’, had spoken. The lizard has struck and the Obama campaign now reels south hoping to regain its lost footing. Reinforcements began arriving almost immediately as Obama’s forces began to make a stand in South Carolina. Old warriors of the left—first John Kerry and then former Senator Gary Hart moved quickly to endorse Barack sidestepping Edwards, Kerry’s running-mate in 2004. This further solidifies Barack’s claim to represent the legacy of Bobby Kennedy as old Kennedy supporters join with a growing movement based on college campuses to fuel the insurgency against the party regulars. De Ja Vu all over again. A burgeoning children’s crusade against the Clinton “establishment”. Conceding Michigan to Clinton—all but Hillary had pledged not to campaign there because Michigan had violated party rules by moving it’s primary ahead of the allotted date—Obama faces Hillary in Nevada and South Carolina in a classic insurgency against the party regulars. Nevada favors Obama given the Caucus format for it does not give the voter the luxury of changing his or her mind in the privacy of the voting booth but instead requires that one publicly switch one’s vote for all to see—effectively neutralizing the “Bradley Effect”. Obama also has the support of the Culinary Workers Union forcing an interesting reversal of roles in which Hillary has taken to the streets campaigning door-to-door to appeal for ‘grass roots’ support in a last ditch effort to win the state.
In South Carolina the race pits the two largest voting blocks in the Democratic Party, women and minorities in this race for delegates. Hillary has stronger support among women, Barack among blacks with black women thrown into an interesting quandary. Edwards, who won the South Carolina primary in 2004, once again appears the odd-man-out, and looks to finish a distant third. Obama should win the South Carolina Primary and should he win Nevada will get a huge boost going into February. Hillary can claim Michigan and should she win in Nevada would begin to post her credentials as something more than a regional candidate. All this is mere prelude to the serious business that waits Super Tuesday in February.
Meanwhile John McCain was the big winner in New Hampshire with Mitt Romney finishing second. Mitt needed this one and lost it. New Hampshire is part of the Boston media market. The state gets its television and most of its radio programming from Boston and therefore Mitt, a veteran of two state-wide campaigns is, like Paul Tsongas and John Kerry before him, a household name in the state. Mitt must now repair to Michigan and as we speak is busy pulling ads from his South Carolina campaign to concentrate his efforts there. Mitt is now forced to tread the ground of his father, his home turf, to gather enough support to stay in the race. A loss in Michigan will finish Mitt Romney.
I know New Hampshire. I have trekked her trails, climbed her mountains, and explored her valleys. She is an independent voice in American politics, reveling in the prospect of grabbing the nation’s and, occasionally, the world’s attention by insisting on the first say in the quadrennial process of choosing the next ‘leader of the free world’. Of late some of that luster has been lost to Iowa so the good people of New Hampshire, ever a cantankerous lot, express themselves by throwing the occasional monkey wrench into the best oiled political machines. It is not good to hit the icy roads of New Hampshire with the throttle wide open, with your pedal to the metal. Just ask pappy Bush about the ‘big Mo’ Iowa gave him back in ’80 just before his presidential ambitions hit an ugly patch at Kinsman’s Notch. It took him 8 years to put that bus back together. In other words, whoever emerges from Iowa is likely to get a quick reality check as the good folks of New Hampshire go about bursting campaign balloons. And so Obama and Huckabee find themselves a bit further down in the standings as the granite state gives life not this time to the insurgents but to the established candidates. If one is to battle the established order, New Hampshire had always been favorable ground. McCarthy in ’68, McGovern in ’72, Carter in ’76, Kennedy in ’80, Hart in ’84….not so this time. It was not a good night for religious conviction, racial transformation or the sons of Brigham Young. The question goes begging: if not here…where, and if not now…when?
It’s on to Nevada where we await another roll of the dice.
It was not supposed go this way. As noted earlier the latest polling had shown Barack with a commanding lead going into Election Day. These polling figures were confirmed by the internal polling done by the candidates themselves with the Clinton camp showing their candidate losing by 11 percentage points and Obama’s campaign reporting a 14 point lead. What brought about the 14-17 point last minute swing?
I suggest, in large measure, the Bradley factor. Back in the 80’s Tom Bradley, Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, faced off against George Deukmejian, in the contest to become Governor of California. Late polling showed a commanding lead similar to Obama’s only to evaporate on polling day. The same was true of Harvey Gant’s South Carolina Senate race as he opposed Strom Thurmond’s re-election bid in the 90’s. Both candidates had commanding leads which evaporated on Election Day. The similarity: both were black men, and both ran up against the ‘race factor’---that 15% of the electorate who will not reveal their racial bias but will instead tell pollsters that they are supporting a certain black candidate and then, in the privacy of the voting booth, vote the other way. This is the Achilles heel that plagues the Obama campaign. Barack, should he gain the nomination, will begin the campaign with a 10-15 point handicap that is race in these United States. He must, by his very physical presence. confront a racial divide that is perhaps not the gaping chasm of yesteryear but is now showing itself to be clear and present.
The vote in New Hampshire also saw a “boomer” turnout, especially “boomer” women who supported Hillary in large numbers. Obama still captured the vote of those who yearn for ‘change’, but it was clear that the party regulars, now populated by ‘boomers’, had spoken. The lizard has struck and the Obama campaign now reels south hoping to regain its lost footing. Reinforcements began arriving almost immediately as Obama’s forces began to make a stand in South Carolina. Old warriors of the left—first John Kerry and then former Senator Gary Hart moved quickly to endorse Barack sidestepping Edwards, Kerry’s running-mate in 2004. This further solidifies Barack’s claim to represent the legacy of Bobby Kennedy as old Kennedy supporters join with a growing movement based on college campuses to fuel the insurgency against the party regulars. De Ja Vu all over again. A burgeoning children’s crusade against the Clinton “establishment”. Conceding Michigan to Clinton—all but Hillary had pledged not to campaign there because Michigan had violated party rules by moving it’s primary ahead of the allotted date—Obama faces Hillary in Nevada and South Carolina in a classic insurgency against the party regulars. Nevada favors Obama given the Caucus format for it does not give the voter the luxury of changing his or her mind in the privacy of the voting booth but instead requires that one publicly switch one’s vote for all to see—effectively neutralizing the “Bradley Effect”. Obama also has the support of the Culinary Workers Union forcing an interesting reversal of roles in which Hillary has taken to the streets campaigning door-to-door to appeal for ‘grass roots’ support in a last ditch effort to win the state.
In South Carolina the race pits the two largest voting blocks in the Democratic Party, women and minorities in this race for delegates. Hillary has stronger support among women, Barack among blacks with black women thrown into an interesting quandary. Edwards, who won the South Carolina primary in 2004, once again appears the odd-man-out, and looks to finish a distant third. Obama should win the South Carolina Primary and should he win Nevada will get a huge boost going into February. Hillary can claim Michigan and should she win in Nevada would begin to post her credentials as something more than a regional candidate. All this is mere prelude to the serious business that waits Super Tuesday in February.
Meanwhile John McCain was the big winner in New Hampshire with Mitt Romney finishing second. Mitt needed this one and lost it. New Hampshire is part of the Boston media market. The state gets its television and most of its radio programming from Boston and therefore Mitt, a veteran of two state-wide campaigns is, like Paul Tsongas and John Kerry before him, a household name in the state. Mitt must now repair to Michigan and as we speak is busy pulling ads from his South Carolina campaign to concentrate his efforts there. Mitt is now forced to tread the ground of his father, his home turf, to gather enough support to stay in the race. A loss in Michigan will finish Mitt Romney.
I know New Hampshire. I have trekked her trails, climbed her mountains, and explored her valleys. She is an independent voice in American politics, reveling in the prospect of grabbing the nation’s and, occasionally, the world’s attention by insisting on the first say in the quadrennial process of choosing the next ‘leader of the free world’. Of late some of that luster has been lost to Iowa so the good people of New Hampshire, ever a cantankerous lot, express themselves by throwing the occasional monkey wrench into the best oiled political machines. It is not good to hit the icy roads of New Hampshire with the throttle wide open, with your pedal to the metal. Just ask pappy Bush about the ‘big Mo’ Iowa gave him back in ’80 just before his presidential ambitions hit an ugly patch at Kinsman’s Notch. It took him 8 years to put that bus back together. In other words, whoever emerges from Iowa is likely to get a quick reality check as the good folks of New Hampshire go about bursting campaign balloons. And so Obama and Huckabee find themselves a bit further down in the standings as the granite state gives life not this time to the insurgents but to the established candidates. If one is to battle the established order, New Hampshire had always been favorable ground. McCarthy in ’68, McGovern in ’72, Carter in ’76, Kennedy in ’80, Hart in ’84….not so this time. It was not a good night for religious conviction, racial transformation or the sons of Brigham Young. The question goes begging: if not here…where, and if not now…when?
It’s on to Nevada where we await another roll of the dice.
January 8, 2008: Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, Inflation is a Cruel Mistress, Midnight in New Hampshire
For a generation now we have watched and listened as the political leadership have wrapped themselves in the clothes of the common man. First there was Jimmy, famously carrying his own bags as he stepped off his chartered plane, masquerading as one of the folk and when in power levying taxes on unemployment. Then there was Ronnie, he of “Death Valley Days”, who spoke of freeing capital so that the benefits thereof would be shared by all and when in power crushed the unions, cut to shreds the safety net, raised social security taxes and presided over an economic boom that left main street America uninvited. Then came the Clintons who talked the talk of social justice but proceeded to cut to shreds the Federal commitment to welfare and likewise presided over an economic prosperity that did it’s level best to replay the 1920’s and 80’s.
The upshot is that for the last 35 years the income of middle class households, adjusted for inflation, has fallen. Median household income has declined and markedly so since the political larceny of 2000 during which time the median household has lost nearly $1,500. in yearly purchasing power. The numbers generally go unreported in the mainstream media and the situation is much more critical than the numbers reveal. On page 42 of the October 12, 2007 edition of “Business” magazine a report by Daniel Gross cites inflation numbers that the Feds choose to ignore. Reporting that the Feds post an annual inflation rate of 2.3%, Gross points out that this ignores 12.7% inflation rate for food and a 5.6% rate for energy because the Federal Government excludes the costs of food and energy from the calculation of the annual cost of living index.
Inflation is a cruel mistress. It benefits certain segments of the economy by making it possible—assuming annual wage increases—to repay loans on durable goods such as homes and automobiles with ever cheaper money. But as one descends the income ladder it works to disproportionately rob the most vulnerable among us with what little purchasing power limited resources possess. For instance: Assuming a family of three spend about $120.00 a week or $480.00 a month on groceries and $520.00 a month on gasoline, electricity and natural gas. At current inflation rates this will add an additional $90.00 a month to household expenses over the last calendar year. Notice that this cost is not related to income but to the cost of goods and services. Now as we descend the income ladder notice how this cuts into the disposable or “spendable” household income---money left over after taxes to live on. With after tax money of say $3,200 a month the inflation of the cost of food and energy add 2.75% to the cost of living producing a real inflation rate (2.75% undeclared inflation of food and energy plus the 2.3% the Feds do declare) of 5.05%. Now look what happens when income drops. With after tax money of $2,000.00 per month the inflation on food and energy relative to income is 4.5% and a real overall inflation now becomes 6.8%. Why? Because the $90.00 of additional expense per month is now a greater proportion of a smaller income. Similarly, with a disposable income of $1,500.00 a month---now down to the levels of the working poor, the numbers jump to 6.0% and 8.3% respectively. So the lower the income the higher the impact of the inflation rate on one’s well being. This is so because there is almost no discretionary spending at these levels of income. The poor can, and often do, exercise their discretionary spending power by opting not to seek increasingly expensive educations or medical attention. But with food and energy one is left with little choice, one simply has to pay the price at the pump and the check-out counter. The untold story, then, is not simply that the feds are underreporting inflation but how this inflation impacts the constituent parts of the republic.
With real inflation at between 5 and 8 percent for middle to lower income Americans-- extending over a period of years-- it is clear how a reduction in real purchasing power now hovering on average of $1, 500. Annually occurs. I would not be surprised to learn, given administration misrepresentation of social security numbers, that the decline in purchasing power is much worse. The concurrent evidence suggest that it is: growing numbers of foreclosures brought on by subprime loans made in part to large segments of the public who did not have the purchasing power, and record levels of credit card and other personal debt. The country is clearly borrowing in a frantic effort to maintain its tenuous hold on the American Dream. Americans are also cashing in personal wealth by way of home equity loans, to fund credit card purchases, and reverse mortgages in which the elderly cash out the equity of their estates to meet the ever increasing cost of living. This is what is driving the poll numbers that tell us that 70-80% of the country now think that we are on the wrong track, and that for the first time we have a generation of Americans who fear that they will give their children a poorer country than the one they inherited. This is what is driving the message of change now reverberating through the political corridors. The question is: do these morons get it or are they simply playing lip service to the crying need while harboring a political agenda that will once again be in service of their corporate paymasters? And if we should luck up on the right candidate will such a champion have the experience and administrative skills to tackle the legion of problems that await the hapless bastard? We grope blindly now as we reach out in the darkness.
Every four years a political ritual is observed in Dixon Notch, New Hampshire. The good citizens show up in the middle of the night and the entire village casts the first votes of the quadrennial primary season. Tonight Obama and John McCain took the village and the early lead. Later polling showed Romney ahead on the Republican side but the Democrats following the good villagers in their stated preference. Obama has reached into the icy cold of the great white north to become their champion. What this means remains in the telling.
The upshot is that for the last 35 years the income of middle class households, adjusted for inflation, has fallen. Median household income has declined and markedly so since the political larceny of 2000 during which time the median household has lost nearly $1,500. in yearly purchasing power. The numbers generally go unreported in the mainstream media and the situation is much more critical than the numbers reveal. On page 42 of the October 12, 2007 edition of “Business” magazine a report by Daniel Gross cites inflation numbers that the Feds choose to ignore. Reporting that the Feds post an annual inflation rate of 2.3%, Gross points out that this ignores 12.7% inflation rate for food and a 5.6% rate for energy because the Federal Government excludes the costs of food and energy from the calculation of the annual cost of living index.
Inflation is a cruel mistress. It benefits certain segments of the economy by making it possible—assuming annual wage increases—to repay loans on durable goods such as homes and automobiles with ever cheaper money. But as one descends the income ladder it works to disproportionately rob the most vulnerable among us with what little purchasing power limited resources possess. For instance: Assuming a family of three spend about $120.00 a week or $480.00 a month on groceries and $520.00 a month on gasoline, electricity and natural gas. At current inflation rates this will add an additional $90.00 a month to household expenses over the last calendar year. Notice that this cost is not related to income but to the cost of goods and services. Now as we descend the income ladder notice how this cuts into the disposable or “spendable” household income---money left over after taxes to live on. With after tax money of say $3,200 a month the inflation of the cost of food and energy add 2.75% to the cost of living producing a real inflation rate (2.75% undeclared inflation of food and energy plus the 2.3% the Feds do declare) of 5.05%. Now look what happens when income drops. With after tax money of $2,000.00 per month the inflation on food and energy relative to income is 4.5% and a real overall inflation now becomes 6.8%. Why? Because the $90.00 of additional expense per month is now a greater proportion of a smaller income. Similarly, with a disposable income of $1,500.00 a month---now down to the levels of the working poor, the numbers jump to 6.0% and 8.3% respectively. So the lower the income the higher the impact of the inflation rate on one’s well being. This is so because there is almost no discretionary spending at these levels of income. The poor can, and often do, exercise their discretionary spending power by opting not to seek increasingly expensive educations or medical attention. But with food and energy one is left with little choice, one simply has to pay the price at the pump and the check-out counter. The untold story, then, is not simply that the feds are underreporting inflation but how this inflation impacts the constituent parts of the republic.
With real inflation at between 5 and 8 percent for middle to lower income Americans-- extending over a period of years-- it is clear how a reduction in real purchasing power now hovering on average of $1, 500. Annually occurs. I would not be surprised to learn, given administration misrepresentation of social security numbers, that the decline in purchasing power is much worse. The concurrent evidence suggest that it is: growing numbers of foreclosures brought on by subprime loans made in part to large segments of the public who did not have the purchasing power, and record levels of credit card and other personal debt. The country is clearly borrowing in a frantic effort to maintain its tenuous hold on the American Dream. Americans are also cashing in personal wealth by way of home equity loans, to fund credit card purchases, and reverse mortgages in which the elderly cash out the equity of their estates to meet the ever increasing cost of living. This is what is driving the poll numbers that tell us that 70-80% of the country now think that we are on the wrong track, and that for the first time we have a generation of Americans who fear that they will give their children a poorer country than the one they inherited. This is what is driving the message of change now reverberating through the political corridors. The question is: do these morons get it or are they simply playing lip service to the crying need while harboring a political agenda that will once again be in service of their corporate paymasters? And if we should luck up on the right candidate will such a champion have the experience and administrative skills to tackle the legion of problems that await the hapless bastard? We grope blindly now as we reach out in the darkness.
Every four years a political ritual is observed in Dixon Notch, New Hampshire. The good citizens show up in the middle of the night and the entire village casts the first votes of the quadrennial primary season. Tonight Obama and John McCain took the village and the early lead. Later polling showed Romney ahead on the Republican side but the Democrats following the good villagers in their stated preference. Obama has reached into the icy cold of the great white north to become their champion. What this means remains in the telling.
January 7, 2008: I Am Waiting, All The President's Men, Lizard King
It is now on to New Hampshire where the Obama express is picking up steam and Hillary’s train appears to be heading for a siding. Today it was reported that Obama has surged ahead of Clinton in the New Hampshire polls by 11 percent clearly indicating a groundswell of support in the wake of last week’s Iowa performance. There was a report on the internet this afternoon that Hillary with a cracking voice fought back tears as she tried yet once again to explain the rationale behind her campaign.
“I am waiting
I am waiting
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere”---Rolling Stones
Whether it will be Obama or Clinton or Edwards is not clear at this moment. Obama seems to be building the momentum to sweep all before him, but the President’s men are working frantically at damage control hoping to build a redoubt in New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida to stop the Obama express. If Obama carries New Hampshire, again with an overwhelming white population this time in an open primary, it looks like he can sweep South Carolina in the following days leaving only Michigan before the contest in Florida. This puts Hillary in the position of having been swept in all the states leading up to the major contests mightily taxing the ability of her campaign to absorb the onslaught. She has the money and has had the time to build an organization to withstand a major assault but it remains unclear if it will withstand the impact of the steamroller that is the Obama express.
Today it didn’t look good with shades of Ed Muskie’s 1972 meltdown in front of the offices of the Manchester Union Leader. Hillary has been reduced to tears further eroding confidence that she can play a man’s game; for just like baseball there is no crying in politics.
“I am the Lizard King
I can do anything”—the Doors
Likewise Giuliani is lurking in the swamps of Florida with what are becoming ever diminishing pretensions to the throne, like some deranged gator hissing 9-11 at anything that passes by. The regulars are now thrown into the awkward and surprising position of having to retreat to Florida before they do battle for the soul of their parties. Armed with massive resources, and little other justification, it remains to be seen if they can prevail. But then Obama, Edwards and Huckabee may find, as so many before them, that in the end it may indeed be the Celebration of the Lizard.
The problem is that we have front-loaded the primaries. In 1968 there were thirteen such contests beginning in mid February in New Hampshire. As noted earlier Robert Kennedy did not even begin his presidential bid until mid March and the first contested primary in which he took part, Indiana, occurring on the 7th of May, with California and New York in early and mid June leading up to the convention. In those days one had several months to raise money, buy media time, print campaign literature and lawn signs, organize phone banks and fundraising, in short build on the momentum of earlier triumphs. Not so this time around. With inspired stupidity the Democratic National Committee has allowed over half the primary states, especially New York and California to follow New Hampshire by a little more than 30 days. This puts a premium on fundraising and makes it nearly mandatory, if one is to capitalize on the momentum of early victories, that one has a hundred million dollars in the campaign chest before the first votes in Iowa are cast. And so the lizards lurk in the marshes of Florida, hiding where civilization fears to tread, and waiting for that moment to swallow whole the hopes and dreams of America’s middle class.
“I am waiting
I am waiting
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere”---Rolling Stones
Whether it will be Obama or Clinton or Edwards is not clear at this moment. Obama seems to be building the momentum to sweep all before him, but the President’s men are working frantically at damage control hoping to build a redoubt in New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida to stop the Obama express. If Obama carries New Hampshire, again with an overwhelming white population this time in an open primary, it looks like he can sweep South Carolina in the following days leaving only Michigan before the contest in Florida. This puts Hillary in the position of having been swept in all the states leading up to the major contests mightily taxing the ability of her campaign to absorb the onslaught. She has the money and has had the time to build an organization to withstand a major assault but it remains unclear if it will withstand the impact of the steamroller that is the Obama express.
Today it didn’t look good with shades of Ed Muskie’s 1972 meltdown in front of the offices of the Manchester Union Leader. Hillary has been reduced to tears further eroding confidence that she can play a man’s game; for just like baseball there is no crying in politics.
“I am the Lizard King
I can do anything”—the Doors
Likewise Giuliani is lurking in the swamps of Florida with what are becoming ever diminishing pretensions to the throne, like some deranged gator hissing 9-11 at anything that passes by. The regulars are now thrown into the awkward and surprising position of having to retreat to Florida before they do battle for the soul of their parties. Armed with massive resources, and little other justification, it remains to be seen if they can prevail. But then Obama, Edwards and Huckabee may find, as so many before them, that in the end it may indeed be the Celebration of the Lizard.
The problem is that we have front-loaded the primaries. In 1968 there were thirteen such contests beginning in mid February in New Hampshire. As noted earlier Robert Kennedy did not even begin his presidential bid until mid March and the first contested primary in which he took part, Indiana, occurring on the 7th of May, with California and New York in early and mid June leading up to the convention. In those days one had several months to raise money, buy media time, print campaign literature and lawn signs, organize phone banks and fundraising, in short build on the momentum of earlier triumphs. Not so this time around. With inspired stupidity the Democratic National Committee has allowed over half the primary states, especially New York and California to follow New Hampshire by a little more than 30 days. This puts a premium on fundraising and makes it nearly mandatory, if one is to capitalize on the momentum of early victories, that one has a hundred million dollars in the campaign chest before the first votes in Iowa are cast. And so the lizards lurk in the marshes of Florida, hiding where civilization fears to tread, and waiting for that moment to swallow whole the hopes and dreams of America’s middle class.
January 6, 2008: High and Dry, Huckleberry Launches His Raft, On to New Hampshire
“High and Dry
I’m up here with no warnin
High and dry
Well, I couldn’t get a word in”—The Rolling Stones
Meanwhile Mike Huckabee, lately of Arkansas and the town of Hope’s latest entry into presidential sweepstakes launched his presidential raft by sweeping the Republican side of the Iowa contest. Outspent nearly five to one by the well-oiled, if not outright greasy machine of Willard “Mitt” Romney, lately of Massachusetts, the former Baptist preacher turned politician co-opted the fundamentalist base from Fred Thompson and stormed ahead of the pack in a last-minute dash to the finish line. John McCain hoping to reclaim some of the magic that was the 2000 campaign finished a distant third.
The best quote of the night came from Democratic candidate John Edwards who said that the real winner on this night was change. With Obama and Edwards fighting to claim the legacy of Robert Kennedy and prevail over the party regulars represented by Hillary Clinton, the upcoming contest has all the earmarks of the RFK, Eugene McCarthy challenge to the party stalwarts in 1968. There have been challenges since: 1972’s contest between McGovern and Humphrey in which the insurgents won but were forsaken in the general election and the ticket went down in a smoking ruin. 1976 saw another storming of the ramparts but Carter quickly proved distasteful to the liberal wing of party. Both in 1980 and ’84 the factions again fought for the nomination with the old RFK wing represented by Teddy in ’80 and Gary Hart in 84. The party stalwarts prevailed at the conventions but lost the ensuing general election. There has not been a serious challenge to the party regulars since, with Bill Clinton---leading the Democratic Leadership Council and moving the party toward the mythical “center”—carrying the standard for the party regulars. The Democrats have won three elections over the last 11 election cycles leaving an ever growing number of faithful to look for something other than “Bush Lite” to quench the party’s thirst; someone to pick up the mantle of Robert Kennedy and speak of social justice, someone to staunch the middle class hemorrhage, and someone to restore the New Deal. In 2004 it was John Edwards, in this election cycle it is increasingly the voice of Barack Obama.
Interestingly the same thing is happening concurrently on the Republican side. Already the party stalwarts are lining up to decry the temerity of Huckleberry Mike to steal the thunder of the chosen. The day following his victory Rusty “Rush to Judgment” Limbaugh was on his megaphone decrying the Huckabee victory and challenging his conservative credentials. Pointing out that Mike had not drunk of Goldwater and had committed the cardinal sin of raising taxes to build roads and schools in Arkansas, Limbaugh railed on that he could not be the true heir to Ronnie. Perhaps, Giuliani, improving threefold on Ronnie’s marital record better fits the bill. Certainly Christian Conservative leader Pat Roberson and the big Texas oil money that greased the Bush political machinery think so. Clearly the party regulars had a rough go of it on both sides of the political isle, for on this cold January night the good people of Iowa spoke with one clear voice leaving the regulars singing
“She left me standin here
Just high and dry”
So now we move on to the snows of New Hampshire, The Granite State. Here Hillary must establish some legitimacy, other than gender, for she is no longer the President-in-waiting. Here John McCain must recapture the magic of a now fading past, and Mitt must win in his own back yard if he is to establish viability.
I’m up here with no warnin
High and dry
Well, I couldn’t get a word in”—The Rolling Stones
Meanwhile Mike Huckabee, lately of Arkansas and the town of Hope’s latest entry into presidential sweepstakes launched his presidential raft by sweeping the Republican side of the Iowa contest. Outspent nearly five to one by the well-oiled, if not outright greasy machine of Willard “Mitt” Romney, lately of Massachusetts, the former Baptist preacher turned politician co-opted the fundamentalist base from Fred Thompson and stormed ahead of the pack in a last-minute dash to the finish line. John McCain hoping to reclaim some of the magic that was the 2000 campaign finished a distant third.
The best quote of the night came from Democratic candidate John Edwards who said that the real winner on this night was change. With Obama and Edwards fighting to claim the legacy of Robert Kennedy and prevail over the party regulars represented by Hillary Clinton, the upcoming contest has all the earmarks of the RFK, Eugene McCarthy challenge to the party stalwarts in 1968. There have been challenges since: 1972’s contest between McGovern and Humphrey in which the insurgents won but were forsaken in the general election and the ticket went down in a smoking ruin. 1976 saw another storming of the ramparts but Carter quickly proved distasteful to the liberal wing of party. Both in 1980 and ’84 the factions again fought for the nomination with the old RFK wing represented by Teddy in ’80 and Gary Hart in 84. The party stalwarts prevailed at the conventions but lost the ensuing general election. There has not been a serious challenge to the party regulars since, with Bill Clinton---leading the Democratic Leadership Council and moving the party toward the mythical “center”—carrying the standard for the party regulars. The Democrats have won three elections over the last 11 election cycles leaving an ever growing number of faithful to look for something other than “Bush Lite” to quench the party’s thirst; someone to pick up the mantle of Robert Kennedy and speak of social justice, someone to staunch the middle class hemorrhage, and someone to restore the New Deal. In 2004 it was John Edwards, in this election cycle it is increasingly the voice of Barack Obama.
Interestingly the same thing is happening concurrently on the Republican side. Already the party stalwarts are lining up to decry the temerity of Huckleberry Mike to steal the thunder of the chosen. The day following his victory Rusty “Rush to Judgment” Limbaugh was on his megaphone decrying the Huckabee victory and challenging his conservative credentials. Pointing out that Mike had not drunk of Goldwater and had committed the cardinal sin of raising taxes to build roads and schools in Arkansas, Limbaugh railed on that he could not be the true heir to Ronnie. Perhaps, Giuliani, improving threefold on Ronnie’s marital record better fits the bill. Certainly Christian Conservative leader Pat Roberson and the big Texas oil money that greased the Bush political machinery think so. Clearly the party regulars had a rough go of it on both sides of the political isle, for on this cold January night the good people of Iowa spoke with one clear voice leaving the regulars singing
“She left me standin here
Just high and dry”
So now we move on to the snows of New Hampshire, The Granite State. Here Hillary must establish some legitimacy, other than gender, for she is no longer the President-in-waiting. Here John McCain must recapture the magic of a now fading past, and Mitt must win in his own back yard if he is to establish viability.
January 4, 2008: Time Has Come Today, Joined at the Hip, Burned Up by the Sun
“Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can’t put it off another day
I don’t care what others say
They say we don’t listen anyway
Time has come today”--- The Chambers Brothers
He was told to wait, to take his place at the back of the line, to bide his time and observe the opportunity. He said that this is his time, that in another four or eight years his time will have passed, and that his window of opportunity is now. Last night Barach Obama stunned the political world by winning the Iowa Presidential Caucus with 38% of the vote to 30% for John Edwards and 29% for Hillary Clinton.
The Iowa Caucus is a rather interesting and arcane exercise in retail politics. An almost guaranteed low turnout compared to a primary or general election, it has the one-on-one feel of New Hampshire but with some interesting wrinkles. First people don’t vote at the polls but rather gather in a large room, much as they did in places like colonial Virginia and publicly vote in an open meeting. Not only does one have to arrive at a meeting place at an appointed time and make one’s vote known but each candidate must reach a level of support equal to 15% of those attending in order to be “Viable”. Not only is this process open to independents and Republicans but if one’s candidate does not reach viability, then one can switch one’s vote to one of the front runners. Candidates leading the pack, therefore, can pick up additional support from not only independents and Republicans who join the fracas but from lower tier candidates who do not reach the threshold. By all accounts Obama garnered the largest share of all of the above.
There had been a stampede, by historical standards, to the Democrats anyway. The turnout state wide was nearly double 2004 with independents and disgruntled Republicans participating. This makes Obama’s victory even more compelling given that the Hawkeye State is 94% white for it demonstrates two salient facts: first Obama is establishing himself as a transformational political figure by reaching across that age-old racial divide. Second, he also demonstrated that if he is not the first choice among democratic faithful, he is clearly the second choice. This has important consequences.
I remember a great Mac Nelly cartoon in 1976 showing two vehicles at a red light. On the left was a Mercedes or Volvo with a professorial type smoking a pipe and a poodle sitting in the passenger seat and a tag reading LIB-76. On the rear bumper was a Mo Udall sticker over which had been plastered “Carter”. Next to this car was a pickup truck with a hound dog in the back and a gun rack in the rear window and a tag reading RED-109. On the rear bumper was a Wallace sticker over which had been plastered “Carter”. The caucus in Iowa is an early indication that Barach is capable of picking up support from those behind other candidacies and can forge the coalition needed to prevail in the general election.
One gropes for an historical precedent. Ali’s victory over Liston that “shook up the world” or, more appropriately, John Kennedy’s victory over Hubert Humphrey in heavily protestant West Virginia demonstrating that a Catholic could win Protestant support and represent all Americans.
It is early but already he is clearly dictating the terms of the debate. He has stolen the thunder of John Edwards. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, emerged on the national political stage in 2004 with a tone of conciliation and compassion. He spoke of “Two Americas” one rich and one poor, of the growing polarization of America and the need to bridge the breach. Today he has less the voice of Robert Kennedy than the tone of Lou Dobbs. As he quite rightly points to the class war that is being waged by the rich against the rest of us, his campaign has taken on an ominous and rancorous quality that appears, at least on television, almost threatening. In sum, although they speak the same language, Obama has taken the rhetorical high road.
Hillary, on the other hand, has lost the aura of inevitability that has justified her campaign. Many party regulars will be in the awkward position of having to re-evaluate their support if she does not improve her standing. Her campaign is largely based on experience and the salad days of her husband’s presidency. Many on the left in the party question that legacy given that Bill was so eager to compromise with the Republican congress even to the point of savaging the last safeguards of the old New Deal. Besides running a budget surplus and upgrading the performance of FEMA to natural disasters, one is hard pressed to point to any other major achievements. But Clinton looks like the reincarnation of FDR himself compared to the moron who presently warms the presidential seat, and so those pining for a “restoration” have claimed Hillary as their standard-bearer.
“OH
The rules have changed today (hey)
I have no place to stay (hey)
I’m thinking about the subway (hey)
My love has flown away (hey)
My tears have come and gone (hey)
Oh my lord, I have to roam (hey)
I have no home (hey)
I have no home (hey)
The problem, as Al Gore could have told her, is that the paucity of the state of our national politics has given Bill such stature that it is difficult to get out from under his shadow. A generation of American politicians could find shelter in the legacy of Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan. But Clinton, who won office by ever larger minorities, presents succeeding democratic politicians with the necessity of running as far from Bill has possible, running naked in the merciless noon sun.
For Hillary no such option exists. Joined at the hip she cannot shed herself from Bill and every time he appears on stage or joins in the fray he appears to be rescuing her. Her demonstrably inferior campaign performance has left her diminished by comparison. And then there are the reminders of the Clinton propensity to lie down with swine.
And so as the campaign season progressed here was Hillary defending lobbying as part of the “democratic process”, and garnering endorsements from party pols eager to restore the old order, raising money from the pharmaceutical and medical industry, and getting support from the likes of Rupert Murdock and Fox Noise.
We have seen such campaigns before. Republican William Howard Taft in 1952, Ed Muskie, famously inevitably the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination in 1972, had endorsements from every major Democratic politician right down to the county chairmen. Gone by the New Hampshire primary in a flood of tears outside the office of the Manchester Union Leader. Then there was Howard Dean in 2004, another coronation that didn’t happen.
Edwards is now in the position that having raised only a fraction of the money that Obama and Clinton have raised, and poised to finish behind one or both in New Hampshire he must now try to raise his profile without becoming more strident in his message and the attendant risk of being further marginalized. Hillary must now resuscitate her campaign which will require nothing less than a new justification for it given that her message of experience and ready on day one is not salient; nor does she have any longer the aura of the president-in-waiting that motivated many of the party regulars and much of her base to support her. In short her support was a continent wide but an inch deep much like the thinning ice sheet on the Arctic Ocean. And in the Hawkeye State, the ice began to crack.
It’s high noon in America and as Hillary’s support melts and cracks, Barack has risen from the ashes of Democratic Party politics to soar like a modern phoenix.
“Oh
Now the time has come (time)
There’s no place to run (time)
I might get burned up by the sun (time)
But I had my fun (time)
I’ve been loved and put aside (time)
I’ve been crushed by the tumbling tide (time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (time)
(Time)
Now the time has come
There are things to realize
Time has come today
Time has come today
Yeah”.
Young hearts can go their way
Can’t put it off another day
I don’t care what others say
They say we don’t listen anyway
Time has come today”--- The Chambers Brothers
He was told to wait, to take his place at the back of the line, to bide his time and observe the opportunity. He said that this is his time, that in another four or eight years his time will have passed, and that his window of opportunity is now. Last night Barach Obama stunned the political world by winning the Iowa Presidential Caucus with 38% of the vote to 30% for John Edwards and 29% for Hillary Clinton.
The Iowa Caucus is a rather interesting and arcane exercise in retail politics. An almost guaranteed low turnout compared to a primary or general election, it has the one-on-one feel of New Hampshire but with some interesting wrinkles. First people don’t vote at the polls but rather gather in a large room, much as they did in places like colonial Virginia and publicly vote in an open meeting. Not only does one have to arrive at a meeting place at an appointed time and make one’s vote known but each candidate must reach a level of support equal to 15% of those attending in order to be “Viable”. Not only is this process open to independents and Republicans but if one’s candidate does not reach viability, then one can switch one’s vote to one of the front runners. Candidates leading the pack, therefore, can pick up additional support from not only independents and Republicans who join the fracas but from lower tier candidates who do not reach the threshold. By all accounts Obama garnered the largest share of all of the above.
There had been a stampede, by historical standards, to the Democrats anyway. The turnout state wide was nearly double 2004 with independents and disgruntled Republicans participating. This makes Obama’s victory even more compelling given that the Hawkeye State is 94% white for it demonstrates two salient facts: first Obama is establishing himself as a transformational political figure by reaching across that age-old racial divide. Second, he also demonstrated that if he is not the first choice among democratic faithful, he is clearly the second choice. This has important consequences.
I remember a great Mac Nelly cartoon in 1976 showing two vehicles at a red light. On the left was a Mercedes or Volvo with a professorial type smoking a pipe and a poodle sitting in the passenger seat and a tag reading LIB-76. On the rear bumper was a Mo Udall sticker over which had been plastered “Carter”. Next to this car was a pickup truck with a hound dog in the back and a gun rack in the rear window and a tag reading RED-109. On the rear bumper was a Wallace sticker over which had been plastered “Carter”. The caucus in Iowa is an early indication that Barach is capable of picking up support from those behind other candidacies and can forge the coalition needed to prevail in the general election.
One gropes for an historical precedent. Ali’s victory over Liston that “shook up the world” or, more appropriately, John Kennedy’s victory over Hubert Humphrey in heavily protestant West Virginia demonstrating that a Catholic could win Protestant support and represent all Americans.
It is early but already he is clearly dictating the terms of the debate. He has stolen the thunder of John Edwards. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, emerged on the national political stage in 2004 with a tone of conciliation and compassion. He spoke of “Two Americas” one rich and one poor, of the growing polarization of America and the need to bridge the breach. Today he has less the voice of Robert Kennedy than the tone of Lou Dobbs. As he quite rightly points to the class war that is being waged by the rich against the rest of us, his campaign has taken on an ominous and rancorous quality that appears, at least on television, almost threatening. In sum, although they speak the same language, Obama has taken the rhetorical high road.
Hillary, on the other hand, has lost the aura of inevitability that has justified her campaign. Many party regulars will be in the awkward position of having to re-evaluate their support if she does not improve her standing. Her campaign is largely based on experience and the salad days of her husband’s presidency. Many on the left in the party question that legacy given that Bill was so eager to compromise with the Republican congress even to the point of savaging the last safeguards of the old New Deal. Besides running a budget surplus and upgrading the performance of FEMA to natural disasters, one is hard pressed to point to any other major achievements. But Clinton looks like the reincarnation of FDR himself compared to the moron who presently warms the presidential seat, and so those pining for a “restoration” have claimed Hillary as their standard-bearer.
“OH
The rules have changed today (hey)
I have no place to stay (hey)
I’m thinking about the subway (hey)
My love has flown away (hey)
My tears have come and gone (hey)
Oh my lord, I have to roam (hey)
I have no home (hey)
I have no home (hey)
The problem, as Al Gore could have told her, is that the paucity of the state of our national politics has given Bill such stature that it is difficult to get out from under his shadow. A generation of American politicians could find shelter in the legacy of Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan. But Clinton, who won office by ever larger minorities, presents succeeding democratic politicians with the necessity of running as far from Bill has possible, running naked in the merciless noon sun.
For Hillary no such option exists. Joined at the hip she cannot shed herself from Bill and every time he appears on stage or joins in the fray he appears to be rescuing her. Her demonstrably inferior campaign performance has left her diminished by comparison. And then there are the reminders of the Clinton propensity to lie down with swine.
And so as the campaign season progressed here was Hillary defending lobbying as part of the “democratic process”, and garnering endorsements from party pols eager to restore the old order, raising money from the pharmaceutical and medical industry, and getting support from the likes of Rupert Murdock and Fox Noise.
We have seen such campaigns before. Republican William Howard Taft in 1952, Ed Muskie, famously inevitably the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination in 1972, had endorsements from every major Democratic politician right down to the county chairmen. Gone by the New Hampshire primary in a flood of tears outside the office of the Manchester Union Leader. Then there was Howard Dean in 2004, another coronation that didn’t happen.
Edwards is now in the position that having raised only a fraction of the money that Obama and Clinton have raised, and poised to finish behind one or both in New Hampshire he must now try to raise his profile without becoming more strident in his message and the attendant risk of being further marginalized. Hillary must now resuscitate her campaign which will require nothing less than a new justification for it given that her message of experience and ready on day one is not salient; nor does she have any longer the aura of the president-in-waiting that motivated many of the party regulars and much of her base to support her. In short her support was a continent wide but an inch deep much like the thinning ice sheet on the Arctic Ocean. And in the Hawkeye State, the ice began to crack.
It’s high noon in America and as Hillary’s support melts and cracks, Barack has risen from the ashes of Democratic Party politics to soar like a modern phoenix.
“Oh
Now the time has come (time)
There’s no place to run (time)
I might get burned up by the sun (time)
But I had my fun (time)
I’ve been loved and put aside (time)
I’ve been crushed by the tumbling tide (time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (time)
(Time)
Now the time has come
There are things to realize
Time has come today
Time has come today
Yeah”.
December 29, 2007: Reach Out In the Darkness, Sympathy For The Devil, Requiem For Benazir
“I think it’s so groovy now
That people are finally getting together
I think its wonderful now
That people are finally getting together
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
And you may find a friend” --Friend and Lover
I was standing in line at a gas station when that song so rarely played stabbed my consciousness like hot steel on a cold night. It seems so long ago now as we approach yet another presidential election cycle, the 10th such season of promises, since that song was popular, since that terrible time when the universe came unhinged. There was a certain inexorable logic behind that season of tragedy. The nation was deeply divided between rich and poor, black and white, young and old, war and peace. The Tet Offensive had demonstrated the total bankruptcy of our war policies and the nation, after several long summers of rioting and rage was bracing itself for another “long hot summer”. Yet we had emerged strong and promising, pregnant with possibilities, challenging the established order, dreaming things that never were and asking “why not”?
First Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota emerged to challenge Lyndon Johnson for his party’s nomination. In February, McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson in New Hampshire. By mid-March Robert Kennedy, after re-assessing his situation was drawn into the race, and by the end of March Johnson announced his retirement. It seemed as if the heavens had parted and a new dawn had come to America. But throughout the season dark clouds loomed on the horizon like the ugly protesters that ringed the outer fringes of the Kennedy rallies.
I remember watching on television Robert Kennedy announce his candidacy for the presidency on March 16 from the old Senate chamber. Kennedy had been drawn into the battle much sooner than he had wanted, preferring to defer a presidential bid until 1972 or 1976. But the conflicts both at home and abroad had caused many of his friends and political supporters to look elsewhere and Bobby knew that his national stature demanded that he step forward. I watched with a certain foreboding as he picked up the mantle of his brother and began the campaign hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
As April Fools day dawned Johnson had fled the field and it seemed as if victory would come without firing a shot. But within days the long national nightmare began. Martin gunned down in Memphis and the rioting that followed, the entrance of Vice President Humphrey into the race to carry the standard of the party regulars, and finally, after winning all the remaining primaries save Oregon (which went to the anti-war McCarthy); Bobby too was gunned down as he reached for his party’s nomination. Within 90 days it was over, all that remained was to vent our rage at the convention. It was like a Greek tragedy beginning with the hubris of youth, and ending by cursing the fates; beginning with so much promise and ending with the ultimate booby prize: Richard Nixon.
“Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I lay traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay”--- The Rolling Stones
In this frame of mind I returned home. Going into the living room, I turned on the television and up came the financial news network. I was watching the market numbers and noticed on the crawl space a news report that former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated following a political rally. I turned to CNN and followed the initial reports that she had died following an explosion set off by a suicide bomber. Later this was revised to include shots fired at her motorcade at close range. It felt like de ja vu all over again.
The truly redeeming quality of politics is that by participating one can experience a certain mobility otherwise unattainable. Through political action one can transcend one’s station in life and meet not only interesting, though largely self-absorbed individuals, but on occasion rub shoulders with the powerful. In 1968 I was drawn into the Kennedy campaign, first working with his advance men organizing a political rally at Campau Square in downtown Grand Rapids, and then later in Indiana running a sound truck and doing door-to-door work in Michigan City and Marion. And so it was that four years later a son of a poor factory worker found himself in a Hotel room in Cambridge Massachusetts sitting on a bed talking politics with Benazir Bhutto.
She was 19 at the time, a freshman at Radcliff, daughter of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, young, intelligent and articulate. I was 23, a senior at Grand Valley State. We were drawn together as participants in the Harvard Invitational Model United Nations held at Cambridge Massachusetts. She was representing, of course, Pakistan. I was representing, not so obviously, the United States. I was deep in my senior thesis on the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 when I received a call from Dr. Junn, the head of the political science department asking if I wanted to participate in a model U.N. sponsored by Harvard. I asked which country we would be representing and he told me the United States. It seemed a set up: why with all the colleges and universities to choose from would Harvard ask a small teachers college in western Michigan to represent the United States? The answer: Vietnam. Here was a golden opportunity for the debate teams of Harvard and Yale, not to mention several others to beat up on United States foreign policy. We would be the perfect “straw man”.
We called a meeting of the several members of our delegation and I was chosen chairman, principally because I had written several papers on Vietnam and was something of the resident expert on the subject. This made me in effect the United States Ambassador to the United Nations playing the role of then UN Ambassador George H.W. Bush. I preferred to see myself as a young Adlai Stevenson but was forced to consult the record, largely one of abstaining from votes on Security Council resolutions that characterized the Nixon White House. Fortunately I knew the history of Vietnam and American involvement in it as well as all the arguments in favor of our prosecution of the war. In addition I was an outspoken early critic of the war and knew the arguments of dissent. So it happened that I became the unanimous choice to sit at the Security Council and face the debate teams of America’s most prestigious universities.
The first day was a rough go. Villanova, representing Germany stood with us, but the school representing France bolted to our adversaries and followed the Chinese by launching an all out attack on American “imperialist” foreign policy. Represented by the University of Utah, who had spent two weeks with the Chinese delegation at the UN in New York, the debate teams of Harvard and Yale representing countries like Cuba lined up with several others to oppose our intervention in Indochina. At the end of the first of the three day session our delegation met at our hotel suite to map out strategy given that many of the participants were not faithful to the policies of the governments they were purporting to represent but were instead using the forum to express personal opinions. We determined that drastic action was needed. I asked how much money we had brought with us. Dr. Junn gave me a figure and asked why. I responded that we must now do what diplomats the world over have always done—order large quantities of alcohol and play the gracious host. In a word: PARTY!
We sent someone out for the requisite liquor and let it be known that our suite, which in due course became the entire floor, would be scene for an “international” social event. It was during a bit of banter with my friend from Utah, a slightly older man who had fought with the Montignard tribesman in Vietnam and who would later, playing the Chinese role magnificently, refer to “running dog American Imperialism” that I was elbowed by a young lady who introduced herself as the representative of Pakistan and asked if I could speak with her. We went to a room and she impressed upon me the urgency of the United States introducing a Security Council resolution concerning India and, if memory serves, had something to do with Kashmir. I told her I would do the best I could and we talked for some time about Pakistan and its relations with her neighboring countries, Kashmir, and the United States.
The next day I met with her again, but unfortunately things were tight at the Security Council as I struggled to stave off a full fledged assault on the United States. Benazir stopped by and importuned me once again but I tried to explain that I had greater problems to deal with at the moment. She left disappointed. Finally, midway through the second session, the Council voted by a majority of one to strike Vietnam from the agenda. We had dodged a bullet but there were still issues in South Africa, Rhodesia, and elsewhere that consumed the time. Mostly it was theatre. I had stopped while walking through the “yard” and bought a socialist rag being hawked by a vendor which I read whilst the Chinese “Ambassador” from Utah railed on about “American Capitalist Imperialist Aggressors”. The Chairman of the Security Council, who was in real life a legal counsel to the United Nations, asked me in a terse Eaton accent if the United States had any response. I remember saying’ as I peered up from my worker’s party rag, “It is the position of the government of the United States that the ranting of the honorable ambassador from the People’s Republic is unworthy of comment and that if he is interested in serious boilerplate I have a copy of an excellent publication he might find informative”. In any case events dictated that Pakistan would not emerge as a major player as long as the Cold War lasted. I had tried to teach an important lesson in international politics: that the United States has no friends, it has only interests and that United States support could be uncertain.
But it was not Benazir’s nature to remain undeterred. Critics, and there were many in Pakistan, saw her re-emerge as a political figure too closely allied with the United States. She had promised to allow the Americans to use Pakistani territory to establish bases of operations against the growing lawlessness in the tribal provinces along the Afghan border where Bin Laden is believed to have taken refuge. But most importantly she represented, as her father before her, an attempt to transform Pakistan from tribal Feudalism into a modern secular liberal democratic state.
I sensed all those years ago that Benazir was in large measure enamored with all things American, attending an American university, adopting western dress, and with her father attempting to impose a western style republic on a tribal culture. I felt then it was risky business. Many transformational political figures have paid the last full measure for their effort. The Gracci brothers in ancient Rome, Julius Caesar for creating pax Romana, Lincoln, the Kennedy’s; and in her own part of the world Mahatma Gandhi, Neru, Indira and Rajib Gandhi, her own father. I watched with a certain foreboding as she went home to once again pick up the mantle of her father, hoping for the best but fearing the worst; and as I watched her bloody return from exile I told my wife that Benazir was going home to die. It had the inevitability of 1968 about it, as certain as the setting sun.
Go gently into that good night Benazir Bhutto; we are left now to reach out in the darkness.
That people are finally getting together
I think its wonderful now
That people are finally getting together
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
And you may find a friend” --Friend and Lover
I was standing in line at a gas station when that song so rarely played stabbed my consciousness like hot steel on a cold night. It seems so long ago now as we approach yet another presidential election cycle, the 10th such season of promises, since that song was popular, since that terrible time when the universe came unhinged. There was a certain inexorable logic behind that season of tragedy. The nation was deeply divided between rich and poor, black and white, young and old, war and peace. The Tet Offensive had demonstrated the total bankruptcy of our war policies and the nation, after several long summers of rioting and rage was bracing itself for another “long hot summer”. Yet we had emerged strong and promising, pregnant with possibilities, challenging the established order, dreaming things that never were and asking “why not”?
First Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota emerged to challenge Lyndon Johnson for his party’s nomination. In February, McCarthy nearly defeated Johnson in New Hampshire. By mid-March Robert Kennedy, after re-assessing his situation was drawn into the race, and by the end of March Johnson announced his retirement. It seemed as if the heavens had parted and a new dawn had come to America. But throughout the season dark clouds loomed on the horizon like the ugly protesters that ringed the outer fringes of the Kennedy rallies.
I remember watching on television Robert Kennedy announce his candidacy for the presidency on March 16 from the old Senate chamber. Kennedy had been drawn into the battle much sooner than he had wanted, preferring to defer a presidential bid until 1972 or 1976. But the conflicts both at home and abroad had caused many of his friends and political supporters to look elsewhere and Bobby knew that his national stature demanded that he step forward. I watched with a certain foreboding as he picked up the mantle of his brother and began the campaign hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
As April Fools day dawned Johnson had fled the field and it seemed as if victory would come without firing a shot. But within days the long national nightmare began. Martin gunned down in Memphis and the rioting that followed, the entrance of Vice President Humphrey into the race to carry the standard of the party regulars, and finally, after winning all the remaining primaries save Oregon (which went to the anti-war McCarthy); Bobby too was gunned down as he reached for his party’s nomination. Within 90 days it was over, all that remained was to vent our rage at the convention. It was like a Greek tragedy beginning with the hubris of youth, and ending by cursing the fates; beginning with so much promise and ending with the ultimate booby prize: Richard Nixon.
“Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I lay traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay”--- The Rolling Stones
In this frame of mind I returned home. Going into the living room, I turned on the television and up came the financial news network. I was watching the market numbers and noticed on the crawl space a news report that former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated following a political rally. I turned to CNN and followed the initial reports that she had died following an explosion set off by a suicide bomber. Later this was revised to include shots fired at her motorcade at close range. It felt like de ja vu all over again.
The truly redeeming quality of politics is that by participating one can experience a certain mobility otherwise unattainable. Through political action one can transcend one’s station in life and meet not only interesting, though largely self-absorbed individuals, but on occasion rub shoulders with the powerful. In 1968 I was drawn into the Kennedy campaign, first working with his advance men organizing a political rally at Campau Square in downtown Grand Rapids, and then later in Indiana running a sound truck and doing door-to-door work in Michigan City and Marion. And so it was that four years later a son of a poor factory worker found himself in a Hotel room in Cambridge Massachusetts sitting on a bed talking politics with Benazir Bhutto.
She was 19 at the time, a freshman at Radcliff, daughter of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, young, intelligent and articulate. I was 23, a senior at Grand Valley State. We were drawn together as participants in the Harvard Invitational Model United Nations held at Cambridge Massachusetts. She was representing, of course, Pakistan. I was representing, not so obviously, the United States. I was deep in my senior thesis on the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 when I received a call from Dr. Junn, the head of the political science department asking if I wanted to participate in a model U.N. sponsored by Harvard. I asked which country we would be representing and he told me the United States. It seemed a set up: why with all the colleges and universities to choose from would Harvard ask a small teachers college in western Michigan to represent the United States? The answer: Vietnam. Here was a golden opportunity for the debate teams of Harvard and Yale, not to mention several others to beat up on United States foreign policy. We would be the perfect “straw man”.
We called a meeting of the several members of our delegation and I was chosen chairman, principally because I had written several papers on Vietnam and was something of the resident expert on the subject. This made me in effect the United States Ambassador to the United Nations playing the role of then UN Ambassador George H.W. Bush. I preferred to see myself as a young Adlai Stevenson but was forced to consult the record, largely one of abstaining from votes on Security Council resolutions that characterized the Nixon White House. Fortunately I knew the history of Vietnam and American involvement in it as well as all the arguments in favor of our prosecution of the war. In addition I was an outspoken early critic of the war and knew the arguments of dissent. So it happened that I became the unanimous choice to sit at the Security Council and face the debate teams of America’s most prestigious universities.
The first day was a rough go. Villanova, representing Germany stood with us, but the school representing France bolted to our adversaries and followed the Chinese by launching an all out attack on American “imperialist” foreign policy. Represented by the University of Utah, who had spent two weeks with the Chinese delegation at the UN in New York, the debate teams of Harvard and Yale representing countries like Cuba lined up with several others to oppose our intervention in Indochina. At the end of the first of the three day session our delegation met at our hotel suite to map out strategy given that many of the participants were not faithful to the policies of the governments they were purporting to represent but were instead using the forum to express personal opinions. We determined that drastic action was needed. I asked how much money we had brought with us. Dr. Junn gave me a figure and asked why. I responded that we must now do what diplomats the world over have always done—order large quantities of alcohol and play the gracious host. In a word: PARTY!
We sent someone out for the requisite liquor and let it be known that our suite, which in due course became the entire floor, would be scene for an “international” social event. It was during a bit of banter with my friend from Utah, a slightly older man who had fought with the Montignard tribesman in Vietnam and who would later, playing the Chinese role magnificently, refer to “running dog American Imperialism” that I was elbowed by a young lady who introduced herself as the representative of Pakistan and asked if I could speak with her. We went to a room and she impressed upon me the urgency of the United States introducing a Security Council resolution concerning India and, if memory serves, had something to do with Kashmir. I told her I would do the best I could and we talked for some time about Pakistan and its relations with her neighboring countries, Kashmir, and the United States.
The next day I met with her again, but unfortunately things were tight at the Security Council as I struggled to stave off a full fledged assault on the United States. Benazir stopped by and importuned me once again but I tried to explain that I had greater problems to deal with at the moment. She left disappointed. Finally, midway through the second session, the Council voted by a majority of one to strike Vietnam from the agenda. We had dodged a bullet but there were still issues in South Africa, Rhodesia, and elsewhere that consumed the time. Mostly it was theatre. I had stopped while walking through the “yard” and bought a socialist rag being hawked by a vendor which I read whilst the Chinese “Ambassador” from Utah railed on about “American Capitalist Imperialist Aggressors”. The Chairman of the Security Council, who was in real life a legal counsel to the United Nations, asked me in a terse Eaton accent if the United States had any response. I remember saying’ as I peered up from my worker’s party rag, “It is the position of the government of the United States that the ranting of the honorable ambassador from the People’s Republic is unworthy of comment and that if he is interested in serious boilerplate I have a copy of an excellent publication he might find informative”. In any case events dictated that Pakistan would not emerge as a major player as long as the Cold War lasted. I had tried to teach an important lesson in international politics: that the United States has no friends, it has only interests and that United States support could be uncertain.
But it was not Benazir’s nature to remain undeterred. Critics, and there were many in Pakistan, saw her re-emerge as a political figure too closely allied with the United States. She had promised to allow the Americans to use Pakistani territory to establish bases of operations against the growing lawlessness in the tribal provinces along the Afghan border where Bin Laden is believed to have taken refuge. But most importantly she represented, as her father before her, an attempt to transform Pakistan from tribal Feudalism into a modern secular liberal democratic state.
I sensed all those years ago that Benazir was in large measure enamored with all things American, attending an American university, adopting western dress, and with her father attempting to impose a western style republic on a tribal culture. I felt then it was risky business. Many transformational political figures have paid the last full measure for their effort. The Gracci brothers in ancient Rome, Julius Caesar for creating pax Romana, Lincoln, the Kennedy’s; and in her own part of the world Mahatma Gandhi, Neru, Indira and Rajib Gandhi, her own father. I watched with a certain foreboding as she went home to once again pick up the mantle of her father, hoping for the best but fearing the worst; and as I watched her bloody return from exile I told my wife that Benazir was going home to die. It had the inevitability of 1968 about it, as certain as the setting sun.
Go gently into that good night Benazir Bhutto; we are left now to reach out in the darkness.
October 28, 2007: Generation of Swine, Pigaus, If 6 Were 9
“You are the crown of creation
And you got no place to go”—Jefferson Airplane
Flashbacks, like a cut from “Let it Bleed” course over the American airwaves. Old hits from the 60’s played to an aging generation 40 years past the promise of that time when America was pregnant with possibilities; when all things seemed possible.
Children of, in Tom Brokaw’s phrase,” The Greatest Generation”, we were the rightful heirs to the “American Century”. Born in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War at the height of American global dominance, the best educated, most affluent, most promising generation in human history poised to change the world. Unfortunately, we were also the most self-absorbed.
The hits of the ‘60’s are played now with diminishing regularity on the country’s airwaves. Hits by the Beatles or the Stones or Jefferson Airplane are now four decades old. What is odd about this is not that one has occasion to relive the fantasies of youth by putting one’s life on rewind, but that this has become a novel experience in this culture. In parts of the Asian steppes one can still witness a tribal elder reliving the battles with Alexander the Great as the oral history of the tribe gets passed down to the next generation. So it has been throughout human history, the tribal talisman revealing mystic myths of origin from the Song of Roland to King Arthur, to Ulysses and Penelope, to tribal myths defining a people on the American plains, long before it could be written down. Succeeding generations sat in rapt attention as the mystery and purpose of life were revealed. Not so in America. In the 1960’s one did not hear the hits of Rudy Valee, or the greatest hits of the early Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra. One discovered Billie Holiday only in the movies made of her life. In the 1960’s one did not, anywhere on the radio band, hear the hits of the 1920’s being replayed.
Query: Why is this?
Answer: Because music did not exist before the boomers discovered it.
With near absolute arrogance, the “boomers” manifest self-absorption displayed itself in the singular way we behaved as if nothing whatever existed before we arrived. And, armed with money to spend and a growing numerical presence, the generation proceeded to elbow aside virtually everything that preceded it, with consequences that have reverberated down through the last half of the twentieth century, and now threaten our own.
We acted as though we not only discovered music, sex and culture, but politics. History held no lessons and our elders had nothing to teach that we felt obliged to learn. We took to the streets and terrorized the hated “establishment”, forcing an end to a war and a president from office. We re-invented the presidential nominating system, we fooled with tax limitation amendments, term limits, invented new and novel causes for impeachments, stood constitutional law on its head by allowing the Supreme Court to appoint a president; ripped the ‘safety net’ to shreds and dismantled the last firewalls of the New Deal. Foremost we heeded the siren song of greed.
Much has been made of the altruism of the early boomers; the freedom rides, the civil rights movement, the Vista and Peace Corps volunteers. One must be careful here. The Boomers began arriving in 1946 so they would have been a mere 14 when John Kennedy issued his clarion call to “ask what you can do for your country”, and would not have reached the age of majority by mid decade. By then the Johnson Administration was confronted with an entirely different youth movement, one vehemently and sometimes violently against the war, demonstrating and rioting in the streets. But something interesting happened on the way to the forum. Nixon, ever prescient about such things saw through the alleged “altruism” knowing that the movement was not motivated by conviction but by fear. Nixon understood that here was a generation that would not “pay any price” nor “bear any burden”. Nixon saw the naked fear behind the pretense and knew that the country was presented with a generation of Americans who were so self-absorbed that they truly did believe in their own immortality. A generation whose life had mystic origins (since it had itself invented sex), no boundaries and promised to be a long magical mystery tour.
“A true nature’s child
We were born
Born to be wild
We will climb so high
Never gonna die” ----Steppenwolf
Nixon saw the brazen hypocrisy and the cheap courage of those who believe only in themselves; he also saw a cheap altruism born of fear. Behind the façade of protesting an ‘unjust’ war, of demonstrating against the slaughter of the innocent, Nixon saw the naked fear; fear of a mortality that would belie the ‘boomers’ deepest confusions. Nixon was not the first, nor would he be the last to understand that where there is fear there is opportunity. Nixon understood that if he eliminated the draft he could quell the disturbances: without the draft there would be no more moratoriums. Without the fear there would be no more principles.
I have not been understood: the antiwar movement was never so much about saving Viet Nam as it was about saving ‘Boomer’ ass. So beginning in early 1971 he first instituted the lottery which immediately peeled away those who were clearly not going to be called from the antiwar movement. Those who clearly would be called enlisted so as to get the best possible military assignment (somewhere far from the rice fields of Southeast Asia---the Texas Air National Guard will do). The result: an end to the “principled” opposition by the young to the “unjust war”. Indeed the war went on for several years after the demonstrations subsided becoming of little concern to the “boomers” so long as it was fought with aircraft safely dropping bombs from fifty thousand feet and with another people’s ground forces. So much for the boomer commitment to “end the war”. No it was people like newsman Walter Cronkite and Sen. William Fulbright talking over our heads to our elders as well as the spectacle of Tet and the crumbling of the Saigon forces and finally the shooting down during the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam of 25% of our B-52 bombers that led this nation to call an end to the debacle—long after the boomers had fled the streets into the self-absorption of the Woodstock nation.
“I almost cut my hair
Happened just the other day
Gettin kinda long.”—CSN&Y
We became the “Me” generation lampooned on “Saturday Night Live” by comedian Al Franken when he declared the 80’s the “Franken Decade”. “Because remember” he would say to uneasy laughter, “…it’s all about me….Al Franken”. In 1968 Jerry Rubin, heading up the Youth International or Yippie Party would nominate a pig duly dubbed “Pigasus” for president. “Pigasus” would, to the delight of the assembled, squeal in earnest when asked a pointed political question. Pigasus, pig as us. Got it Jerry, very poignant and excellent street theatre. But street theatre is not revolution or even the means to significant political change. It is, merely, in a word, theatre. Alas the boomers were not revolutionaries, for revolution or any significant social change requires sacrifice and commitment. To the “Boomers” revolution meant, for the most part, singing songs, wearing Mao jackets, attending wine and cheese fundraisers, engaging in street theatre and impressing the image of Che Guevara on t-shirts. Most telling of all was that Jerry Rubin had gone from the street antics at the Chicago convention and his trial as one of the Chicago seven to being a stockbroker at the time of his death in the early 90’s. Rubin justified this “transformation” by saying that “the 90’s are the 60’s turned on its head”; but had we traveled all that far or had we been mere swine all along?
And you got no place to go”—Jefferson Airplane
Flashbacks, like a cut from “Let it Bleed” course over the American airwaves. Old hits from the 60’s played to an aging generation 40 years past the promise of that time when America was pregnant with possibilities; when all things seemed possible.
Children of, in Tom Brokaw’s phrase,” The Greatest Generation”, we were the rightful heirs to the “American Century”. Born in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War at the height of American global dominance, the best educated, most affluent, most promising generation in human history poised to change the world. Unfortunately, we were also the most self-absorbed.
The hits of the ‘60’s are played now with diminishing regularity on the country’s airwaves. Hits by the Beatles or the Stones or Jefferson Airplane are now four decades old. What is odd about this is not that one has occasion to relive the fantasies of youth by putting one’s life on rewind, but that this has become a novel experience in this culture. In parts of the Asian steppes one can still witness a tribal elder reliving the battles with Alexander the Great as the oral history of the tribe gets passed down to the next generation. So it has been throughout human history, the tribal talisman revealing mystic myths of origin from the Song of Roland to King Arthur, to Ulysses and Penelope, to tribal myths defining a people on the American plains, long before it could be written down. Succeeding generations sat in rapt attention as the mystery and purpose of life were revealed. Not so in America. In the 1960’s one did not hear the hits of Rudy Valee, or the greatest hits of the early Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra. One discovered Billie Holiday only in the movies made of her life. In the 1960’s one did not, anywhere on the radio band, hear the hits of the 1920’s being replayed.
Query: Why is this?
Answer: Because music did not exist before the boomers discovered it.
With near absolute arrogance, the “boomers” manifest self-absorption displayed itself in the singular way we behaved as if nothing whatever existed before we arrived. And, armed with money to spend and a growing numerical presence, the generation proceeded to elbow aside virtually everything that preceded it, with consequences that have reverberated down through the last half of the twentieth century, and now threaten our own.
We acted as though we not only discovered music, sex and culture, but politics. History held no lessons and our elders had nothing to teach that we felt obliged to learn. We took to the streets and terrorized the hated “establishment”, forcing an end to a war and a president from office. We re-invented the presidential nominating system, we fooled with tax limitation amendments, term limits, invented new and novel causes for impeachments, stood constitutional law on its head by allowing the Supreme Court to appoint a president; ripped the ‘safety net’ to shreds and dismantled the last firewalls of the New Deal. Foremost we heeded the siren song of greed.
Much has been made of the altruism of the early boomers; the freedom rides, the civil rights movement, the Vista and Peace Corps volunteers. One must be careful here. The Boomers began arriving in 1946 so they would have been a mere 14 when John Kennedy issued his clarion call to “ask what you can do for your country”, and would not have reached the age of majority by mid decade. By then the Johnson Administration was confronted with an entirely different youth movement, one vehemently and sometimes violently against the war, demonstrating and rioting in the streets. But something interesting happened on the way to the forum. Nixon, ever prescient about such things saw through the alleged “altruism” knowing that the movement was not motivated by conviction but by fear. Nixon understood that here was a generation that would not “pay any price” nor “bear any burden”. Nixon saw the naked fear behind the pretense and knew that the country was presented with a generation of Americans who were so self-absorbed that they truly did believe in their own immortality. A generation whose life had mystic origins (since it had itself invented sex), no boundaries and promised to be a long magical mystery tour.
“A true nature’s child
We were born
Born to be wild
We will climb so high
Never gonna die” ----Steppenwolf
Nixon saw the brazen hypocrisy and the cheap courage of those who believe only in themselves; he also saw a cheap altruism born of fear. Behind the façade of protesting an ‘unjust’ war, of demonstrating against the slaughter of the innocent, Nixon saw the naked fear; fear of a mortality that would belie the ‘boomers’ deepest confusions. Nixon was not the first, nor would he be the last to understand that where there is fear there is opportunity. Nixon understood that if he eliminated the draft he could quell the disturbances: without the draft there would be no more moratoriums. Without the fear there would be no more principles.
I have not been understood: the antiwar movement was never so much about saving Viet Nam as it was about saving ‘Boomer’ ass. So beginning in early 1971 he first instituted the lottery which immediately peeled away those who were clearly not going to be called from the antiwar movement. Those who clearly would be called enlisted so as to get the best possible military assignment (somewhere far from the rice fields of Southeast Asia---the Texas Air National Guard will do). The result: an end to the “principled” opposition by the young to the “unjust war”. Indeed the war went on for several years after the demonstrations subsided becoming of little concern to the “boomers” so long as it was fought with aircraft safely dropping bombs from fifty thousand feet and with another people’s ground forces. So much for the boomer commitment to “end the war”. No it was people like newsman Walter Cronkite and Sen. William Fulbright talking over our heads to our elders as well as the spectacle of Tet and the crumbling of the Saigon forces and finally the shooting down during the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam of 25% of our B-52 bombers that led this nation to call an end to the debacle—long after the boomers had fled the streets into the self-absorption of the Woodstock nation.
“I almost cut my hair
Happened just the other day
Gettin kinda long.”—CSN&Y
We became the “Me” generation lampooned on “Saturday Night Live” by comedian Al Franken when he declared the 80’s the “Franken Decade”. “Because remember” he would say to uneasy laughter, “…it’s all about me….Al Franken”. In 1968 Jerry Rubin, heading up the Youth International or Yippie Party would nominate a pig duly dubbed “Pigasus” for president. “Pigasus” would, to the delight of the assembled, squeal in earnest when asked a pointed political question. Pigasus, pig as us. Got it Jerry, very poignant and excellent street theatre. But street theatre is not revolution or even the means to significant political change. It is, merely, in a word, theatre. Alas the boomers were not revolutionaries, for revolution or any significant social change requires sacrifice and commitment. To the “Boomers” revolution meant, for the most part, singing songs, wearing Mao jackets, attending wine and cheese fundraisers, engaging in street theatre and impressing the image of Che Guevara on t-shirts. Most telling of all was that Jerry Rubin had gone from the street antics at the Chicago convention and his trial as one of the Chicago seven to being a stockbroker at the time of his death in the early 90’s. Rubin justified this “transformation” by saying that “the 90’s are the 60’s turned on its head”; but had we traveled all that far or had we been mere swine all along?
October 22, 2007: Friedrich Nietzsche Wherever I May Find Him
To Friedrich Nietzsche Wherever I May Find Him
Those who hold that
Poverty is the hothouse of virtue
Have no idea
Of the origin of species
For he that has not understood
That life lives off other life
Has not taken the first step
Toward honesty with himself
Behold the last man
Trapped in this behavioral sink
This madhouse
Where the frightened herd
Marches in jack-booted lock-step
Terror beyond good and evil
Confusing will to power
With pious frauds
This global asylum
Where no one here
Gets out alive
Those who hold that
Poverty is the hothouse of virtue
Have no idea
Of the origin of species
For he that has not understood
That life lives off other life
Has not taken the first step
Toward honesty with himself
Behold the last man
Trapped in this behavioral sink
This madhouse
Where the frightened herd
Marches in jack-booted lock-step
Terror beyond good and evil
Confusing will to power
With pious frauds
This global asylum
Where no one here
Gets out alive
October 6, 2007: Greenspun, Let the CHIPs Fall Where They May, The Maiden With Wrought Iron Soul
Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan has been making his rounds on the talk circuit doing to his new book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, what Republicans are so good at doing to the historical record: smearing it. Backing off his statement that the war in Iraq has always been about oil, the former oracle of Wall Street offered up more of his usual bromides in the form of a clarification to the effect that he really didn’t mean anything like that at all.
Greenspan is very good at twisting the language into a form of pretzel-logic that in the end becomes so convoluted and esoteric as to be properly understood by only Greenspan himself. He has made a career of sewing confusion forcing the money managers to read his tea leaves in order to divine their immediate economic prospects. A whole industry has sprung up charged with interpreting precisely what the good Chairman meant when he was interviewed on television or appeared before a congressional committee and stocks would gyrate wildly in reaction. It is easier to interpret the Revelations of Saint John the Divine than to understand the utterances of the Chairman, for he has become the resolute master of the vague and obtuse; a veritable Nostradamus of finance.
Greenspan avoids the simple declarative sentence like a rabid dog avoids water—and for good reason. To render the obvious obvious can not only be dangerous—it can bring this financial house of cards crashing down—it can also lose one friends in high places. Besides one gets the impression, from watching his career, that perhaps he didn’t really have all that much to say and when the situation demanded it he didn’t have the courage to speak.
There are solid reasons why Alan works so assiduously to burnish his record. Few remember, and Alan does not care to remind us, his debut on the national stage. Brought to Washington by Nixon, he was appointed chief economics advisor to President Ford charged with doing something to reign in the runaway inflation that had plagued the country during the Nixon years. His response to the challenge was pure Aynn Rand. Simply give the public a platitude in the form of a lapel button with the word “WIN” printed on it, for “Whip Inflation Now”. So induced the public, acting as a rational actor in the marketplace, would respond appropriately and the hyperinflation of the decade would simply disappear. Riotous laughter broke out across the country and people asked “is this a presidential advisor or merely a court jester?” Greenspan slinked back behind the curtains and was not seen again for several years.
The public humiliation of Greenspan burned a deep scar on his psyche, for in its aftermath poor Alan saw inflation lurking behind every bush, under every bed. Later when he re-emerged as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board he made it his mission in life to wage relentless war against the inflation boogeyman, real or imagined. So every time the middle class was about to finally cash in on the Reagan prosperity of the 80’s and the Clinton boom of the 90’s there would stand Greenspan and the Federal Reserve shouting about the inflation boogeyman, raising interest rates and driving up the cost of money and unemployment. When no one else in the universe saw inflationary pressures in the late 90’s Alan, once again trembling before the boogeyman, raised interest rates nine times in the year 2000. This simultaneously created a minor recession and laid the groundwork for the return of the Bush family to the presidency; so obsessed was he with never again suffering such public humiliation. No one chose to point out to the Chairman when he appeared before congress that perhaps the greatest inflationary pressure was the Federal Reserve itself, driving up the cost of money.
Then there were the sins of omission. He spoke obliquely of the “irrational exuberance” of Wall Street leading up to the dot.com crash but did nothing to advocate reining it in. The result was a financial meltdown. Ignoring solid data that for years we have been building 25% more housing units per year than the market needs—almost all of it on speculation—he chose to sit idly by and let the market run wild leading to the present real estate bubble that the country is only now beginning to grapple with.
His new book makes much of how the good Chairman thinks that Bush has led the country astray, taxing work instead of wealth and deploring the runaway trade and fiscal deficits. But you will search the historical record in vain to find a single critical word spoken in public by the nation’s chief economic guru when Bush set about derailing the Clinton Express. No instead there was Alan before the congress in 2001 with his usual “Greenspaneeze” bobbing and weaving and giving his tacit approval as Bush ran the country from record surpluses to record deficits in record time. Such are the sins of Alan Greenspan which he seeks now to sponge clean with his new fiction, this assault on the historical record, this pious fraud.
For years Greenspan was the center of attention. He had Wall Street snorting his every fart, as if real wealth were created in divining the oracle instead of manufacturing goods on the shop room floor. He presided over the integration of America into the global economy; over the gutting of the American industrial base, the impoverishment of the middle class, the outsourcing of wages and capital; over the transformation of the U.S. economy from manufacturing to finance. To him “traumatized workers” created by a “heightened sense of job insecurity” was something to be celebrated (Alexander Cockburn, Nation Oct. 8, 2007) because it kept inflation under control. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve stand as an historical monument as to why one does not put bankers in charge of the economy, and why one does not privatize the money supply, for such men can only be relied upon to lead us now into the nineteenth century.
“Now listen to this, and I’ll tell you ‘bout the Texas
I’ll tell you about the Texas Radio
I’ll tell you about the hopeless night
Wandering the western dream
“Tell you about the maiden with wrought iron soul”—The Doors.
“Compassionate Conservatism” has once again been sacrificed to the ideological imperative. It was never anything more than another catchphrase, a campaign artifice designed to lure the soccer mom into a comfort zone before the Neo-Cons hijack her and her minivan and take her out in the woods for the inevitable rape. This time the assault comes in the form of a veto of the S-CHIP program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Passed with rare bi-partisan support during the Clinton years the ten year old program has reduced the number of uninsured kids by 1/3. But with nearly 9 million children currently without medical insurance the Democratically led congress voted to increase coverage with the House version adding nearly 5 million kids to the roles and the Senate version 4 million (see the Nation Oct. 8, 2007 pg. 7). The congress came up with a compromise satisfying even Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) but the White House decided that it covered too many kids and, more importantly, would lead down the slippery-slope to socialized medicine. This from a President who hadn’t vetoed a single spending bill until the Democrats gained control of congress!
“Some call it heavenly in its brilliance
Others, mean and rueful of the Western Dream”….The Doors
Harry Reid (D-Nev) called the veto “heartless”, Hatch was beside himself knowing that many a Republican governor will be hard-pressed to find the funds to keep these state programs afloat. Some Republicans, it appears, are beginning to understand that ideology can be a cruel and self-absorbed lover; a maiden with wrought iron soul.
For eight long years we have wandered the Western Dream, searching for the promise of the new century.
“I’ll tell you this
No eternal reward
Will forgive us now
For wasting the dawn” –The Doors.
Greenspan is very good at twisting the language into a form of pretzel-logic that in the end becomes so convoluted and esoteric as to be properly understood by only Greenspan himself. He has made a career of sewing confusion forcing the money managers to read his tea leaves in order to divine their immediate economic prospects. A whole industry has sprung up charged with interpreting precisely what the good Chairman meant when he was interviewed on television or appeared before a congressional committee and stocks would gyrate wildly in reaction. It is easier to interpret the Revelations of Saint John the Divine than to understand the utterances of the Chairman, for he has become the resolute master of the vague and obtuse; a veritable Nostradamus of finance.
Greenspan avoids the simple declarative sentence like a rabid dog avoids water—and for good reason. To render the obvious obvious can not only be dangerous—it can bring this financial house of cards crashing down—it can also lose one friends in high places. Besides one gets the impression, from watching his career, that perhaps he didn’t really have all that much to say and when the situation demanded it he didn’t have the courage to speak.
There are solid reasons why Alan works so assiduously to burnish his record. Few remember, and Alan does not care to remind us, his debut on the national stage. Brought to Washington by Nixon, he was appointed chief economics advisor to President Ford charged with doing something to reign in the runaway inflation that had plagued the country during the Nixon years. His response to the challenge was pure Aynn Rand. Simply give the public a platitude in the form of a lapel button with the word “WIN” printed on it, for “Whip Inflation Now”. So induced the public, acting as a rational actor in the marketplace, would respond appropriately and the hyperinflation of the decade would simply disappear. Riotous laughter broke out across the country and people asked “is this a presidential advisor or merely a court jester?” Greenspan slinked back behind the curtains and was not seen again for several years.
The public humiliation of Greenspan burned a deep scar on his psyche, for in its aftermath poor Alan saw inflation lurking behind every bush, under every bed. Later when he re-emerged as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board he made it his mission in life to wage relentless war against the inflation boogeyman, real or imagined. So every time the middle class was about to finally cash in on the Reagan prosperity of the 80’s and the Clinton boom of the 90’s there would stand Greenspan and the Federal Reserve shouting about the inflation boogeyman, raising interest rates and driving up the cost of money and unemployment. When no one else in the universe saw inflationary pressures in the late 90’s Alan, once again trembling before the boogeyman, raised interest rates nine times in the year 2000. This simultaneously created a minor recession and laid the groundwork for the return of the Bush family to the presidency; so obsessed was he with never again suffering such public humiliation. No one chose to point out to the Chairman when he appeared before congress that perhaps the greatest inflationary pressure was the Federal Reserve itself, driving up the cost of money.
Then there were the sins of omission. He spoke obliquely of the “irrational exuberance” of Wall Street leading up to the dot.com crash but did nothing to advocate reining it in. The result was a financial meltdown. Ignoring solid data that for years we have been building 25% more housing units per year than the market needs—almost all of it on speculation—he chose to sit idly by and let the market run wild leading to the present real estate bubble that the country is only now beginning to grapple with.
His new book makes much of how the good Chairman thinks that Bush has led the country astray, taxing work instead of wealth and deploring the runaway trade and fiscal deficits. But you will search the historical record in vain to find a single critical word spoken in public by the nation’s chief economic guru when Bush set about derailing the Clinton Express. No instead there was Alan before the congress in 2001 with his usual “Greenspaneeze” bobbing and weaving and giving his tacit approval as Bush ran the country from record surpluses to record deficits in record time. Such are the sins of Alan Greenspan which he seeks now to sponge clean with his new fiction, this assault on the historical record, this pious fraud.
For years Greenspan was the center of attention. He had Wall Street snorting his every fart, as if real wealth were created in divining the oracle instead of manufacturing goods on the shop room floor. He presided over the integration of America into the global economy; over the gutting of the American industrial base, the impoverishment of the middle class, the outsourcing of wages and capital; over the transformation of the U.S. economy from manufacturing to finance. To him “traumatized workers” created by a “heightened sense of job insecurity” was something to be celebrated (Alexander Cockburn, Nation Oct. 8, 2007) because it kept inflation under control. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve stand as an historical monument as to why one does not put bankers in charge of the economy, and why one does not privatize the money supply, for such men can only be relied upon to lead us now into the nineteenth century.
“Now listen to this, and I’ll tell you ‘bout the Texas
I’ll tell you about the Texas Radio
I’ll tell you about the hopeless night
Wandering the western dream
“Tell you about the maiden with wrought iron soul”—The Doors.
“Compassionate Conservatism” has once again been sacrificed to the ideological imperative. It was never anything more than another catchphrase, a campaign artifice designed to lure the soccer mom into a comfort zone before the Neo-Cons hijack her and her minivan and take her out in the woods for the inevitable rape. This time the assault comes in the form of a veto of the S-CHIP program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Passed with rare bi-partisan support during the Clinton years the ten year old program has reduced the number of uninsured kids by 1/3. But with nearly 9 million children currently without medical insurance the Democratically led congress voted to increase coverage with the House version adding nearly 5 million kids to the roles and the Senate version 4 million (see the Nation Oct. 8, 2007 pg. 7). The congress came up with a compromise satisfying even Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) but the White House decided that it covered too many kids and, more importantly, would lead down the slippery-slope to socialized medicine. This from a President who hadn’t vetoed a single spending bill until the Democrats gained control of congress!
“Some call it heavenly in its brilliance
Others, mean and rueful of the Western Dream”….The Doors
Harry Reid (D-Nev) called the veto “heartless”, Hatch was beside himself knowing that many a Republican governor will be hard-pressed to find the funds to keep these state programs afloat. Some Republicans, it appears, are beginning to understand that ideology can be a cruel and self-absorbed lover; a maiden with wrought iron soul.
For eight long years we have wandered the Western Dream, searching for the promise of the new century.
“I’ll tell you this
No eternal reward
Will forgive us now
For wasting the dawn” –The Doors.
September 30, 2007: I Stink Therefore I Am, Polythene Ann, False Pearls Before Real Swine
“I Think Therefore I Am”—Renee Des Cartes, eighteenth century French philosopher and mathematician.
“I Stink Therefore I Am”---George W. Bush, early twenty-first century American president and hopeless idiot.
“You should see polythene Ann
She’s so good-looking that she looks like a man
You should see her in drag
Dressed in that polythene bag
Yes, you should see polythene Ann”—The Beatles (sort of)
Ann Coulter is a banshee from Hell, a venomous vixen with a penchant for turning even the most heated boilerplate into a veritable witches’ brew of ignorance, invective and intolerance. Perhaps the Cons think that the leggy blonde puts an attractive face on their putrid agenda, but no matter how offensive she continues to make the circuit of television talk shows spewing her venom in every direction like a paranoid cobra on bad acid. She loves to rabbit on about how the ‘godless’ liberals ‘hate’ America, and how the widows of those who died in the twin towers on 911 are playing for sympathy to further a political agenda. Lately her diatribes have taken sexual overtones as in calling Bill Clinton a closet homosexual and John Edwards a faggot. Clearly there is only one position with this conservative missionary.
One must approach Ann with gloves on for she bites and bites easily. One must approach her much the same as the male Praying Mantis approaches the female in their ritual mating dance. He knows that she will quite literally bite his head clean off after he has copulated with her, so he distracts her. He brings her trinkets, small pieces of tin foil will do, something with little value that glitters and will hold her attention. Once distracted, he moves quickly behind her, mounts her, finishes and then gets free and makes good his escape before she turns on him and literally eats him alive. So one imagines it is with Ann. Present her with a few long dead economic ideas, something pungent enough to attract her attention, mesmerize her with images of sweat shops, and one can have one’s way with her, if only for a few brief moments. One of the consequences of such liaisons is that it requires a certain level of promiscuity. One imagines that more than a few good men have lost their heads over Ann. She has, then, become quite a depository of arcane conservative and Neo-con ideas, useless trinkets which, for some perverse reason, she feels compelled to foist upon the unwashed. A feminine Johnny Appleseed walking the landscape sewing kudzu wherever she goes; casting false pearls before real swine.
“I Stink Therefore I Am”---George W. Bush, early twenty-first century American president and hopeless idiot.
“You should see polythene Ann
She’s so good-looking that she looks like a man
You should see her in drag
Dressed in that polythene bag
Yes, you should see polythene Ann”—The Beatles (sort of)
Ann Coulter is a banshee from Hell, a venomous vixen with a penchant for turning even the most heated boilerplate into a veritable witches’ brew of ignorance, invective and intolerance. Perhaps the Cons think that the leggy blonde puts an attractive face on their putrid agenda, but no matter how offensive she continues to make the circuit of television talk shows spewing her venom in every direction like a paranoid cobra on bad acid. She loves to rabbit on about how the ‘godless’ liberals ‘hate’ America, and how the widows of those who died in the twin towers on 911 are playing for sympathy to further a political agenda. Lately her diatribes have taken sexual overtones as in calling Bill Clinton a closet homosexual and John Edwards a faggot. Clearly there is only one position with this conservative missionary.
One must approach Ann with gloves on for she bites and bites easily. One must approach her much the same as the male Praying Mantis approaches the female in their ritual mating dance. He knows that she will quite literally bite his head clean off after he has copulated with her, so he distracts her. He brings her trinkets, small pieces of tin foil will do, something with little value that glitters and will hold her attention. Once distracted, he moves quickly behind her, mounts her, finishes and then gets free and makes good his escape before she turns on him and literally eats him alive. So one imagines it is with Ann. Present her with a few long dead economic ideas, something pungent enough to attract her attention, mesmerize her with images of sweat shops, and one can have one’s way with her, if only for a few brief moments. One of the consequences of such liaisons is that it requires a certain level of promiscuity. One imagines that more than a few good men have lost their heads over Ann. She has, then, become quite a depository of arcane conservative and Neo-con ideas, useless trinkets which, for some perverse reason, she feels compelled to foist upon the unwashed. A feminine Johnny Appleseed walking the landscape sewing kudzu wherever she goes; casting false pearls before real swine.
September 29, 2007: Republicans in Drag, The NRA in Bahgdad, You Don't Count the Dead
The presidential dog and pony show continues unabated. The Rescumlicans, short on issues and with a woeful track record, are beginning to gin up the slime machine depicting democrats as “feminine”. Never mind that the real romantics are the neo-cons who swoon over anything in a uniform and know in their heart of hearts that no one gets a date like a man in uniform, especially a man in uniform brandishing a swagger stick.
The Cons have known the sting of the wimp factor suffering severely when George H.W. Bush was running for re-election on a nearly equally dismal record. Called a ‘wimp’ for his feminine gestures, especially the hand and arm movements, Pappy quailed before Clinton and lost the election. A revealing interchange took place during the Republican National Convention. The convention, besot with rancor, invective and abuse had Pat Buchanan leading the charge against Hillary who had committed the cardinal sin of having a mind of her own. The next morning a reporter stopped Clinton on his way out of his hotel and asked him what he thought of the Republican savaging of Hillary. “If George wants to be first lady”, Clinton replied, “that’s o.k. with me, but he can’t live in the White House”. The attacks stopped, and Clinton cruised to victory.
It is always difficult to tell what the Neo-Cons are learning from any given historical experience. One can only be sure that they do not draw the same lessons as the rest of us. While the country drew from the experience of 1992 that America needed a change, that under the influence of Ross Perot the country awakened to the need to clean up its fiscal house, the Cons learned something else.
No it could not be that the country had grown weary of financing huge breaks for the rich at the cost of savaging the social safety net. No it could not be that the country recoiled at the sight of endless deficits. No it could not be that the country was sick of wading neck deep in a political cesspool designed to get Pappy re-elected; sick of being bombarded by pseudo-issues and political palaver. No it had to be the ‘wimp factor’ that cast Pappy from the tents of power.
The lesson was drawn that one of the keys to victory are hot buttons over sexuality. They tried to unhorse Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky nonsense but this only confirmed Bill’s macho status with the electorate. Clearly, in their twisted minds, something more perverse is needed to sway the electorate so as to get America to vote against its own interests and return the Cons to power. Enter the Rescumlican attempts to feminize the Democratic standard-bearer, in the historical context to do to the Democratic nominees what Pappy had so happily done to himself.
Eric Alterman in his essay “The Presidential Pageant” (The Nation Oct.1, 2007) points to the fixation with the pundits and the press over John Edwards’ haircuts, with his hair getting more media attention than his health care proposals. Ann Coulter, who has called Bill Clinton a “closet homosexual’ and Edwards a “faggot” leads a band of assailants like Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough who, when referring to Edwards, “use the term ‘Breck Girl’.” Dowd is seemingly fixated with feminizing any man seeking the Democratic nomination complaining in 1999 that Gore “was ‘so feminized…he’s practically lactating.”’ Apparently Ms. Dowd reviles her own sex so much that she can think of no greater denigration of someone she disagrees with than to say that he is one of her own…
Recently Ms. Dowd has been directing her ire against Barach Obama accusing him “of preening like a ’46-year-old virgin’, demonstrating ‘loose’ body language and being ‘hung up on being seen as thoughtful,’ while secretly fearing ‘being seen as a dumb blonde’”. One would think that a party that makes so much of teaching abstinence, of lauding young girls for taking the virginity pledge, that makes so much of motherhood would not so disparage their political opponents—that is not unless they secretly revile women.
There was a splendid little picture in Time magazine published this spring in a long piece about Rudy Guilliani. Among the many photos of the Mayor posing at Times Square, on the campaign trail, as U.S. Attorney, was a lovely little photograph of Rudy in black hose and a dress, all dolled up for the New York Follies. Of course this little photo got no more play in the media and the Democrats, always prone to campaign on issues, will no doubt not give it any greater circulation. But you can rest assured that the Guilliani campaign, if he gets the nomination, will happily go down the mud slide to the neo-con cesspool and sling its contents at the Democratic nominee. If it is Edwards or Obama, Rudy will happily let the scum disparage the ‘manhood’ of these champions of reason and the middle class; if it is Hillary he will stand idly by whilst his minions spread rumors of her being lesbian. Meanwhile he’ll keep his splendid little outfit tucked away at some secret secure location—you know the same place they kept Congressman Mark Folley and Senator Larry Craig all those years.
Beware of Rescumlicans in drag.
The hunting season is nearly once again upon us. A comedian, whose identity escapes me, once said that hunting is the only sport where your opponent doesn’t know he’s playing. Funny yes but it’s always more serious than that. Now we have the fearless warrior dressed in full camouflage stalking with high-powered weapons the harmless herbivores during the mating season. For these brief weeks the hunter stops to feed the herd—bait so that he can have a stationary target while he fixes Bambi’s father in the crosshairs as the trophy stops for a momentary bite to eat while he looks for a piece of ass. To insure that he will bag his prey, the hunter plants doe scent about the bait trap. I know this because for years I worked at a retail store that always stocked a hefty supply of deer piss during hunting season. Deer piss containing the doe scent. One knows that one’s career is in the tank when one has to confess to one’s children that one sells deer piss for a living…Anyway setting out in full regalia, high powered weapons, and a respectable supply of piss, as on some deranged ‘search and destroy’ mission against North Vietnamese regulars, the mighty hunter makes his annual foray into the dense woods.
It has become a most uneven contest. The unarmed adversary, minding his own business, responding to deep biological needs finds itself in the crosshairs when he least expects it. It is not enough that the brave hunter is in full camouflage, armed to the teeth with high powered automatic weapons, hunting a beast that has no weapons—not even a decent set of claws—and cannot see well detecting mostly movement. It’s this baiting business, this preying upon the hunger for food and sex. If the roles were revered—imagine it! Man, minding his own business, looking for some poontang stumbles upon a hamburger stand. Then suddenly, out in the clearing the deer tosses out a huge tuna! Man cannot resist he must follow the scent…then bam! Perhaps I’ve become too jaded by the Rescumlican slime machine; perhaps it isn’t about gluttony or sex after all. Perhaps it was simple curiosity that led man into the crosshairs of the beast. After all, knowledge is Original Sin.
This is the pageant that transpires annually throughout America, the kind of ritual that gives Charlton Heston a woody and makes the NRA proud. I understand hunting; in not so recent times it was an important part of husbandry, part of the struggle to literally put meat on the table. But like nearly everything else in this society things have run seriously amok, become seriously dysfunctional, perhaps pathological.
What happens when the weekend warrior used to hunting his prey by such methods is suddenly uprooted and transported halfway around the world? Writing for the Associated Press, Pauline Jelinek and Robert Burns reported this week that U.S. snipers are accused of ‘baiting’ Iraqis. It appears that “army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to ‘bait’ targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords,” then kill whoever picks up the items. An attorney for two accused Ranger snipers indicated that “the Army has a classified program that encourages snipers to ‘bait’ potential targets and then kill whoever takes the bait. A sergeant and two others are accused of using ‘drop weapons’ to make killings appear justified. The Army on Monday declined to confirm such a program exists”…the classic nondenial denial.
The unsuspecting Iraqi, seeing a detonation cord or something else that gets his attention, lets his curiosity get the best of him. He walks over, picks it up, and bam!, another trophy in the World War on Terror.
“And you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side”--Dylan
The Cons have known the sting of the wimp factor suffering severely when George H.W. Bush was running for re-election on a nearly equally dismal record. Called a ‘wimp’ for his feminine gestures, especially the hand and arm movements, Pappy quailed before Clinton and lost the election. A revealing interchange took place during the Republican National Convention. The convention, besot with rancor, invective and abuse had Pat Buchanan leading the charge against Hillary who had committed the cardinal sin of having a mind of her own. The next morning a reporter stopped Clinton on his way out of his hotel and asked him what he thought of the Republican savaging of Hillary. “If George wants to be first lady”, Clinton replied, “that’s o.k. with me, but he can’t live in the White House”. The attacks stopped, and Clinton cruised to victory.
It is always difficult to tell what the Neo-Cons are learning from any given historical experience. One can only be sure that they do not draw the same lessons as the rest of us. While the country drew from the experience of 1992 that America needed a change, that under the influence of Ross Perot the country awakened to the need to clean up its fiscal house, the Cons learned something else.
No it could not be that the country had grown weary of financing huge breaks for the rich at the cost of savaging the social safety net. No it could not be that the country recoiled at the sight of endless deficits. No it could not be that the country was sick of wading neck deep in a political cesspool designed to get Pappy re-elected; sick of being bombarded by pseudo-issues and political palaver. No it had to be the ‘wimp factor’ that cast Pappy from the tents of power.
The lesson was drawn that one of the keys to victory are hot buttons over sexuality. They tried to unhorse Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky nonsense but this only confirmed Bill’s macho status with the electorate. Clearly, in their twisted minds, something more perverse is needed to sway the electorate so as to get America to vote against its own interests and return the Cons to power. Enter the Rescumlican attempts to feminize the Democratic standard-bearer, in the historical context to do to the Democratic nominees what Pappy had so happily done to himself.
Eric Alterman in his essay “The Presidential Pageant” (The Nation Oct.1, 2007) points to the fixation with the pundits and the press over John Edwards’ haircuts, with his hair getting more media attention than his health care proposals. Ann Coulter, who has called Bill Clinton a “closet homosexual’ and Edwards a “faggot” leads a band of assailants like Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough who, when referring to Edwards, “use the term ‘Breck Girl’.” Dowd is seemingly fixated with feminizing any man seeking the Democratic nomination complaining in 1999 that Gore “was ‘so feminized…he’s practically lactating.”’ Apparently Ms. Dowd reviles her own sex so much that she can think of no greater denigration of someone she disagrees with than to say that he is one of her own…
Recently Ms. Dowd has been directing her ire against Barach Obama accusing him “of preening like a ’46-year-old virgin’, demonstrating ‘loose’ body language and being ‘hung up on being seen as thoughtful,’ while secretly fearing ‘being seen as a dumb blonde’”. One would think that a party that makes so much of teaching abstinence, of lauding young girls for taking the virginity pledge, that makes so much of motherhood would not so disparage their political opponents—that is not unless they secretly revile women.
There was a splendid little picture in Time magazine published this spring in a long piece about Rudy Guilliani. Among the many photos of the Mayor posing at Times Square, on the campaign trail, as U.S. Attorney, was a lovely little photograph of Rudy in black hose and a dress, all dolled up for the New York Follies. Of course this little photo got no more play in the media and the Democrats, always prone to campaign on issues, will no doubt not give it any greater circulation. But you can rest assured that the Guilliani campaign, if he gets the nomination, will happily go down the mud slide to the neo-con cesspool and sling its contents at the Democratic nominee. If it is Edwards or Obama, Rudy will happily let the scum disparage the ‘manhood’ of these champions of reason and the middle class; if it is Hillary he will stand idly by whilst his minions spread rumors of her being lesbian. Meanwhile he’ll keep his splendid little outfit tucked away at some secret secure location—you know the same place they kept Congressman Mark Folley and Senator Larry Craig all those years.
Beware of Rescumlicans in drag.
The hunting season is nearly once again upon us. A comedian, whose identity escapes me, once said that hunting is the only sport where your opponent doesn’t know he’s playing. Funny yes but it’s always more serious than that. Now we have the fearless warrior dressed in full camouflage stalking with high-powered weapons the harmless herbivores during the mating season. For these brief weeks the hunter stops to feed the herd—bait so that he can have a stationary target while he fixes Bambi’s father in the crosshairs as the trophy stops for a momentary bite to eat while he looks for a piece of ass. To insure that he will bag his prey, the hunter plants doe scent about the bait trap. I know this because for years I worked at a retail store that always stocked a hefty supply of deer piss during hunting season. Deer piss containing the doe scent. One knows that one’s career is in the tank when one has to confess to one’s children that one sells deer piss for a living…Anyway setting out in full regalia, high powered weapons, and a respectable supply of piss, as on some deranged ‘search and destroy’ mission against North Vietnamese regulars, the mighty hunter makes his annual foray into the dense woods.
It has become a most uneven contest. The unarmed adversary, minding his own business, responding to deep biological needs finds itself in the crosshairs when he least expects it. It is not enough that the brave hunter is in full camouflage, armed to the teeth with high powered automatic weapons, hunting a beast that has no weapons—not even a decent set of claws—and cannot see well detecting mostly movement. It’s this baiting business, this preying upon the hunger for food and sex. If the roles were revered—imagine it! Man, minding his own business, looking for some poontang stumbles upon a hamburger stand. Then suddenly, out in the clearing the deer tosses out a huge tuna! Man cannot resist he must follow the scent…then bam! Perhaps I’ve become too jaded by the Rescumlican slime machine; perhaps it isn’t about gluttony or sex after all. Perhaps it was simple curiosity that led man into the crosshairs of the beast. After all, knowledge is Original Sin.
This is the pageant that transpires annually throughout America, the kind of ritual that gives Charlton Heston a woody and makes the NRA proud. I understand hunting; in not so recent times it was an important part of husbandry, part of the struggle to literally put meat on the table. But like nearly everything else in this society things have run seriously amok, become seriously dysfunctional, perhaps pathological.
What happens when the weekend warrior used to hunting his prey by such methods is suddenly uprooted and transported halfway around the world? Writing for the Associated Press, Pauline Jelinek and Robert Burns reported this week that U.S. snipers are accused of ‘baiting’ Iraqis. It appears that “army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to ‘bait’ targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords,” then kill whoever picks up the items. An attorney for two accused Ranger snipers indicated that “the Army has a classified program that encourages snipers to ‘bait’ potential targets and then kill whoever takes the bait. A sergeant and two others are accused of using ‘drop weapons’ to make killings appear justified. The Army on Monday declined to confirm such a program exists”…the classic nondenial denial.
The unsuspecting Iraqi, seeing a detonation cord or something else that gets his attention, lets his curiosity get the best of him. He walks over, picks it up, and bam!, another trophy in the World War on Terror.
“And you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side”--Dylan
September 26, 2007: Intellectual Laziness, The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Yesterday it was reported that ‘Ol Two-Cows’ criticized Barach Obama claiming he was “intellectually lazy”. This is like a withered toothless whore, so shopworn that she can now only offer ‘gum jobs,’ calling her neighbor’s daughter a slut because she got a date to the prom.
This from a president who didn’t ask a single question while being briefed about the federal response to catastrophe at New Orleans. At least Barach does not mangle the language, speaks in complete sentences, and does not emit broad daylight from between his ears.
To understand what has befallen our great republic on must consult the former aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powel who said that the government had been taken over by an ideologically-driven cabal of neo-cons and militarists.
Bush did not set out seeking the presidency. No the presidential bee was put in his bonnet by Condolessa Rice, Paul Wolfowicz and a few others who saw in the intellectually challenged but politically well placed Dubya an avenue to power. Getting him elected governor of Texas they set about putting him on the national stage as the heir apparent to the throne overlooking his much more articulate and intelligent younger brother. In Dubya they saw the perfect tool, a former cheerleader who could rally the crowd no matter what transpired on the field.
And so they broke into the palace, stole the emperor’s robes and scepter, and made off into the night bringing their loot to the Sorcerer himself: Dick Cheney.
Cheney and Rumsfeld had been here before. They were the ‘power-behind-the-throne’ that had hijacked the Ford Presidency and by degrees cost him so much support that he lost the next election to Jimmy Carter.
The official version is that Poor Jerry never recovered from his pardon of Nixon. Perhaps, but this may be another one of those neo-con illusions. One is left to speculate that if Cheney had not pressured Ford to dump Nelson Rockefeller, if he had not pressed for Jerry to kiss off New York City when it was in financial crisis, perhaps he would have carried New York and the election. But embracing the ‘eastern establishment’ in the form of the very symbol of the eastern establishment—the Rockefellers—is anathema to the conservative base of the party, at least since the days of Barry Goldwater. So the old eastern establishment was cast aside as the new right exercised its political muscle. And at the vanguard of the new right were a young Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Cheney was schooled in the exercise of power behind the throne. A true sorcerer who understood how to use the levers of power. Dick was well pleased, for if he could not be the president in fact he could be the president indeed.
And so George and his band of thieves brought the trappings of power back to the conservative opium den for Dick to behold and fondle. A brief celebration ensued and Cheney retired to an undisclosed secure location.
Unfortunately old habits prevailed and some hard liquor and more than a few narcotics were consumed causing Dubya to slip into a deep sleep. He put on the emperor’s robe, grabbed the scepter and began his orchestrations—the lotus-dream of the village idiot become the long national nightmare.
This from a president who didn’t ask a single question while being briefed about the federal response to catastrophe at New Orleans. At least Barach does not mangle the language, speaks in complete sentences, and does not emit broad daylight from between his ears.
To understand what has befallen our great republic on must consult the former aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powel who said that the government had been taken over by an ideologically-driven cabal of neo-cons and militarists.
Bush did not set out seeking the presidency. No the presidential bee was put in his bonnet by Condolessa Rice, Paul Wolfowicz and a few others who saw in the intellectually challenged but politically well placed Dubya an avenue to power. Getting him elected governor of Texas they set about putting him on the national stage as the heir apparent to the throne overlooking his much more articulate and intelligent younger brother. In Dubya they saw the perfect tool, a former cheerleader who could rally the crowd no matter what transpired on the field.
And so they broke into the palace, stole the emperor’s robes and scepter, and made off into the night bringing their loot to the Sorcerer himself: Dick Cheney.
Cheney and Rumsfeld had been here before. They were the ‘power-behind-the-throne’ that had hijacked the Ford Presidency and by degrees cost him so much support that he lost the next election to Jimmy Carter.
The official version is that Poor Jerry never recovered from his pardon of Nixon. Perhaps, but this may be another one of those neo-con illusions. One is left to speculate that if Cheney had not pressured Ford to dump Nelson Rockefeller, if he had not pressed for Jerry to kiss off New York City when it was in financial crisis, perhaps he would have carried New York and the election. But embracing the ‘eastern establishment’ in the form of the very symbol of the eastern establishment—the Rockefellers—is anathema to the conservative base of the party, at least since the days of Barry Goldwater. So the old eastern establishment was cast aside as the new right exercised its political muscle. And at the vanguard of the new right were a young Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Cheney was schooled in the exercise of power behind the throne. A true sorcerer who understood how to use the levers of power. Dick was well pleased, for if he could not be the president in fact he could be the president indeed.
And so George and his band of thieves brought the trappings of power back to the conservative opium den for Dick to behold and fondle. A brief celebration ensued and Cheney retired to an undisclosed secure location.
Unfortunately old habits prevailed and some hard liquor and more than a few narcotics were consumed causing Dubya to slip into a deep sleep. He put on the emperor’s robe, grabbed the scepter and began his orchestrations—the lotus-dream of the village idiot become the long national nightmare.
September 25, 2007: Bait and Switch, Pachyderms In The China Shop, Social Insecurity, The Way of The Pterodactyl
Every day brings new outrages. It is easier, it seems, for Joe Citizen to step in elephant dung than it is for a Republican Senator to give head in an airport men’s room.
Back in the good ‘ol days the Democrats ran a television ad depicting an elephant loose in a china shop, ending with the beast wrapping it’s trunk around a plate labeled “Social Security” and about to smash it. Of course the Resumlicans cried “foul” comparing the piece to the famous ad produced by the Johnson Campaign in ’64 about Barry Goldwater and nuclear weapons. Neither ad, unfortunately, had much play for the squeamish jackasses, always prone to crawl out of the mud and take the high road, quickly reverted back to “issues” campaigning.
Of course the Democrats were too kind. Gone are the days when they can simply laugh the pachyderms off the stage as John Kennedy so successfully did in 1960. Kennedy famously said: “Have you ever seen elephants at the circus. There they are with their heads full of ivory, eyes firmly fixed on the posterior of the one before them, walking around in endless circles”….Unfortunately the times, as the saying went, were “a-changing”.
It is far more serious than that now. An index of just how serious it is can be seen in the plight of the poor pachyderm itself. When Thomas Mast made the elephant the symbol of the Republican Party he could not have known the peril in which he put the beast; for making the pachyderm the symbol of greed, avarice, gluttony and incompetence has taken its toll. In fact it has rendered the once majestic beast so onerous, so hated around the world, that it has been hunted to near extinction. Soon we will be about the business of casting about for a new mascot for the Republican Party. The rat comes immediately to mind but the new mascot must be appropriately indifferent and cold-blooded. No compassionate conservatives here! For this reason, a reptile or an insect will have to do, perhaps the snake, lizard or roach.
But I digress. Today the Pachyderms came bearing gifts by once again raising the cry over Social Security and pretending to beat the drums to “save’ it. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was the point man this time warning of an impending 13.6 trillion dollar shortfall in “ coming years” if we don’t do something to fix the broken system. This is up from 11.3 trillion dollars when Bush last sounded the alarm just two short years ago.
The problem, as Al Franken has revealed, is that this is a gross overstatement meant to create a “crisis”. Why do we need a crisis? So the Neo-cons can once again override sound public policy and institutional memory and impose the ideological imperative. Let’s start from the beginning with a nod of thanks to Mr. Franken.
First the fact that real money, instead of treasury notes, are not in the vault at the Social Security Administration is that for years (mostly under Republican administrations) the government has been raiding the trust fund to artificially lower the deficit and make it look like we were making great strides to balance the budget; rendered seriously out of whack by the huge tax cuts to the rich. So if there are no greenbacks in the box it is because George broke into the Social Security lockbox within months of usurping the throne and breaking a major campaign promise in the bargain. So he has no one to blame but himself for the alleged shortfall.
Second as Franken so clearly points out, in order to get to this astronomical number of 13.6 trillion ‘Ol Two-Cows’ Social Security Administration changed the parameters (numerical expressions in the form of mathematical formulae describing a universe as opposed to perimeters meaning boundaries). In this case average life expectancy was increased to age 150 over an indefinite period. This means that the Bush Administration demanded the new projections to require that Social Security would, in the out years, fund an average retirement of 83 years extrapolated into infinity. So to read this properly one has to translate ‘Bush speak’ “13.6 Trillion shortfall in the coming years” to its real meaning: 13.6 Trillion shortfall over eternity. As Franken pointed out a 13.6 Trillion dollar shortfall over 13.6 Trillion years is one dollar a year. It should be clear that this projection is no more legitimate than assuming an average lifespan of 150 and retirement of 83 years. Garbage in, garbage out as the old saying goes.
Third, as Franken again demonstrates, Bush’s remedy—private accounts—moves up the crises date from roughly 2042 when the system allegedly begins its death throes. Franken made some calls to actuaries and statisticians and their conclusion was that because Dubya begins taking monies immediately out of the system and directing it to his stock-jobbing buddies on Wall Street that the crisis he describes begins within a year of it’s adoption by the congress. So Dubya moves the crisis up a few decades rather than solve it. Why? So the congress can act when the country is beshit in conservatism; before the boomers retire and become once again the wards of the state—and much more liberal by definition.
Katrina had taken Social Security Reform off the front burner forcing Bush to drop the centerpiece of his second term. Now it is back. Perhaps because the Neo-Cons, heeding the voice of Newt Gingrich, sense that their moment in the sun is about to be eclipsed and that they must now make hay while the sun still shines. There is deep foreboding in the herd. ‘Ol Two-Cows’ has become the modern political equivalent of that meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Our cosmic ‘pet rock’ hurtling toward us, threatening a cataclysm so earth-shattering as to obliterate the sun, re-arranging life on earth. A systemic convulsion of 1932, if not biblical proportions, now threatens the Neo-Con paradise. Perhaps the pachyderm and the politics the beast symbolizes will go together the way of the pterodactyl. If so, it will be of small loss. One hates to say goodbye to the majestic beast, but if it saves Social Security and leads to a New Deal so be it.
Back in the good ‘ol days the Democrats ran a television ad depicting an elephant loose in a china shop, ending with the beast wrapping it’s trunk around a plate labeled “Social Security” and about to smash it. Of course the Resumlicans cried “foul” comparing the piece to the famous ad produced by the Johnson Campaign in ’64 about Barry Goldwater and nuclear weapons. Neither ad, unfortunately, had much play for the squeamish jackasses, always prone to crawl out of the mud and take the high road, quickly reverted back to “issues” campaigning.
Of course the Democrats were too kind. Gone are the days when they can simply laugh the pachyderms off the stage as John Kennedy so successfully did in 1960. Kennedy famously said: “Have you ever seen elephants at the circus. There they are with their heads full of ivory, eyes firmly fixed on the posterior of the one before them, walking around in endless circles”….Unfortunately the times, as the saying went, were “a-changing”.
It is far more serious than that now. An index of just how serious it is can be seen in the plight of the poor pachyderm itself. When Thomas Mast made the elephant the symbol of the Republican Party he could not have known the peril in which he put the beast; for making the pachyderm the symbol of greed, avarice, gluttony and incompetence has taken its toll. In fact it has rendered the once majestic beast so onerous, so hated around the world, that it has been hunted to near extinction. Soon we will be about the business of casting about for a new mascot for the Republican Party. The rat comes immediately to mind but the new mascot must be appropriately indifferent and cold-blooded. No compassionate conservatives here! For this reason, a reptile or an insect will have to do, perhaps the snake, lizard or roach.
But I digress. Today the Pachyderms came bearing gifts by once again raising the cry over Social Security and pretending to beat the drums to “save’ it. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was the point man this time warning of an impending 13.6 trillion dollar shortfall in “ coming years” if we don’t do something to fix the broken system. This is up from 11.3 trillion dollars when Bush last sounded the alarm just two short years ago.
The problem, as Al Franken has revealed, is that this is a gross overstatement meant to create a “crisis”. Why do we need a crisis? So the Neo-cons can once again override sound public policy and institutional memory and impose the ideological imperative. Let’s start from the beginning with a nod of thanks to Mr. Franken.
First the fact that real money, instead of treasury notes, are not in the vault at the Social Security Administration is that for years (mostly under Republican administrations) the government has been raiding the trust fund to artificially lower the deficit and make it look like we were making great strides to balance the budget; rendered seriously out of whack by the huge tax cuts to the rich. So if there are no greenbacks in the box it is because George broke into the Social Security lockbox within months of usurping the throne and breaking a major campaign promise in the bargain. So he has no one to blame but himself for the alleged shortfall.
Second as Franken so clearly points out, in order to get to this astronomical number of 13.6 trillion ‘Ol Two-Cows’ Social Security Administration changed the parameters (numerical expressions in the form of mathematical formulae describing a universe as opposed to perimeters meaning boundaries). In this case average life expectancy was increased to age 150 over an indefinite period. This means that the Bush Administration demanded the new projections to require that Social Security would, in the out years, fund an average retirement of 83 years extrapolated into infinity. So to read this properly one has to translate ‘Bush speak’ “13.6 Trillion shortfall in the coming years” to its real meaning: 13.6 Trillion shortfall over eternity. As Franken pointed out a 13.6 Trillion dollar shortfall over 13.6 Trillion years is one dollar a year. It should be clear that this projection is no more legitimate than assuming an average lifespan of 150 and retirement of 83 years. Garbage in, garbage out as the old saying goes.
Third, as Franken again demonstrates, Bush’s remedy—private accounts—moves up the crises date from roughly 2042 when the system allegedly begins its death throes. Franken made some calls to actuaries and statisticians and their conclusion was that because Dubya begins taking monies immediately out of the system and directing it to his stock-jobbing buddies on Wall Street that the crisis he describes begins within a year of it’s adoption by the congress. So Dubya moves the crisis up a few decades rather than solve it. Why? So the congress can act when the country is beshit in conservatism; before the boomers retire and become once again the wards of the state—and much more liberal by definition.
Katrina had taken Social Security Reform off the front burner forcing Bush to drop the centerpiece of his second term. Now it is back. Perhaps because the Neo-Cons, heeding the voice of Newt Gingrich, sense that their moment in the sun is about to be eclipsed and that they must now make hay while the sun still shines. There is deep foreboding in the herd. ‘Ol Two-Cows’ has become the modern political equivalent of that meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Our cosmic ‘pet rock’ hurtling toward us, threatening a cataclysm so earth-shattering as to obliterate the sun, re-arranging life on earth. A systemic convulsion of 1932, if not biblical proportions, now threatens the Neo-Con paradise. Perhaps the pachyderm and the politics the beast symbolizes will go together the way of the pterodactyl. If so, it will be of small loss. One hates to say goodbye to the majestic beast, but if it saves Social Security and leads to a New Deal so be it.
Jan 27, 2008
September 24, 2007: Oh! Columbia, Throwing Stones Near Glass Houses, Texas Radio and the Big Beat
Rupert Murdock’s Fox Noise and the collective idiot right (read wrong) of this country are all-a-dither about the appearance of Iranian President Ahmadinejad at Columbia University. He is in the country in connection with a United Nations appearance in New York and has been banned from appearing at ground zero but invited to speak at Columbia. The cons and the neo-cons have fouled their collective pants over the alleged ‘outrage’ of having a modern-day ‘Hitler’ addressing an open meeting. The argument is that this sponsor of terror and supplier of military hardware to the Iraq insurgency and Hezbollah in Lebanon should not be given a forum in which to state his views.
Fair enough, but under that criteria Oliver North should not have a microphone and be given access to appear on television and radio since he funded the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua. Henry Kissassinger should not be allowed his regular appearances on Nightline and other talk shows to spout his dated wisdom since he fostered the illegal war against Cambodia and Laos. Ronald Reagan, if he were still alive, would likewise be forbidden to appear at any University Campus for his state sponsored terror in Nicaragua and supporting the death squads in El Salvador. So too would John Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower, Kennedy for funding and supporting ‘freedom fighters’—insurgents—in Cuba, Eisenhower for similar acts in Cuba and Guatemala and for overthrowing the legitimately elected government in Iran and re-installing the much-despised Peacock throne. One must be careful when throwing stones near glass houses.
“Let me tell you about Texas Radio and the big beat
Soft drivin’, slow and mad, like some new language”….The Doors
‘
Texans know all about insurgency. It was, after all, an American insurgency spawned by a flood of what would today be illegal aliens coming over the border from the United States into Mexico. Perhaps this is why ‘Ol Two-Cows’ and his Texans rode into Washington so cocksure they understood what we were up against whilst the rest of us poor slobs could simply take a back seat and learn.
The problem is that while the Americans in Texas won their independence, the Mexicans lost their battle with the insurgency. And oh yes, what was that rebellion against the autocratic Mexican authority all about? Freedom? Independence? Reproducing American political institutions and the Bill of Rights on what only yesterday was sovereign Mexican territory? That’s the way some Texans believe it for that is the way the history books tell it.
“The History books tell it
They tell it so well
The Cavalry charged
The Indians fell
The Cavalry charged
The Indians died
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side”----Bob Dylan
Unfortunately, as Voltaire once so thoughtlessly remarked, “History is the lie commonly agreed upon”. This is especially true in Texas wherein the state has a unified core curriculum and all the high schools must purchase the same books from the state depository. Hence the Texas School Book Depository Building….anyway, wielding the clout normally reserved for say the Medicare system to negotiate prices with pharmaceuticals, the Texas Board of Education can literally dictate or rather edit unpalatable or ‘inconvenient truths’ from the common understanding concerning origins. This applies, it appears, not only to the origin of species, but to the origin of the state itself.
So the common misunderstanding concerning the cause of the Texas revolt against Santa Anna and the “repressive” Mexican government is that it was a fight for freedom against slavery.
Wrong! It was precisely the opposite. The truth is that brother Travis had run into some problems with the local authorities in Louisiana and as an added inducement wished to skip out on his wife and kids. Unfortunately the Mexicans, to whom Texas then belonged, had the ascended the ladder of civilization just far enough, it seems, to have inconveniently outlawed slavery. Poor Travis could not take his slaves with him lest they become freedmen upon crossing the Louisiana/Texas frontier. Answer: foment revolt, break away from Mexico so as to extend the ‘peculiar institution’ westward and continue to make one’s fortunes by exploiting one’s fellow man. This was the impetuous behind the famous revolt romanticized in legend. This was the cause for which Bowie and Crocket gave their lives. Remember the Alamo.
Texans, with their outsized egos, braggadocio, and penchant for overstatement have, it appears, a long experience with standing history on its head. And the problem with standing history on its head is that one is prone to consistently draw the wrong lessons from it.
Fair enough, but under that criteria Oliver North should not have a microphone and be given access to appear on television and radio since he funded the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua. Henry Kissassinger should not be allowed his regular appearances on Nightline and other talk shows to spout his dated wisdom since he fostered the illegal war against Cambodia and Laos. Ronald Reagan, if he were still alive, would likewise be forbidden to appear at any University Campus for his state sponsored terror in Nicaragua and supporting the death squads in El Salvador. So too would John Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower, Kennedy for funding and supporting ‘freedom fighters’—insurgents—in Cuba, Eisenhower for similar acts in Cuba and Guatemala and for overthrowing the legitimately elected government in Iran and re-installing the much-despised Peacock throne. One must be careful when throwing stones near glass houses.
“Let me tell you about Texas Radio and the big beat
Soft drivin’, slow and mad, like some new language”….The Doors
‘
Texans know all about insurgency. It was, after all, an American insurgency spawned by a flood of what would today be illegal aliens coming over the border from the United States into Mexico. Perhaps this is why ‘Ol Two-Cows’ and his Texans rode into Washington so cocksure they understood what we were up against whilst the rest of us poor slobs could simply take a back seat and learn.
The problem is that while the Americans in Texas won their independence, the Mexicans lost their battle with the insurgency. And oh yes, what was that rebellion against the autocratic Mexican authority all about? Freedom? Independence? Reproducing American political institutions and the Bill of Rights on what only yesterday was sovereign Mexican territory? That’s the way some Texans believe it for that is the way the history books tell it.
“The History books tell it
They tell it so well
The Cavalry charged
The Indians fell
The Cavalry charged
The Indians died
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side”----Bob Dylan
Unfortunately, as Voltaire once so thoughtlessly remarked, “History is the lie commonly agreed upon”. This is especially true in Texas wherein the state has a unified core curriculum and all the high schools must purchase the same books from the state depository. Hence the Texas School Book Depository Building….anyway, wielding the clout normally reserved for say the Medicare system to negotiate prices with pharmaceuticals, the Texas Board of Education can literally dictate or rather edit unpalatable or ‘inconvenient truths’ from the common understanding concerning origins. This applies, it appears, not only to the origin of species, but to the origin of the state itself.
So the common misunderstanding concerning the cause of the Texas revolt against Santa Anna and the “repressive” Mexican government is that it was a fight for freedom against slavery.
Wrong! It was precisely the opposite. The truth is that brother Travis had run into some problems with the local authorities in Louisiana and as an added inducement wished to skip out on his wife and kids. Unfortunately the Mexicans, to whom Texas then belonged, had the ascended the ladder of civilization just far enough, it seems, to have inconveniently outlawed slavery. Poor Travis could not take his slaves with him lest they become freedmen upon crossing the Louisiana/Texas frontier. Answer: foment revolt, break away from Mexico so as to extend the ‘peculiar institution’ westward and continue to make one’s fortunes by exploiting one’s fellow man. This was the impetuous behind the famous revolt romanticized in legend. This was the cause for which Bowie and Crocket gave their lives. Remember the Alamo.
Texans, with their outsized egos, braggadocio, and penchant for overstatement have, it appears, a long experience with standing history on its head. And the problem with standing history on its head is that one is prone to consistently draw the wrong lessons from it.
September 23, 2007: The Ambassador Speaks, Mendacity in the White House, and the Worst of all Possible Worlds
Last Wednesday, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke testified before Congressman Lantos’ committee detailing his concerns about the conduct of the Iraq war. His testimony is illuminating inasmuch as he pointed out the cross-purposes and the internal contradictions of the Administration’s policies in the country. He testified that we cannot at once hope to forge a strong central government while at the same time support the aspirations of separate ethnic groups and religious sects. We have at once supported the Shi’ite control of both the southern regions and for majority control of the central government standing idly by and giving tacit endorsement to ethnic cleansing, the Shia control of the Health and Interior ministries as well as major parts of the Iraqi military. We have supported, in recent months, various Sunni Sheiks in their efforts to combat both the Shia majority in and around Baghdad and a growing Al-Qaeda presence in Basra province while chiding them for not embracing the idea of a majority-driven central authority. In fact it was Paul Brenner, Bush’s choice to manage the ‘pacification’ of the country after ‘mission accomplished’ was declared, who created the scheme of dividing the country along its major ethnic and religious fault lines in the first place. So lo and behold the Shia vote the mullahs into power, the Sunni’s boycotted the election, and the Kurds participated but have gone their separate ways.
Holbrooke pointed out that we now have a de facto Kurdistan. The Kurds now have their own flag, own government, own language, own currency, own economy. They have the most rigorously protected borders in the region with some six levels of security at the frontier. More worrisome is that there is growing conflict along the Kurdish/Turkey border with the Turks sending their army across the border on at least two occasions in retaliation for cross border raids by the Kurds into Eastern Turkey. Clearly the area is much more volatile and the prospects for a stable Iraqi regime in the absence of some strong man like Saddam grow more remote with the passing of time.
So is it simply that the President and his advisors are muddle-headed about the dynamics in the region? Surely Vice President Cheney had been able to see clearly enough in previous incarnations: as when in the aftermath of the first Gulf War he succinctly and accurately laid out the options before the administration if we had gone to Baghdad. Cheney said then that it was the right decision not go on to Baghdad for to do so would lead to occupation and an insurgency, and we would be mired in a civil war.
So it cannot be that top administration officials were blind to the consequences of grasping da Tar Baby. No, it appears that they knew quite well what would transpire. But to what end would we seek to create civil strife in such a volatile region? Tom Hayden in an essay entitled “The New Counterinsurgency” (The Nation September 24th edition) outlines American experience with counterinsurgency beginning with Kit Carson’s tactic of pitting the Ute and other rival tribes against the Navajo. It is Hayden’s thesis that immediately dividing the country along ethnic lines and then alternately and sometimes simultaneously (as when the Cons under Reagan simultaneously supported both Iraq and Iran during their war), pursue the goal of COIN (Counterinsurgency) “to replace Arab Nationalism with a fragmented culture of subservient informants split along tribal and sectarian lines”. We will keep them fighting amongst themselves, no Sa-Aladdin will emerge to liberate them and we can continue to keep pumping the oil. It is the age-old strategy of ‘divide and rule’, something the Rescumlicans had already worked to perfection back in the States.
There is method to the madness when seen in this light. Lost in the discussion is that many of the so called ‘bench marks” mandated by this administration and this congress, by which we are to judge ‘progress’ in Iraq, involve the country joining the World Trade Organization, the privatization of the oil fields, a free market economy; and if we cannot get the Sheiks and the clerics to sign on we will keep them fighting each other and create a de facto new order. If Iraq ever emerges from the chaos, if somehow we prevent the violence from spilling over into the region: or if, on the other hand, the country breaks up into three or four separate states the region will still be confronted with a fait accompli, a free-market capitalist order with foreign ownership and control of the country’s natural resources. Iraq will then be fully ‘liberated’, that is made a full member of the new world order. In the meantime we will keep our troops and our mercenaries in the country, hopefully maintain a lid on the violence, and keep pumping the oil with no meters on the wells. We turn on the spigots and it is high tide and green grass for Bechtel and Halliburton. Bob Dole said when we went into the region it was all about oil. Alan Greenspan, in his new book, says the same thing. These men have walked the corridors of power, and for Republicans, are quite candid. Not so the Usurper King and his court.
One must be careful to never underestimate the mendacity of this administration, for the Iraq debacle is fully consistent with how it has conducted itself domestically. Beginning with the ‘divide and rule’ stratagems dating back to the days of Pappy’s assaults on Dukakis, the Bush’s have never been reticent to drive a wedge into any historical fissure in the base of the republic if it meant short-term political gain. And so it was in 1988 along racial (Willie Horton ads), cultural (Pledge of Allegiance nonsense), and populist lines (the Eastern Establishment vs. the rest of the country). Likewise his 1992 campaign against Clinton where new wedges were driven into the old fissures: North-South, calling Clinton a governor from a small insignificant southern state; Generational, the campaign accusing Clinton of Draft Dodging and reviving the old rifts over Viet Nam; Economic, accusing Clinton of engaging in “class warfare” for his opposition to huge tax breaks for the rich ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Dubya, of course, trumped Pappy by happily smearing decorated war heroes, and gaining political power by, in Al Franken’s words, “Fear, Smear and Queers.”
“You stoop so low
To reach so high”---U2
The point is that it is likely a gross misreading of the morass ‘Ol Two-Cows’ has made in Iraq to say simply that it is a consequence of blind stupidity. It may very well have been deliberate mendacity; the kind of pathology wherein Dubya creates yet another ‘win-win’ situation by making the worst of all possible worlds. We set the Iraqi’s out on the journey to statehood by creating and fostering the conditions of failure. We pledge to support the central authority whilst working to prevent the proper exercise of that authority. The result is that while we foster civil strife we present ourselves to the world as the defenders of order ensuring by solemn treaty obligation our license to remain. And while the Iraqi’s fight amongst themselves, we pick their pockets.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Holbrooke pointed out that we now have a de facto Kurdistan. The Kurds now have their own flag, own government, own language, own currency, own economy. They have the most rigorously protected borders in the region with some six levels of security at the frontier. More worrisome is that there is growing conflict along the Kurdish/Turkey border with the Turks sending their army across the border on at least two occasions in retaliation for cross border raids by the Kurds into Eastern Turkey. Clearly the area is much more volatile and the prospects for a stable Iraqi regime in the absence of some strong man like Saddam grow more remote with the passing of time.
So is it simply that the President and his advisors are muddle-headed about the dynamics in the region? Surely Vice President Cheney had been able to see clearly enough in previous incarnations: as when in the aftermath of the first Gulf War he succinctly and accurately laid out the options before the administration if we had gone to Baghdad. Cheney said then that it was the right decision not go on to Baghdad for to do so would lead to occupation and an insurgency, and we would be mired in a civil war.
So it cannot be that top administration officials were blind to the consequences of grasping da Tar Baby. No, it appears that they knew quite well what would transpire. But to what end would we seek to create civil strife in such a volatile region? Tom Hayden in an essay entitled “The New Counterinsurgency” (The Nation September 24th edition) outlines American experience with counterinsurgency beginning with Kit Carson’s tactic of pitting the Ute and other rival tribes against the Navajo. It is Hayden’s thesis that immediately dividing the country along ethnic lines and then alternately and sometimes simultaneously (as when the Cons under Reagan simultaneously supported both Iraq and Iran during their war), pursue the goal of COIN (Counterinsurgency) “to replace Arab Nationalism with a fragmented culture of subservient informants split along tribal and sectarian lines”. We will keep them fighting amongst themselves, no Sa-Aladdin will emerge to liberate them and we can continue to keep pumping the oil. It is the age-old strategy of ‘divide and rule’, something the Rescumlicans had already worked to perfection back in the States.
There is method to the madness when seen in this light. Lost in the discussion is that many of the so called ‘bench marks” mandated by this administration and this congress, by which we are to judge ‘progress’ in Iraq, involve the country joining the World Trade Organization, the privatization of the oil fields, a free market economy; and if we cannot get the Sheiks and the clerics to sign on we will keep them fighting each other and create a de facto new order. If Iraq ever emerges from the chaos, if somehow we prevent the violence from spilling over into the region: or if, on the other hand, the country breaks up into three or four separate states the region will still be confronted with a fait accompli, a free-market capitalist order with foreign ownership and control of the country’s natural resources. Iraq will then be fully ‘liberated’, that is made a full member of the new world order. In the meantime we will keep our troops and our mercenaries in the country, hopefully maintain a lid on the violence, and keep pumping the oil with no meters on the wells. We turn on the spigots and it is high tide and green grass for Bechtel and Halliburton. Bob Dole said when we went into the region it was all about oil. Alan Greenspan, in his new book, says the same thing. These men have walked the corridors of power, and for Republicans, are quite candid. Not so the Usurper King and his court.
One must be careful to never underestimate the mendacity of this administration, for the Iraq debacle is fully consistent with how it has conducted itself domestically. Beginning with the ‘divide and rule’ stratagems dating back to the days of Pappy’s assaults on Dukakis, the Bush’s have never been reticent to drive a wedge into any historical fissure in the base of the republic if it meant short-term political gain. And so it was in 1988 along racial (Willie Horton ads), cultural (Pledge of Allegiance nonsense), and populist lines (the Eastern Establishment vs. the rest of the country). Likewise his 1992 campaign against Clinton where new wedges were driven into the old fissures: North-South, calling Clinton a governor from a small insignificant southern state; Generational, the campaign accusing Clinton of Draft Dodging and reviving the old rifts over Viet Nam; Economic, accusing Clinton of engaging in “class warfare” for his opposition to huge tax breaks for the rich ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Dubya, of course, trumped Pappy by happily smearing decorated war heroes, and gaining political power by, in Al Franken’s words, “Fear, Smear and Queers.”
“You stoop so low
To reach so high”---U2
The point is that it is likely a gross misreading of the morass ‘Ol Two-Cows’ has made in Iraq to say simply that it is a consequence of blind stupidity. It may very well have been deliberate mendacity; the kind of pathology wherein Dubya creates yet another ‘win-win’ situation by making the worst of all possible worlds. We set the Iraqi’s out on the journey to statehood by creating and fostering the conditions of failure. We pledge to support the central authority whilst working to prevent the proper exercise of that authority. The result is that while we foster civil strife we present ourselves to the world as the defenders of order ensuring by solemn treaty obligation our license to remain. And while the Iraqi’s fight amongst themselves, we pick their pockets.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
September 18, 2007: Blackwater Down, Mercenaries
Bassem Mroue, writing for the Associated Press reported today that the Iraqi government was revoking the license of Blackwater Security. The firm is accused of involvement in the deaths of 8 civilians and the injury of 13 others in a firefight following a car bomb explosion. Canceling their license, the Iraqi interior ministry has moved to reign in on Blackwater, threatening prosecution.
Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., has an 800 million dollar federal contract to operate in Iraq and is one of the most high-profile security firms in the country. Over 170 private security contractors and 190 thousand of what amounts to mercenary soldiers work in Iraq, protecting diplomats, foreign corporations and individuals. The coalition forces now employ 30,000 more mercenaries than there are American troops occupying the country. It was Blackwater, who sparked the battle of Fallujah when a mob of insurgents attacked, killed, burned then hung the bodies of Blackwater employees from a bridge. 27 United States Marines and an untold number of civilians were killed in the retaliation that followed. Many of these contractors have been accused of indiscriminately shooting at American and Iraqi troops as well as civilians who get too close to their convoys, killing countless Iraqi citizens and earning the well-deserved contempt of the Iraqi people. According to the Associated Press report, “Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings ‘a crime that we cannot be silent about.’, and Iraq President Al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a ‘foreign security company’ and called it a ‘crime’.” Unfortunately such things will be hard to prosecute because these mercenaries are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and are exempt from prosecution by the Iraqis under a special agreements forced on the Iraqis by the American-led occupying forces.
Al-Maliki is, of course, playing to a receptive audience for the country has grown weary of these hordes of armed mercenaries traveling about the country in heavily armored vehicles, brandishing and shooting automatic weapons from SUV’s and helicopter gunships and indiscriminately killing innocent bystanders. In an exercise in damage control the administration has launched an ‘investigation’ and sent Condolessa Rice to Baghdad to patch things up with the Iraqi’s. Ah the power behind a basic campaign contribution.
But this, unfortunately, is only half the scandal. It is not simply that we have created and licensed hordes of mercenaries to protect our ‘national interests’, it is that we are paying these soldiers of fortune about $160,000 a year for their efforts. Meanwhile the poor slob who joined the National Guard thinking that he would be at the ready the next time a category 5 hurricane bears down on New Orleans but instead finds himself a dessert rat is being paid a mere fraction of what his comrades at Blackwater are making. And both are paid by federal funds! The difference? The Guardsman is a soldier paid by the government. The Blackwater mercenary is also paid by the government but through Blackwater. Ah the benefits of privatization with public funds. One makes four or five times as much money and one is not subject to the Military Code of Justice and cannot be prosecuted if one should take a little target practice at a passing car or shoot at civilians standing in the street. This is where privatization leads. This is the Neo-Con wet dream turned national nightmare that is Iraq today. And not just Iraq, it was reported in passing on CNN’s coverage of the story today that Blackwater was in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
This is yet another dimension of the Neo-Con nightmare that has only begun to blow back on the country. Privatize the schools, privatize the prisons, privatize law enforcement, and privatize the roads---just today a young enterprising Republican in the Georgia legislature proposed putting advertising on traffic signs. Yes privatize the military to the point where we now have mercenaries on Main Street.
This morning C-Span broadcast an appearance by Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa) before the National Press Club. Murtha has been one of those war veterans turned politician that have been a thorn in the side of ‘Chicken Hawks’. Visiting wounded soldiers returning from Iraq, Murtha became an early critic of the administration’s conduct of the war. Detailing the administration’s shortcomings: not adequately preparing the military for these levels of commitments, failure to send in enough troops to sufficiently occupy the country and prevent the emergence of an armed insurgency, failure to properly provide body armor and spare parts, failure to build a strong enough coalition and involve other countries in the region, failure to address the political dimensions of the conflict, and failure to put pressure on the Iraqi regime to negotiate a solution to the ethnic divide.
None of this is new. Murtha has been out front on this issue, first voicing concern in the halcyon days when dubya was declaring ‘mission accomplished’ and Rumsfeld was pooh-hooing any suggestion that a viable insurgency was in the making. So outraged were the ‘chicken-hawks’ that a Republican congresswoman from Ohio took to the floor of the House and announced that real marines don’t turn tail and run.
The problem with this kind of political criticism is that John Murtha is a real marine. He’s the kind of soldier that reminds one of John McCain, Max Cleland and John Kerry. Real warriors who went in harm’s way and engaged a real enemy under fire. But the Rescumlicans had achieved a measure of success savaging real heroes by innuendo, smear, and boldfaced lies. In the 2000 South Carolina Primary Karl Rove and his minions spread the rumor that the daughter John McCain and his wife had adopted from mother Teresa’s orphanage was his illegitimate daughter by an illicit interracial affair (See Al Franken “The Truth with Jokes). Nearing Election Day, Dubya’s forces created what is known in the business as a “push-poll”, ostensibly a public opinion poll conducted by a neutral party that in reality is a device to smear an opponent. In this case, voters were called and asked that if they knew John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child (she is from Bangladesh), would you still vote for him? Additionally the Bush forces conducted a whispering campaign to the effect that the years of torture while a guest at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ had scrambled poor John’s mind making him unstable. Not a good choice to control the finger on the nuclear button.
Max Cleland was another bona fide hero who got caught in the crosshairs of the Rescumlican slime machine. Losing three limbs in a land-mine explosion, Cleland a Viet Nam war vet had nonetheless so distinguished himself that he was put in charge of the Veteran’s Administration by President Carter and was later elected to the United States Senate. Knowing that the Republicans have no talent for administering much less creating large bureaucracies, he voiced deep suspicions about creating a Homeland Security Department charged with centralizing and coordinating intelligence and security agencies—especially if the new department did not incorporate the FBI or the CIA. Cleland, as prescient as he is courageous, knew that if unheeded Dubya would do nothing but create a politicized boondoggle. And so it has become. Nearly 5 years into the ‘world war’ and our ports, borders, nuclear power plants, chemical installations, railroads, and food supply are no more secure than they were before 911. But none of this mattered. What mattered was that Cleland had the temerity to not only represent Georgia in the Senate as a Democrat, but a Democrat openly voicing legitimate reservations. What to do? Answer: smear. So the Bush scum machine went about the business of sliming Max by putting his face next to that of Osama Bin Laden on television commercials with a voice over saying that Max was ‘soft on defense’ implying that he was giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
Then there is John Kerry. Another bona fide hero who actually saw battle, engaged the enemy and earned several citations including the Silver Star. Had he won election he may have become the only President of the United States to have actually killed anyone in battle. No matter, for by now the Rove slime machine had mastered the technique of smear. And they didn’t have to look far. Waiting in the weeds was Paul O’Neil, former adversary of Kerry dating back to the Vietnam era. O’Neil served as a shill for Charles Colsen when Nixon’s White House got him on the Dick Cavett show and otherwise promoted him to counter the growing influence of Kerry who Nixon feared would become another Kennedy. And so financing O’Neil’s ‘Swift-Boat Veteran’s for Truth” Karl Rove pulled the cables that released the slime that inundated the Kerry campaign introducing a new verb into the political lexicon: “Swift-boating”. As in ‘we need a candidate who won’t be ‘swift-boated’, meaning smeared.
They tried to do the same thing to Murtha. Perhaps because Murtha is only one of 435 members of the House and hadn’t gained enough national profile, or because he commands the unwavering respect of his constituents, they haven’t been able to savage Murtha as they have the others. So they chose to ignore him. In late 2003, Murtha wrote to Donald Rumsfeld his concerns about developments in Iraq and the resulting impact on the military. Murtha said today that it took a full seven months for the Department of Defense, in the form of the Undersecretary, to respond and then only to say that his concerns had been addressed.
Here was the ranking member of the House Armed Services committee charged with oversight of the Defense budget and Rumfeld demonstrates his contempt for the congress by taking seven months to respond to simple inquiry. If one cannot smear then one can simply dismiss. Such is the arrogance of power.
Now John is Chairman of the committee and a vocal critic of the war. He said in his speech today that a reporter asked Dubya why history would be kind to him on his conduct in Iraq. “ Because I’m right”, Murtha reported the president as saying. “Right about what?” asked Murtha. “Right about the weapons of mass destruction? Right about Al-Qaeda connections to Iraq? Right about the cost of the war? Right about our being welcome as liberators? Right about the insurgency?” Right-On John Murtha.
Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., has an 800 million dollar federal contract to operate in Iraq and is one of the most high-profile security firms in the country. Over 170 private security contractors and 190 thousand of what amounts to mercenary soldiers work in Iraq, protecting diplomats, foreign corporations and individuals. The coalition forces now employ 30,000 more mercenaries than there are American troops occupying the country. It was Blackwater, who sparked the battle of Fallujah when a mob of insurgents attacked, killed, burned then hung the bodies of Blackwater employees from a bridge. 27 United States Marines and an untold number of civilians were killed in the retaliation that followed. Many of these contractors have been accused of indiscriminately shooting at American and Iraqi troops as well as civilians who get too close to their convoys, killing countless Iraqi citizens and earning the well-deserved contempt of the Iraqi people. According to the Associated Press report, “Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani called the shootings ‘a crime that we cannot be silent about.’, and Iraq President Al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a ‘foreign security company’ and called it a ‘crime’.” Unfortunately such things will be hard to prosecute because these mercenaries are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and are exempt from prosecution by the Iraqis under a special agreements forced on the Iraqis by the American-led occupying forces.
Al-Maliki is, of course, playing to a receptive audience for the country has grown weary of these hordes of armed mercenaries traveling about the country in heavily armored vehicles, brandishing and shooting automatic weapons from SUV’s and helicopter gunships and indiscriminately killing innocent bystanders. In an exercise in damage control the administration has launched an ‘investigation’ and sent Condolessa Rice to Baghdad to patch things up with the Iraqi’s. Ah the power behind a basic campaign contribution.
But this, unfortunately, is only half the scandal. It is not simply that we have created and licensed hordes of mercenaries to protect our ‘national interests’, it is that we are paying these soldiers of fortune about $160,000 a year for their efforts. Meanwhile the poor slob who joined the National Guard thinking that he would be at the ready the next time a category 5 hurricane bears down on New Orleans but instead finds himself a dessert rat is being paid a mere fraction of what his comrades at Blackwater are making. And both are paid by federal funds! The difference? The Guardsman is a soldier paid by the government. The Blackwater mercenary is also paid by the government but through Blackwater. Ah the benefits of privatization with public funds. One makes four or five times as much money and one is not subject to the Military Code of Justice and cannot be prosecuted if one should take a little target practice at a passing car or shoot at civilians standing in the street. This is where privatization leads. This is the Neo-Con wet dream turned national nightmare that is Iraq today. And not just Iraq, it was reported in passing on CNN’s coverage of the story today that Blackwater was in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
This is yet another dimension of the Neo-Con nightmare that has only begun to blow back on the country. Privatize the schools, privatize the prisons, privatize law enforcement, and privatize the roads---just today a young enterprising Republican in the Georgia legislature proposed putting advertising on traffic signs. Yes privatize the military to the point where we now have mercenaries on Main Street.
This morning C-Span broadcast an appearance by Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa) before the National Press Club. Murtha has been one of those war veterans turned politician that have been a thorn in the side of ‘Chicken Hawks’. Visiting wounded soldiers returning from Iraq, Murtha became an early critic of the administration’s conduct of the war. Detailing the administration’s shortcomings: not adequately preparing the military for these levels of commitments, failure to send in enough troops to sufficiently occupy the country and prevent the emergence of an armed insurgency, failure to properly provide body armor and spare parts, failure to build a strong enough coalition and involve other countries in the region, failure to address the political dimensions of the conflict, and failure to put pressure on the Iraqi regime to negotiate a solution to the ethnic divide.
None of this is new. Murtha has been out front on this issue, first voicing concern in the halcyon days when dubya was declaring ‘mission accomplished’ and Rumsfeld was pooh-hooing any suggestion that a viable insurgency was in the making. So outraged were the ‘chicken-hawks’ that a Republican congresswoman from Ohio took to the floor of the House and announced that real marines don’t turn tail and run.
The problem with this kind of political criticism is that John Murtha is a real marine. He’s the kind of soldier that reminds one of John McCain, Max Cleland and John Kerry. Real warriors who went in harm’s way and engaged a real enemy under fire. But the Rescumlicans had achieved a measure of success savaging real heroes by innuendo, smear, and boldfaced lies. In the 2000 South Carolina Primary Karl Rove and his minions spread the rumor that the daughter John McCain and his wife had adopted from mother Teresa’s orphanage was his illegitimate daughter by an illicit interracial affair (See Al Franken “The Truth with Jokes). Nearing Election Day, Dubya’s forces created what is known in the business as a “push-poll”, ostensibly a public opinion poll conducted by a neutral party that in reality is a device to smear an opponent. In this case, voters were called and asked that if they knew John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child (she is from Bangladesh), would you still vote for him? Additionally the Bush forces conducted a whispering campaign to the effect that the years of torture while a guest at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ had scrambled poor John’s mind making him unstable. Not a good choice to control the finger on the nuclear button.
Max Cleland was another bona fide hero who got caught in the crosshairs of the Rescumlican slime machine. Losing three limbs in a land-mine explosion, Cleland a Viet Nam war vet had nonetheless so distinguished himself that he was put in charge of the Veteran’s Administration by President Carter and was later elected to the United States Senate. Knowing that the Republicans have no talent for administering much less creating large bureaucracies, he voiced deep suspicions about creating a Homeland Security Department charged with centralizing and coordinating intelligence and security agencies—especially if the new department did not incorporate the FBI or the CIA. Cleland, as prescient as he is courageous, knew that if unheeded Dubya would do nothing but create a politicized boondoggle. And so it has become. Nearly 5 years into the ‘world war’ and our ports, borders, nuclear power plants, chemical installations, railroads, and food supply are no more secure than they were before 911. But none of this mattered. What mattered was that Cleland had the temerity to not only represent Georgia in the Senate as a Democrat, but a Democrat openly voicing legitimate reservations. What to do? Answer: smear. So the Bush scum machine went about the business of sliming Max by putting his face next to that of Osama Bin Laden on television commercials with a voice over saying that Max was ‘soft on defense’ implying that he was giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
Then there is John Kerry. Another bona fide hero who actually saw battle, engaged the enemy and earned several citations including the Silver Star. Had he won election he may have become the only President of the United States to have actually killed anyone in battle. No matter, for by now the Rove slime machine had mastered the technique of smear. And they didn’t have to look far. Waiting in the weeds was Paul O’Neil, former adversary of Kerry dating back to the Vietnam era. O’Neil served as a shill for Charles Colsen when Nixon’s White House got him on the Dick Cavett show and otherwise promoted him to counter the growing influence of Kerry who Nixon feared would become another Kennedy. And so financing O’Neil’s ‘Swift-Boat Veteran’s for Truth” Karl Rove pulled the cables that released the slime that inundated the Kerry campaign introducing a new verb into the political lexicon: “Swift-boating”. As in ‘we need a candidate who won’t be ‘swift-boated’, meaning smeared.
They tried to do the same thing to Murtha. Perhaps because Murtha is only one of 435 members of the House and hadn’t gained enough national profile, or because he commands the unwavering respect of his constituents, they haven’t been able to savage Murtha as they have the others. So they chose to ignore him. In late 2003, Murtha wrote to Donald Rumsfeld his concerns about developments in Iraq and the resulting impact on the military. Murtha said today that it took a full seven months for the Department of Defense, in the form of the Undersecretary, to respond and then only to say that his concerns had been addressed.
Here was the ranking member of the House Armed Services committee charged with oversight of the Defense budget and Rumfeld demonstrates his contempt for the congress by taking seven months to respond to simple inquiry. If one cannot smear then one can simply dismiss. Such is the arrogance of power.
Now John is Chairman of the committee and a vocal critic of the war. He said in his speech today that a reporter asked Dubya why history would be kind to him on his conduct in Iraq. “ Because I’m right”, Murtha reported the president as saying. “Right about what?” asked Murtha. “Right about the weapons of mass destruction? Right about Al-Qaeda connections to Iraq? Right about the cost of the war? Right about our being welcome as liberators? Right about the insurgency?” Right-On John Murtha.
September 17, 2007: Beshit in the Bayou.
Last week the Nation published a series of articles on the aftermath of the Katrina disaster. Rebecca Solnit detailed the struggles of the lower ninth ward to battle back from the ravages of the storm. Michael Tisserand writes of the ‘Charter School Flood’ wherein fully 70% of New Orleans school children now attend private charter schools. Fully two years after the disaster, Robin Templeton in her article “Locked Up in New Orleans” said,”only one-third of the childcare centers and 45 percent of the public schools in Orleans Parish have reopened. Mental health services for residents suffering from depression, drug addiction or post-traumatic stress disorder are practically nonexistent. The city’s Housing Authority has slated thousands of units of public housing for demolition, the majority of which were not damaged by the storm.” Whole sections of the city still lay waste as residents struggle to return.
The Neo-Cons, ever keen to maximize the political potential of an unmitigated disaster, saw in Katrina a golden opportunity to create a veritable Petri dish of Right-wing ideological fungus masquerading as penicillin. The first response after the untimely removal of ‘You’re doing a helluva job’ Brownie was to announce that hereafter the old Wade-Davis provisions would not apply to the rebuilding effort. Back in the good old days, before the ideological cabal had hijacked the government, two members of congress one a Democrat the other a Republican had joined forces and passed the Wade-Davis bill which required any government-funded project to meet the prevailing community wage rates. This requirement was the first casualty of the recovery effort. Gone also was the need to employ U.S. citizens. Twenty percent, by some estimates, of the construction workers employed in the rebuilding of the city are illegal aliens. Judging by the prevalence of the illegals in the construction industry in the greater Atlanta area and in other parts of the country this may be a gross underestimation. In any case the storm provided the crisis needed to overrule sound and established policy traditionally governing our response to such crises and gave the Neo-Cons the opportunity to impose the ideological imperative and in so doing denied the residents of the city a chance to work at a living wage or a chance to find work rebuilding their own city at all.
While temporary housing in the form of mobile trailers sat for years in an Arkansas field, citizens of the city, having nowhere to stay, could not come home and rebuild. To use the public purse for such charity is in clear violation of the ideological imperative so dear to the Neo-Cons. To Wit: the response must be by the private sector (albeit with a large dose of public funds) and it must be profit driven.
The same with the schools. According to Tisserand, “immediately after the flood, Bush attempted a $500 million voucher program to allow displaced children to enroll in private and religious schools across the country. Critics saw the move as an attempt to exploit the disaster to finally enact vouchers, a longstanding Bush goal, and the initiative failed. There was no similar outcry when the US Department of Education pledged $44.8 million to Louisiana for post-Katrina charter schools. Yet the Administration left no doubt that the move was intended to quickly prop up charters: It offered no comparable funding to re-establish traditional neighborhood or district schools.” The result is that the public school system has become a ‘dumping ground’, a system of ‘catch-all’ schools that
“Is required in a free market system, because there must be a place for the kids who don’t gain entry elsewhere” (The Nation, September 10/17, 2007 pg. 22).
So the Administration loosed the dogs of greed upon the helpless survivors of the Gulf coast in a fevered attempt to surpass ‘Ol Pappy’s days when Florida was set upon by the “roofers from Hell” and other beasts of prey in the wake of Hurricane Andrew. It was a strategy ‘Ol Two-Cows’ had worked elsewhere to perfection. He would simply replicate on the Gulf Coast what he had so assiduously struggled to attain in the Persian Gulf: to privatize everything in sight, to get his friends at Halliburton another government sinecure and put another feather in the cap of his able vice-president, still on the Halliburton payroll. Who cares if we beshit ourselves in bayou country, there is real money to be made making hay in a hurricane.
“Money for nothing
And chicks for free”—Dire Straits
The country cared. ‘Ol Two-Cows’ popularity plummeted to Nixonian levels; below even the base Republican vote in any respectable or even legitimate election. Gone was his much touted “political capital”. America suddenly saw that the emperor had no clothes, and even less sense. For all intents and purposes, George W. Bush became a dead duck president. Suddenly seeing an imminent end, CNN began to post the number of remaining days until the next election and the number of days until inauguration on its crawlspace. States began a stampede to move up their primary elections so as to jump-start the next election cycle. A collective wish that the long national nightmare be over.
But there was a silver lining in the clouds of Katrina for gone now was George W. Bush’s congressional majorities, his assault on overtime and his neglect of the minimum wage. Gone too was his assault on Social Security. America had been repulsed by the sight of the emperor beshit with incompetence and reveling in unimaginable degradation. Katrina had, at least temporarily, saved the surviving remnants of the New Deal.
Meanwhile Fred Thompson of Tennessee has entered the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. Fred is known primarily for acting stints on “Law and Order” and a few movie and television roles, once actually playing the president of the United States. The political pachyderms, in what amounts to a total panic at the electoral prospects now looming, are grasping at straws in Iowa and other primary states trying to find a new messiah to lead them out of the wilderness. “If only we could recreate the glory days”, they say to each other in whispered breath, “if only we could resurrect Ronnie”. What the hell an actor once held them and much of the nation spellbound, why not nominate yet another thespian. Perhaps he can deliver some of that old black magic.
Reagan was one of those characters who walks on stage, holds the audience in rapt attention, and then makes his exit to thundering applause. He accomplished on the political stage what he could not on the boards of Broadway or the silver screen for upon his exit the crowd sat transfixed unable to judge the man behind the curtain. Reagan was a host of contradictions. The darling of the bible-thumping fundamentalist idiot right he espoused family values but was, nevertheless, the first divorced man to be elected President of the United States. Campaigning against “big government” and charging that “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem”, he nevertheless presided over a peacetime expansion of the federal payroll not seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson. Espousing conservative fiscal restraint he created what were, for the time, record deficits. Advocating a strong military and talking tough to our adversaries (once calling the Soviet Union the ‘evil empire’), he nevertheless chose to wage war on countries whose military strength represented the might of roughly the police force of the city of Miami. No one remembers that when the going got tough, “the tough got going”, as in when 280 marines were killed by a suicide bomber in south Lebanon. Ronnie simply put his tail between his legs and called the boys home. Ronnie was able to straddle these contradictions and transcend them because he had somehow mastered on the political stage what had been so elusive on the silver screen: he had become, in the moniker Congresswoman Schroeder so aptly gave him, “the Teflon President”; he had succeeded in suspending disbelief.
The acting profession has not had such an impact on national public policy since John Wilkes Booth made his last brief appearance at Ford’s Theatre. Ronnie created a fiscal mess that took not only most of his second term but arguably cost his successor re-election because he had to break his famous ‘no new taxes’ pledge to keep the republic from sinking deep into a financial abyss. It wasn’t until Clinton again upwardly adjusted the tax code that some sense of fiscal responsibility was restored to the republic.
Reagan also gets credit for a booming economy. The historical record is checkered and somewhat contradictory on this point. The record shows huge deficits beginning in the early 80’s brought on by Ronnie’s cutting taxes on the highest earners from roughly 72% to 29%, later adjusted upward to around 33%. In fact for a brief period the highest tax payers were actually in a lower tax bracket than the middle class: 29% as compared with 32. This of course led to huge increases in the disparity of wealth and made it possible, along with changes in the Social Security tax structure and the passing of the cost of services to state and local governments where tax codes are much more regressive, for the rich to accumulate huge sums while the middle and lower classes struggled. For the entire first term, the nation stood dead in the water: Gross National Product, a measure of the economic productivity of the country, did not reach 1979 levels until 1985. Unemployment, high interest rates, and inflation continued to curse the best laid plans of presidents and men. As in the twenties, the prosperity of the 80’s was not widely shared by the country. The economy looked good on paper but while Wall Street prospered, Main Street languished.
Reagan is credited by Fox Noise, talk radio, and the idiot right with rebuilding our military. Yes he brought back the B1 and B2 bombers but he also brought the U.S.S. Iowa and other World War Two battleships out of mothballs and refitted them at huge expense in an erstwhile effort to fight the last war or to be precise the war before the war before the last war. In truth when Pappy Bush launched his assault on the errant Saddam in the first Gulf War, he did it with Jimmy Carter’s weapons—cruise missiles, smart bombs.
Reagan, it seems, was an amiable boob but a boob nonetheless, reminding one not so much of his hero Calvin Coolidge, but Warren G. Harding. The “Acting President”, as Bob Scheifer called him, who horrified the Neo-Cons by sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev at Raykivic and nearly giving away our nuclear arsenal. Fortunately the vitality of the U.S. economy and a great deal of institutional inertia and memory prevented Reagan from running roughshod over the country. But Reagan paid homage to Coolidge only in taking down the portrait of Woodrow Wilson in the cabinet room and hanging ‘Ol Cal in his place and by regularly napping and thereby sleepwalking through half his presidency. With Oliver North playing Bernard fall and Iran-Contra replacing Teapot Dome, Reagan played his best Warren Harding in that he ushered in an era of reaction, greed, corruption and scandal.
It remains to be seen whether Fred Thompson brings the same ability to suspend disbelief with the same disdain for the facts. Clearly no facts can prevent him from genuflecting before the altar of low taxes. No facts can dissuade him from unabashed support of dubya’s war. Still I have my doubts. I didn’t know Ronnie, Ronnie wasn’t a friend of mine, but from what I can see, Fred you’re no Ronnie Reagan. But then again if you don’t put some distance between yourself and “The Great Decider”, if you don’t put more daylight between you and ‘Ol Two-Cows than there is between Dubya’s ears, we will never find out.
The Neo-Cons, ever keen to maximize the political potential of an unmitigated disaster, saw in Katrina a golden opportunity to create a veritable Petri dish of Right-wing ideological fungus masquerading as penicillin. The first response after the untimely removal of ‘You’re doing a helluva job’ Brownie was to announce that hereafter the old Wade-Davis provisions would not apply to the rebuilding effort. Back in the good old days, before the ideological cabal had hijacked the government, two members of congress one a Democrat the other a Republican had joined forces and passed the Wade-Davis bill which required any government-funded project to meet the prevailing community wage rates. This requirement was the first casualty of the recovery effort. Gone also was the need to employ U.S. citizens. Twenty percent, by some estimates, of the construction workers employed in the rebuilding of the city are illegal aliens. Judging by the prevalence of the illegals in the construction industry in the greater Atlanta area and in other parts of the country this may be a gross underestimation. In any case the storm provided the crisis needed to overrule sound and established policy traditionally governing our response to such crises and gave the Neo-Cons the opportunity to impose the ideological imperative and in so doing denied the residents of the city a chance to work at a living wage or a chance to find work rebuilding their own city at all.
While temporary housing in the form of mobile trailers sat for years in an Arkansas field, citizens of the city, having nowhere to stay, could not come home and rebuild. To use the public purse for such charity is in clear violation of the ideological imperative so dear to the Neo-Cons. To Wit: the response must be by the private sector (albeit with a large dose of public funds) and it must be profit driven.
The same with the schools. According to Tisserand, “immediately after the flood, Bush attempted a $500 million voucher program to allow displaced children to enroll in private and religious schools across the country. Critics saw the move as an attempt to exploit the disaster to finally enact vouchers, a longstanding Bush goal, and the initiative failed. There was no similar outcry when the US Department of Education pledged $44.8 million to Louisiana for post-Katrina charter schools. Yet the Administration left no doubt that the move was intended to quickly prop up charters: It offered no comparable funding to re-establish traditional neighborhood or district schools.” The result is that the public school system has become a ‘dumping ground’, a system of ‘catch-all’ schools that
“Is required in a free market system, because there must be a place for the kids who don’t gain entry elsewhere” (The Nation, September 10/17, 2007 pg. 22).
So the Administration loosed the dogs of greed upon the helpless survivors of the Gulf coast in a fevered attempt to surpass ‘Ol Pappy’s days when Florida was set upon by the “roofers from Hell” and other beasts of prey in the wake of Hurricane Andrew. It was a strategy ‘Ol Two-Cows’ had worked elsewhere to perfection. He would simply replicate on the Gulf Coast what he had so assiduously struggled to attain in the Persian Gulf: to privatize everything in sight, to get his friends at Halliburton another government sinecure and put another feather in the cap of his able vice-president, still on the Halliburton payroll. Who cares if we beshit ourselves in bayou country, there is real money to be made making hay in a hurricane.
“Money for nothing
And chicks for free”—Dire Straits
The country cared. ‘Ol Two-Cows’ popularity plummeted to Nixonian levels; below even the base Republican vote in any respectable or even legitimate election. Gone was his much touted “political capital”. America suddenly saw that the emperor had no clothes, and even less sense. For all intents and purposes, George W. Bush became a dead duck president. Suddenly seeing an imminent end, CNN began to post the number of remaining days until the next election and the number of days until inauguration on its crawlspace. States began a stampede to move up their primary elections so as to jump-start the next election cycle. A collective wish that the long national nightmare be over.
But there was a silver lining in the clouds of Katrina for gone now was George W. Bush’s congressional majorities, his assault on overtime and his neglect of the minimum wage. Gone too was his assault on Social Security. America had been repulsed by the sight of the emperor beshit with incompetence and reveling in unimaginable degradation. Katrina had, at least temporarily, saved the surviving remnants of the New Deal.
Meanwhile Fred Thompson of Tennessee has entered the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. Fred is known primarily for acting stints on “Law and Order” and a few movie and television roles, once actually playing the president of the United States. The political pachyderms, in what amounts to a total panic at the electoral prospects now looming, are grasping at straws in Iowa and other primary states trying to find a new messiah to lead them out of the wilderness. “If only we could recreate the glory days”, they say to each other in whispered breath, “if only we could resurrect Ronnie”. What the hell an actor once held them and much of the nation spellbound, why not nominate yet another thespian. Perhaps he can deliver some of that old black magic.
Reagan was one of those characters who walks on stage, holds the audience in rapt attention, and then makes his exit to thundering applause. He accomplished on the political stage what he could not on the boards of Broadway or the silver screen for upon his exit the crowd sat transfixed unable to judge the man behind the curtain. Reagan was a host of contradictions. The darling of the bible-thumping fundamentalist idiot right he espoused family values but was, nevertheless, the first divorced man to be elected President of the United States. Campaigning against “big government” and charging that “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem”, he nevertheless presided over a peacetime expansion of the federal payroll not seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson. Espousing conservative fiscal restraint he created what were, for the time, record deficits. Advocating a strong military and talking tough to our adversaries (once calling the Soviet Union the ‘evil empire’), he nevertheless chose to wage war on countries whose military strength represented the might of roughly the police force of the city of Miami. No one remembers that when the going got tough, “the tough got going”, as in when 280 marines were killed by a suicide bomber in south Lebanon. Ronnie simply put his tail between his legs and called the boys home. Ronnie was able to straddle these contradictions and transcend them because he had somehow mastered on the political stage what had been so elusive on the silver screen: he had become, in the moniker Congresswoman Schroeder so aptly gave him, “the Teflon President”; he had succeeded in suspending disbelief.
The acting profession has not had such an impact on national public policy since John Wilkes Booth made his last brief appearance at Ford’s Theatre. Ronnie created a fiscal mess that took not only most of his second term but arguably cost his successor re-election because he had to break his famous ‘no new taxes’ pledge to keep the republic from sinking deep into a financial abyss. It wasn’t until Clinton again upwardly adjusted the tax code that some sense of fiscal responsibility was restored to the republic.
Reagan also gets credit for a booming economy. The historical record is checkered and somewhat contradictory on this point. The record shows huge deficits beginning in the early 80’s brought on by Ronnie’s cutting taxes on the highest earners from roughly 72% to 29%, later adjusted upward to around 33%. In fact for a brief period the highest tax payers were actually in a lower tax bracket than the middle class: 29% as compared with 32. This of course led to huge increases in the disparity of wealth and made it possible, along with changes in the Social Security tax structure and the passing of the cost of services to state and local governments where tax codes are much more regressive, for the rich to accumulate huge sums while the middle and lower classes struggled. For the entire first term, the nation stood dead in the water: Gross National Product, a measure of the economic productivity of the country, did not reach 1979 levels until 1985. Unemployment, high interest rates, and inflation continued to curse the best laid plans of presidents and men. As in the twenties, the prosperity of the 80’s was not widely shared by the country. The economy looked good on paper but while Wall Street prospered, Main Street languished.
Reagan is credited by Fox Noise, talk radio, and the idiot right with rebuilding our military. Yes he brought back the B1 and B2 bombers but he also brought the U.S.S. Iowa and other World War Two battleships out of mothballs and refitted them at huge expense in an erstwhile effort to fight the last war or to be precise the war before the war before the last war. In truth when Pappy Bush launched his assault on the errant Saddam in the first Gulf War, he did it with Jimmy Carter’s weapons—cruise missiles, smart bombs.
Reagan, it seems, was an amiable boob but a boob nonetheless, reminding one not so much of his hero Calvin Coolidge, but Warren G. Harding. The “Acting President”, as Bob Scheifer called him, who horrified the Neo-Cons by sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev at Raykivic and nearly giving away our nuclear arsenal. Fortunately the vitality of the U.S. economy and a great deal of institutional inertia and memory prevented Reagan from running roughshod over the country. But Reagan paid homage to Coolidge only in taking down the portrait of Woodrow Wilson in the cabinet room and hanging ‘Ol Cal in his place and by regularly napping and thereby sleepwalking through half his presidency. With Oliver North playing Bernard fall and Iran-Contra replacing Teapot Dome, Reagan played his best Warren Harding in that he ushered in an era of reaction, greed, corruption and scandal.
It remains to be seen whether Fred Thompson brings the same ability to suspend disbelief with the same disdain for the facts. Clearly no facts can prevent him from genuflecting before the altar of low taxes. No facts can dissuade him from unabashed support of dubya’s war. Still I have my doubts. I didn’t know Ronnie, Ronnie wasn’t a friend of mine, but from what I can see, Fred you’re no Ronnie Reagan. But then again if you don’t put some distance between yourself and “The Great Decider”, if you don’t put more daylight between you and ‘Ol Two-Cows than there is between Dubya’s ears, we will never find out.
September 16, 2007: Sheik it Up, Fatal Attraction,
The news over the weekend have brought some altogether predictable and some startling developments. In Iraq, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was assassinated by Al-Qaida forces in Anbar province. The Sheik was recently in the news having switched sides, leading a band of tribal leaders from the insurgency to support of US backed government forces. Al-Qaida immediately took responsibility announcing that it has formed “security committees” responsible for the assassination of any Iraqi leader who cooperates with the U.S. led coalition forces or the Iraqi government. Abu Risha was unfortunate to have achieved a high enough profile to be so targeted and was immediately eliminated. This, apparently, is what happens when one has one’s picture taken with George W. Bush out in the Iraq desert. Yesterday it was announced that insurgent forces had assassinated a high ranking Iraqi security official. It remains to be seen how well the recent developments in Anbar province will hold up, given the emerging vulnerability of any pro-government figure to this kind of retaliation. Anbar had been singled out by General Petreus and other administration officials as an example of the pacification of the countryside. But this is the very province where Al-Qaida has felt strong enough to announce the creation of an Islamist state within a state and has and continues to challenge the Iraqi government for power and legitimacy. The insurgents have demonstrated that they will not go quietly into that good night.
Meanwhile, recent CNN polls show that 47% of Iraqi’s want us out of the country immediately. Within the last year the provisional governmental council has asked us to leave, and an emerging majority of the country says it is o.k. to kill Americans. With friends like this….
Similar developments occurred at home. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, author of the “contract on America”, and the thief that stole Christmas announced over the weekend that he would not be a candidate for President of the United States. Citing an 80-20% chance of a Democratic triumph, ‘ol Newt’ declared the political waters too frigid to chance jumping into the contest. Gingrich spoke gloomily of an upcoming Democratic landslide unless every Republican put some distance between their campaigns and the White House. Newt, of course, is merely pointing out the painfully obvious for the Desert Fox has got himself so tangled in tar that anyone who gets close to him is likely to be joined at the hip. As Sheik Abu Risha recently so graphically demonstrated W can be a fatal attraction.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is out with a new book in which he has for the first time demonstrated that he can indeed speak in simple declarative sentences. Eschewing the obtuse obfuscation of his official declarations, Greenspan for the first time speaks in the King’s English demonstrating that he can indeed render the obvious obvious. Saying that Bush has run the country into the fiscal ditch with his tax policies, that Bush had favored wealth over work, and that he has put America on the wrong course, Greenspan eulogized Nixon and Clinton saying they were the most intelligent Presidents he’d had the pleasure to serve. Initial reviews of his work leave the question unanswered as to whom was the most mentally challenged, but then again it doesn’t take much of an imagination to figure that out.
The White House reacted with its usual palaver, with the assistant Press Secretary immediately taking to the ramparts with nonsense about spending whatever it takes to keep America safe from the terrorist threat. This, of course, is a boldface misrepresentation of the facts and yet another attempt to smear the historical record. The record clearly shows that this administration had run the train off the tracks by mid summer of 2001 with its retroactive tax cuts creating a burgeoning deficit that necessitated breaking into the social security lock box (something Bush had pledged not to do in the 2000 campaign) to cover operating expenses. All this well before 911. In any case the two trillion in new debt has not bought us any greater security with two million illegal immigrants crossing our open borders every year and our sea ports nearly unprotected and managed by interests in Dubai. Query: would it have taken FDR four and a half years to secure our ports from axis attack in World War II? Would any other administration in historical memory with the possible exception of James Buchanan and Pappy Bush have left the borders completely unprotected this long into the conflict? But then this is no world war and I knew FDR, FDR was a friend of mine, and “’Ol Two-Cows” is no FDR.
Meanwhile, recent CNN polls show that 47% of Iraqi’s want us out of the country immediately. Within the last year the provisional governmental council has asked us to leave, and an emerging majority of the country says it is o.k. to kill Americans. With friends like this….
Similar developments occurred at home. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, author of the “contract on America”, and the thief that stole Christmas announced over the weekend that he would not be a candidate for President of the United States. Citing an 80-20% chance of a Democratic triumph, ‘ol Newt’ declared the political waters too frigid to chance jumping into the contest. Gingrich spoke gloomily of an upcoming Democratic landslide unless every Republican put some distance between their campaigns and the White House. Newt, of course, is merely pointing out the painfully obvious for the Desert Fox has got himself so tangled in tar that anyone who gets close to him is likely to be joined at the hip. As Sheik Abu Risha recently so graphically demonstrated W can be a fatal attraction.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is out with a new book in which he has for the first time demonstrated that he can indeed speak in simple declarative sentences. Eschewing the obtuse obfuscation of his official declarations, Greenspan for the first time speaks in the King’s English demonstrating that he can indeed render the obvious obvious. Saying that Bush has run the country into the fiscal ditch with his tax policies, that Bush had favored wealth over work, and that he has put America on the wrong course, Greenspan eulogized Nixon and Clinton saying they were the most intelligent Presidents he’d had the pleasure to serve. Initial reviews of his work leave the question unanswered as to whom was the most mentally challenged, but then again it doesn’t take much of an imagination to figure that out.
The White House reacted with its usual palaver, with the assistant Press Secretary immediately taking to the ramparts with nonsense about spending whatever it takes to keep America safe from the terrorist threat. This, of course, is a boldface misrepresentation of the facts and yet another attempt to smear the historical record. The record clearly shows that this administration had run the train off the tracks by mid summer of 2001 with its retroactive tax cuts creating a burgeoning deficit that necessitated breaking into the social security lock box (something Bush had pledged not to do in the 2000 campaign) to cover operating expenses. All this well before 911. In any case the two trillion in new debt has not bought us any greater security with two million illegal immigrants crossing our open borders every year and our sea ports nearly unprotected and managed by interests in Dubai. Query: would it have taken FDR four and a half years to secure our ports from axis attack in World War II? Would any other administration in historical memory with the possible exception of James Buchanan and Pappy Bush have left the borders completely unprotected this long into the conflict? But then this is no world war and I knew FDR, FDR was a friend of mine, and “’Ol Two-Cows” is no FDR.
September 12, 2007: The Elephant at the Circus, The Desert Fox and the Tar Baby, Incompetence as its own
There is an old story about a middle aged man who one day took his son to the circus. Nearing the big tent the man and his boy passed by the circus elephants that were roped off to the side awaiting their turn to perform. Walking along the rope line the man suddenly noticed an attendant with his hand inserted up the elephant’s ass, all the way to his arm pits.
“Look daddy, what’s that man doing?” cried the boy.
“Good question what are doing?” asked the man.
“The elephant is constipated”, replied the attendant.
“I think I’d look for another job if I were you”, said the man.
“What! Are you crazy! Leave show business?”
So it is with anyone who makes his living with elephants. Unfortunately for the Democrats the government is lousy with political pachyderms and they are condemned to spend most of their time following behind them with a shovel cleaning up the mess.
“What! Are you crazy! Leave politics?” cry the Democrats.
So it is.
The awful truth is no matter who is elected the next President, be he or she a Republican or Democrat, will have to immediately go about the task of shoveling up the shit by systematically undoing virtually everything this fool has put his hands on. In this sense this “values” President has inadvertently become a veritable criterion of value; for whatever he did was wrong and sound public policy, if not common decency, require that the next administration reverse everything he has done.
Let’s take the case of Iraq. To risk mixing a metaphor, we need to visit good ‘ol Uncle Remus. In the “Song of the South”, he presented us with the enduring tale of “brer Fox, brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. The genius of our adversary was not only did he find a low tech response to a high tech challenge by transforming box cutters into guided missiles, but he managed to get the boy blunder to play brer fox to his brer Rabbit.
Chasing Osama ‘brer rabbit’ into the dense thicket of the Middle East ‘Ol Two-Cows’ vowed to bring him back ‘dead or alive’. But Bin Laden knew that George the Cheerleader turned Desert Fox would not for long be able to resist getting his hands on the Tar Baby, in this case the rich oil fields of Iraq. Just throw out a few loose connections, spread some rumors of Iraqi support, just make oneself hard enough to find and Bush—who has always suffered from attention deficit syndrome—would soon enough be fixated by the Tar Baby of Baghdad.
And so it was. Not much more than a year into the conflict and major resources and plans were made for the Iraqi adventure.
“Tell me Saddam, where are your weapons of mass destruction”?
And the Tar Baby says nothin’. He just sits there and stares.
“Tell me Saddam, where are your weapons of mass destruction!” cries the Desert Fox
Once again the Tar Baby, he says nothin’. He jus’ sits there and stares.
Angry, the Desert Fox grabs the Tar Baby by the throat…and screams
“Tell me Saddam…”
But the Tar Baby, he says nothin’
And the Desert Fox he try to pull his hands free but the Tar Baby stick to the fox and would not let go and the more the Desert Fox try to get free of da Tar Baby the more he get all tangled up.
And brer Rabbit, he just laughs and laughs.
Somewhere in the bowls of a neo-con stink tank—say the Heritage Foundation—there is a budding disciple of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove who came to the conclusion that incompetence is its own reward. That if we can make incompetence an ethic, a governing principle, we can destroy public confidence in governance. Destroy public confidence and you destroy the public willingness to finance government. Destroy the public’s perceived need for government and you destroy the need to tax.
They learned from Nixon that incompetence can serve your political agenda. Nixon gave us wage and price controls in the early ‘70s. Regulating retail but not wholesale prices, the Nixon administration failed to control the runaway inflation of the age where in more competent hands such policies were a signal success. Confronted with hyperinflation after the end of the Second World War, when consumers were flush with money made from war production and consumer goods were in short supply, the Truman administration instituted controls. The record of the administration to hold prices in line until consumer production increased enough to ease price pressure served as a touchstone of public policy that succeeding administrations could refer to when confronted with similar economic problems.
Then came Nixon. By totally botching the administration of price controls Nixon failed to bring prices under control. The result was a loss of confidence in governance and at the end of the stagflation era of the ‘70s stood Ronald Reagan. It was a seminal lesson to the young Neo-Cons. Fuck it up and you still win! Bad administration creates a more conservative public. Answer: More fuck ups….
Reagan did his best to run the government bankrupt, and subverted the constitution by trying to create a self-funding stand-alone foreign policy in Nicaragua answerable to no one. But, alas, poor Ronnie was too gentle and far too reasonable to fuck it up too badly. So he raised taxes five times beginning a long series of tax increases to try to right the fiscal ship, ending with Pappy Bush’s unhappy reversal of the “READ MY LIPS” pledge and Bill Clinton’s minor adjustments to the upper tax bracket in the early 90’s. No this couldn’t stand…lurking in the weeds, funding the long assault on Clinton’s financial deals and sexual peccadilloes lay the neo-cons, waiting for their chance to strike.
Lightning struck in 2000 in the form of an inarticulate, diminutive, former coke snorting, pot-smoking alcoholic who had demonstrated his bona fide’s to the idiot Right by making a complete botch of virtually everything he had ever laid his hands on. What better way to achieve the required level of incompetence than put a complete incompetent in charge? Enter Crawford’s very own village idiot.
And so within months of establishing, through mass voter fraud and intimidation, the Bastard Presidency Bush had managed to lay waste our economic prospects by transforming record surplus into record deficits—breaking into the social security lock box a full two months before the terrorist attacks of 911.
He lay waste our energy policy by empowering Enron to perpetrate larceny on a scale never before seen. His justice department and energy department stood transfixed as Enron gamed the energy market of the West coast bilking billions from governments and tax payers, and, incidentally producing a recall of the governor of California (Democratic) and electing a new governor ( Republican).
He laid waste our economy by allowing millions of illegal immigrants into the country to compete for labor intensive jobs that are not easily exportable. Other jobs he allowed to be exported out of the country. He has been the only President since Herbert Hoover to have failed to create a single net job while four years in office. He ran up huge trade deficits which, in effect, meant the export of capital out of the country. America was trading the family cow for a relative handful of beans in the form of cheap Chinese goods destined to entice the American consumer at thousands of dollar stores and Wal-Marts throughout the land. Cheap goods with little use value and short life. Goods that in the main are quickly and readily discarded into landfills where they will be forever interred. That is the real monument to the monumental stupidity that has characterized American economic policy under both Democrats and Republicans for the last thirty years. Our enduring architectural monuments will be not our buildings—which are ugly and will be happily torn down—or our roads. The enduring monuments are our landfills which dwarf in size and longevity anything we produce. Testaments to the consumer society in which a market/price driven economy genuflecting before the ‘free markets’ willing takes a serrated knife and cuts it’s own throat, happily gutting it’s own economy in the name of free trade. Bush is only the latest to have happily sold his country for thirty talents of silver.
He had one single success in his first four years in office: his No Child Left Behind Act. But once passed, he refused to fund the “No Child left Behind” mandates.
Posturing as a friend of the military and smearing his opponents as being against the common soldier, he nonetheless cut funding for the Veteran’s administration whilst committing this country to an open ended military engagement.
His Justice Department took an 8 year nap from any anti-trust actions, dropping several high profile cases, such as Microsoft, and allowing untold mergers in the marketplace further concentrating wealth and power.
In Iraq this President and his henchman refused to heed advice as to what would be needed to stabilize the country. He purposefully began the campaign undermanned and ignored early and growing signs of insurgency, holding to the romanticism of the neo-cons that we would be welcome in Baghdad as heroes and liberators, and would be greeted with roses instead of bombs.
His Defense Department, budget office, intelligence agencies and auditors promoted the “privatization” of the Iraqi economy, created private military forces such as Blackwater to protect Halliburton, Bechtel and other corporate interests in Iraq, introducing a force of mercenaries representing America by shooting up the countryside. Billions disappeared due to graft and corruption along with 170,000 ak-47 rifles that somehow slipped thru the hands of the emerging Iraqi military, probably into the hands of insurgents.
He led an assault on Social Security by producing bogus predictions of impending doom justifying a move toward “privatization” always central to the neo-con’s core sexual fantasy.
Then came Katrina. While this president vacationed at his Crawford Ranch, ‘Ol Two-Cows played the guitar, sang and partied while the city drown.
Let me be very clear about this: Any other president with the possible exception of Pappy Bush would have responded immediately and effectively to the crisis of a category 5 hurricane bearing down on a city situated below sea level. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, would have marshaled the forces of the federal agencies as well as the armed forces, and would have followed the storm into the city with helicopters, pontoon boats, rafts, light water craft, fresh water, food, temporary shelter, medical supplies, and mobile power units. But then none of them chose to put the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the hands of a director whose previous management experience was running a horse stable.
In the annals of public administration is a force called “institutional memory”. Institutional memory is the rules, regulations, policies, procedures and previous practices that govern institutional responses to crises. This provides not only continuity and consistency to an institution, but enables it to achieve some stability and longevity as the institution is able to weather a measure of incompetence, stupidity and bad luck. It is for this reason that the Catholic Church could survive several incompetent and more than a few criminal popes. It is for this reason that our republic has been able to survive the elevation of such men as Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan, Warren Harding, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
To achieve this level of incompetence requires more than the unhappy elevation of a hapless soul fitted with mediocre talent and cursed with bad luck. This requires a deliberate imposition of ignorance, stupidity, venality and greed. To dismantle and render neutral the power of the federal government requires acts of deliberate mendacity. It requires the chutzpah to put not only Brownie in charge of FEMA but “W” in the White House. We learned from Pappy’s unhappy experience when he screwed up the response to hurricane Andrew, and thereby lost Florida and the election to Clinton, that for incompetence to be its own reward an incompetence of an entirely higher order of magnitude is required. Unfortunately, Pappy had an idiot son.
An’ brer Rabbit, he jus’ laugh and laugh.
“Look daddy, what’s that man doing?” cried the boy.
“Good question what are doing?” asked the man.
“The elephant is constipated”, replied the attendant.
“I think I’d look for another job if I were you”, said the man.
“What! Are you crazy! Leave show business?”
So it is with anyone who makes his living with elephants. Unfortunately for the Democrats the government is lousy with political pachyderms and they are condemned to spend most of their time following behind them with a shovel cleaning up the mess.
“What! Are you crazy! Leave politics?” cry the Democrats.
So it is.
The awful truth is no matter who is elected the next President, be he or she a Republican or Democrat, will have to immediately go about the task of shoveling up the shit by systematically undoing virtually everything this fool has put his hands on. In this sense this “values” President has inadvertently become a veritable criterion of value; for whatever he did was wrong and sound public policy, if not common decency, require that the next administration reverse everything he has done.
Let’s take the case of Iraq. To risk mixing a metaphor, we need to visit good ‘ol Uncle Remus. In the “Song of the South”, he presented us with the enduring tale of “brer Fox, brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. The genius of our adversary was not only did he find a low tech response to a high tech challenge by transforming box cutters into guided missiles, but he managed to get the boy blunder to play brer fox to his brer Rabbit.
Chasing Osama ‘brer rabbit’ into the dense thicket of the Middle East ‘Ol Two-Cows’ vowed to bring him back ‘dead or alive’. But Bin Laden knew that George the Cheerleader turned Desert Fox would not for long be able to resist getting his hands on the Tar Baby, in this case the rich oil fields of Iraq. Just throw out a few loose connections, spread some rumors of Iraqi support, just make oneself hard enough to find and Bush—who has always suffered from attention deficit syndrome—would soon enough be fixated by the Tar Baby of Baghdad.
And so it was. Not much more than a year into the conflict and major resources and plans were made for the Iraqi adventure.
“Tell me Saddam, where are your weapons of mass destruction”?
And the Tar Baby says nothin’. He just sits there and stares.
“Tell me Saddam, where are your weapons of mass destruction!” cries the Desert Fox
Once again the Tar Baby, he says nothin’. He jus’ sits there and stares.
Angry, the Desert Fox grabs the Tar Baby by the throat…and screams
“Tell me Saddam…”
But the Tar Baby, he says nothin’
And the Desert Fox he try to pull his hands free but the Tar Baby stick to the fox and would not let go and the more the Desert Fox try to get free of da Tar Baby the more he get all tangled up.
And brer Rabbit, he just laughs and laughs.
Somewhere in the bowls of a neo-con stink tank—say the Heritage Foundation—there is a budding disciple of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove who came to the conclusion that incompetence is its own reward. That if we can make incompetence an ethic, a governing principle, we can destroy public confidence in governance. Destroy public confidence and you destroy the public willingness to finance government. Destroy the public’s perceived need for government and you destroy the need to tax.
They learned from Nixon that incompetence can serve your political agenda. Nixon gave us wage and price controls in the early ‘70s. Regulating retail but not wholesale prices, the Nixon administration failed to control the runaway inflation of the age where in more competent hands such policies were a signal success. Confronted with hyperinflation after the end of the Second World War, when consumers were flush with money made from war production and consumer goods were in short supply, the Truman administration instituted controls. The record of the administration to hold prices in line until consumer production increased enough to ease price pressure served as a touchstone of public policy that succeeding administrations could refer to when confronted with similar economic problems.
Then came Nixon. By totally botching the administration of price controls Nixon failed to bring prices under control. The result was a loss of confidence in governance and at the end of the stagflation era of the ‘70s stood Ronald Reagan. It was a seminal lesson to the young Neo-Cons. Fuck it up and you still win! Bad administration creates a more conservative public. Answer: More fuck ups….
Reagan did his best to run the government bankrupt, and subverted the constitution by trying to create a self-funding stand-alone foreign policy in Nicaragua answerable to no one. But, alas, poor Ronnie was too gentle and far too reasonable to fuck it up too badly. So he raised taxes five times beginning a long series of tax increases to try to right the fiscal ship, ending with Pappy Bush’s unhappy reversal of the “READ MY LIPS” pledge and Bill Clinton’s minor adjustments to the upper tax bracket in the early 90’s. No this couldn’t stand…lurking in the weeds, funding the long assault on Clinton’s financial deals and sexual peccadilloes lay the neo-cons, waiting for their chance to strike.
Lightning struck in 2000 in the form of an inarticulate, diminutive, former coke snorting, pot-smoking alcoholic who had demonstrated his bona fide’s to the idiot Right by making a complete botch of virtually everything he had ever laid his hands on. What better way to achieve the required level of incompetence than put a complete incompetent in charge? Enter Crawford’s very own village idiot.
And so within months of establishing, through mass voter fraud and intimidation, the Bastard Presidency Bush had managed to lay waste our economic prospects by transforming record surplus into record deficits—breaking into the social security lock box a full two months before the terrorist attacks of 911.
He lay waste our energy policy by empowering Enron to perpetrate larceny on a scale never before seen. His justice department and energy department stood transfixed as Enron gamed the energy market of the West coast bilking billions from governments and tax payers, and, incidentally producing a recall of the governor of California (Democratic) and electing a new governor ( Republican).
He laid waste our economy by allowing millions of illegal immigrants into the country to compete for labor intensive jobs that are not easily exportable. Other jobs he allowed to be exported out of the country. He has been the only President since Herbert Hoover to have failed to create a single net job while four years in office. He ran up huge trade deficits which, in effect, meant the export of capital out of the country. America was trading the family cow for a relative handful of beans in the form of cheap Chinese goods destined to entice the American consumer at thousands of dollar stores and Wal-Marts throughout the land. Cheap goods with little use value and short life. Goods that in the main are quickly and readily discarded into landfills where they will be forever interred. That is the real monument to the monumental stupidity that has characterized American economic policy under both Democrats and Republicans for the last thirty years. Our enduring architectural monuments will be not our buildings—which are ugly and will be happily torn down—or our roads. The enduring monuments are our landfills which dwarf in size and longevity anything we produce. Testaments to the consumer society in which a market/price driven economy genuflecting before the ‘free markets’ willing takes a serrated knife and cuts it’s own throat, happily gutting it’s own economy in the name of free trade. Bush is only the latest to have happily sold his country for thirty talents of silver.
He had one single success in his first four years in office: his No Child Left Behind Act. But once passed, he refused to fund the “No Child left Behind” mandates.
Posturing as a friend of the military and smearing his opponents as being against the common soldier, he nonetheless cut funding for the Veteran’s administration whilst committing this country to an open ended military engagement.
His Justice Department took an 8 year nap from any anti-trust actions, dropping several high profile cases, such as Microsoft, and allowing untold mergers in the marketplace further concentrating wealth and power.
In Iraq this President and his henchman refused to heed advice as to what would be needed to stabilize the country. He purposefully began the campaign undermanned and ignored early and growing signs of insurgency, holding to the romanticism of the neo-cons that we would be welcome in Baghdad as heroes and liberators, and would be greeted with roses instead of bombs.
His Defense Department, budget office, intelligence agencies and auditors promoted the “privatization” of the Iraqi economy, created private military forces such as Blackwater to protect Halliburton, Bechtel and other corporate interests in Iraq, introducing a force of mercenaries representing America by shooting up the countryside. Billions disappeared due to graft and corruption along with 170,000 ak-47 rifles that somehow slipped thru the hands of the emerging Iraqi military, probably into the hands of insurgents.
He led an assault on Social Security by producing bogus predictions of impending doom justifying a move toward “privatization” always central to the neo-con’s core sexual fantasy.
Then came Katrina. While this president vacationed at his Crawford Ranch, ‘Ol Two-Cows played the guitar, sang and partied while the city drown.
Let me be very clear about this: Any other president with the possible exception of Pappy Bush would have responded immediately and effectively to the crisis of a category 5 hurricane bearing down on a city situated below sea level. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, would have marshaled the forces of the federal agencies as well as the armed forces, and would have followed the storm into the city with helicopters, pontoon boats, rafts, light water craft, fresh water, food, temporary shelter, medical supplies, and mobile power units. But then none of them chose to put the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the hands of a director whose previous management experience was running a horse stable.
In the annals of public administration is a force called “institutional memory”. Institutional memory is the rules, regulations, policies, procedures and previous practices that govern institutional responses to crises. This provides not only continuity and consistency to an institution, but enables it to achieve some stability and longevity as the institution is able to weather a measure of incompetence, stupidity and bad luck. It is for this reason that the Catholic Church could survive several incompetent and more than a few criminal popes. It is for this reason that our republic has been able to survive the elevation of such men as Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan, Warren Harding, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
To achieve this level of incompetence requires more than the unhappy elevation of a hapless soul fitted with mediocre talent and cursed with bad luck. This requires a deliberate imposition of ignorance, stupidity, venality and greed. To dismantle and render neutral the power of the federal government requires acts of deliberate mendacity. It requires the chutzpah to put not only Brownie in charge of FEMA but “W” in the White House. We learned from Pappy’s unhappy experience when he screwed up the response to hurricane Andrew, and thereby lost Florida and the election to Clinton, that for incompetence to be its own reward an incompetence of an entirely higher order of magnitude is required. Unfortunately, Pappy had an idiot son.
An’ brer Rabbit, he jus’ laugh and laugh.
Jan 26, 2008
September 11, 2007: 9/11 Remembered, The War President, Criminal Intent
Today, as advertised, marked the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attack on New York City and the Pentagon. Our self-proclaimed “global war on terror” has met with mixed results with no end in sight while the main perpetrator remains at-large somewhere in the outer regions of tribal Pakistan.
It shouldn’t have gone like this. Upon hearing of the attack whilst reading “Tickle me Elmo” or was it “Bestial Beauty” to an elementary school classroom, Bush characteristically boarded Air Force One and disappeared for the day, leaving Rudy Guilliani to speak for the city and the nation as events unfolded during that long agonizing morning and afternoon. It is difficult to imagine Lyndon Johnson or John Kennedy or Richard Nixon, or Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton trembling under a desk at some undisclosed location while the nation is under attack. But then none of them would have been compelled to bring his Vice President along to hold his hand when he appeared before the 911 commission. In any case after once again going AWOL, Bush descended Air Force One and “took control” of the situation, announcing that we had been attacked by a ruthless enemy with global reach in what was clearly an act of war. The boy blunder was wrong on both counts, for this was neither an act of war, nor did our “enemy” have “global reach”, at least not in anything like military terms.
Someday, when the emotions recede and the country begins to gain some perspective on the awful events that we commemorate today, historians will write that what happened on that beautiful late summer morning in the Big Apple was not an act of war but a criminal act perpetrated by a small but fanatical group of zealots. Furthermore this crime did not represent a military threat. Let me repeat: the attacks of 911 were not the deeds of a military force as was the case, say during the cold war or at Pearl Harbor.
I have not been understood. We were not attacked by an imperial navy, a squadron of bombers, by intercontinental or even medium range missiles. We were attacked by a dozen and a half box cutters, wielded by men who were willing to exchange their lives to achieve a limited strike against a symbol of western imperial power. This was a politically-motivated criminal act committed by terrorists.
The response by this administration was disproportionate, misguided, and overreaching. Instead of responding as we should have responded, i.e., bomb and destroy the terrorist training camps, perhaps topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan to destroy the state protection of Al-Qaida, track down the financial network supporting these groups and seize their assets, and hunt down these criminals and put them before the docket at the Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity, we instead responded with overwhelming traditional military force—precisely the response anticipated and hoped for by the terrorists. To send in conventional ground forces means that one must then occupy the country and all the attendant problems that occupation entails.
Instead Bush declared himself a “war president” and demanded all the attendant powers and then a few more. He tore up international treaties on nuclear weapons in space, and anti-ballistic missile defenses. With the advice of his legal counsel Alberto Gonzales he “re-interpreted” the Geneva conventions declaring that international prohibitions on the torture of prisoners would apply only if it involved major organ failure. “Water boarding” became merely surfing for truth. He violated international law by expatriating suspected terrorists, and moved to deny detainees Habeas Corpus thereby holding suspects for years without charge. He introduced unsupervised telephone and computer surveillance. As bad as were the assault on international law and civil liberties nothing was as disgusting as this president’s use of his “wartime” popularity (as high as 90% in the aftermath of 911) to become a “transcendent” president in the tradition of F.D.R. Unfortunately the diminutive one used his powers not to be like F.D.R, but to pursue the long-held wet dream of the idiot right to undo the last vestiges of the New Deal. He has presided over an administration that has not found a legitimate anti-trust action to pursue, that has rolled back environmental regulation that has sought to decertify unions and allowed mergers and acquisitions without number. In the last days of the late Republican congress the workers of the United States missed by a relative handful of votes having overtime pay stripped from federal law. And finally, the long assault on social security—long the dream of the idiot right—nearly succeeded until hurricane Katrina stripped the fig leaf from “compassionate conservatism”.
Al Franken in his book “Truth, With Jokes” details the “Downing Street Memos” involving British diplomats and intelligence officers relating to the Blair government the fixation of the White House with toppling Saddam Hussein as early as February of 2001, and the attempt by this administration to link Iraq with the subsequent attack on September 11. By way of demonstration, it is clear that the administration saw the attacks as a godsend which would accomplish simultaneously two objectives: topple the Hussein regime in Baghdad and make the diminutive one a war president, a transcendent leader—one who could finally realize the pipe dreams of the conservative opium den—roll back the clock and transport America back into the nineteenth century.
What began with the criminal intent of a band of zealots in the sands of the middle east was transfigured by the criminal intent of a band of zealots in the conservative stink tanks. Zealots who had already hijacked the government and could now legitimize their efforts to wage war on the middle class by using any success, real or imagined, any “political capital” gained by the prosecution of war to strip the middle class of its last vestiges of security. This is the real war being waged by this administration. It is not the war on terror; it is the war on the middle class.
It shouldn’t have gone like this. Upon hearing of the attack whilst reading “Tickle me Elmo” or was it “Bestial Beauty” to an elementary school classroom, Bush characteristically boarded Air Force One and disappeared for the day, leaving Rudy Guilliani to speak for the city and the nation as events unfolded during that long agonizing morning and afternoon. It is difficult to imagine Lyndon Johnson or John Kennedy or Richard Nixon, or Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton trembling under a desk at some undisclosed location while the nation is under attack. But then none of them would have been compelled to bring his Vice President along to hold his hand when he appeared before the 911 commission. In any case after once again going AWOL, Bush descended Air Force One and “took control” of the situation, announcing that we had been attacked by a ruthless enemy with global reach in what was clearly an act of war. The boy blunder was wrong on both counts, for this was neither an act of war, nor did our “enemy” have “global reach”, at least not in anything like military terms.
Someday, when the emotions recede and the country begins to gain some perspective on the awful events that we commemorate today, historians will write that what happened on that beautiful late summer morning in the Big Apple was not an act of war but a criminal act perpetrated by a small but fanatical group of zealots. Furthermore this crime did not represent a military threat. Let me repeat: the attacks of 911 were not the deeds of a military force as was the case, say during the cold war or at Pearl Harbor.
I have not been understood. We were not attacked by an imperial navy, a squadron of bombers, by intercontinental or even medium range missiles. We were attacked by a dozen and a half box cutters, wielded by men who were willing to exchange their lives to achieve a limited strike against a symbol of western imperial power. This was a politically-motivated criminal act committed by terrorists.
The response by this administration was disproportionate, misguided, and overreaching. Instead of responding as we should have responded, i.e., bomb and destroy the terrorist training camps, perhaps topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan to destroy the state protection of Al-Qaida, track down the financial network supporting these groups and seize their assets, and hunt down these criminals and put them before the docket at the Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity, we instead responded with overwhelming traditional military force—precisely the response anticipated and hoped for by the terrorists. To send in conventional ground forces means that one must then occupy the country and all the attendant problems that occupation entails.
Instead Bush declared himself a “war president” and demanded all the attendant powers and then a few more. He tore up international treaties on nuclear weapons in space, and anti-ballistic missile defenses. With the advice of his legal counsel Alberto Gonzales he “re-interpreted” the Geneva conventions declaring that international prohibitions on the torture of prisoners would apply only if it involved major organ failure. “Water boarding” became merely surfing for truth. He violated international law by expatriating suspected terrorists, and moved to deny detainees Habeas Corpus thereby holding suspects for years without charge. He introduced unsupervised telephone and computer surveillance. As bad as were the assault on international law and civil liberties nothing was as disgusting as this president’s use of his “wartime” popularity (as high as 90% in the aftermath of 911) to become a “transcendent” president in the tradition of F.D.R. Unfortunately the diminutive one used his powers not to be like F.D.R, but to pursue the long-held wet dream of the idiot right to undo the last vestiges of the New Deal. He has presided over an administration that has not found a legitimate anti-trust action to pursue, that has rolled back environmental regulation that has sought to decertify unions and allowed mergers and acquisitions without number. In the last days of the late Republican congress the workers of the United States missed by a relative handful of votes having overtime pay stripped from federal law. And finally, the long assault on social security—long the dream of the idiot right—nearly succeeded until hurricane Katrina stripped the fig leaf from “compassionate conservatism”.
Al Franken in his book “Truth, With Jokes” details the “Downing Street Memos” involving British diplomats and intelligence officers relating to the Blair government the fixation of the White House with toppling Saddam Hussein as early as February of 2001, and the attempt by this administration to link Iraq with the subsequent attack on September 11. By way of demonstration, it is clear that the administration saw the attacks as a godsend which would accomplish simultaneously two objectives: topple the Hussein regime in Baghdad and make the diminutive one a war president, a transcendent leader—one who could finally realize the pipe dreams of the conservative opium den—roll back the clock and transport America back into the nineteenth century.
What began with the criminal intent of a band of zealots in the sands of the middle east was transfigured by the criminal intent of a band of zealots in the conservative stink tanks. Zealots who had already hijacked the government and could now legitimize their efforts to wage war on the middle class by using any success, real or imagined, any “political capital” gained by the prosecution of war to strip the middle class of its last vestiges of security. This is the real war being waged by this administration. It is not the war on terror; it is the war on the middle class.
September 10, 2007: The Scum also Rises, Don't Petraeus Tell It Like It Is Baby, Three Stars Over Baghdad, The Meritocracy Meets 'Ol Two Cows
Today marks one day short of the sixth anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center and was graced by the appearance of General Petraeus, chief military officer in charge of the present debacle in Iraq. Never missing an opportunity to mislead the country and betray the public trust, the White House originally wanted the general’s presentation concerning progress in Iraq to be given to Congress on the anniversary proper even though countless studies and a complete lack of evidence has demonstrated that Iraq had nothing at all to do with the terrorist attack. Voices were raised on Capitol Hill pointing out the malevolent intent of the White House to use the anniversary of the tragedy to once again mislead by timing the report on Iraq with 9-11; the general’s appearance on the hill was moved up one day. One must keep constant vigilance when dealing with scum which has risen to the top.
Nevertheless the General and ambassador Crocker made their appearance and testified, as expected, that the president’s military “surge” was a success. Never mind that the most striking reduction in terrorist activity occurred in Anbar province where tribal leaders reached agreement to cooperate against Al Qaida independent of American involvement, demonstrating that we are fighting this war with the wrong forces. What is needed is a political solution as the good sheiks have demonstrated, not the ratcheting up of military force. The rest of the quagmire still begs for solution. Several congressmen pointed out that the “surge” was supposed to buy time for the Iraqi government to forge these political agreements. Instead the Iraqi Congress has taken a recess while our troops continue the fighting. There were some qualifications to the unabashed optimism, but it was unconvincing and the outcome remains in doubt. Clearly the general’s appearance served as a predictable public relations stunt in keeping with a long line of such stunts pulled by this administration.
If poor George had only listened to his pappy’s friends who last fall pointed out in the Baker Commission Report that the problem begs a political solution involving negotiations with our friends and adversaries in the region. But boy, always the toy soldier, is enamored with the use of guns. The awful reality in the region is that there are major players who have a vested interest in maintaining the viability of the Iraqi state. Jordan and Saudi Arabia to prevent the dominance of Shi’a Muslims in the region and the subsequent persecution of the minority Sunni Muslims should the Iraq spiral down into a fundamentalist theocracy. These countries also have a vested interest in preventing the wholesale emigration of Iraqi exiles into their countries. Likewise Turkey who opposed our invasion in the first place and wouldn’t allow U.S. coalition forces to go through their country when military operations began. Turkey fears the growing power of the Kurds, the largest people on earth with no homeland, breaking away and creating a greater Kurdistan which would threaten the eastern part of the country. Likewise Iran. For although Iran flirts with the disintegration of Iraq to form a natural alliance with the Shi’a majority; Iran also knows that a greater Kurdistan would threaten the integrity of its western regions.
There are three stars on the Iraqi flag. To the uninitiated, the uninterested and to perhaps a certain intellectually challenged soul currently in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this might appear to represent something unique in the national experience. Perhaps “W” thought that the stars represented the provinces in Iraq, kind of like the states of our union on our flag. No that couldn’t be it for there are more than three provinces. Perhaps as he discovered early in 2003 that the country was divided among three major groups that the Kurds, the Sunni and the Shiites were each represented by a star on the flag. Surely that must be it.
It is not. In the late 1950’s, in what marked the high tide of the pan-Arab movement, Egypt under the leadership of Abdul Gamal Nasser led an effort to unify the three countries of Egypt, Syria, and the then Kingdom of Iraq. Each represented by a star. As part of that movement the Ba’ath (or rebirth) party was formed in Syrian and Iraq, dominated by Sunni Muslims and transcending the territorial divide between Iraq and Syria. This is the same party that brought to power Saddam Hussein and the leadership in Syria. The point here is that there are historical, ethnic, religious, political and yes military bonds between the two countries dating back decades. For this reason, as well as the emigration problems, Syria has a vested interest in the resolution to the present mess, an interest that goes directly to the protection of the Sunni minority, the Ba’ath party, and the integrity of it’s borders.
This is to suggest, as the Baker Commission tried to inform the boy blunder, that most of the players in the region have many of the same interests as we do in preventing a total destabilization of the country. This gives us a unique opening to begin a dialogue with forces we have been unable to reach for decades. If only the boy would listen….
But, alas, the cheerleader become warrior is enamored of guns. Gore Vidal once said of Teddy Roosevelt that one should never give a gun to a coward for he will go about shooting up the countryside. Ditto George….
All of this comes in the context of what occurred to me driving to work this afternoon. I was thinking about how deplorably bad our education prepares us for life. We are led to believe that through hard work and effort, through getting oneself educated about how the world works that merit would rise to the top. This is an illusion and runs counter to most of human history. A recent study done by some English scholars has pointed out that the United States is currently the most stratified country in the industrial world with a greater gap between the “have’s” and “Have-Nots” than even in the aristocratic societies of Old Europe. Increasingly in America where one begins in life determines where one ends. It is startling to come to the realization that here in this country we have less upward social mobility than in England or France. Instead we have those born to privilege with a growing stranglehold on the rest of the country.
It is not simply that we in the United States have fallen behind the rest of the world in the study of math and science, it is not simply that we are woefully ignorant of geography and foreign lands, it is that our educational system does not prepare us for the abiding reality that it is not through merit that one succeeds in these here United States.
I rest my case on the present inhabitant of the oval office. The fortuitous product of social class and wealth he weaseled his way out of military service by getting a sinecure in the Alabama National Guard; he was a dismal failure in the Texas oil fields and was rescued from financial ruin by daddy and his rich friends, he distinguished himself as CEO of the Texas Rangers baseball team by trading Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox and getting the good citizens of Dallas and Fort Worth to belly up to the bar and build the franchise a new baseball park creating millions in equity that the boy simply blundered into. Next came a stint as governor of Texas remarkable only for the further deterioration of the tax base, the schools, the infrastructure and the economy.
There is nothing to recommend George W. Bush to the presidency. Not military service, not business acumen, not political success, not native intelligence. If he were George W. Jones, or George W. Blythe, or George W. anything other that Bush he would have been laughed off the stage in 2000—especially after he opened his mouth and demonstrated conclusively that he was indeed ‘too stupid to be president’. But his name was Bush and his pappy was president, if not an entirely successful one. Presidencies by the right of progeniture if not by divine right itself. Because daddy was president I have legitimate claim to the office.
This is not the “meritocracy” promised in this land of opportunity. This is not the Jeffersonian experiment of an informed citizenry based on universal education, governed in politics and business by those most informed, educated and best able to lead. No this is a form of Bastard Feudalism.
Where once the country was governed by an aristocracy supported by vast feudal estates or in the case of the early United States large commercial plantations we are now presented with a new nobility of Ranchers. Johnson of Texas, Reagan of California, and now the diminutive “W” also of Texas. You know, he of the “Bush Dynasty” late of the oil fields and now baron on that big spread in Crawford. You know the one with two cows.
Nevertheless the General and ambassador Crocker made their appearance and testified, as expected, that the president’s military “surge” was a success. Never mind that the most striking reduction in terrorist activity occurred in Anbar province where tribal leaders reached agreement to cooperate against Al Qaida independent of American involvement, demonstrating that we are fighting this war with the wrong forces. What is needed is a political solution as the good sheiks have demonstrated, not the ratcheting up of military force. The rest of the quagmire still begs for solution. Several congressmen pointed out that the “surge” was supposed to buy time for the Iraqi government to forge these political agreements. Instead the Iraqi Congress has taken a recess while our troops continue the fighting. There were some qualifications to the unabashed optimism, but it was unconvincing and the outcome remains in doubt. Clearly the general’s appearance served as a predictable public relations stunt in keeping with a long line of such stunts pulled by this administration.
If poor George had only listened to his pappy’s friends who last fall pointed out in the Baker Commission Report that the problem begs a political solution involving negotiations with our friends and adversaries in the region. But boy, always the toy soldier, is enamored with the use of guns. The awful reality in the region is that there are major players who have a vested interest in maintaining the viability of the Iraqi state. Jordan and Saudi Arabia to prevent the dominance of Shi’a Muslims in the region and the subsequent persecution of the minority Sunni Muslims should the Iraq spiral down into a fundamentalist theocracy. These countries also have a vested interest in preventing the wholesale emigration of Iraqi exiles into their countries. Likewise Turkey who opposed our invasion in the first place and wouldn’t allow U.S. coalition forces to go through their country when military operations began. Turkey fears the growing power of the Kurds, the largest people on earth with no homeland, breaking away and creating a greater Kurdistan which would threaten the eastern part of the country. Likewise Iran. For although Iran flirts with the disintegration of Iraq to form a natural alliance with the Shi’a majority; Iran also knows that a greater Kurdistan would threaten the integrity of its western regions.
There are three stars on the Iraqi flag. To the uninitiated, the uninterested and to perhaps a certain intellectually challenged soul currently in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this might appear to represent something unique in the national experience. Perhaps “W” thought that the stars represented the provinces in Iraq, kind of like the states of our union on our flag. No that couldn’t be it for there are more than three provinces. Perhaps as he discovered early in 2003 that the country was divided among three major groups that the Kurds, the Sunni and the Shiites were each represented by a star on the flag. Surely that must be it.
It is not. In the late 1950’s, in what marked the high tide of the pan-Arab movement, Egypt under the leadership of Abdul Gamal Nasser led an effort to unify the three countries of Egypt, Syria, and the then Kingdom of Iraq. Each represented by a star. As part of that movement the Ba’ath (or rebirth) party was formed in Syrian and Iraq, dominated by Sunni Muslims and transcending the territorial divide between Iraq and Syria. This is the same party that brought to power Saddam Hussein and the leadership in Syria. The point here is that there are historical, ethnic, religious, political and yes military bonds between the two countries dating back decades. For this reason, as well as the emigration problems, Syria has a vested interest in the resolution to the present mess, an interest that goes directly to the protection of the Sunni minority, the Ba’ath party, and the integrity of it’s borders.
This is to suggest, as the Baker Commission tried to inform the boy blunder, that most of the players in the region have many of the same interests as we do in preventing a total destabilization of the country. This gives us a unique opening to begin a dialogue with forces we have been unable to reach for decades. If only the boy would listen….
But, alas, the cheerleader become warrior is enamored of guns. Gore Vidal once said of Teddy Roosevelt that one should never give a gun to a coward for he will go about shooting up the countryside. Ditto George….
All of this comes in the context of what occurred to me driving to work this afternoon. I was thinking about how deplorably bad our education prepares us for life. We are led to believe that through hard work and effort, through getting oneself educated about how the world works that merit would rise to the top. This is an illusion and runs counter to most of human history. A recent study done by some English scholars has pointed out that the United States is currently the most stratified country in the industrial world with a greater gap between the “have’s” and “Have-Nots” than even in the aristocratic societies of Old Europe. Increasingly in America where one begins in life determines where one ends. It is startling to come to the realization that here in this country we have less upward social mobility than in England or France. Instead we have those born to privilege with a growing stranglehold on the rest of the country.
It is not simply that we in the United States have fallen behind the rest of the world in the study of math and science, it is not simply that we are woefully ignorant of geography and foreign lands, it is that our educational system does not prepare us for the abiding reality that it is not through merit that one succeeds in these here United States.
I rest my case on the present inhabitant of the oval office. The fortuitous product of social class and wealth he weaseled his way out of military service by getting a sinecure in the Alabama National Guard; he was a dismal failure in the Texas oil fields and was rescued from financial ruin by daddy and his rich friends, he distinguished himself as CEO of the Texas Rangers baseball team by trading Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox and getting the good citizens of Dallas and Fort Worth to belly up to the bar and build the franchise a new baseball park creating millions in equity that the boy simply blundered into. Next came a stint as governor of Texas remarkable only for the further deterioration of the tax base, the schools, the infrastructure and the economy.
There is nothing to recommend George W. Bush to the presidency. Not military service, not business acumen, not political success, not native intelligence. If he were George W. Jones, or George W. Blythe, or George W. anything other that Bush he would have been laughed off the stage in 2000—especially after he opened his mouth and demonstrated conclusively that he was indeed ‘too stupid to be president’. But his name was Bush and his pappy was president, if not an entirely successful one. Presidencies by the right of progeniture if not by divine right itself. Because daddy was president I have legitimate claim to the office.
This is not the “meritocracy” promised in this land of opportunity. This is not the Jeffersonian experiment of an informed citizenry based on universal education, governed in politics and business by those most informed, educated and best able to lead. No this is a form of Bastard Feudalism.
Where once the country was governed by an aristocracy supported by vast feudal estates or in the case of the early United States large commercial plantations we are now presented with a new nobility of Ranchers. Johnson of Texas, Reagan of California, and now the diminutive “W” also of Texas. You know, he of the “Bush Dynasty” late of the oil fields and now baron on that big spread in Crawford. You know the one with two cows.
January 18, 2008: Stay of Execution (Health Care and Steel, We an't Give Up Our Jobs the Way We Should - Our Ancestors Were Never Such Fools)
Mitt Romney gained a reprieve last Tuesday. The stay of execution was administered in the good state of Michigan with a victory of nine percentage points over Marshall McCain, who hobbles south with a now bandaged foot, brandishing a now tarnished badge. This was a must-win situation and Romney knew it. Heralding his roots in Michigan and the auto industry, railing against intrusive government regulation, blaming Washington’s CAFÉ standards for the current predicament, and invoking the memory of his father, Mitt was able to prevail in this shootout with the Marshall from Tombstone.
Oh if it were only that easy: a mere trade off on global warming to keep those jobs. But this canard must not be allowed to stand, it is the kind of shameless nonsense that propelled Reagan to power and has since been the main course on the rubber chicken circuit. Actually had Washington enforced rather than relaxed the CAFÉ standards, had we compelled automakers to develop fuel efficient technology, had we followed Republican Senator Howard Baker’s advice and issued a “clarion call to reinvent the automobile”, we could have restored our global competitive edge. While foreign auto companies put money into research and development our domestic auto manufacturers put money into top notch legal firms and lobbyists to oppose any new regulations and to rid themselves of old ones. The result, as in the 1970s, is that we are once again well behind the curve as the industry adjusts globally to the changes in fuel prices and environmental concerns. And so Romney, ever reading yesterdays papers, tore a page from an old Reagan press release and made it his own. The problem is that we are a quarter of a century closer to a global catastrophe with little time now to spare.
A few weeks ago it was announced that Toyota sells more automobiles in the United States than Ford. This speaks not only to the lack of competitiveness, but of the results of decades long practice of allowing foreign imports to flood our domestic market. Clearly someone in the world will meet the demand for global surface transportation by way of automobiles and trucks. In our youth, this demand was largely met by American auto manufacturers. We have forfeited our advantage by allowing our domestic industry to languish; to buy it’s way out of upgrading and making itself more globally competitive; and by underwriting our foreign competitors by allowing them not only to infiltrate but to inundate our market.
The American industrial order is characterized by two salient facts: First we are the only industrialized country that does not have a clear, compelling and cogent economic policy. Instead we are left, in the words of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, to rely on “incantation, admonition and prayer”; kneeling in the church of “free trade” and genuflecting before the stock markets while imploring distant gods to save our collective ass. This has, predictably, led to incredibly stupid and ignorant policies of opening our borders to foreign goods that have gutted the old industrial base of what was once the “Arsenal of Democracy” and the wholesale flight of jobs and capital as those markets have been globalized. Secondly, we are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have socialized medicine. Ford regularly tells us that when figuring the cost of producing an automobile more is spent on health care than on steel. Ford, Chrysler and GM must compete in an international market that now not only favors foreign producers, because ‘ol two-cows’ has destroyed the value of the dollar in international markets, but they must also carry the additional burden of health care for their workers. Imagine the improvement in competitive advantage of what is now left of the old-line manufacturing sector—steel, autos—furniture—appliances—if these firms, like their international competitors, could be relieved of the burden of maintaining the cost of the health care of their workers and their families. Any Democrat now seeking the presidency should be busy about the business of lining up the executives of Ford, Chrysler, GM, General Dynamics, General Electric and many, many others and announce the nationalization of health care as a means of reclaiming our competitiveness and restoring America’s position as the greatest industrial and commercial power on earth.
“This place has changed for good
Your economic theory said it would
It’s hard for us to understand
We can’t give up our jobs the way we should
Our blood has stained the coal
We tunneled deep inside the nation’s soul
We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theories make no sense”----Sting, “We Work the Black Seam”
Let me repeat: there is no reason on earth why we should give up our auto industry— or any of our manufacturing base—to foreign competitors. We need to establish a clear and cogent and compelling national industrial policy. We will protect and foster our national industries. We will impose import duties on foreign products, we will subsidize those industries deemed critical to our national interests, and we will assume as a nation the cost of health care for the workforce. In exchange we will demand that the export of capital and jobs cease, that ownership by foreign nationals in any company under the aegis of protected industry be limited to less than twenty percent, and that the companies in question agree to meet the guidelines concerning environmental protection, worker wages and safety, and research and development targets in order to improve global competitiveness. If we can put a man on the moon we can certainly build automobiles and other durable goods in these United States.
In those areas where industries, such as the clothing industry, have fled wholesale, we must move to foster start-up projects and nurture them as we did in the past. Our ancestors were never such fools, they freely chose winners and losers in the marketplace; they never would have stood passively and watched the markets alone decide questions of such importance. They understood the need to protect and nurture domestic enterprise and so invoked the imposition of tariffs to protect everything from shoes to machine parts; they used land grants to build railroads, and price supports to save the family farm. By the middle of the twentieth century they had, by these means, built an economic engine that would not only dominate but feed the world.
Romney is, of course, not on the road to Damascus and is not likely to experience such an epiphany any time soon. He is, in fact, the very product of Wall Street, an investment impresario who made his billions by creating ever greater concentrations of wealth. He did not create the wealth; he was simply a parasite that created ever greater concentrations of it. He made himself rich doing it and it is not likely to see anything wrong with it, regardless of how much pain he witnessed walking through the boarded up main streets of Michigan. His answer: More of the same old bromides… But Romney, thanks to the good citizens of Michigan who last Tuesday exhibited more heart than sense, will live to fight another day…..it’s on to Nevada where his prospects are suddenly much brighter.
Oh if it were only that easy: a mere trade off on global warming to keep those jobs. But this canard must not be allowed to stand, it is the kind of shameless nonsense that propelled Reagan to power and has since been the main course on the rubber chicken circuit. Actually had Washington enforced rather than relaxed the CAFÉ standards, had we compelled automakers to develop fuel efficient technology, had we followed Republican Senator Howard Baker’s advice and issued a “clarion call to reinvent the automobile”, we could have restored our global competitive edge. While foreign auto companies put money into research and development our domestic auto manufacturers put money into top notch legal firms and lobbyists to oppose any new regulations and to rid themselves of old ones. The result, as in the 1970s, is that we are once again well behind the curve as the industry adjusts globally to the changes in fuel prices and environmental concerns. And so Romney, ever reading yesterdays papers, tore a page from an old Reagan press release and made it his own. The problem is that we are a quarter of a century closer to a global catastrophe with little time now to spare.
A few weeks ago it was announced that Toyota sells more automobiles in the United States than Ford. This speaks not only to the lack of competitiveness, but of the results of decades long practice of allowing foreign imports to flood our domestic market. Clearly someone in the world will meet the demand for global surface transportation by way of automobiles and trucks. In our youth, this demand was largely met by American auto manufacturers. We have forfeited our advantage by allowing our domestic industry to languish; to buy it’s way out of upgrading and making itself more globally competitive; and by underwriting our foreign competitors by allowing them not only to infiltrate but to inundate our market.
The American industrial order is characterized by two salient facts: First we are the only industrialized country that does not have a clear, compelling and cogent economic policy. Instead we are left, in the words of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, to rely on “incantation, admonition and prayer”; kneeling in the church of “free trade” and genuflecting before the stock markets while imploring distant gods to save our collective ass. This has, predictably, led to incredibly stupid and ignorant policies of opening our borders to foreign goods that have gutted the old industrial base of what was once the “Arsenal of Democracy” and the wholesale flight of jobs and capital as those markets have been globalized. Secondly, we are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have socialized medicine. Ford regularly tells us that when figuring the cost of producing an automobile more is spent on health care than on steel. Ford, Chrysler and GM must compete in an international market that now not only favors foreign producers, because ‘ol two-cows’ has destroyed the value of the dollar in international markets, but they must also carry the additional burden of health care for their workers. Imagine the improvement in competitive advantage of what is now left of the old-line manufacturing sector—steel, autos—furniture—appliances—if these firms, like their international competitors, could be relieved of the burden of maintaining the cost of the health care of their workers and their families. Any Democrat now seeking the presidency should be busy about the business of lining up the executives of Ford, Chrysler, GM, General Dynamics, General Electric and many, many others and announce the nationalization of health care as a means of reclaiming our competitiveness and restoring America’s position as the greatest industrial and commercial power on earth.
“This place has changed for good
Your economic theory said it would
It’s hard for us to understand
We can’t give up our jobs the way we should
Our blood has stained the coal
We tunneled deep inside the nation’s soul
We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theories make no sense”----Sting, “We Work the Black Seam”
Let me repeat: there is no reason on earth why we should give up our auto industry— or any of our manufacturing base—to foreign competitors. We need to establish a clear and cogent and compelling national industrial policy. We will protect and foster our national industries. We will impose import duties on foreign products, we will subsidize those industries deemed critical to our national interests, and we will assume as a nation the cost of health care for the workforce. In exchange we will demand that the export of capital and jobs cease, that ownership by foreign nationals in any company under the aegis of protected industry be limited to less than twenty percent, and that the companies in question agree to meet the guidelines concerning environmental protection, worker wages and safety, and research and development targets in order to improve global competitiveness. If we can put a man on the moon we can certainly build automobiles and other durable goods in these United States.
In those areas where industries, such as the clothing industry, have fled wholesale, we must move to foster start-up projects and nurture them as we did in the past. Our ancestors were never such fools, they freely chose winners and losers in the marketplace; they never would have stood passively and watched the markets alone decide questions of such importance. They understood the need to protect and nurture domestic enterprise and so invoked the imposition of tariffs to protect everything from shoes to machine parts; they used land grants to build railroads, and price supports to save the family farm. By the middle of the twentieth century they had, by these means, built an economic engine that would not only dominate but feed the world.
Romney is, of course, not on the road to Damascus and is not likely to experience such an epiphany any time soon. He is, in fact, the very product of Wall Street, an investment impresario who made his billions by creating ever greater concentrations of wealth. He did not create the wealth; he was simply a parasite that created ever greater concentrations of it. He made himself rich doing it and it is not likely to see anything wrong with it, regardless of how much pain he witnessed walking through the boarded up main streets of Michigan. His answer: More of the same old bromides… But Romney, thanks to the good citizens of Michigan who last Tuesday exhibited more heart than sense, will live to fight another day…..it’s on to Nevada where his prospects are suddenly much brighter.
January 20, 2008: The Ballad of Rudy
January 20, 2008: The Ballad of Rudy
“He was tall and thin and rode out of the East
With a Mogen David on his silver breast
He was mean and nasty right clear through
He was mean and nasty right clear through
Which was kinda weird, ‘cause he was yellow too
They called him Rudy
Big Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big, tall, scrawny Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
He came from the old Bar Mitzvah spread
With a 10-gallon yarmulke on his head
He always followed his mother’s wishes
Even on the range he used two sets of dishes.
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sissy Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
A hundred and forty-one could draw faster than he,
But Rudy was looking for one forty-three
Walked into Sols Saloon like a man insane
And ordered three fingers of two cents plain
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sport Rudy
The hundred and fort-second fastest gun in the race.
One day Mike Huckabee came to town
His aim was to shoot that scarecrow down.
Mad Mike said “Draw, and draw right now!”
And Rudy drew, drew a picture of ‘0l Two-Cows”
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big gunfighter Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Marshall McCain’s boys was comin’ to New Hampshire at first sun,
And the people said “Rudy, we need your gun”
When the Marshall arrived at the break of dawn,
Rudy’s gun was there, but Rudy was gone.
Rudy
Big Tall Rudy
Big help, Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Well, finally Rudy got three slugs in the belly
It was right outside the Gator Deli.
He was sittin’ there twirlin’ his gun around,
And butterfingers Rudy gunned himself down!
Rudy.
Big, tall Rudy
Big, Dum-dum Rudy.
Big, Dum-dum dead Rudy.
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
---- Parody of “The Ballad of Irving”, by Frank Gallop
“He was tall and thin and rode out of the East
With a Mogen David on his silver breast
He was mean and nasty right clear through
He was mean and nasty right clear through
Which was kinda weird, ‘cause he was yellow too
They called him Rudy
Big Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big, tall, scrawny Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
He came from the old Bar Mitzvah spread
With a 10-gallon yarmulke on his head
He always followed his mother’s wishes
Even on the range he used two sets of dishes.
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sissy Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
A hundred and forty-one could draw faster than he,
But Rudy was looking for one forty-three
Walked into Sols Saloon like a man insane
And ordered three fingers of two cents plain
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big Sport Rudy
The hundred and fort-second fastest gun in the race.
One day Mike Huckabee came to town
His aim was to shoot that scarecrow down.
Mad Mike said “Draw, and draw right now!”
And Rudy drew, drew a picture of ‘0l Two-Cows”
Rudy
Big, tall Rudy
Big gunfighter Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Marshall McCain’s boys was comin’ to New Hampshire at first sun,
And the people said “Rudy, we need your gun”
When the Marshall arrived at the break of dawn,
Rudy’s gun was there, but Rudy was gone.
Rudy
Big Tall Rudy
Big help, Rudy
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
Well, finally Rudy got three slugs in the belly
It was right outside the Gator Deli.
He was sittin’ there twirlin’ his gun around,
And butterfingers Rudy gunned himself down!
Rudy.
Big, tall Rudy
Big, Dum-dum Rudy.
Big, Dum-dum dead Rudy.
The hundred and forty-second fastest gun in the race.
---- Parody of “The Ballad of Irving”, by Frank Gallop
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