Thursday, 27 October 2011
On the Drum
13 out of 99, Part I - VastLeft is making little documentaries, talking to 13 people at Occupy Boston to find out why they are there and where they stand, as individuals. (Also: another edition of American Extremists.)
Charlie Rose actually treated his guests, Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges (and Paul Volker), with respect, even though they were telling the truth. Fancy that. (Of course, they rocked.)
Susie Madrak spoke to Will Bunch about his new book - perhaps the first out about OWS - October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge (Kindle single), on Virtually Speaking Susie.
After the latest monstrosity, Digby finally asks the right questions: "What, at this point, is the rationale of the Democratic Party? We'll kill terrorists twice as hard and only slash the safety net half as much? We'll pass the Republican agenda so they don't have to?" (And, gods help us, Richard Cohen slummed.)
I see via Jay that Thom Hartmann was on Ratigan explaining why corporations got to be people even though the Supremes didn't rule on that at all. (Keep listening for some familiar White House campaign talking points, a presidential chicken recommendation, and more news on police actions against the Occupy movement.)
Video of tear-gassing of Occupy Oakland, story here. Also: Oakland police critically injure Iraq war vet. (They certainly weren't just trying to clear the crowd. either.) Update: "Occupy Oakland protestors march through Oakland after chaotic day of evictions, arrests."
Tuesday, Sam Seder talked to Christopher Ketcham "about his article in Orion magazine, "The Reign of the One Percenters", which he wrote before there was an Occupy movement. On Wednesday's show, Sam talked to Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer, "on the socially useless Wall Street class" Sam also talked to a woman who was arrested at Occupy Oakland and denied her medication of MS. On Thursday (the show has just started as I write this), Sammy interviews Dahlia Lithwick.
"Why the rich should Occupy Wall Street" - because even their own income stability is being hurt by the crazy economy they've created. (Of course, their destabilization is not like ours.)
"Democrats on Super Committee Offer to Cut Medicare Benefits." One of the stupidest things I hear people on the left say is that, even though they hate Obama's policies, they're still going to vote for Obama in the general election. Even if they are, they shouldn't be saying it. They should go out of their way to imply that they don't see why they should vote for people who want to shaft them. This whole, "Of course, I am going to vote for Obama," frame says, "Do whatever you want, no matter how awful, and I will still reward you." Someone has to start telling them that merely being The Historic Not-Technically-A-Republican President is not good enough. (via)
MC Moneypenney - Tap Dat A$$et (NSFW)
I actually hadn't noticed who Hullabaloo contributor Tristero really is - only that he does good posts. But now I know. I'll need to start catching up.
A letter from Mr. Gandhi
Occupy Duckburg!
The Stone Poneys
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Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Blue, blue windows behind the starsI missed the fact that The Talking Dog celebrated its tenth anniversary last month, but with The Sideshow's tenth also approaching, I've been having similar thoughts myself. I really didn't think I'd still be feeling that need for ten years. When we started, we were looking at people who'd crossed the line and hopeful that we could help to push them back. After 2004, I think we were just hoping to hold the line. But 2008 proved that we can't do that the way we were going. We have to think differently. I won't go so far as to say we should completely ignore electoral politics, but - as I've said for a long time - there has to be more, and I'm glad Occupy is starting to do some of it. And it wouldn't hurt to figure out how to grow your own food, either.
Chris Hedges found himself trying to explain OWS on a Canadian news show where he was accused of sounding like "a left-wing nutbar" - but, fortunately, he is Chris Hedges and gave better than he got.
Occupy Together.
Aldous C. Tyler for president - One of the 99% got tired of waiting for someone else to primary Obama.
Obama can talk all he wants to about jobs, but there are good reasons not to believe him.
No, I didn't notice that we were bombing the hell out of Somalia until I read the Weekend Wrapup at Pruning Shears, nor was I aware of the stupid junk Barney Frank said about OWS, such as, "I want to be honest again here. I don't know what the voting behavior is of all these people, but I'm a little bit unhappy when people didn't vote last time blame me for the consequences of their not voting." No, we're blaming you for the fact that we voted for you in 2006 and 2008 and gave you control of Congress and then even the White House and you did this crap. The Republicans were letting TARP die until Senator Obama came back to save it, and you helped him. And you let him kill not just single-payer but even the Public Option. And you're helping him pass even more job-killing bills. And you prevented the Bush tax-shift from expiring. That's what happened in the last election - you drove people away with your crummy policies and callous negligence. You can't blame anyone else for that. You're still slapping democratic voters around when you should be the one saying what Paul Ryan is saying: "...but if there's frustration aimed at crony capitalism, corporate welfare, at bailing out connected corporations, I agree with them." But you're not, and a lot of people are tired of waiting for you to do more than pretend to disagree with the Republicans.
Ari Berman in The Nation, "How the Austerity Class Rules Washington" - and Ari joining Sam Seder on Monday's Majority Report.
I'm almost starting to think that Stuart Zechman is at his best on Virtually Speaking A-Z when he's on his own explaining his idea of the difference between what Americans think America is and what The Villagers think - as he was last week for the first part of the show. Nevertheless, he and Marcy Wheeler were great together this week on Virtually Speaking Sundays.
"First they came for your pensions..."
"Occupy Wall Street is not difficult to understand."
"No Occupation near you? Can't camp out? Here's one way to Occupy Wall Street anywhere."
I'm delighted to know that teach-ins are being held at OWS - by people like Jeff Madrick and Joseph Stiglitz.
Occupy Gretchen Morgenson: "The problem with this country is not the partisan tone of its politics. It's that certain people feel empowered to lie with the certainty that they won't suffer any repercussions."
Color photographs of circus performers, 1940s-1950s
This says there's no such thing as pink, but that's just wrong.
Neil Young and Arcade Fire live, last Saturday night
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Sunday, 23 October 2011
Words and pictures
Bra of the Week
It wasn't long after we started Feminists Against Censorship that we found ourselves spending a lot of time defending (and recommending) On Our Backs. And Susie Bright started to be a rather big name in our little circles. We didn't get the U.S. edition of Forum and we missed a lot of what she did, but what we saw, we liked. I was delighted to find her, eventually, writing the Susie Sexpert column in Salon, and absolutely chuffed to learn that she was an avid reader of The Sideshow. Susie Bright's Erotic Screen: The Golden Hardcore & The Shimmering Dyke-Core is now available on Kindle - or you can read the introduction at her (not work-safe) blog and see why she was so important to us.
It's worth remembering that the original name of Zuccotti Park was Liberty Plaza Park.
Amazingly, Anderson Cooper corrects his error.
"The effort to get a citizen veto of John Kasich's union-busting attack on the middle class is still a very big deal in Ohio, even as the Occupy movement picks up steam here (and everywhere!) If it has gone somewhat off your radar here's an update. First, the latest polling shows overwhelming support for overturning the law. Opponents appear to have the public firmly on their side, and that offers a lot of encouragement as we go into the stretch run."
Michael Moore tells Keith Olbermann that OWS has made him happy and says everyone should go out and occupy.
It would have been entertaining if this dinner honoring OWS and co-sponsored by Goldman Sachs had gone as planned.
I hear one of the occupiers is some 92-year-old guy named Pete Seeger.
Cenk Uygur Announces Wolf-PAC.com at Occupy Wall Street.
Compare the news - it all looks different from somewhere else.
Your paycheck, and their priority.
"They got away with it once, so why not try it again?" - that is, stick you with a Seventy-Four Trillion Dollar bill.
This says something very sad about police training. And, of course, very scary, because these cops shouldn't even have been thinking this way without so much as an order from a above.
Ackerman: "But the fact is America's military efforts in Iraq aren't coming to an end. They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas. [...] It's a situation with the potential for diplomatic disaster. And it's being managed by an organization with no experience running the tight command structure that makes armies cohesive and effective."
You only have to look at the NBA (and major league sports in general) to know what the occupiers are angry about.
And to wake up in the morning without that total dread.
I suspect the hand of TBogg.
Zombie Nativity set (via)
Bolognese Machiavelli
The greatest scientist to never win a Nobel prize
I've been falling down on the visual stuff lately, so here's a bunch:
Celebrities Portrayed as Russian Generals
Petar Todorinski's photos of women
Pantelis Zografos' watercolors of Greece
Wojtek Kwiatkowski's photos of horses
Christopher Boffoli's odd food scenes
Photo Manipulations by Sarolta Bán
paintings by Omar Ortiz
and Pedro Terrinha's pictures with pretty light.
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Friday, 21 October 2011
Decoder ringPeople think I don't ban the right-wing trolls in the comment threads because I'm anti-censorship. Actually, that's not why. We don't get that many of them around here, so they mostly supply entertainment. Sometimes a troll will say something that's just plain wrong, and discussion can be illuminating not just for the troll, but also for participants who've never heard the facts that will be used in the rebuttals that commenters will supply. Other times, the troll will actually say something that's true, but entirely one-sided - e.g., a couple of years ago we had a commenter who kept insisting that Democrats have done horrible things, so we should vote Republican. (In retrospect, he was only half-wrong.) But, mainly, I don't ban them because some of them earnestly believe what they are saying until they hear something that sticks in their head and changes their mind, and my experience tells me that this does happen, regardless of what some people would like you to believe - which brings us to our other kind of troll, against whom I'm beginning to think people really need some inoculation. You see, there's a kind of troll who says things that are so batcrap crazy that it seems plain there is simply no talking to them. And that's what they're for. They're there to convince you that you can't possibly talk to people who identify as Republicans or conservatives at all. You can't find common ground, you can't find the areas you agree on, you can't make common cause - because doing so would provide a real threat to the people who run things. Religious, partisan, and political tribalism is their weapon and your enemy, and having idiots flouncing around shouting inanely on your TV and radio and blog comment threads is there to derail you from even making a try.
Monkeyfister told me where to get that little blue banner up in the top-left corner. Does it look okay in your browser? I noticed when I tried it on the top-right, it didn't work too well in mine. Click on it and get one for your page, too. (Barry Ritholtz likes it.)
On the other hand, I don't think I'll be buying Act Blue's Occupy Wall Street T-Shirt until they stop giving the money to elect-Democrats PAC.
Welcome, 53 Percenters, to the 99 Percent.
From Eschaton
The bumper-sticker is: "Don't cut spending, cut unemployment." If you have the opportunity to elaborate, say, "High deficits are a symptom of high unemployment." People should repeat that wherever they can.
I guess the fact that the IMF and Goldman Sachs are suddenly saying austerity is a bad idea is funnier than the way Krugman chose to illustrate it, but it still gave me a laugh.
As usual, our wonderful leaders want to help those who need it least while letting everything else crumble. The banks should, fergodssakes, write-down every inflated mortgage and the banksters responsible for this criminal mess should go to jail.
Pierce takes a scalpel to David Brooks. I ♥ Pierce.
"The Federal Reserve and Bank of America Initiate a Coup to Dump Billions of Dollars of Losses on the American Taxpayer." And depositors. It may be time to put your money under the mattress.
Senator Bernie: "A new audit of the Federal Reserve released today detailed widespread conflicts of interest involving directors of its regional banks."
Your member of Congress is legally required to answer your questions. It's amazing what they'll do to avoid that. (But it's not just the Republicans. I have a Democratic Congressman and two Democratic Senators who certainly don't answer mine.)
Nothing succeeds like excess - for your newly-hired CEO, but not for your company.
At A Tiny Revolution, "How I Communicate With People Less Right Than Me"
It may be time to move your money - if you have any.
The 1% fight back! (I wish. Then we could kettle them.)
And now, a few words from George Carlin.
Mike Huckabee Makes Hilarious Voter Disenfranchisement Joke. (And you can listen to Ari Berman talking last night about how it's really happening.)
A few years ago some idiot asked me if we actually thought we were going to levitate the Pentagon that day. The thing is, it's a question no one was stupid enough to ask me at the time. But that's how things have gone, that people would seriously ask that, now.
We Are the 1%. (Don't ask me why Richards et al. didn't get their own panel....)
Jack Benny vs. Groucho
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Sunday, 16 October 2011
Why's the rich man busy dancin' while the poor man pays the band?Seriously, there's no point in trying to tell legislators what the polls say - they already know, and that means that no matter what they say and do, they know that we are a country made up primarily of people who want liberal policies and liberal outcomes. They don't care. It's really worth remembering that they hate democracy.
I'm actually okay with Michael Moore turning up at OWS, because it's the kind of thing that brings media attention, but you gotta watch out for the real bloodsuckers. (via)
The whole 53% thing is (a) a lie and (b) not even understood by the people who are saying it, but they're saying it because that's their side of the culture war. (Your job is not to point out to them that they're stupid, but to make it clear that you are on their side in the class war that is being made on them. Why, just the other day I had it out with a conservative friend who imagined that she would be hit by a top marginal rate on millionaires, even though she has never made a million dollars in a single year. She did not know that merely having a million dollars saved up over many years had nothing to do with the top marginal rate. Eventually, even she was willing to agree that, well, no one actually needs a billion dollars, and maybe OWS has a point about the corruption and aren't just a bunch of commies after all.)
CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...
Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone: "If you were trying to formulate a tax proposal to enrage and energize the Occupy Wall Street movement, it would be hard to improve on Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan."
The real Ponzi scheme is our entire financial sector.
The only people trying to clean up Wall Street (or Zuccotti Park) are Occupy Wall Street.
The administration still tries to pretend that things are getting better, and others will admit that they aren't, but slowly, people are beginning to admit that "Things Can Get Worse: "I'm not making a prediction here, if pressed I'd be more in the 'things will continue to suck much as they are' camp, but there isn't actually any real reason to have my sunny optimism." That's Atrios, linking not to people like me who've been saying it all along, but to the Economist.
Who are the 1% and What Do They Do for a Living?
Total Recall, the 99 Percent Solution
The Old Fart Rants on OWS and Teabaggers. (Also: live OWS feed and a couple of proposed Constitutional amendments to fix some major problems.
Dan at Pruning Shears has lots of links as always, but I like the way he said it down in comments below: "Know what the explosive unstated message of Occupy is? Withdrawal of consent." And don't miss the Polka video!
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Friday, 14 October 2011
Just keep saying itAtrios says he's a broken record on the subject, but it's fine with me to have people saying over and over that giving people free money would do a lot more to help our economy than any of the brilliant plans coming out of Washington or Downing Street. But, of course, the thing that people really want is jobs, any kind of jobs, and the gods know there is plenty to do. At every level, there is stuff that can be done right now, there is stuff that can be started next year, there is all kind of infrastructure repair and development that should already be happening, there is general maintenance that hasn't been done and isn't being done but should bloody well be happening, and doing it would create wealth in the general economy. Pay people to do needed work. It's a simple formula. But, if you can't do that, at least give people free money so they can spend it. That's what makes jobs - ordinary people spending money every day. And since the private sector isn't hiring, that money has to come from the government. There isn't anywhere else.
Robert Reich on The Seven Biggest Economic Lies
Naomi Klein, "Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now [...] Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: 'We found each other.' That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can't be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful."
Allison Kilkenny and Stuart Zechman talked to Jay Ackroyd on Virtually Speaking last night. Here she is in The Nation on how Occupy Movements Spotlight Disappearing Rights - The "public-private" buyout of public space means the public still pays for it but loses the right to use it as public space - where protest (free speech) can take place. A combination of local ordinances and antique laws - some of them clearly intended to make protest more difficult, and others simply reinterpreted in that service - are used to "justify" police action to interrupt the protests, and post-9/11 craziness to encourage the response to be nasty. So, public protest is fine as long as you can find a place that's public and account for every silly (or punitive) rule they come up with to stop you. FAIR also interviewed Kilkenny about press coverage of OWS, and about the spin. (They also talked to Moshe Adler, economics professor at Columbia University and Empire State College, about the attack on the Postal Service.)
HOW TO: Occupy Wall Street
Sam Seder was live from Las Vegas for the Mass Tort Conference yesterday, where they're talking about how your right to access to the courts is being eroded systematically. He's there today, too, and of course is also continuing his coverage of OWS. Cliff Schecter will join him.
It's time for Corrente's annual report - and fundraiser. Support this great blog if you have anything to spare.
"Why the Impossible Happens More Often" - or, human beings love to work, to create, to do things they're good at, and the internet has made that a lot easier. (via)
Ettlin saw the Sheen-Estevez movie and loved it, but rated it PG-35.
More reasons why I love the internet: David Honeyboy Edwards died the other month at 96, after a long career that ended only a few years ago when he stopped performing (via), and it reminded me that, although I'd certainly heard of him, I'd never actually heard him play. But thanks to YouTube, I can enjoy a whole "new" experience of listening to some fine old blues.
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Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Democracy is comingMission accomplished: Barack Obama has ensured that even Democrats won't be singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" when Democrats are in charge, anymore. We now have two misery parties - but everyone is starting to know it.
1. If a Republican were president right now, do you think the economy would be better,
worse, or about the same as it is now?
Better Worse The same No opinion
All adults 23 25 45 7
2. Thinking beyond the 2012 presidential election, do you think your own family's
financial situation would be better if (President Obama wins a second term) OR if
(a Republican wins the election) or wouldn't it make much difference either way?
President Obama Republican wins Not make much (Vol.) No
wins a second term the election much difference Depends opinion
All adults 24 24 44 * 7
David Swanson asks the easy questions: "If we want to end wars and cut military spending, will we accomplish that by changing the faces of the military industrial complex's representatives in Congress and the White House or by educating the public about the human costs, financial costs, environmental costs, civil liberties and democratic costs, and the endangerment of us all caused by dumping 65 percent of discretionary spending into the war machine? Will we get further by funding candidates or by using civil resistance to disrupt the work of the makers of war? We can do both. We must do both. But which should we prioritize? Which should we make subservient? Do we want a culture passionately demanding peace and compelling all elected officials to work for it, a culture we approached, for example, in 1928? Or do we want a country in which loyal Democrats denounce Republican war funders, but nobody at all denounces Democratic war funders?" (via)
The law blog Balkinization has been on my sidebar for a very long time, and Marty Lederman was a fine contributor, writing strong and well-thought-out criticisms of the lawlessness of the Bush administration. But now, as a member of this administration's Office of Legal Council, Lederman has become the Democratic John Yoo. Glenn Greenwald finds this repellant ("But I think any minimally rational person can immediately detect the extreme levels of sophistry at work here: according to Marty Lederman, it was outrageous to suggest in the Bush years that the AUMF could allow mere presidential detention or even eavesdropping targeted at American citizens accused of being involved with Al Qaeda, but during the Obama years, that same statute justifies presidential assassinations (and note that Padilla, whose treatment remains a symbol of Bush/Cheney radicalism, ultimately received a trial and at least the trappings of due process, whereas Anwar Awlaki did not and never will)"), but not surprising, after what we have seen for the last two years; however, it's still one of the more depressing and disappointing revelations in Charlie Savage's latest exposé. (As a side note, Marcy Wheeler observes: "What was leaked to @charlie_savage is MORE classified than anything Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked.")
Sam Seder posted an interview with Charlie Savage Monday that is worth a listen. On Thursday, TMR teamed up with Citizen Radio for their live coverage of Occupy Wall Street, joined by Naomi Klein.
Amazing: "During their panel discussion on ABC's This Week, Christiane Amanpour actually took some time out to bring on Daily Kos blogger Jesse LaGreca, otherwise known as Ministry of Truth, to give his perspective on the Occupy Wall Street protests. LaGreca did a good job on there and called the corporate media out for ignoring the working class in the United States." It was downright gratifying to watch him walk all over George Will and Peggy Noonan.
The Rude Pundit provides us with An Inarticulate Articulation of Why Occupy Wall Street Doesn't Need to Articulate a Damn Thing
A post from Atrios on what we're willing to do "everything necessary" for.
An adorable fractal analysis.
H.P. Suesscraft
I can always listen to Cohen doing "Democracy" again.
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Monday, 10 October 2011
Everybody look what's goin' down
This picture, news that our drones are crashy, and a whole lot of other good stuff at Pruning Shears.
On Virtually Speaking Sundays, Marcy Wheeler and Julian Sanchez discussed Obama's executive murder "authority" and Occupy Wall Street.
Matt Stoller was the guest this week on Virtually Speaking, and he and Stuart both had a lot to say to Jay about OWS. Stuart was also Susie Madrak's guest, discussing the same subject, on Virtually Speaking Susie, and about making common cause.
(I forget where I saw it, but someone was saying something like, "It's not just kids. Now the old hippies are coming out - you see people in their 40s." Um, people in their 40s are not "the old hippies"; they're Alex Keaton's generation.)
The Patriotic Millionaires say marginal tax rates have nothing to do with how they invest, so we have no reason not to tax the rich.
Krugman: "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people."
Interviews I've heard with people who were up front at the march don't say the police actually led the marchers onto the bridge, but make it clear that the officers present at no time indicated that they were doing anything improper or would be arrested, and seemed to be guiding them to stay within certain boundaries to avoid obstructing other traffic on the bridge. And then, suddenly, everything changed. Whether this was a deliberate plan by the authorities or something the cops on the ground were instructed to do at the last minute was unknown the last time I looked. Which is the problem I have with this analysis - because, in context, the original version of the story looks a lot more accurate, and the new version does, indeed, shift the blame off of authorities who allowed the march to proceed and then suddenly started to have people arrested without warning.
Back in the early days of the Teabagger media surge, there really were people who were sympathetic because they imagined this was the group that objected to bank bailouts - and they showed up at events with signs complaining about just that issue. But their message wasn't really welcome. And now that message can be seen where it should have been all along, in cities all over America (and the world). Unlike so many of our high-profile media, Charles Pierce talked to some real people in the occupation: "Not anti-anybody. We're pro-American citizen. Millions of Americans are getting kicked out of their house. They're losing their education, their health care. They can't take care of their parents. This is about people. Republicans are opening their bills. Democrats are opening their bills. I'll go all the way to $250,000 if you want. Everybody's opening their bills and they're thinking, 'Who's protecting me from people stealing from me?' This isn't what I agreed on when I signed this agreement with this company. You add all these hassles up in your life - your hospital, your credit card, your education, your mortgage - and you're getting nailed. And there are a couple of banks who created the instruments that made that happen. This is not a physical war. This is an oppression that's quiet, and through money, and through services, and through small print. They want you to be afraid, and not to know, and they want to bewilder you. [...] It's serious out there, but it's quiet, because it happens at everyone's kitchen table. It's happening household-by-household. There's a sense out there, which I hope what's going on here will dissipate, that there's something wrong with me. I'm a jerk because I can't pay that bill. There are working men who will march tomorrow. It's all about people, who feel they got duped. There needs to be a systematic legislative change, so that this cannot happen any more."
"My list of absolute demands for Occupy Wall Street: Look folks, are you sure you're doing this right? I mean, where are the TV hosts providing daily updates and talking points? Where's the billionaire supporter to arrange signs, flags, stages, entertainment and giant star-spangled touring buses? Where are the nice pre-printed bullet point lists and glossy handouts that summarize 40 pieces of legislation already on the floor of the House (or being drafted by lobbyists) which absolutely everyone there supports 110 percent? Where's the media empire telling you when to meet, how long to meet, who to cheer, who to hate, what to say and how to vote? Do you even have a list of commercial sponsors? Come on. Is this any way to run a spontaneous, grassroots movement?"
Innocent museum-goer pepper-sprayed when protesters tried to get into the Air and Space Museum. In fairness, the security guards had been annoyed first by an agent provocateur from The American Spectator.
BDBlue reminded me in comments that I should have realized that press reports about Obama killing No Child Left Behind are no more believable than his withdrawal of combat troops or his "affordable health care" bill. The Obama administration rarely does the good things it claims to be doing, it simply renames them. And they've been promising to rebrand NCLB for a long, long time. They don't want to kill it. They like it.
I'm pretty sure I linked to these before, but Monkeyfister wants to make sure everyone sees the Plutonomy memos.
They've already done this with other things, but now our legislators want to make it illegal to smoke pot even if you're in Amsterdam. It's global repression of Americans, wherever they are. Oh, what fun!
Twenty House Democrats call for investigation of Justice Thomas. I don't know why anyone had to wait until now to talk about Thomas' little conflicts of interest. After all, he didn't recuse himself from Bush v Gore, despite the fact that his wife's job with the Bush administration was at stake. And he's not the only one with conflicts of interest.
In the UK, Young, unpaid and angry: interns go online to campaign for a wage, because slave labor is no fun, and the only people who can afford to be interns are those who already have the money. Internships are a way of (a) getting free labor and (b) making sure that the underclass can't get onto a career ladder. (via)
It's odd to me that lately Americans know the name of Piers Morgan. He's a right creep, you know.
Robert Whitaker died the other week. He photographed floods and war, and Salvador Dali, but it's hard to find much of that in most of his obituaries, or on the web, because he also photographed the Beatles, and, in particular, two covers for the same album. when the first generated a little too much controversy.
Buffalo Springfield, with a little help from Tommy Smothers.
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Thursday, 06 October 2011
When worlds collideBased on everything the US government itself has said, it seems pretty clear that Barack Obama knowingly and willfully had an American citizen murdered because he didn't like what he was saying. He did so without regard to Constitutional restraints against such actions - that is, this was manifestly, unequivocally, against the law. He has produced not one single item of evidence to justify this action. His answer to suggestions that such evidence must be produced is essentially that he won't tell us anything. "The official U.S. position naturally acknowledges there are strong legal limits to U.S. application of military force. We can't 'use military force whenever we want, wherever we want.' What is a key limitation? The threat must be imminent. Claims that al-Awlaki and Khan presented an imminent threat of other than posting to YouTube, blogging, speaking, and writing, seem extremely shaky, at best."
Glenn Greenwald also reminds us: "The heel-clicking, blind faith in secret, unproven accusations of the President that someone is a Terrorist is what drove support for Bush's secret War on Terror excesses, and it is now exactly the mindset driving support for Obama's killing of Awlaki. That's why - contrary to the conceit of Obama loyalists that conservatives would condemn him for the Awlaki killing - the most vocal praise has been heaped on Obama by the likes of Rick Perry, Dick and Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Bill O'Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol. It's also why the legal justification for Obama's actions is being supplied by the likes of former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith, whose views on the War on Terror and executive power led him to approve of Bush's warrantless NSA eavesdropping program and to demand detention without charges." (Glenn has video here of Jake Tapper actually pressing to get something better than "nyaa nyaa nyaa" out of the administration, to no avail.)
Jay Ackroyd will be talking with Matt Stoller tonight about Occupy Wall Street on Virtually Speaking.
Elizabeth Warren Blasts Wall Street, Scott Brown In First Massachusetts Senate Debate. But did she just fatally screw up?
Meanwhile, Obama does something right: He killed No Child Left Behind.
Joan Walsh wakes up to Occupy Wall Street, and takes a trip down memory lane.
"Washington's long con", Maureen Tkacik's article on Suskind's book, makes me think Confidence Men might very well be worth reading. And Tim Geithner sounds like even more of a creep than I thought. (via)
"96-year-old Woman Who Voted During Jim Crow Is Denied Photo ID [...] Here's a woman who has gone to her voting precinct to do her patriotic duty her whole life, even when the segregationist laws were intentionally aimed at preventing it. And now they tell her no."
And they have a message for us.
The amazing Bert Jansch has died, at the age of 67. As Derek Schofield says in the Guardian, he "had the most sustained influence, not only within folk circles, but also on the wider music scene. To Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Jansch was 'the innovator of the time - so far ahead of what anyone else was doing'. Johnny Marr of the Smiths described Jansch's effect on his musicianship as 'massive ... one of the most influential and intriguing musicians to have come out of the British music scene'. Other artists he influenced included Paul Simon, Donovan and Neil Young, with whom Jansch toured in the US in 2010." (Other stories at Auntie Beeb, the Telegraph, more from the Telegraph, and another from the Guardian.) Many of you will recognize Jansch's arrangement of "Angie" from your Simon & Garfunkel collection, as Led Zep fans will know his Black Waterside". Oddly, I couldn't find a Jansch version or Donovan's cover of "Deed I Do" at YouTube (though I could find "Donovan covers" of it by others), but you can tell he liked Jansch a lot. And then, of course, there was Pentangle.
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Wednesday, 05 October 2011
There's something happening hereSam Seder did a great interview with Glenn Greenwald on Monday's Majority Report, about Obama's exercise of executive murder - and, of course, live coverage form OWS. On Tuesday, he talked to David Dayen about mortgage fraud, and to Mike Stark about radio show phone-ins. And Sam using that phrase to Tom Friedman was the funniest thing to happen in days.
The burgeoning action of OWS has "explosive potential."
The Boston Tea Party was more like OWS than like today's teabaggers.
Bernie Sanders on Ratigan says OWS is doing "exactly the right thing to do."
Occupy Wall Street versus Tea Party: a video comparison
Monkeyfister got all inspired by Ratigan's appearance at OWS.
Obama's ardor for an Infrastructure Bank is actually just a load of corruption that he knows full well will have dire consequences for increasingly voiceless Americans - for the profit of a few.
"Why don't rogue traders ever make money? [...] Does it strike you as strange that no big bank ever announces that it has made $2.3 billion in unauthorized trading? Somehow, 'rogue' traders always wind up losing tons of money; they never seem to win."
The media is starting to talk about how that trigger won't fire, and the supercommittee is just wasting time.
Jared Bernstein says it's not at all hard to figure out the message of Occupy Wall Street: "Given the facts of the income distribution, the trends in real middle-class incomes and poverty, the failure of policy to do much to change these trends, the government bailouts of the only class that's benefited from the recovery so far, the absence of clear punishment/accountability for the financial and political institutions that helped inflate the debt bubble that continues to squeeze economies across the globe, and the dysfunctionality of the current political system (they're arguing more about whether they can keep the lights on than whether they can help solve the economic problems), the more interesting question is what took so long for such protests to show up?"
Taylor Marsh thinks Obama wrong-footed here by saying that Americans aren't any better off than they were four years ago. I have a different take. Partly it's that most people who remember four years ago know things are not better, and there's no point in him saying something they don't have to do any research to know is not true. But the other is that Obama is playing his role, and that role is to lower expectations. His most optimistic message, most of the time, can roughly be translated as, "Things are tough, and we're working to try to keep them from getting worse," which means "we" are not actually expecting them to get better.
Ariel Dorfman on the shame of Cheney - and the United States
Stuart Zechman's polished snark
Giblets and Fafnir return to the issues of the day. Every time one of these is posted, you should send it to your representatives and tell them how much more insightful it is than Politico and The Washington Post. It may not accomplish anything, but I'd feel better about it.
Your steampunk keyboard
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Monday, 03 October 2011
Generations at work
See the rest of these great pictures here. (via)
The 99% have something to say.
The panelists on Virtually Speaking Sundays this week were Digby and McJoan, who discussed the good news from OWS. (And with the California state AG pulling out of the settlement, it looks like the case against the banks may actually go forward. And maybe OWS helped do that, too.) (podcast)
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. Obviously inspired by TJ hisself. (And I keep meaning to say that the really nice thing about OWS is that finally there is someone aside from the Tea Party publicly making a stink about the fealty our elected officials and their underlings are showing to the financiers, and it's not just about the so-called "socialist" in the White House. This is bipartisan corruption and everyone should know it by now.)
Don't be afraid to say Revolution. After three weeks, many things are changing.
"Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales" - paying bribes, deliberately cheating and stealing, and firing employees who report problems. And this story isn't from some lefty blogger - it's from Bloomberg.
Barbara Ehrenreich says, "Rich people are being 'demonized' for flaunting their wealth. Poor dears!" Wailing about tax rises that, even if they happened, wouldn't even inconvenience them. And does anyone really think they're going to happen?
Charles Pierce on credit card fees, and what Jamie Dimon charges for a hamburger.
Atrios asks, "How Does It Even Occur To You That This Might Be OK? I hear a lot about how frightened schools are of lawsuits, but when you start thinking you have more police power than the police you can't be that concerned... "
Have you visited Skippy the Bush Kangaroo lately? He's got zillions of links up.
Rick Perry Finally Talks Some Sense.
Dick Cheney demands an apology.
American Extremists: "Preoccupied"
Sign of the times
Ruth Calvo is visiting from Texas, and she spent the day at Kew Gardens yesterday. She had wanted to go up to the treetop walkway, but getting up there turned out to be a problem, so when she got back she did it on the computer instead.
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Saturday, 01 October 2011
Volunteers of AmericaI keep thinking that all I do is document the atrocities - and some days, it does seem that's all I'm doing - but there really are good things that have emerged in spite of the horrors going on. What happened in Wisconsin is that the people got together and pushed back. What's happening in the actual streets of New York is people getting together to start making a larger push-back happen. That Sam Seder's listener-supported edition of The Majority Report is coming to us every weekday and bringing us important news and analysis and interviews means we aren't letting them shut us up. That you can download podcasts from Virtually Speaking with useful analysis of the difference between what's real and what we're told means you have tools you never had before. While there are flaws and weaknesses to be found in all, we're all getting smarter and better and learning to do more things, and a lot of it is starting to bleed into the public consciousness and even the establishment media. Even some of the smaller blogs make contributions that filter into a Krugman column here, a segment of MJR there, and soon a moment on MSNBC, and even the occasional NYT editorial. The point is, if you want to make a campaign work, you have to keep repeating your talking points and doing it everywhere you can. As more people do that, the possibilities increase. Watch them, listen to them, join them, support them.
At Pruning Shears, The many successes of Occupy Wall Street: "Generating attention to an issue that the Beltway wants to go away, building support among disparate groups the old-fashioned way, supporting local workers who might otherwise feel isolated, and breathing oxygen into alternative outlets. The OWS movement has been racking up some really important successes. What's not to like?"
On The Majority Report, Sam Seder has been keeping up with the news and doing interviews with people on the scene at the Wall Street occupation, so check out his shows Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
On Virtually Speaking A-Z, Jay and Stuart discussed the trap that career Obama-propagandist Melissa Harris-Perry and those like her are attempting to set for critics of Obama. It's not just that her "argument" is wrong (right up to the fact that "the left" in the form of The Nation magazine published far more criticism of President Bill than they have of Obama), it's that it's not an argument at all, but a campaign tactic that is meant to silence legitimate criticism. It's McCarthyist, it's trying to turn the camera on the critics rather than on the ghastly policies of a president. It's a distraction. But, to me, it's a distraction that is so manipulative, so shameful, and so damaging to real discussion of racial issues, that I still think it needs to be called out. To me, people who promulgate this sort of phony guilt-tripping are part of the machine that is hurting the black community every single day. You care about blacks? Stand up against the war on drugs, the burgeoning prison industry, and the economic policies - Obama's economic policies - that have been making life increasingly more miserable for black people in America. You can't persistently degrade the Constitutional rights and economic stability of 98% of Americans without hurting the black community. Ms. Harris-Perry would like us to ignore the damage those policies are doing to the vast majority of Americans, including black Americans, and pretend that it's All About Obama. It's not. She may work for Obama, but the rest of us answer to a higher calling than the fortunes of one well-connected politician who just happens to be black. Barack Obama is not Black America - he's just one guy. There are millions of black people - and white people, and people of those funny colors in between - who matter much more.
Jay also talked to Mike Stark in the second hour. And on Virtually Speaking Susie, Susie Madrak talked to columnist Will Bunch about the relationship between music and politics (which reminded me of Ahmet Ertegun talking about how they decided to add The Buffalo Springfield to their list after hearing "For What It's Worth" and how rock music was representing the news. Clear Channel made sure we can't do that anymore). This week on Virtually Speaking Sundays, the panelists will be Digby and McJoan.
"Volunteers"
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Friday, 30 September 2011
Where the action isI think I like LarryE's quote from Oscar Ameringer down in comments (to this post) better than I like my own metaphor: "Money is like manure: Spread around, it helps things grow. Piled up in one place, it just stinks."
I'd like to take a moment to congratulate the Wall Street Occupiers (aka the NYC General Assembly) for doing more than a day's worth of work, for sticking it out, for hanging in long enough that even the media is starting to notice and the "progressives" who support Obama-at-any-cost are pushing back. That's already an accomplishment. As Digby notes, the NYT doesn't find the Wall Street occupation as serious as the appearance of people with tea bags on their heads two years ago, and Glenn Greenwald notes the "progressive" scorn with a clear eye:
A significant aspect of this progressive disdain is grounded in the belief that the only valid form of political activism is support for Democratic Party candidates, and a corresponding desire to undermine anything that distracts from that goal.
And yet, clearly, electing people who happen to be Democrats hasn't worked out too well. Something has to happen. When I read something like this, I am astonished at how little modern "progressives" understand about how long it takes to get some real organization going and how useful demonstrations are to seeding those organizations. (On the bright side, the commenters to that post show a lot of sense.) But Glenn is right, this isn't really sincere criticism. It's not sincere, certainly, to pretend that the message of the Wall Street Occupation is not well understood, even though the media pretend they don't know what it is. The rest of the country understands very well that something is seriously wrong on Wall Street, and something has to be done about it. Glenn, again:Most importantly, very few protest movements enjoy perfect clarity about tactics or command widespread support when they begin; they're designed to spark conversation, raise awareness, attract others to the cause, and build those structural planks as they grow and develop. Dismissing these incipient protests because they lack fully developed, sophisticated professionalization is akin to pronouncing a three-year-old child worthless because he can't read Schopenhauer: those who are actually interested in helping it develop will work toward improving those deficiencies, not harp on them in order to belittle its worth.
Yes. If you wanted something worthwhile to happen, you'd be doing it yourself. I'm all in favor of people who have the time and resources to get out there - with cameras, with bottles of water, and with ideas - and join them.Or you can just look for an excuse not to get off the couch.
* * * * *I see there are still people who don't believe that the All Opponents of Obama Are Racist tactic has been a trait of the Obama campaign all along. Then let me take you back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when Andrew Cuomo talked about campaigning in small states like Iowa and New Hampshire and said they "require you to do something no other race does, you know, and I like it, and I agree with you, it's a good thing. It's not a TV-crazed race, you know, you can't just buy your way through that race ... It doesn't work that way, it's frankly a more demanding process. You have to get on a bus, you have to go into a diner, you have to shake hands, you have to sit down with ten people in a living room. You can't shuck and jive at a press conference, you can't just put off reporters, because you have real people looking at you saying answer the question, you know, and all those moves you can make with the press don't work when you're in someone's living room." (And let me remind you that when white northerners use phrases like "shuck and jive" - and, if you're a certain generation, also terms like "dig", "hip/hep" "go to school on" and dozens of others of the same ilk - they use them not because they are southern crackers but because they learned them from their black friends and associates in the civil rights movement, who used them all the time.) But the interesting thing about Cuomo's innocuous quote is not what he said, but the way it was suddenly introduced to the wider political community. See if you can spot the difference. Yes, an entire memo was somehow magically disseminated to the world compiling supposedly racist comments from the Clinton campaign, none of which were racist - and though the memo seems to have come from an "unofficial" source (did we ever learn who?) in the Obama campaign, it did a lot of dirty work - and I do mean dirty. That memo drove an enormous spike into the progressive coalition that has never been healed. The current reiteration of that nonsense is just more evidence that what is past really is prologue. So you'd better go to school on the past.
Strangely, Marcy Wheeler does not agree with the NYT's brilliant suggestion that the protests all over the world are against democracy.
Two to read from Atrios:
"But What About The Children??"
"Anything That Lets Us Lay People Off"
Lynching fever: "Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past,' Jacobs said. 'This hasn't been done overtly, and probably no one has consciously made such a decision. But the results show a clear connection.'"
Tweet from @maxbsawicky (Max B. Sawicky): Liberal states with lower unemployment than Texas and no oil: VT, HI, MD, MA, WI, NY, DE. #socialism Unemployment Rates for States
A great post title from Athenea.
BoonyvilleUSA on MMT.
Vibrations interview clip, Julian Bond, 1982. A more recent Jonathan Capehart interview with Julian Bond establishing that, all these years later, he's still cooler than you. Wikipedia: In 1965, Bond was one of eight African Americans elected to the Georgia House of Representatives after passage of civil rights legislation, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On January 10, 1966, however, the Georgia state representatives voted 184-12 not to seat him because he publicly endorsed SNCC's policy regarding US involvement in the Vietnam War. They also disliked Bond's stated sympathy for persons who were "unwilling to respond to a military draft".[4] A federal District Court panel ruled 2-1 that the Georgia House had not violated any of Bond's federal constitutional rights. In 1966, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 9-0 in the case of Bond v. Floyd (385 U.S. 116) that the Georgia House of Representatives had denied Bond his freedom of speech and was required to seat him. From 1967 to 1975, Bond was elected for four terms as a Democratic member in the Georgia House. There he organized the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. Throughout his House career, his district was repeatedly redistricted [...] He went on to be elected for six terms in the Georgia Senate from 1975 to 1986." And he's still doing all sorts of stuff you should know him for.
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Tuesday, 27 September 2011
And so it goesYou can download the podcast of my discussion with Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) Sunday night right here. I thought it went all right. Stuart says we should have said more about how we can look forward to another round of having our criticisms of Obama's policies dismissed as "racist" and lumped in with the Teabaggers' attacks, perhaps along the lines of the "thoughtful" manner discussed below (and here, and, notably, here). (And, apparently, I am a racist for suggesting that there have been better black leaders than Obama.) It is, as Marcy and I both said, something they have to do to distract us, because they can't answer the real questions that are being raised - they don't want to have to talk about what they are really doing, which is deliberately trying to destroy the New Deal - and the middle-class.
Ian Welsh is on the same page with Marcy and me: "Tax Increases on the Rich are not going [to] pass. Period. Obama is doing this so he can look like a liberal, because he knows it won't pass. If he wanted this sort of policy, he needed to do it in his first few months. He didn't and he doesn't, this is re-election positioning. If you are treating it as anything else, you are being played. Oh, and while I approve of the 'Wall Street Occupation' it isn't going to do a damn thing unless it costs Wall Street large amounts of money. Which would require different tactics than are being used. Still, it's a start." Indeed, if Obama really wanted to tax the rich, all he had to do is start with simply letting the Bush tax-shift expire rather than making sure it was renewed.
Of course, we were warned a long time ago when Obama "courageously" bashed poor black people. But what Obama proves today more than ever is, as Bruce Dixon says, that, "When Republicans invade new countries, global public opinion can put millions worldwide in protest demonstrations in the street. When Democrats invade, there are no demonstrations. When Republicans propose social security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts, and try to regulate unions out of existence, public outcries and near general-strike situations loom. When Democrats do the same, all is quiet. Republicans could not even pass their own bailout bills with a Republican in the White House. So between bigoted, bumbling tea party Republicans, and level-headed, competent corporate Democrats, which is the greater evil? And which is the more effective evil?"
CMike down in comments provides a little reminder of the times.
French vote against austerity - seems it's generated unprecedented support for the leftist parties. Perhaps we could take a lesson from this. Frankly, at this point, it wouldn't surprise me if the Socialist Workers Party could make inroads against the five Tory parties in the US and UK.
Looks like Obama broke his own bank - but that's okay, he's still got the corporations.
Pruning Shears notes the long non-evolution of David Brooks, among other things.
"Obama and women: Two views"
Distinguishing the Innocent Not an Easy Task
Udall and Wyden Complain About Misleading Patriot Act Surveillance Reports
From Glenn Greenwald:
When two Americans are released after "781 days in Iran's most notorious prison," the establishment media is happy to quote them on how bad their experience was, but never mentions that they talked about how America treats prisoners probably made things worse for them.
Dennis G. Jacobs: Case study in judicial pathology
The Geithner mystery solved - because, you know, it's no mystery.
More out from Charlie Savage on how Bush and Obama have expanded executive power.
The NYC police pepper-sprayed a woman who had already been corralled. Why? Arrest the guy who did it.
In today's scare-yourself-to-death news, a trader tells the BBC that Europe will collapse and governments aren't going to fix this market crisis because "Governments Don't Rule The World, Goldman Sachs Rules The World."
BDBlue asks a favor in comments: "My one suggestion is that if you must single out a GOP candidate with whom to agree on some of the issues, could you at least mention Gary Johnson (preferably instead of Ron Paul). Johnson would - like every other candidate for the presidency - destroy us economically. However, like Ron Paul, he's anti-war and along with Paul refused to endorse water boarding at the last GOP debate. He's also pro-choice (unlike Paul), for legalizing marijuana and treating drugs generally as a health problem, for the repeal of DADT and for civil unions (unlike Paul), and against the death penalty. And he doesn't have the horrible racist associations that Paul has. In other words, he's Ron Paul without the reactionary social politics. Which means, btw, that the GOP is actually scared of him (he's been repeatedly denied entrance to GOP debates even though he has more support than others allowed to participate) - he's young (so it's not his last hurrah like it is Paul's) and has the policies to appeal to the younger libertarians by being liberal on social issues. Again, he's absolutely awful on economics and the usual libertarian crap, and I'm not voting for him, but he's a much better "strange bedfellow" to point to than Ron and I wish more people on the left would, if only to make the GOP more uncomfortable." Of course, the problem with that is that since most people aren't seeing him in the debates, he's not the guy they're identifying as the one who has the right views on marijuana, waterboarding, and the war machine. But, yeah, both of them are to the "left" of Obama on drugs, torture and military adventurism.
"Nativists Shift Target to Documented Immigrants" - so, it's not "legality" that concerns them. Who'da thunk it?
Obama tells blacks to STFU.
Thom Hartmann interview with Sam Pizzigati (which happened last August but I didn't notice it until now). And here's Pizzigati's article "What would FDR Do?"
Video: Sam Seder live interview with Wall Street occupier. Interesting detail on how they are working.
Keith Olbermann's show on Countdown, 9-23-11, featured Michael Moore, discussion of the murder of Troy Davis, and the occupation of Wall Street. (I couldn't help thinking while Moore was talking about how cops feel about Wall Street that when Bloomberg manipulates the situation to get the police to harass protesters, he's trying to break that support and provoke hostility from the protesters.)
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Sunday, 25 September 2011
Virtually Speaking SundaysTonight's guests on Virtually Speaking Sundays will be Avedon Carol and Marcy Wheeler.
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Saturday, 24 September 2011
Equal opportunity bad presidentsStuart alerts me in comments to the post below to a piece of nonsense in The Nation by Melissa Harris-Perry that demonstrates just how far away our established liberals have drifted from reality. The title gives the game away: "Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama".
Now, if you've been paying any attention at all, you might have thought that white liberals were abandoning Obama because we spent eight years recoiling in horror from Bush's policies and are even more horrified that we elected someone we thought might be one of our own who instead acts just as smug, insensitive, callous, stupid, and creepy as the crazy white man did, but Ms. Harris-Perry thinks we suddenly object to monstrous polices like torture, assassination of American citizens without trial, war-making, attacks on the middle-class and the export of American jobs to foreign countries (because slaves can do them cheaper - complete with betraying unions so we can make life just as hard-scrabble at home as it is over there) - we object to all that, just like we have for the last decade - merely because we're just a bunch of racists:
Still, electoral racism cannot be reduced solely to its most egregious, explicit form. It has proved more enduring and baffling than these results can capture. The 2012 election may be a test of another form of electoral racism: the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts. If old-fashioned electoral racism is the absolute unwillingness to vote for a black candidate, then liberal electoral racism is the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors.The relevant comparison here is with the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Today many progressives complain that Obama's healthcare reform was inadequate because it did not include a public option; but Clinton failed to pass any kind of meaningful healthcare reform whatsoever. Others argue that Obama has been slow to push for equal rights for gay Americans; but it was Clinton who established the "don't ask, don't tell" policy Obama helped repeal. Still others are angry about appalling unemployment rates for black Americans; but while overall unemployment was lower under Clinton, black unemployment was double that of whites during his term, as it is now. And, of course, Clinton supported and signed welfare "reform," cutting off America's neediest despite the nation's economic growth.
She goes on with a list of Clinton's sins in a similar manner without reference to the facts of the times, which include the paucity of information sources and forums in which any of those crimes could be discussed, especially once it became clear that there was a full-scale attack on Clinton in progress that was based not on these really quite awful policies, but on his having done things like appoint a perfectly sane woman who said perfectly sane things about sex education. Or on things that were really the doing of his predecessor (I'm always amazed at how Clinton was responsible for Ruby Ridge even though it happened during the GHWB administration), or were planned or implemented under the Reagan or Bush-the-first administrations. Or on his having done something that most of his predecessors in the office are known to have done - i.e., get a little on the side. (Note: it used to be that it was okay to commit adultery on the side as long as you never got divorced. Apparently, it's now okay - at least, if you're a Republican - to play around all you want to and get a divorce, but any Democrat who has an affair is pretty much in the Worse Than Hitler category.) Or things that were the sheer fantasies of backwoods segregationists in Arkansas.Face it, there was no air in the room for attacking Clinton from the left while most liberals were still reeling in shock at discovering just how right-wing the "liberal" media had become. When The New Republic is promoting (to respectful appreciation from the rest of the media) a re-packaging of long-debunked racists myths in the form of The Bell Curve while the rest of us are being called "fascist" for suggesting that we'd rather not hear our neighbors referred to as "niggers", where, exactly, was this criticism of Clinton supposed to take place?
Nevertheless, plenty of us were furious at Clinton, and we said so on the rare occasion that we found a place to do it. Trouble is, most spaces for public debate were dominated more by partisanship than by appreciation of just how damaging some of his policies were, and too many people were feeling helpless in the face of that sudden ugly exposure of the now manifest right-wing nature of the media. With right-wing Democrats suddenly in charge of the party, it had become impossible even to mention single-payer, let alone decry policies that were more directly an attack on the poor and minorities. Universal government-funded healthcare was something that had wide mainstream support and yet it couldn't be talked about?
And, in an atmosphere where genuine liberal concerns could not be talked about, it left us all atomized, feeling alone, like our concerns were not shared by the many, but only by a handful of our friends. You can't get a movement going when you feel like you're the only one who sees what's going on.
And it took time for our complaints to begin to permeate. A new generation had to begin to hear the language of real progressive liberalism, and an old generation had to learn the ways of the internet, before there was even a place and time for talking about these things - and we were able to practice on Bush, who gave us plenty of reasons to look more thoroughly into those policies and understand just how urgent the promotion of liberalism had become.
And, of course, it was precisely that understanding of how much damage Clinton had really done us that put so many liberals into the Anyone But Hillary camp. All over the progressive blogosphere, people swore oaths against anyone who was connected with the DLC or anyone like them. We talked openly about the damage done by NAFTA, by the Clintons' refusal to discuss single-payer, by DADT, by the increasing militarization of our police and the direct damage these "modernizing" policies were doing to the black community, the poor, and even the middle-class - and all of the sins of Clinton. We may not have had the space to talk about those things during his presidency, but now that we did, we did not cut the Clintons much slack. Sure, Hillary had her supporters in the primary, but many of those were people who had accepted the fact that it was going to be either Clinton or Obama and they could see that Obama, though he tried to hide them (unlike Hillary, who at least was honest about them), had pretty clear connections to the DLC bunch and was the choice of the corporate media, and that he really had no liberal credentials to speak of. And it wasn't Hillary who had openly betrayed liberals by dragging the "Social Security crisis" story out of the grave we had so recently managed to bury it in through virtually round-the-clock effort to defeat that very, very serious threat. I trusted neither of them, myself, but Obama talked like a well-spoken Republican of the past - genteel compared to today's GOP, but with the same policies and goals.
If there has been a double-standard, it was the one that ignored Obama's claim that Afghanistan was the "right" war and it was okay to continue prosecuting it, the shrugging off of Obama's vote against a 30% cap (30%!) on usury, the brushing away of Obama reviving the "Social Security crisis" meme after we had worked so hard to kill it, and dozens of other pieces of evidence that Obama was contemptuous of progressive liberalism and willing to break the progressive coalition in order to get into office. The one that pretended that, while Hillary Clinton was "a monster", Obama was somehow golden.
What kind of standard was it that told us throughout the primaries and even long after he had started to show his true colors in office that the reason Obama walked and talked like a refined Tory and promoted and fought for right-wing policies was that he "had to" because he was black? (Why was it okay to say that during the campaign, but no one would have accepted the same excuse for Hillary - that she "had to" vote for the Iraq authorization because she was female, and a Clinton to boot? Nor did anyone bother to point out that the AUMF did not authorize Bush to do what he did - he did what he wanted to do regardless of the restraints written into it.) Why do we hear, over and over, that we have to put up with what can best be described as utter crap because Obama is black?
I do not believe that it was "not the time" to elect a black liberal as president. I think it would have been a terrific time to elect a black liberal as president, in fact. Yes, the right-wing would have said all the same crazy things they're saying now, but at least, if Obama had actually been one, elected with his overwhelming mandate, I believe he could have been a great president - one who actually did the work that needed doing instead of continuing to reverse us back to the 13th century. A black liberal, standing up to people who were and are hurting the nation, could have welcomed their hatred and been proud of being called the enemy of people of such caliber. A proud black liberal president could have saved the country and perhaps even earned the respect of some people who thought a black president would not help them.
But he's not. He's something else that doesn't care about the damage he is doing to this country. His actions from the very start of his political career have sent a clear message that he is not on our side, that in fact he wants to hurt us. He has won one election after another by first destroying the political careers of people who were more liberal than he is. He has been telling us pretty much to lie down and die since the moment he arrived at the White House.
I don't have an unrealistic standard I hold black politicians to. It's perfectly realistic to hold Obama to the same standard I have watched black leaders achieve throughout my lifetime.
But I'm disgusted when people like Melissa Harris-Perry sink so low as to tell me I can't expect intelligence, courage, competence and decency from a president simply because he's black. Yes, I can.
* * * * *Gallup is saying that more people are willing to vote for, or at least consider voting for, Mitt Romney than are willing to vote for, or consider voting for Perry or Obama. The good news for Obama is that more people say they will definitely vote for him than would definitely vote for either Romney or Perry - but that winning number is only 33% who are currently sure they'll vote for him. Meanwhile, only 35% say they will definitely not vote for Mittens, while 45% would definitely not vote for Obama and 44% say the same about Perry. I didn't see the question, "Would you vote for any of these creeps?" 'Cause I sure won't. (Also: a media moment when the White House and some of their friends in the media push back against Suskind - and he stands up for himself.)
I always said it was pretty easy to explain this stuff if you don't start off by convincing yourself that it's all too complicated. I'm glad to see that Krugman is getting better at this. As I pointed out a long time ago, the image of money as the blood of the economic body is an easy one to understand. It needs to circulate throughout the body for the body to remain healthy. It does not need to be leeched away so that the rich can bloat themselves on it.
Get your Lord of the Rings Pez dispensers here. (Get me some, too.)
Google is celebrating Jim Henson's birthday. (Story)
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