The Underview

somebody said "Matt, tell us how you really feel about the left and Ron Paul..."

2012-01-11T09:42:00.002-07:00

I just wish the vessel of truth wasn't a f***king race-baiting homophobe classist billionaire's buddy confederate south-shoulda-won-the-war f**k poor and sick people d-bag. Is that too much to ask? That the person speaking truth to power not have so much potential to DISCREDIT the righteous? I am just amazed at how many people on the left refuse to engage that question in any meaningful sense. We're really that desperate--we're like a bunch of 15 year old boys who will have sex with some 80 year old nag with herpes because we're that deprived and desperate for something. And this whole episode has forced me to re-think the white left on the race issue. I used to defend us on that. I won't anymore. We are a bunch of myopic hippies who just don't care about racism. So yeah, that's how I feel.

Can Romney Win?

2012-01-11T08:09:00.002-07:00

If Romney's people can take an out-of-touch, ADD-like billionaire who can't seem to say a single thing that sounds in the least bit empathetic to the life situations of 90% of the population, while getting hardcore evangelicals to vote for him, and somehow convince a few working class conservative Democrats to vote for him, all the while overcoming the most effective campaign team we've seen in 50 years (better than Clinton's, I think), then Romney edges Obama. I don't see it, but I've been wrong before; I thought Gore would get more votes than Bush, and...oh wait.

Quote of the Day: The Fall of Cain and What's Really At Stake in Presidential Politics

2011-12-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

From Patrick Martin:

More significant is what will not disqualify a candidate for the highest political office in America. In the course of the past month, while Cain’s campaign collapsed under the impact of allegations of sexual misconduct, his rivals (and Cain himself) condemned child labor laws, supported mass evictions, endorsed torture, advocated war with Iran and generally lined up behind the “right” of American corporations to be free of taxes, regulations, unions or any other restrictions on private wealth.
None of these reactionary and semi-fascistic opinions was regarded as an obstacle to the nomination. Meanwhile, a largely bogus and irrelevant issue was manufactured to clear Cain out of the path of the eventual nominee, who, like Obama, will be a tested and experienced defender of the interests of the financial aristocracy.

Time for the GOP to get serious

2011-11-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

I think I finally found a candidate that will give you what you need...

Analogies 101

2011-11-04T08:54:00.000-06:00

Pamela Gellar endorsing Herman Cain:

Colovaginal Fistula endorsing Giardiasis.

one BREEZEBLOCK BOMB at your service...

2011-10-17T23:25:00.001-06:00

Because sometimes only some compelling triphop will get me through the night...

This has been called "a gorgeous track with a nice pace of rhythm" and I couldn't agree more.

Not a chance...

2011-10-12T21:57:00.000-06:00

Herman Cain is currently in first place among GOP presidential contenders. A princess among the trolls, if you will.

I'm not sure any GOP candidate could beat Obama, but if the nominee is Herman Cain, mark my words when I say he'll lose worse than a piece of prime rib getting thrown into a dog fight.

New from Cory Morningstar at politicalcontext.org

2011-09-15T16:24:00.000-06:00

Go to politicalcontext.org and read Tar Sands Action and the Paralysis of a Movement --Cory Morningstar's investigative critique of the Tar Sands Action--the bourgeois environmental movement's obedient act of civil "unrest."

Just how non-serious were the protests against the Tar Sands project? This quote, in the article, from one of the arrested protesters pretty much says it all:

Getting arrested in the Tar Sands Action was fun and it felt like the right and responsible thing to do. The scariest part of it was navigating the D.C. Metro. No, that’s not exactly true. It was the anticipation of navigating the D.C. Metro that terrified me, not the actual navigation. … The female officer took my ID but stuffed my money back in my bra. Then they took my mug shot, handed me my ID and squeezed me into the paddy wagon with Kidder. It was very hot and close in there but we joked around with the cute police officers, told stories and had a pretty good time…. I was released at 12:46 p.m.

This is the first in a series of articles by Cory Morningstar on the Tar Sands Action as typical of the bourgeois environmental movement.

New at politicalcontext.org: "Corporate America Sends a Labor Day Message"

2011-09-04T10:59:00.002-06:00

This is an incredible piece of investigative journalism by Walter Brasch. I've never been more proud to publish a piece on our web site.

Corporate America Sends a Labor Day Message

Walter Brasch chronicles how RR Donnelley, a $9 billion dollar corporation, ruined the lives of 284 loyal workers in Bloomsburg, PA.

Introducing: Focus on the Aftermath

2011-08-28T20:27:00.000-06:00

An editorial at politicalcontext.org by my friend Alan Tauber, founder of an organization dedicated to keeping public awareness of disasters alive even when the mainstream media has moved on to the next news cycle:

Introducing Focus on the Aftermath

Libya: Raining on the Uncritical Parade

2011-08-22T23:48:00.000-06:00

From Who really won in Libya? SocialistWorker.org:

No one who cares about justice will shed a tear for Muammar el-Qaddafi. He
was a tyrant, with the blood of many people on his hands. But no one who opposes
imperialism and its crimes can celebrate Qaddafi's downfall in these
circumstances.
The new government that will come to power in Libya won't
answer to the people of Libya and their desire for democracy and justice. It
will answer to imperialism--and that is a blow to the Arab Spring, which this
year showed the world the hope of an alternative to oppression, violence and
tyranny.

A Conservative Response to Those Who Would TAINT Saint Michele

2011-08-16T17:54:00.001-06:00

Okay, so Michele Bachmann got a little confused and wished Elvis Presley a happy birthday on the anniversary of his death.

But the little conservative man on my shoulder (his name is Moe, I believe...) replies thusly:

"You liberals selectively apply 'truth standards' to deliberately play 'gotcha' with conservatives. Remember, Obama said he'd visited 57 states. So-called 'temporality,' like so-called 'science' is routinely applied selectively by liberals to mute God's higher truths, which are irreducible to the literalism of liberal academics. Also, Bachmann may have a low IQ, but that's meaningless, because 'IQ' is an artificial construct dreamed up by liberal 'social scientists' in order to justify things like eugenics and mandatory government-run education, which is the same as communist Nazism. Also, any attacks against Bachmann are, a priori, sexist. Finally, Bachmann is closer to God than you are, therefore, if she says today is Elvis's birthday, then it must be his birthday."

And that settles that.

"There is a higher truth!"

Progressives and Democrats: the agenda and mobilization arguments

2011-08-14T08:14:00.000-06:00

Over at politicalcontext.org, I posted an article a few days ago about progressives defecting from the Democratic Party. It's been our most widely read and widely shared article so far, and it's inspired some Facebook commentary that is both vociferous and predictable: Why should we help the GOP win? Well, this argument has been hashed and rehashed for several election cycles. And I am not staking dogmatic ground here--the Context2012 project aims to make the public more aware of third parties; it's not a call to join them, necessarily. But still, I think there are some unanswered arguments on the part of Democratic loyalists:

The arguments that presently concern me the most are that Democratic Presidents (1) enact conservative agendas more effectively than Republican Presidents and (2) de-mobilize popular resistance to those agendas, whereas, Republican Presidents tend to mobilize widespread popular resistance. Social Security is the case in point: Bush wanted to destroy it and popular resistance prevented that. Obama is destroying it now, and Democrats are more concerned with defending Obama than saving Social Security.

Or, as Alexander Cockburn put it, in the excerpt from his recent Counterpunch essay that I linked to in my politicalcontext.org essay:

Indeed, the best outcome for the left in 2008 would have been a victory for McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent. McCain! But, you wail, he would have plunged America into new wars, kept Guantanamo open, launched an onslaught on entitlements, surrendered to Wall Street and the banks… McCain would have tried all these things, but maybe he would have quailed amid a storm of public protest. Under W. Bush’s two terms the spirit of opposition throve; the antiwar movement flourished; the labor movement was active; blacks militant. Amid a brilliant campaign mounted by the AFL-CIO, Bush’s hopes to gut social programs were dead within months of the start of his second term in 2004. But since 2008 a Democratic president has neutralized all these constituencies.

Even if not generally true, this seems indisputably true about Obama.

Special Report--Culture War Against Indigenous Alaskans 08/07 by SharedSacrifice | Blog Talk Radio

2011-08-06T21:59:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow we're hosting this special report via podcast, at 12 noon mountain time, 2:00 PM eastern time:

Special Report--Culture War Against Indigenous Alaskans 08/07 by SharedSacrifice Blog Talk Radio

Gregory Vickrey talks to Norman Ayaugalria and Carl Wassilie about the violent culture war being waged against the Yup'ik in Emmonak, Alaska.

SPAM POETRY

2011-08-04T19:03:00.000-06:00

I've been cleaning up spam from politicalcontext.org and, well, I've found it to be absurdly poetic. Here's an example (I took the stream-of-unconscious-bot writing and divided it into arbitrary "lines")...
Someone said

A person’s content

in addition to have to say

that just how amazing it’s.

But not only matter but what

centered you have preaching about it.

I most certainly will unquestionably reveal

the item utilizing my girlfriends

all of which will.

Kentucky Green Party Forms

2011-07-30T17:17:00.001-06:00

(reposted from politicalcontext.org)

From Joseph Gerth at the Louisville Courier-Journal, interesting and encouraging news about the newest state Green Party:

Tired of Democrats and Republicans who don’t speak to the issues or solve the problems important to them, about 35 people gathered Saturday in Anderson County to form the Green Party of Kentucky...
Geoff Young, a retired state government worker, said he decided last fall that there needed to be a Green Party chapter in Kentucky. “People in Kentucky are becoming desperate for a real alternative to the two established parties,” he said. “Many people, including myself, feel that the two established parties don’t offer enough new ideas, enough ideas that work and do not propose solutions that will actually address Kentucky’s most serious problems.” The party supports policies that would improve the environment and is opposed to war, Young said.

The article also details the challenges faced by third parties in Kentucky, challenges we are familiar with here at politicalcontext.org as part of our context2012 effort to publicize and offer a voice to similar alternative political organizations. Ballot Access News reports that: "In Kentucky, if a group polls 2% of the vote for President, it is a qualified minor party for the next four years, and can nominate by convention, with no petitioning needed. The only parties that have attained that status, in the last 80 years, are the Reform Party 1996-2000, the Anderson Coalition 1980-1984, and the American Party 1968-1972." This statistic seems more reasonable than the apparently misreported 20% figure quoted by both the Courier-Journal article and Green Party Watch.

Kentucky is certainly a state needing some fresh political voices. The state's Democratic Governor, Steve Beshear, seems to be in bed with big coal. Like much of the rest of the country, unemployment in the state has increased not just dramatically, but critically. And, of course, Kentucky gave us Rand Paul. But oppressive conditions give rise to solidarity, and closed political doors in one house may well inspire hard-working activists to build a new and better house. Good luck, Kentucky Greens!

How bad is Tolkien, really?

2011-07-24T10:08:00.000-06:00

I don't endorse this assessment, but I find it hilariously provocative:

Elf-besotted fans aside, why shouldn't Tolkien be granted admission to the literary pantheon? Well, for one thing, his detractors argue, his prose is unbearably archaic. "Sometimes, reading Tolkien, I am reminded of the Book of Mormon," writes [Harold] Bloom. Tolkien's verse--which litters the text of The Lord of the Rings--is generally accepted to be even worse.

--Chris Mooney, "Kicking the Hobbit."

The Residents - Perfect Love

2011-07-08T04:09:00.000-06:00

"There's something I must tell you. There's something I must say. The only really perfect love. Is one that gets away."

cover lover: Jenny Owens Youngs & co. --> New Order

2011-07-05T08:54:00.000-06:00

Fantastic interpretation of one of my favorite songs of all time.

cover lover: TMBG --> Chumbawamba

2011-07-05T07:52:00.000-06:00

Two things about this cover: First, I wish TMBG had dug a little deeper and discovered some Chumba songs really worth disseminating into popular consciousness--like anything on Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records or even WYSIWYG

Second, though, even with their limited political consciousness, I think John and John get several things right in their "Tubthumping" cover even without overt awareness of it: the communal nature of the song, the distorted social values that accompany pub-hopping (Linnell distorts the audio during the drinking verses) and, musically speaking, a sense of the compartmentalized stories simultaneously playing out in the song. All in all, a decent cover.

They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

the story remains the same if you'd take a look

2011-07-03T10:58:00.000-06:00

Spot on vocals, appreciative crowd, great song. Sigh.

Calling BS on Obama on Libya

2011-07-03T10:28:00.000-06:00

I think Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi is a sick joke of a leader--or at least wasted potential; perhaps he had a streak of anti-imperialism in him at one time before he learned to be an opportunist, but no true progressive would ever do what he's done to his own people, no way and no how. Cindy Sheehan and I went back and forth on this in a rather intense moment during my last interview with her (my fault Cindy), and I've even been critical of what I see as Hugo Chavez's Gaddafi-esque posturing. Maybe I'm a purist, a kind of moral Trotskyist. Whatever, I have no sympathy for the besieged Libyan leader.

But I agree 100% with Cynthia McKinney's assessment of the U.S.-NATO mission in Libya. It's illegal, immoral, stupid, ill-timed, ill-planned, one-dimensional, ignorant, clumsy, undemocratic, terribly wasteful, brutal, dishonest, hypocritical, and imperialist. It's absurd.

From her speech:

At a time when the American people have been asked to tighten their belts, teachers are receiving pink slips, the vital statistics of the American people reveal a health care crisis in the making, and the U.S. government is in serious threat of default, our President and Congress have decided that a new war, this time against the people of Libya, is appropriate. This comes at a time when the U.S., by one estimate, spends approximately $3 billion per week for war against Iraq and Afghanistan. The President and Congress continue to fund the war against Libya despite the fact that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the U.S. had no strategic interest in Libya; and despite the fact that the Senate Chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence admits that the U.S. really does not know who the "rebels" are; while the rebels themselves, according to a Telegraph report of 25 March 2011, admit that Al Qaeda elements are among their ranks. So while the apparatus of our government has been used for over ten years to inform the American people and the global community that Al Qaeda is an enemy of freedom-loving people all over the world, our President chooses to ally our military with none other than Al Qaeda elements in Libya and other people whom U.S. intelligence say they do not know.
Additionally, U.S. Admiral Locklear admitted to a Member of Congress that one of NATO's missions was to assassinate Muammar Qaddafi. And, indeed, NATO bombs have killed Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren, just as US bombs in 1986 killed his daughter. NATO bombs just recently killed the grandchildren of one of Qaddafi's associates in a targeted assassination attempt. Targeted assassination is not within the scope of the United Nations Security Council Resolution and targeted assassination is against U.S. law, international law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law. Targeted assassination is also a crime. We certainly cannot encourage others to abide by the law when we so openly break it.
While in Libya, I witnessed NATO's targeting of civilians: NATO bombs and missiles landed in residential neighborhoods, hit schools, exploded near hospitals, destroyed parts of the public broadcasting infrastructure, and narrowly missed killing students at Al Fateh University. When civilians are targeted in war, or "low kinetic" activities, crimes are committed.
NATO practices in Libya are exactly like Israel's practices in Gaza: fishermen are killed as they go about their fishing business, a naval blockade allows arms to flow to NATO's Libyan allies, but stops food, fuel, and medicine from entering non-NATO ally-held areas. The entire population suffers as a result. Collective punishment is illegal when Israel practices it against the people of Gaza and collective punishment is illegal when NATO practices it.
NATO and hyperbolic press accounts have introduced a kind of race hatred that the Libyan people have been trying hard to erase. Approximately 50% of Libya looks like me. Innocent darker skinned Libyans have been targeted, tortured, harassed, and killed.
The people of Libya have the right to self-determination. They have a right to "resource nationalism." They have a right to live in peace. They have a right to determine their future and they need not exercise their rights underneath the shock and awe of NATO bombs and missiles.

The Politics of Genocide: Ann Garrison on the Shared Sacrifice podcast

2011-07-01T21:49:00.000-06:00

Ann Garrison

Genocide--it's an especially powerful term, it's an unstable term, and what it stands for is relatively rare, but it's a terrifying rarity that implicates humanity, human nature if you will. Not surprisingly, the meaning of the term, and particularly its application in policymaking, is a site of struggle among various sections of the ruling class--and among those who advocate on behalf of victims of mass murders and systemic elimination campaigns. The invocation of "genocide" as a political tool bears only a nominal relationship to what's actually happening, however awful that is.

Our guest tomorrow has been covering and is in constant correspondence with people "on the ground"--the working class and alternative political activists in Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, the Congo, in her work as a journalist. Ann Garrison has been focusing on war and resource struggles in Africa for several years, and her work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner and a slew of other digital and offline publications--and she's sat in plusher interview seats than we offer. But we're pleased to have her back for the third time on tomorrow's podcast.

Join us saturday for a discussion on Dukes v. Wal-Mart

2011-06-22T12:09:00.000-06:00

The Shared Sacrifice podcast Saturday morning at 9AM (archived thereafter) will feature a discussion with Christine Owens of the National Employment Law Project, concerning the setback to workers and women from the recent Supreme Court decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart. Don't miss it!

Clarence Thomas, meet Abe Fortas

2011-06-20T21:22:00.000-06:00

Think Progress has this on lockdown. Justice Thomas, who has at least three ethically problematic issues weighing him down, brings to mind Abe Fortas, who resigned from the high court in disgrace in 1969 for actions at least comparable, and maybe less severe, than those of Thomas:

Fortas’ questionable gifts first came out when President Johnson nominated him for a promotion to Chief Justice of the United States in 1968. Fortas had accepted $15,000 to lead seminars at American University — far more than the university normally paid for such services — and the payments were bankrolled by the leaders of frequent corporate litigants including the vice president of Phillip Morris. Fortas survived this revelation, although his nomination for the Chief Justiceship was filibustered into oblivion.
Just a year later, the country learned that Fortas took another highly questionable gift. In 1966, one year after Fortas joined the Court, stock speculator Louis E. Wolfson’s foundation began paying Fortas an annual retainer of $20,000 per year for consulting services. Fortas’ actions were legal, and he eventually returned the money after Wolfson was convicted of securities violations and recused himself from Wolfson’s case, but the damage to Fortas — and the potential harm to the Supreme Court’s reputation — were too great. Fortas resigned in disgrace.
It is difficult to distinguish Fortas’ scandal from Thomas’. Like Fortas, Thomas accepted several very valuable gifts from parties who are frequently interested in the outcome of federal court cases. One of Thomas’ benefactors has even filed briefs in his Court since giving Thomas a $15,000 gift, and Thomas has not recused himself from each of these cases.

Today's generation of conservative Justices, however, play in an entirely different key.

Huntsman Can't Win, Here's Why

2011-06-14T10:25:00.002-06:00

So Jon Huntsman is officially running. But there's a problem:

Presidential candidates need to be physically attractive in this day and age. Huntsman will never win because he has the face of a weasel. Or a ferret. People will call him "ol' ferret face."

I don't make the rules.

Peter Bach and Robert Kocher: make medical school free but charge specialists for their training

2011-06-05T20:18:00.000-06:00

Peter B. Bach of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and former special assistant to President Obama on health care and economic policy Robert Kocher, both MDs, have laid out a cogent, persuasive case for government-paid general practitioner training, with specialties coming at a cost. Among the claimed benefits: more general practitioners, avoidance of personal debt as a driving force behind the excessive pursuit of specialties at the expense of the public good, and the program would pay for itself by charging doctors for specialty training. Incremental versions of some of this are already happening:

Many states have loan forgiveness programs for doctors entering primary care. The health care reform law contains incentive programs that will include bonuses for primary care doctors who treat Medicare patients, and help finance a small increase in primary care training positions.

Free education would also increase the quality of applicants, the doctors claim, and would reflect the already symbiotic relationship between medical training and taxpayer money.

Critics might object to providing free medical education when students have to pay for most other types of advanced training. But the process of training doctors is unlike any other, and much of the costs are already borne by others. Hospitals that house medical residents and specialist trainees receive payments from the taxpayer, through Medicare. Patients give of their time and of their bodies in our nation’s teaching hospitals so that doctors in training can become skilled practitioners.

Some letters to the editor expressed skepticism that this would encourage more medical students to become general practitioners when people could just borrow money to become specialists, but I can see how at least some low-to-medium income students would choose the general path and avoid the debt. It might also encourage people, say, in their 20s to pursue new careers in medicine after they see how bleak a lot of other options are right now.

truth can be tragic, but lies are dangerous

2011-06-03T05:29:00.000-06:00

It may be too late to undo some of the damage created by this story, but it's definitely worth posting that it wasn't true.

The headlines were nothing short of chilling.

"Aspiring 'Miss Ukraine' Killed Under Shari'a Laws In Crimea" warned Ukrainian online newspaper "Gazeta Po-Kievski."
"Radical Islamists Murder Young Girl In Crimea," screamed Russia's "Svobodnaya Pressa."
"Muslim Girl,19, Stoned To Death After Taking Part In Beauty Contest," was the headline on Britain's "Mail Online," the "Daily Mail" website.
The circumstances around the death of Kateryna Korin, a 19-year-old Ukrainian student on the Crimean peninsula, appeared to point to a made-for-tabloid tragedy: a young beauty-pageant contestant brutally killed by her admirer, a radical Islamist who chose to stone her to death under an unforgiving interpretation of Islamic law.
There was just one small problem: They weren't true.

Instead, the suspect doesn't appear to be very religious at all, and the inferences of fundamentalism appear to be baseless according to the available evidence. Rather than "stoning" Kateryna, the suspect appears to have strangled her and struck her on the head--with a stone.

Fundamentalism is dangerous. So is ginning up stories designed to incite hatred.

Multilayered Resistance in Honduras

2011-05-29T09:44:00.000-06:00

Over at politicalcontext.org I've posted More than Zelaya: Multilayered Resistance in Honduras, featuring analysis and interviews on Zelaya's return and the state of the resistance in Honduras. Enjoy.

a hoisted by their own petard kind of thing

2011-05-24T20:33:00.000-06:00

Ol' Tim Pawlenty may be in a bit of a soup. A Daily Kos blogger passed along the news that

...then-Gov. Pawlenty granted to a sex offender in October 2008, a pardon that is certain to haunt Pawlenty throughout his campaign. Turns out the man Pawlenty pardoned was later arrested again for molesting his daughter more than 250 times in an eight-year span, including six years prior to his pardon.
Jeremy Giefer served 45 days in prison in 1994 after being convicted of statutory rape. However, because he married the then-14-year-old girl and stuck around to father the child they conceived together, he begged the state for an extraordinary pardon, which would no longer require Giefer to report himself as a sex offender.
The board — which included the Minnesota attorney general, the chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and then-Governor Pawlenty — voted unanimously to pardon Giefer.

"Old Redneck" at Kos concludes that this proves Republicans fire teachers and pardon child molesters. Yeah, anyway...

This isn't Pawlenty's first pardon problem. He and Michele Bachmann sought a pardon for a character

...indicted on fraud and money-laundering charges in a U.S. District Court in Minnesota. A former North Dakota pawnshop owner who ostensibly found Jesus while serving a prison sentence in the 1980s, Vennes emerged as a pillar of Minnesota’s conservative Christian community. Then, according to the indictment, he channeled millions into a Ponzi scheme run by the businessman Thomas J. Petters, who is now serving 50 years in federal prison. Much of the money Vennes raised seems to have come from faith-based charities, pastors, and ministers, some of who have lost their life savings.
...Vennes was a major donor to both politicians, and both politicians sought pardons for him in order to wipe away the taint of the crimes that first landed him in prison. Vennes’s respectability in conservative Minnesota circles seems to have enabled his crimes.
... He donated several thousand dollars to Tim Pawlenty’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and sat on the board of Teen Challenge, a faith-based drug rehab program, with Pawlenty’s wife, Mary. In 2006, according to the Star Tribune, he was the top donor to Michele Bachmann’s congressional campaign.

(Which leads me to sidebar: Is there a bigger piece of opportunistic trash in congress than Michele Bachmann?)

It's certainly not true that only Republicans abuse the pardon process. Bourgeois politicians, products of the marketplace themselves, have trouble drawing their wheeling and dealing lines. But in this election cycle, it's the GOP that seems tainted by what Politico called "Horton's Ghost."

Sometimes these pardon scandals are a bit unfair, a bit of a stretch to the limits of configural causality and foreseeability. Mittens, for example, appointed people to a parole board who made a pretty egregious error (see the Politico link above). Even Pawlenty can't be faulted for what a shrink should have caught--that the dude that married the 14 year old was also prone to go after younger kids--including immediate family members.

One unanswered question, though, is why Pawlenty would be stupid enough to pardon ANY sex offender. Was he trying to appeal to the self-perceived wrongfully convicted sex offender constituency?

Where to go, Mr. Trumka?

2011-05-20T20:53:00.000-06:00

At politicalcontext.org I ask: Where to go, Mr. Trumka?

Richard Trumka's call to arms, and promise of an "independent" labor movement, was refreshing. Can labor deliver? Does it mean more than just criticizing the Democratic Party? Is there a walk accompanying the talk?

"but I've grown older and wiser..."

2011-05-16T07:39:00.000-06:00

"I am for people, individuals, exactly like automobile insurance, individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance, and I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals on a sliding scale a government subsidy so to insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance." ~Newt Gingrich, 1993

sometimes nice guys finish first!

2011-05-03T21:19:00.000-06:00

This is great news about a great person.

Jason West was Mayor of New Paltz New York from 2003 to 2007. An active member of the Green Party at that time, West was the first official in the United States to marry same-sex couples. He was arrested and charged with “solemnizing marriages without a license”. The charges were later dismissed.

After losing in a run at re-election West headed out west, to the University of California at Berkley to study urban planning, and later returned to New Paltz. This year he again ran for Mayor, and . . . he has won that race, giving him a second but non-consecutive term.
West ran on the “Cooperative Party” ticket.

Congrats and good luck, Mayor West. Keep fighting the good fights!

from one living right wing terrorist, concerning a dead right wing terrorist

2011-05-02T17:43:00.000-06:00

"If [Obama] was a shoo-in for reelection, Osama bin Laden would still be alive today. There would have been no need to undertake the mission."

--Rush Limbaugh, courtesy of Media Matters and Daily Kos. I'm no Obama fan, but if the POTUS could send the Fat Idiot to Gitmo, I just might become one.

Friendly Fire

2011-05-02T08:34:00.002-06:00

Not that I wouldn't dance on OBL's grave (the only good right-wing terrorist is a dead right-wing terrorist), but it's kind of a shame to see the CIA kill one of their own like that.

Rules of Engagement

2011-04-26T09:27:00.000-06:00

These are very important to remember if you're working for any network or cable news outlet (including the so-called "progressive" MSNBC). Here's the bottom line:

‎25 tea partiers anywhere = national news coverage.
37,000 unemployed people protesting in Raleigh = apparently not network newsworthy.

Any questions? Good. You now know the rules. But as my friend Pete pointed out: "Read your constitution. Ben Franklin had the foresight to guide the framers (with the help of Jesus, of course) to set the ratio for worker value at one tea partier to 1480 workers. It was called the 3/4440 compromise. It's right there in black and sepia, you commie."

I'm glad we had this discussion.

New WikiLeaks Revelations on Guantanamo Lies

2011-04-25T07:04:00.000-06:00

From BBC and Alternet: The argument for Gitmo has always been that it's necessary to house dangerous people. Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, we know that a lot of the people the U.S. put there were not dangerous at all, and the U.S. knew this.

At least 150 people were revealed to be innocent Afghans or Pakistanis - including drivers, farmers and chefs - rounded up during intelligence gathering operations in the aftermath of 9/11.

The detainees were then held for years owing to mistaken identity or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the memos say. In many cases, US commanders concluded there was "no reason recorded for transfer".
Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese cameraman for al-Jazeera, was held for six years, partly so he could be questioned about the Arabic news network

Six years in Gitmo, just to be harassed because you work for a news network.

"a nation of laws"

2011-04-23T12:21:00.000-06:00

"We're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law."

-President (and constitutional scholar) Obama, on Bradley Manning, who hasn't yet been tried or convicted of anything.

Spread the Word: revolution starts in Sacramento, May 1!

2011-04-18T10:38:00.000-06:00

This is huge, and everyone needs to spread the word. Please read this post, then spread it via twitter, facebook, phone, conversation, shouting, whatever it takes:

Peace of the Action (POTA), CodePINK, Cindy Sheehan, United Progressives, several other entities, and all Vulnerable Folks are calling on us to march, strike, and occupy Sacramento and beyond beginning May Day (1st), 2011.

We seek your endorsement for – and participation in – this march/strike to strengthen our approach, our numbers, and our will.

some guy said this about me

2011-04-14T20:28:00.000-06:00

"Maybe if I can learn to wear hipster glasses and puff myself up like you instead of using facts it will get me somewhere."

--I laughed so hard my glasses nearly fell off.

that one time...

2011-04-12T17:50:00.000-06:00

Remember when teachers, social workers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither.

(via various FB friends)

It's up to us...a reminder from long ago

2011-04-12T11:08:00.000-06:00

Well, you know, we've got a slight problem. If I say the things that you want me to say, those gentlemen back there [vice squad officers attending Bruce's performance] are going to bust me. [Audience boos.] Don't boo them, it's not their fault. They're only doing their job. It's your fault I'm being busted. Until you change the law, they have to do what the law requires them to do. It's up to you to change the law.

--Lenny Bruce's performance at the Unicorn in Los Angeles, February 1962

"I'm trying to come to the point..."

2011-04-09T10:11:00.000-06:00

A friend brought this to my attention and it seemed configurally appropriate after watching the twin corporate parties struggle over the budget this week. "America" -- Powerful, critical, sincere, reflective, Ginsberg (with music by Tom Waits)

he was telling me there were power circles in paris...in paris

2011-04-05T07:18:00.001-06:00

Morning music:

This stuff really gets me going--and gets my imagination going too.

where are they hiding?

2011-04-04T06:15:00.000-06:00

An old favorite of mine & some friends of mine, by the influential Cabaret Voltaire.

	Cabaret Voltaire - Yashar .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

throw out the fake umpires

2011-04-02T12:42:00.000-06:00

During his confirmation hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts referred to SCOTUS justices as "umpires." Scalia and Thomas aren't umpires. They're playing for a team. Thomas, in particular, has committed impeachable financial offenses and conflict-of-interest offenses that most of my lawyer friends find unconscionable. He is literally in bed with the tea partiers. This week's Connick v. Thompson decision distorts the facts in the case to the point of ridiculousness in order to justify a particular ruling on a matter of law, and it shocks the conscience. I wish something in what I just wrote were hyperbolic, but unfortunately, if anything, I'm using restraint here.

out-of-synch hatred

2011-03-31T06:21:00.000-06:00

What's behind the intensified attacks on Islam in America recently, from New York to Oklahoma to Wyoming and even Alaska? There's been no extremist violence in the U.S., and pro-democracy movements in the Middle East are encouraging, and nobody's trying to "enact Sharia law" in America, so why the high level of bigotry and scapegoating?

Fukushima Update: Some Highlights

2011-03-25T08:31:00.000-06:00

Contamination is high in the seawater near the nuclear pant.

DemFromCT at Daily Kos says the disaster in Fukushima is unlikely to affect the nature and use of nuclear power.

...there's no nuclear renaissance in this country. We were unlikely to accept a lot of nuclear reactor construction before Fukushima, and nothing unfolding in Japan right now is likely to change that. Still, some folks in Congress like the idea of "clean energy" and figure the spent fule issue can be kicked down the road, so the debate won't disappear. As if the nuclear lobby would let it.

Meanwhile, the plant is hot. Very hot.

Engineers at Japan’s damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant were evacuated from one reactor after three men suffered radiation burns, the second retreat from the location in as many days.

Have no fear--they'll develop a drug: From Voice of America News

The serious radiation leaks at Japan's damaged Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant have reawakened public fears about radiation sickness. But what if there were a drug that could not only protect people from dangerous levels of radiation exposure but also heal those actually exposed to damaging nuclear radiation?
Researchers say they are developing such a drug - one that can both prevent and repair human cell damage from all types of radiation exposure.
Such a healing medication has the potential to lessen panic and fear generated by catastrophic reactor accidents. Plant workers trying to make repairs near a crippled reactor's radioactive core might be less fearful if they could take a pill to repair their own radiation-damaged cells.

And, from Andrew Revkin at the Dot Earth blog of the New York Times: If we're going to keep nuclear, we need some big changes--changes we don't have the regulatory courage to implement.

Finally, regardless of nuclear industry spin, half of Americans now oppose building new nuclear plants--anywhere.

Yemeni troops on streets, the people are not backing down

2011-03-19T18:21:00.000-06:00

Yemeni troops on streets, two party members quit Reuters: "'Tanks don't scare us. They have killed dozens of us and hundreds were wounded. And we are not leaving until Ali Abdullah Saleh leaves,' said Abdullah Saif, one of the protesters."

Japan update--containers can't contain and spinners can't spin

2011-03-18T09:13:00.000-06:00

...or contain & spin forever, at least. Both are happening now, but the long-term outlook is that this will continue to be a crisis that upends a number of assumptions the public has been fed about nuclear power--and the energy economy in general.

Right now it's all about getting water into the reactors--and Japanese technicians appear to be having a hard time doing that. Ever since the pool containing spent fuel rods ran dry on Wednesday, all pretense of this being a containable crisis has been lifted. A few minutes ago, Japan's nuclear agency raised the threat to a "5," where "7" is the highest level. "Fuel rods in three of the six reactors are thought to have partially melted, while spent fuel rods in cooling pools that have ceased to function also posed urgent problems." "The move," Reuters reports, "puts it on the same level as the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US, and two levels below the Chernobyl meltdown." American and Japanese politicians, and the nuclear wonks upon which politicians currently rely are at odds.

US officials say there is a potentially dire problem in the cooling pool for spent nuclear rods in the No. 4 reactor, despite the fact that Japanese officials insist that No. 3 is the more urgent problem, according to the The Los Angeles Times. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the reactor pool has a significant hole or crack, allowing water to drain out of the pool, reports the Times. Leaving the spent rods uncovered allows them to overheat causing them catch on fire and release significant amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Such a problem would be extremely difficult to solve.

Differences between American and Japanese assessments of the disaster have raised talk of a rift between the two nations' governments. More likely, there is merely a rift in transparency, as the U.S. warns its own citizens in Japan to stay further away from the site than Japanese officials are advising. U.S. officials, of course, have no reason not to be transparent about other countries' disasters.

For those who want to wrap their head around the unpleasant comparisons to Chernobyl, this piece at asahi.com lays out the reasons why, even though the fire at Chernobyl burned for ten days, Fukushima has a much higher combined power output, making the stakes in the current containment effort even higher than many suppose.
In other crappy news, food prices are going to rise as a result of contaminated beef and rice.

Perhaps the big global conversation should now be about how to handle international radioactive fallout, but that's not the conversation that's happening. Rather, nations' mainstream media are arguing about whether this is the end of "the nuclear power revival." The Indian government presents a paradigm case of stubbornness: They're building a nuclear plant on an earthquake fault zone, and have no plans to reconsider the project--only to re-evaluate safety issues, a gesture which in most contexts means very little.

...as Japan battles to contain a crisis at its nuclear reactors, opposition parties in India have asked the government to review its ambitious plans to increase the use of nuclear energy. Anti-nuclear activists are calling for a freeze on further expansion pointing to potential risks from an accident.

The Indian government says it will not reconsider plans to expand nuclear power generation. It says it will, however, re-evaluate safety issues.

"There are lessons be learned,” said V. Raghuraman, a former energy adviser to the Confederation of India Industry. “That is what India will do. The question now will be one of re-examination and see whether the path on which we have been going ahead is providing the necessary safeguards and safety procedures are being incorporated, so they will be re-evaluated. So there may be some postponement, but no derailing of the process."

In particular, there is expected to be greater focus on potential safety hazards at a nuclear reactor to be built at Jaitapur, in western Maharashtra, by France. Billed as the world’s biggest reactor, it will generate about 10,000 megawatts of electricity. But some concerns have been raised because the site stands on an earthquake-prone zone.

The most discouraging part of this conversation is the constant reminder that the absence of nuclear energy automatically entails an increase in the carbon-based energy--and an accompanying increase in CO2 emissions. Germany's decision to pause its nuclear program for three months, a reasonable pause for a safety overhaul, has dire consequences for the fight against carbon emissions.

The three-month German moratorium alone would, according to a calculation by energy analysts, add eight megatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
Climate-change scientists and activists are now contemplating the effects of a middle to long-term shift away from nuclear.
''I despise and fear the nuclear industry as much as any other green,'' wrote influential British climate commentator George Monbiot in his Guardian blog this week. ''[But] even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally.''
Ruling out nuclear, ''a low-carbon source of energy, which could help us tackle the gravest threat the world now faces … does neither the people nor the places of the world any favours''. Back in the 1970s, it was expected that nuclear energy would soon become the world's dominant generator of electrical power. Nations such as France determinedly invested in the technology after the oil-price shock.

Wall Street Journal financial blogger Alen Mattich is a nuclear power expert now. Seriously, Murdoch can do things like that for you. Mattich must certainly have no incentive to write off renewables in the midst of this crisis. But he has a tough time stopping himself from at least laying the groundwork for self-refutation when he writes:

But looking to renewables as a source of electricity generation is a forlorn hope. Sure, Brazil gets nearly all of its electricity from renewables, while Canada, Switzerland, Sweden Pakistan, Armenia, Romania and Finland get from a third to two thirds of their needs from renewables.

But these countries are blessed with plenty of water running downhill. Strip out hydroelectric generation, and other renewables largely make up less than 10% of electricity generation (in countries with nuclear plants). At most it’s around 13% in Russia, Spain and Slovakia.

To be sure, great efforts are being made towards developing non-hydro renewables, and generation has boomed during the past few years. But it is hard to see how it could fully replace nuclear power for at least a generation, and possibly longer.

Note that the WSJ financial, newly appointed nuclear power expert lists "water running downhill" as a prerequisite for transition readiness. But if you accept at face value the claim that "we're just not ready" for a transition to post-carbon, and non-nuclear, energy, you are only getting half the story. And the other half of that story is not coming from tree-hugging nonscientist hippies, and the blueprints for an economic and structural transition are not being written by Stalinists. Maybe some weekend reading on renewable energy will lift your spirits, increase your political resolve, make you both more optimistic about humanity and more determined to make that optimism show through in politics itself--politics that we control in so far as we can reclaim the public square, and the commons.

In the long run, it's more economically and environmentally viable. In the short run, we're closer than we might suspect in some ways, even if formidable structural barriers exist elsewhere. In the Latin American context:

Industrializing countries need efficient, affordable power, and power demand in Latin America will surge over the next decade. Though renewable power is still seen as uneconomic in many parts of the region, we need only look at recent events to see that fossil fuel prices are unpredictable. Additionally, oil spills, coal mine and natural gas accidents, and perhaps too nuclear plant accidents will continue to have untold environmental and economic costs. But the sun, the sea, rivers, wind, these are unchanging. And thanks to the rapid development of a renewable industry in Europe and China, costs are coming down. Indeed, investors prior to the crisis saw double digit returns in the wind sector in numerous parts of the world, and solar power could be cost-competitive in as little as two years.

With the right regulatory signals, renewable energy could prove an important complement to base load power in Latin America in the next decade. The time to act is now.

Why, I wonder, do economic reporters feel compelled to reassure us that the "green buying binge won't last" in the wake of the Japan crisis? Over the past year, Americans have seen a domestic coal diaster that killed 29 people in a non-union coal mine in West Virginia, an offshore oil rig explosion which, after killing 11 people, proceded to kill an entire section of the Gulf of Mexico, and now a disaster in Japan that casts into doubt the "cleanliness" of the nuclear alternative. But Americans and our global allies seeking a transition to renewable energy are fighting tremendous odds. Any inclination on the part of the Obama administration for such a transition died when Koch Bros-funded Americans for Prosperity engineered the ouster of green energy advocate Van Jones from the White House. Since then, Obama has marched to the orders of big oil and big nuke, and corporate media is eager to march along. The corporate communists once known as the GOP not only supports the principle of nuclear energy, but is prepared to manifest this support by violating free market principles and directly funding them. Keep that in mind as you hear financial experts say that we can't achieve a renewables transition without government funding (along with the conditional normative assumption that we shouldn't, for some reason, be massively funding a scientifically feasible transition to safe and clean energy).

Listening to the financial scribes--their language in shaping, through description, their financial universes--is an study in the rhetoric of economic correctness. Although solar shares rose, the crisis won't be (won't be?) enough to "quickly boost demand" for power. "The real winners," says one insufficiently enthusiastic clean energy investment manager, "will be natural gas and energy efficiency." Well duh, but the double digit gains for solar panels and other renewables implements --including climbs of 77% for Germany's Conergy AG and 54% for Solon SE, suggest that there's life in the renewables sector that will get a significant shot in the arm even if government commitment climbs only incrementally in the next few years. A major commitment by any big government could change the renewable energy game. And sooner or later, one of those governments will blink. Armed with that possibility, advocates of clean and safe energy can battle back the perception that nuclear power is inevitable, the only post-carbon game in town. That assumption is reinforced in the business sections of all mainstream media outlets, including in the form of personal advice to investors. A public counteroffensive on renewable energy could prove both timely and effective.

Saint Patrick Battalion

2011-03-17T04:15:00.000-06:00

Saint Patrick Battalion by David Rovics:

My name is John Riley
I'll have your ear only a while
I left my dear home in Ireland
It was death, starvation or exile
And when I got to America
It was my duty to go
Enter the Army and slog across Texas
To join in the war against Mexico

It was there in the pueblos and hillsides
That I saw the mistake I had made
Part of a conquering army
With the morals of a bayonet blade
So in the midst of these poor, dying Catholics
Screaming children, the burning stench of it all
Myself and two hundred Irishmen
Decided to rise to the call

(Chorus)
From Dublin City to San Diego
We witnessed freedom denied
So we formed the Saint Patrick Battalion
And we fought on the Mexican side

We marched 'neath the green flag of Saint Patrick
Emblazoned with "Erin Go Bragh"
Bright with the harp and the shamrock
And "Libertad para la Republica"
Just fifty years after Wolftone
Five thousand miles away
The Yanks called us a Legion of Strangers
And they can talk as they may

(Chorus)
We fought them in Matamoros
While their volunteers were raping the nuns
In Monterey and Cerro Gordo
We fought on as Ireland's sons
We were the red-headed fighters for freedom
Amidst these brown-skinned women and men
Side by side we fought against tyranny
And I daresay we'd do it again
(Chorus)
We fought them in five major battles
Churobusco was the last
Overwhelmed by the cannons from Boston
We fell after each mortar blast
Most of us died on that hillside
In the service of the Mexican state
So far from our occupied homeland
We were heroes and victims of fate

upon hearing that Rush had made fun of Japanese disaster victims, I thought, once again...

2011-03-16T21:26:00.000-06:00

Nobody's conservative friend listens to Rush, or reads Ann Coulter. Their conservative friends don't either. So they're loved by millions, 'fessed up to by none.

Nuclear Disaster Review

2011-03-16T11:00:00.000-06:00

Whatever the controversies of where and how far the radioactivity will spread, and however impossible and overwhelming this all sounds (is there anyone not lying to the public? any hope for transparency in the future? and if not, then what's left to do?), the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi has reached international crisis level; authorities have been forced to spend more time fixing and managing the disaster than effectively covering it up. Mainstream and corporate media are finally admitting what only "fringe" media (and a number of scientists) had been saying a few days ago. A lot of people are going to die because of corporate greed, government complacency, and the socially constructed desire for an energy panacea.

According to Stratfor, the admission by Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of a meltdown of the reactor core is especially significant, because

...it is the government agency that reports to the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy within the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. NISA works in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission. Its role is to provide oversight to the industry and is responsible for signing off construction of new plants, among other things. It has been criticized for approving nuclear plants on geological fault lines and for an alleged conflict of interest in regulating the nuclear sector. It was NISA that issued the order for the opening of the valve to release pressure — and thus allegedly some radiation — from the Fukushima power plant.
NISA has also overseen the entire government response to the nuclear reactor problems following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. It is difficult to determine at this point whether the NISA statement is accurate, as the Nikkei report has not been corroborated by others. It is also not clear from the context whether NISA is stating the conclusions of an official assessment or simply making a statement. However, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, also said that although it had relieved pressure, nevertheless some nuclear fuel had melted and further action was necessary to contain the pressure.

Yesterday, a friend reminded me to keep in mind the experiences of the emergency technicians working at Fukushima now. This engineering student's blog, a very well-written, busy blog which more people should subscribe to, has a very effective post that explains the human factor from an technician's perspective.

As the fires at Unit 4 and other sources increase the radiation levels, the dose rates get so high that workers can only spend short times on the site without getting radiation sickness. Moreover, after a worker does a shift in an extreme radiation area--it might be only 30 minutes or less--and receives a large does, he must allow his body to heal before being re-exposed to radiation. I don't know how long, but think in terms of how long it takes to recover from a burn, so several days to a couple of weeks. This creates a manpower problem very quickly. . . Assuming things continue apace, access will get more and more difficult and it is entirely credible the site will have to be essentially abandoned to run its course for several weeks.

They will literally run out of bodies.
From Justin Elliott at Salon, "What the media missed about the nuclear lobby:"

The Nuclear Energy Institute is a Washington-based trade group that has been widely quoted in the press -- including Salon -- in recent days as representing the American nuclear industry. What media reports haven't mentioned is that NEI is actually an international organization that serves several Japanese member corporations, including the very company whose reactors are at the center of the crisis: Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
According to the trade group's 2010 "governance roster," TEPCO is one of about 350 member organizations, along with the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, and other Japanese energy interests....NEI has at times given overly sunny takes on what is happening. Early on in the crisis, for example, NEI distributed to reporters a document from the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (an NEI member) that claimed there was "no danger of the nuclear fuel being exposed" at Fukushima Daiichi plant. That turned out not to be true. An NEI spokesman also argued on Sunday that Americans should be "reassured" by what is happening because lessons will be learned in Japan.

Friends of the Earth has compiled a list of experts to contact about the disaster, and their news is not good for the nuclear industry--or, more accurately, the industry's future victims, in America. Just for starters, the fox is guarding the henhouse and writing the PR about it:

The U.S. makes widespread use of the same aging reactors that are in crisis in Japan. Five of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi 1 site are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, including Unit 1, which suffered an explosion that destroyed part of its containment building on Saturday, and Unit 3, which uses plutonium-based MOX fuel and has been the subject of major efforts to cool the reactor.
Michael Mariotte, executive director and the chief spokesperson for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: “Nearly one out of five -- 23 – of the operating reactors in the U.S. use the GE Mark I design. All but two of these began commercial operation between 1971 and 1976. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved 20-year license extensions for 18 of these aging GE Mark I reactors. Two applications are currently under review; three reactors have not filed for license renewal. When the reactor designs are the same, and the reactor’s ages are the same, comparisons seem more than appropriate -- indeed, it would be irresponsible not to understand what lessons may be learned from the Japanese experience that would apply to so many aging U.S. reactors that are still in use.”

Gizmodo.com has republished an article by Debora MacKenzie at New Scientist describing the health effects of crisis-level nuclear radiation levels. Radiation poisoning isn't pretty--survivable or not.

Radiation damages DNA, especially as it assembles in dividing cells. That means tissues which contain many dividing cells, such as the gut lining, skin and bone marrow, are most at risk of damage. High enough doses also damage brain cells and such doses are invariably fatal. Less severe damage can be treated, however. Gut damage disturbs fluid balance and can lead to blood infection; marrow damage means no blood cells are produced for clotting and fighting infection. If those problems can be managed, people can be kept alive long enough for gut and marrow to regenerate. A cloned human hormone that boosts white blood cell production sometimes helps; there is little else.
[...]
The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. However, so far it seems more likely to resemble the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 which, like Fukushima, lost coolant and had a partial meltdown.
So far, the release of radioactivity at Fukushima appears to be closer to what happened at TMI than at Chernobyl. The huge plume of smoke from Chernobyl spread radiation over most of Europe and forced evacuation within a 30-kilometre radius. The gases that escaped TMI, in contrast, might have travelled as far as New York state, but most stayed within 15 kilometres of the plant.

...So, either Chernobyl or TMI. Those are the choices we currently face. It's time to change the range.

Some information for Twitter users:

Standing out from the crowd is Twitter user @shioyama, and the rest of the the outstanding Global Voices team. They have set up a Japan earthquake hub and post updates frequently. Time Out Tokyo, besides posting frequent updates to Twitter (@TimeOutTokyo), has a number of live reports, safety information and photographs on their website.
Blogger Michael Gakuran (@gakuranman) is posting updates on his blog (gakuranman.com ), including links to blackout schedules and other essential notifications. Similarly, Marcy Sensei (@marcysensei) is updating her feed with translations. Roy Berman (aka @mutantfroginc) has a good stream of updates, as well as amazingly informative information on his blog, including an explanation of who can and cannot give blood in Japan.
Individuals who speak languages other than English or Japanese can visit imperium-donuzium.org/ where you can monitor Twitter updates in a wide range of languages including Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese and many more.
There is also a bot collating information from government sources (@earthquake_jp), which we all pray soon remains forever silent.

our regional manager will be dropping by, so everyone work extra hard

2011-03-12T04:56:00.000-07:00

stark raving loony

2011-03-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

Comment I left at at blog of a friend who called me "occasionally crazy" :

I resent the implication that I am only occasionally crazy. To designate one as even partially sane in contemporary society is to paint them as complicit. I am stark raving mad. For example, I don't like the taste of peanut butter, I think the souls of aborted babies get another chance, and the voices of seemingly chaste, pure-hearted female Christian and Mormon pop singers make me feel quite randy.

Too much information? Almost certainly.

not-so-undercover in Libya

2011-03-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

From what little I could gather in this article (which, to be fair, is from the state-run media of the nation most likely to lie about bthe event in question), it doesn't sound like the clandestine (not very effectively clandestine) British forces captured by Libyan rebels are in any danger, or that their detainers are being hostile to them. They were found behaving suspiciously and had weapons on them. The rebels are concerned about Gaddafi bringing in mercenaries from other countries (which he apparently has--and which the U.S. is apparently supporting) to help put down the rebellion. A charitable interpretation is that the Brits were there either to observe events or to assist in rounding up British citizens and getting them the heck out of Libya. Of course, the Ministry of Defence is silent.

Read my editorial on Saudi Arabia and the global oil economy

2011-03-05T08:04:00.000-07:00

Check it out over at Politicalcontext.org. The conclusion: "We’re willing to let the Saudi Kingdom arrest, torture, and execute human beings in order to maintain our current lifestyle. Moreover, we’re being prodded into this morally bankrupt position knowing full well that the ruling classes in America, and the rest of the world, will do okay for themselves even if the rest of us starve to death. Our willingness to tolerate that brutality only buys us a little time. We’re not even selling out our Saudi brothers and sisters for anything lasting or substantive. The proper answer, both morally and pragmatically, is to support democratic revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, and to start one here."

postmodernists and climate change

2011-02-28T18:55:00.001-07:00

In denying the objective validity of science and reducing it to one narrative among a wide fields of unstable narratives, have postmodernists greased the wheels for climate change denialism?

Chris Mooney doesn't think so. He is responding to Judith Warner's New York Times Magazine piece by Judith Warner (who misattributes postmodernism to the left, where it's never, technically been), in arguing that the far right appropriated the anti-foundationalist discourse of postmodernity in their attack on science.

Mooney jokes:

Can you picture James Inhofe citing Derrida or Foucault? The very idea is comical.

But more seriously, he writes that climate deniers do believe in objective truth--just not the objective truth of contemporary science. There's no overriding, systemically consistent reason for their position. It's more pre-modern than postmodern. I don't really have any strong disagreement with Mooney's position here. But it may be possible that intellectuals who have ridden the right's coattails, who author carefully coded "intelligent design" treasises and cite Heidegger and Nietzsche in the service of radical orthodoxy do, in fact, deploy postmodernist thinking in their attack on science. Such intellectuals may contribute to the anti-scientific attitude of rank-and-file Christians who know little to nothing about the foundational poles of the overall debate. It's also important to remember that the scientific method, when properly deployed, is an instantiation of democracy, while a certain strain of religious postmodernism is both deeply anti-scientific and hostile to cosmopolitan democracy.

Finally, I posed the question at the top of this post on my Facebook page earlier, and received some extremely thoughtful responses:

"Yes, amongst other things, in fact I believe that in promoting the Many Truths narrative they have helped the Right define the debate in their favor."

"Um, no. If you don't understand that science is unstable, you don't understand science, IMHO. There's a difference between instability and complete indeterminacy. In that difference, the entire world lies."

"I suspect the vast majority of climate change deniers have never heard of postmodernism or think it's a communist plot."

"Habermas makes that argument. I don't buy it. The problem with science in the U.S. comes from evangelicals, and they are hardly postmodernists. There are many more relativists/postmodernists in Europe and a much higher belief in science."

"For an interesting read on the question see Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry, 30 (2003). Latour is one of the original critique of science people."

"And besides capital "S"cience is a narrative science itself is a method of inquiry while postmodernism(s) can call into question the big Truth claims that people think science makes but science isnt concerned wit...h the Ultimate truths that say religion or philosophy is. Only the best truth that fits the available evidence. In this respect science in its always unfinished-- constantly revisiable-- self reflexive-- process oriented methodology is and has always been the paragon of post modernity."

The King's Dump

2011-02-28T08:55:00.001-07:00

I have a great idea for the next Hollywood smash hit: A movie, which must be over two hours long, depicting the struggle of a sympathetic king-character with his bowel movement. In the midst of international turmoil and intrigue, as the masses struggle for security and the royal family comes to terms with their Nazi sympathies, the king sits in his bathroom, grunting away. Plagued by a dreaded spell of constipation and considered too bloated and unhealthy to be king, our protagonist engages the help of an unorthodox poop therapist. Through a set of unorthodox cognitive restructuring techniques, and as a result of an unlikely friendship and specially made laxitives, the king is able to "find his voice," as it were, and boldly lead the country through war, taking symbolic dumps on the British working class.

Not just a democratic revolution...

2011-02-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Guess what? The revolts in the Middle East and North Africa are not just against the broadly brushed "dictatorship," but also against the global economic hierarchy. That's the argument advanced by John Pilger in his Truthout article Behind the Arab Revolt Is a Word We Dare Not Speak.

The revolt in the Arab world is not merely against a resident dictator, but against a worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries like Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with half the population earning less than $2 a day. The people's triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.

...which makes all of this even more interesting than it has already been--and even more intimately connected to the conditions and stakes in the Wisconsin battles.

Economic History

2011-02-23T01:13:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to ask myself if they've ever been right about anything.

Wisconsin and Priorities

2011-02-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

From Tom Hayden:

Cost of Iraq: $3 trillion [projected]
Cost of Afghanistan: $1 trillion [projected]
California budget gap: $28 billion
Wisconsin budget gap: $138 million

...the budget crises faced in places like Wisconsin and California can be ended by rapidly ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

trying to get some politifacts straight

2011-02-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

Last week, in the midst of the unprecedented labor uprising in Wisconsin, Talkingpointsmemo.com ran an interesting, much-cited story about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "ginning up" budget figures, and essentially causing a budget crisis through mis-timed tax cuts, which he then turned around and used as a reason to push through legislation limiting public workers' right to collectively bargain. TPM got that story from the local Wisconsin media, and Rachel Maddow picked up the story and ran with it--as did many other sources, including my own politicalcontext.org.

A conservative friend pointed out that politifact.com has called the "ginning up" story false.

So earlier this morning, I emailed Brian Beutler at talkingpointsmemo.com --who broke the story of Gov. Walker ginning up the budget crisis before Maddow did-- asking him to comment on the politifact.com analysis. I'll report his reply if and when I receive it--and I sincerely hope I do. If it comes out that this was a screw up on TPM's part, a lot of people will need to clarify their position concerning Wisconsin. Supporting the 70,000 + people in the streets in Madison, and the right of all workers to collectively bargain, does not stand or fall on whether Gov. Walker messed up the budget and lied about it. Public workers make less than private sector workers, and the whole blame game being lobbed against the public sector is ridiculous. And, Wisconsin Republicans aren't interested in facts and have rejected compromise offers by the unions. But we still need to make sure we get our facts straight--always, every time.

that refreshing mass action feeling

2011-02-18T18:39:00.002-07:00

It's been nice this past week to see actual working people take to the streets in mass action rather than seeing half a dozen aging, government teat-sucking teabaggers shout epithets on courthouse steps.

this is how far the right has fallen...

2011-02-17T11:54:00.001-07:00

Conservative stalwart and professional hatemonger Debbie Schlussel, one of several conservative Hosni Mubarak fans, is celebrating the rape of CBS reporter Lara Logan. It seems that Logan offended Schlussel's anti-Muslim extremism by feeling good about the Egyptian anti-Mubarak uprising. So when Logan was raped (as women are statistically in danger of in the United States as well as Egypt), Schlussel wet her pants with joy, delcaring on the O'Reilly Factor:

"So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled. How fitting that Lara Logan was 'liberated' by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the 'liberation.' Hope you're enjoying the revolution, Lara!"

What, exactly, is it appropriate for us to wish upon Debbie Schlussel?

Obama vs The Rest of Us

2011-02-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

Patrick Martin hits his target again in "Obama’s budget and the rot of American capitalism:"

Programs to be cut include not only those targeted by Obama and the Republicans in the current budget debate—home heating assistance, Pell Grants, WIC, Head Start, etc.—but the much larger entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, which will face cuts later in the budget process. The social impact will be incalculable. As hundreds of thousands of people face the bitter cold of winter without heat and gas, Obama is proposing halving the grossly inadequate federal assistance that is available. As students graduate with record debt and no job prospects, the administration is proposing significant cuts in government aid. Such gross indifference to social distress is repeated in every sphere.

a progressive non-manifesto

2011-02-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

Shared Media Cooperative, formerly Shared Sacrifice Media, launches two new web sites next week, starting with Politicalcontext.org. I have previewed the introductory post here.

Politicalcontext.org is a new web site produced by Shared Media Cooperative, devoted to interviews, blog-diaries, news, and debates concerning progressive politics, culture and philosophy. Politicalcontext.org’s home page is a hub for blogs devoted to politics, religion, law, sexuality, philosophy, economics, arts & culture, science & technology, and direct action. The posts on each individual blog will roll through the main page, along with breaking news from the activist community, and daily compilations of leading currents in progressive and left wing politics and culture.
Politicalcontext.org contains the following blogs:
• Politics and Policy: Policy analysis and advocacy. Wide-ranging and in-depth discussion of both foreign and domestic policy. An examination of legislative and executive decisionmaking of government both in the U.S. and abroad.
• Economics: Political economy, economic science, an examination of the goings on in the material base. Debates and updates on long-term and short-term economic issues, from both the theoretical and the practical.
• Rule of Law: Legal debates and news from constitutional issues to the prison-industrial complex, from drug policy to immigration, from the death penalty to corporate personhood. Updates on the rule of law in America and abroad.
• Take Action: Immediate and significant opportunities to make a difference. Direct action opportunities: protests, strikes, boycots, petitions, elections, targeted fund drives, and more.
• Spirituality: Institutional and non-institutional religious perspectives on contemporary politics and culture. News of religious dissent and progressive spirituality around the world, as well as a chance to thoughtfully report and criticize on regressive religious tendencies.
• Philosophy: Foundational human thought and its relation to the politics of history and everyday life. Criticism, advocacy, speculation, and logic.
• Sexuality: News, views, and analysis of intimacy and pleasure. Sexual politics, alternatives, and the struggle for sexual freedom.
• Arts and Culture: Music, dance, literature, movies, poetry, theater, graphic arts, folklore, fiction, high and low art, featuring both reviews and original work.
• In addition, we are adding a Science and Technology blog in the near future.

those selfish egyptians--what about my needs???

2011-02-11T02:22:00.000-07:00

"US stocks fell amid speculation out of Egypt that President Hosni Mubarek will step down" should read "the suits are trying to scare & shame us away from revolution." Don't overthrow dictators, folks. It might tank the market!

Princess Gwyn meets the cowboys

2011-02-10T05:08:00.000-07:00

"The world of country music, like, the values are so strong, you know."

~Gwyneth Paltrow, Starz Studios interview, explaining the title of the movie, and not sounding aloof or condescending at all.

The Last Word on the Raygun Centennial

2011-02-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

three predictions

2011-02-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

1. I will not be watching the Superbowl tomorrow.
2. Steelers will win. This is a prediction, not a normative judgment. I mean, the Packers are the only "socialist" team in the league (owned by the people of Green Bay). But laudible ownership schemes do not guarantee a championship. If they did, Cuba would win at other things besides just baseball and boxing.
3. If I am wrong about 2, I will only focus on how I was right about 1, and in any case shall not blog of this again.

Egypt, Now

2011-01-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

Does Early Evidence Point to Success of ACA?

2011-01-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

Early anecdotes, statistics, and honest assessments by small business observers all suggest that the conservative narrative against the Affordable Care Act is based more on what the conservative paradigm tells them the outcome should be--not what the outcome actually is. Joan McCarter at Daily Kos has compiled some of the evidence:

There's more than just anecdotal evidence that the small business tax credit has spurred many more business to provide insurance to their employees. Last fall, the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation reported a nine percent increase in businesses offering coverage, and the Los Angeles Times featured a story earlier this month reporting that "[m]ajor insurers around the country are reporting that a growing number of small businesses are signing up to give their workers health benefits, a sign of potential progress for the nation's battered healthcare system."
Even in a down economy with very high unemployment, being able to offer workers health benefits is a huge boon to small businesses. It is, incidentally, also good news for insurers, who've gained a lot of new customers. So the U.S. Chamber's zeal for repeal certainly isn't shared by the businesses they purport to represent, but apparently just those mega-corporations that actually comprise their membership. So the only conclusion that makes any sense is that the U.S. Chamber is operating on the basis of pure ideology, rather than what the average American business would want.

The insistence on repeating the conservative narrative sans facts has been politically and materially hazardous for organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has lost major corporations as members, as well as the cooperation of local chambers, because of its extremist ideology and unwillingness to objectively assess the economic effects of the legislation. In other words, people with genuine business and economic interests reject the conservative non-arguments for economic reasons. As Suzy Khimm writes in Mother Jones:

Angry about the lobbying behemoth's full-bore opposition to Democratic climate-change legislation, Apple, Nike, Johnson & Johnson, and a handful of other blue-chip corporations quit the Chamber. A few months later, about a dozen local Chambers of Commerce publicly broke away from the group, arguing that the national organization had swung too far to the right and no longer represented its members' views. Now, some of the same questions are beginning to surface over the Chamber's hard-line stance on health care. Since the new Congress has begun, the group has come out swinging against "Obamacare," boosting conservative claims that reform is killing businesses and the economy. "It's time to go back to the drawing board," said Tom Donohue, the Chamber's chief executive officer, at his annual address last week. "The Chamber was a leader in the fight against this particular bill—and thus we support legislation in the House to repeal it." Could another civil war erupt within the Chamber over health care reform? Given that full repeal isn't politically feasible any time soon, a repeat of 2009's defections seems unlikely, and the Chamber itself has begun adopting a more targeted approach to submarining reform. But when it comes to the Chamber's constituency outside the beltway, some local branches say they don't agree with the national Chamber's stance on repeal.

Neither the Kos nor the Mother Jones pieces weigh the evidence against the criticisms of the left (and remember--more people believe the ACA doesn't go far enough than believe it goes too far). We know the legislation doesn't go far enough fast enough, and that single payer would have been more fiscally responsible and successful in terms of the policy objective of universal coverage. But the news of the ACA's early success doesn't undermine those arguments, and it should serve to make the public suspicious of arguments from both the right and the center against single payer. If the Chamber, and its ideological constituency, can't get it right on center-right reform, there's really no reason to trust their dismissals of more progressive reform, should the opportunity to make that case arise in the near future (importantly: Many important groups never stopped arguing for it, and those groups simultaneously oppose repeal of the ACA).

Painful Becktal Itch

2011-01-26T01:24:00.001-07:00

As Glenn Beck pathetically and enthymematically invites violence on yet another figure of the left, and Fox officials recite their usual denials and disclaimers, it occurred to me that no conservative I know personally (and having lived in Utah, Wyoming and California I know more than enough) will defend Beck in a conversation. They won't proactively call him out, though. They all say he's bad for their side, but they're either lying about their disposition towards him, or they're weak-willed in terms of trying to raise the level of conservative discourse.

So help me out, dear reader: Aside from a couple of right wing mediawatch sites, are any articulate conservatives--and/or conservatives you know personally--standing up for this death clown?

um yeah, about that alliance thing...

2011-01-23T01:24:00.000-07:00

Concerning this so-called "progressive-libertarian alliance" ... anyone remember the story of "The Scorpion and the Frog" ? Why does that keep popping into my mind when I hear Nader reassuring us that Ron Paul, et al, only want to help us working folks?

No Further Comment Necessary

2011-01-22T13:15:00.001-07:00

When Bourgeois-Liberal Rhetoric Backfires

2011-01-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

I had a feeling that the Democratic strategy to call on GOP members of Congress to give up their federal health insurance would backfire. And it has.

Looks like we've got another House GOPer who has decided to forgo the health insurance members of Congress enjoy -- because he says members of Congress should not support laws they don't want applied to themselves. [...] Dems, of course, have been demanding Republicans give up their insurance, in order to tar GOPers who favor repeal with the hypocrisy charge. But at this point, it should be noted that a surprising amount of House Republicans have now endorsed the idea by agreeing to do it themselves. Among them are Bobby Shilling, Mike Kelly, Joe Walsh, Daniel Webster, Sandy Adams, Frank Guinta, David McKinley, and Bill Johnson.

The reason they can do this is simple: Since most of these representatives range from upper-middle class to extremely wealthy, they can afford private health insurance. The rhetorical strategy of holding them to consistency might have worked if, say, the stakes were donning a uniform to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Democrats could hardly make such a demand when the vast majority of them have been complicit in Obama's continued occupation of those countries. But since the best options for providing affordable care to poor people were kicked off the table before the health care reform debate even began, and because it was the Democrats who were responsible for those manuevers, the center-right has nowhere to stand when their rich GOP colleagues call their bluff on federal employees' health insurance.

So as the House comes closer to finalizing their symbolic repeal vote, and a few (very few) principled Democrats remind the public of the tiny bits of common sense that the Act actually contains, the GOP has found another opportunity to strengthen their hand, without fear of genuine political opposition or reprisal. This is what happens when the only check against wealthy people without a conscience is wealthy people with an occasional conscience.

Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?"

2011-01-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

Bill O'Reilly claims science can't explain the tides.

Apparently, Bill O’Reilly has never heard of the moon. In a debate Tuesday with Dave Silverman, head of the American Atheist group behind this, the Fox host tried to prove the existence of God by citing the unknowable mysteries of the tides. “I’ll tell you why [religion is] not a scam, in my opinion,” he told Silverman. “Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”

Silverman looked stunned. “Tide goes in, tide goes out?” he stuttered. O’Reilly pressed on. “The water, the tide—it comes in and it goes out. It always goes in, then it goes out. … You can’t explain that. You can’t explain it.”

I am pretty sure Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Shintoists, Rastafarians, Pastafarians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Confucians, and Taoists can all agree that Bill O'Reilly is as stupid as a sack of nails. Only the Moonies are likely to dissent.

yeah but

2011-01-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, conservatives--yes, we do have some of the best health care in the world--& nearly a quarter of us can't afford to use it, tens of millions more would be financially wiped out if a family member got sick, & health care facilities are laying off workers because more & more people can't afford care. In this context, it's absurd to speak of repealing modest reforms OR being satisfied w/ said reforms.

Obvious to most people, but worth inscribing just to remind ourselves in a few years that we were right about this.

Anyone else think that nurse is kinda hot?

WikiLeaks, Secrecy States and the Call for Blood

2010-12-31T10:18:00.000-07:00

Leave it to veteran pacifist David McReynolds to point out the pathology of the right's latest calls for violence. David has been emailing a group including me almost daily pointing out the ways in which right wing hawks' current call for blood is the culmination of the the violent secrecy state. At a time when almost 20% of Americans are unemployed, underemployed, and in general, employment-challenged; at a time when we are fighting two illegal wars and watching our domestic infrastructure crumble and social programs dry up because of it; after we've suffered the worst oceanic oil disaster in human history; what does the right do? Call for the assassination and/or execution of people leaking and disseminating classified documents. Rather than being outraged at the content of the documents, conservatives want to send one of our James Bonds out to assassinate the founder of the web page releasing that information.

This isn't just a couple of over-exposed loonies, not the hideous hybrid created by the joining of Ann Coulter and Michael Savage, not just Alan Dershowitz writing another book. The calls for assassination are coming out of the conservative woodwork. It's crass opportunism rather than sound policy analysis, of course, but it provides further proof that, as conservatism circles the drain, its adherents will go to ever greater lengths to demonstrate their verility and marketability. Nor should we forget that what passes for analysis from the conservative side is mostly provided by politicians who are receiving bonifide paychecks from Fox News.

As I said on Wednesday's podcast, Bradley Manning is the whipping boy for the secrecy state. Even if the "limited" solitary confinement of Manning is not torture, it's not clear what the policy purpose of such confinement is if it's _not_ punitive. And, of course, if it is punitive, it is unconstitutional and even violates the UCMJ's Article 13: "No person, while being held for trial, may be subjected to punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against him, nor shall the arrest or confinement imposed upon him be any more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure his presence..."

Unnecessary, unlawful confinement and drain-circling political figures trying to make their name, or keep their name, by calling for murder: These are the whines of a dying military-industrial complex and spokespersons desperate to make a few more bucks before the collapse of empire. We need to keep articulating the alternatives in 2011.

The Real Dexter

2010-12-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

Not sure about this other "Dexter" everybody's talking about. The real Dexter has a massive laboratory and can time travel and stuff. Much cooler than being a (yawn) serial killer.

image management

2010-12-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

Just like Bill Clinton gutted welfare better than any Republican could, President Obama has overseen the dismantling of major components of New Deal and Great Society policies--in the midst of an economic crisis the likes of which haven't been seen in half a century. And to think the right wing subintellosphere still calls him a socialist...

One fact says a great deal about the reality of Obama’s policies: the reduction in the estate tax included in his tax-cut deal with the Republicans brings the tax on inherited wealth to its lowest level since 1931, prior to Roosevelt’s coming to power. Roosevelt during World War II pushed for the tax rate on the highest income tax bracket to be raised to 91 percent and imposed a cap on executive salaries.

Obama’s measures will provide an estimated $70 billion a year in tax breaks for the rich and hand over an additional $23 billion in estate tax cuts to 6,600 families.
The shift on Obama exemplifies the ceaseless efforts of the corporate-owned and controlled media to artificially create political realities by means of image making. Obama’s election was largely the result of a media marketing operation, backed and financed by sections of the ruling class that saw the need for a change in image and personnel after the foreign policy disasters of the Bush years and in the face of public hatred for Bush and the Republicans.
Now, the media is seeking to repackage and repair the badly discredited Obama administration. Why? Because it is dutifully doing the bidding of the financial aristocracy.

does yours?

2010-12-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a random note by a friend...

My butt shines like gold
There's too much of it to hold
It smells like a pretty flower
Although I never shower
It jangles when I walk
I wish that it could talk
They'll say when I am old
That my butt shone like gold
--MJS 12-28-10

start from anywhere post 2

2010-12-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

The WikiLeaks affair presupposes "state secrets." So what is the state, and on what grounds may it keep secrets?

Who's family have I fixed within my sights?

2010-12-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

Happy xmas, everybody.

DADT and Economic Justice

2010-12-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Sometimes acts of justice move in the same normative direction even though they may not be fully consistent with one another. Activists negotiate their movement around these acts in different ways. While millions of people are celebrating the impending demise of the ban on openly GLBT military personnel, a few organizations, and many individuals, have questioned the appropriateness of progressives celebrating a policy which, foundationally, is a victory for the military-industrial complex, a route for more smoothely escorting people into the imperialist death machine.

While it is important to note that the public justification for lifting the ban drips with the rhetoric of imperialism, there's not a lot of new information to discover there. The U.S. military is simultaneously the oppressive arm of multinational capital, and home to millions of working class people, many of whom are economically dependant on the military and, of those, many who discover, too late in some instances, that much of the solidarity, honor, and valor they may initially have sought in their jobs has been hijacked by the imperialist-mercenary role of U.S. forces.

One terse dismissal of the DADT victory came from Queers for Economic Justice, who seamlessly tie the struggle for economic justice to the overall struggle against militarism:

QEJ believes military service is not economic justice, and it is immoral that the military is the nation’s de facto jobs program for poor and working-class people. And since QEJ organizes LGBTQ homeless people in New York City, we wanted to remind the LGBT community and progressive anti-war allies that militarism and war profiteering do not serve the interests of LGBT people.

When I posted QEJ's statement on the Shared Sacrifice FB fan page, one reader responded that it was shameful QEJ seemed incapable of distinguishing between doing one good thing and solving every systemic problem. I agree, but I'm trying to understand their argument better. They needed to better articulate how, precisely, this is a setback or a distraction--the only two warrants, as I see it, for their conclusion. It is true that, as presently constructed, "military service is not economic justice." But neither are most jobs where we're demanding an end to discrimination. What I do agree with, vehemently, is the need to prioritize the struggle for economic justice.

Last Saturday, Jason & Annette & I had a good discussion on the Shared Sacrifice Weekend podcast about the tension between equal rights within existing institutions, and the true argument that this is all just more human beings being thrown into the grinder. Several arguments emerged, of which the following are the general types, and I am not necessarily endorsing any of them as I list them: (1) Gays already serve, always have, so kind of a "non-unique, only a risk you increase people's dignity" argument. (2) Equal opportunity: Serving in the military is often a pathway to getting good jobs, paying for education, and other benefits. Saying "f--- the war machine!" doesn't answer back the equality argument, it just makes you sound like a hippie who has nothing to offer the working class. (3) The "it's not militarism itself, it's the bourgeois fat cats who start the illegal wars" argument. Essentially: the military can be used for good ends such as fighting the Nazis, disaster response, space exploration, anything good requiring major amounts of discipline, comaradery and collective will. Don't knock the military--reform society and end the corporate colonization of all aspects of American life, and institutions will invariably change for the better. (4) Don't insult people in the military by reducing the entirety of their existence and their values to "dying for oil" or whatever.

Personally I see no more contradiction fighting imperialism while promoting equality in the military, than I see fighting wage slavery while promoting equality in the workplace. In a sense, these are inconsistent, because the social and material conditions under which we live are themselves inconsistent. But like I said at the outset, they move in the same normative direction. Controversial, even uncomfortable conversations like those sparked by QEJ, help us forge that normative space, important in the long view. And while we argue, we can fight for common goals (think ENDA, since even after DADT is repealed, bosses all over the country will still be able to fire workers for being gay).

start from anywhere post 1

2010-12-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

A paradoxical, consistent historical phenomenon: When the number of poor in a society increases, so do the open, blatant attacks on the poor (it's their own fault, they shouldn't be allowed to vote, let's criminalize poverty, etc.). As socioeconomic forces increase poverty, the rhetoric reducing poverty to a moral choice escalates.

Ten Reasons to Believe: Important Sites on Worker Cooperatives

2010-11-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

I recently asked Shared Sacrifice Facebook readers whether, as the economy collapses, people will turn to hate, or turn toward each other. The response was a unanimous, fearful prediction of hate. That led me to think about the people out there who have thought about and implemented, in some cases with extreme success, alternative economic models on the ground. So before you sink into despair at what economic decline will do to one another, take heart in the possibility that more people will come to realize that cooperation _is_ self-interest. For those only slightly familiar with cooperative work models, here are ten web sites to visit that will get you seriously thinking about the economic case for cooperation.

1. Most progressives have probably heard of Mondragon. Here's a quick read on how Mondragon works and some critical analysis the author speeds quickly through at the end.

2. Listen to this podcast by Business Matters on worker-owned coops.

3. The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives is a national grassroots organization offering advice, resources, solidarity for worker cooperatives in the U.S.

4. Equal Exchange: a food cooperative

5. Check out Citybikes, a Portland cooperative bike shop--actually two branches in Portland

6. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development supports --and funds-- worker-owned cooperatives. "Over the past ten years, CCHD has supported worker-owned cooperatives focused on paraprofessional healthcare, child care, cleaning, sewing and craft production and temporary employment businesses."

7. Listen to "Your Call" with Rose Aguilar: "Worker-Owned Cooperatives: The Work We Do is the Solution" .

8. Personal essay by a worker-owner at the well-known Rainbow Grocery cooperative.

9. Participatory Economics guru Robin Hahnel on reducing inequality among worker cooperatives.

10. "The United Steel Workers Union, North America's largest industrial trade union, announced a new collaboration with the world's largest worker-owned cooperative, Mondragon International, based in the Basque region of Spain."

A careful study of worker cooperatives has something to offer progressives of varying tendencies. For the socialist, worker cooperatives really are schools and laboratories for what works and doesn't in trying to build a post-capitalist economy. For Greens, they're an example of the kind of policies that should be promoted by legislation and built by grass roots movements. For Democrats, they are a reason to push their party away from corporatism, if that's possible at this point. They may even have something to offer the non-paleo libertarians. Happy reading. I mean, this is happy reading, so happy reading!

the empirical-research-challenged person's guide to sound policymaking

2010-11-08T13:27:00.001-07:00

In Connecticut, Governor Jodi Rell vetoed a bill that would have banned capital punishment in the state. Her explanation couldn't have been any less intellectually or morally satisfying:

"There is no doubt that the death penalty is a deterrent to those who contemplate such monstrous acts. The statistics supporting this fact, however, are not easily tabulated."

The last I heard, if there's "no doubt" about something, it's possible to empirically verify it. At least, you know, when we're talking about public policy rather than the existence of God or the Easter Bunny.

Back here in the real world, the death penalty does not deter crime. It just doesn't.

Olbermensch

2010-11-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

One of the more amusing things about Keith Olbermann's suspension is the amount of barely-concealed professional jealousy that has emerged from the media woodwork. A quick review of stories that have emerged on the Olbermann suspension in the last few hours:

In a few clumsy paragraphs, CNN contributor John Avlon manages to compose the most intellectually dishonest column I've seen on the issue so far. He cites Fox News's 30+ hyperpartisan hosts and contributors, in order to compare them to MSNBC's two or three, in order, finally, to cast a blanket of equivalency on all of them. This despite the fact that neither Olbermann nor Maddow have ever _endorsed_ a candidate, appeared at a campaign rally jointly sponsored by a Fox program and the candidates, and so on. Editorialists can be ideologically oriented without overtly supporting a party or candidate. Avlon doesn't get this. He also misses the fact that both Olbermann and Maddow have been critical of the Democratic Party and Obama, where one would never expect (nor ever witness) equivalent criticism of GOP leaders from Fox News.

He calls Maddow, who has an independent history all her own, Olbermann's "on-air protege." That's Ann Coulter language. It's also inaccurate and meanspirited, but was probably an attempt to sound clever. And, he explains Maddow's defense of Olbermann as a natural consequence of their ideological afinity, ignoring the fact that she, um, actually made some arguments. Avlon doesn't care about arguments, particularly those emerging from female proteges with no histories or personalities of their own.

He wraps it up with the most meaningless display of statistics I've seen since I used to go to L.A. Clippers games: Guess what, kids? 15% identify as conservative republicans while ONLY 11% describe themselves as liberal democrats. Good Gosh, a four-point gap among polar opposites! That didn't help the nutbags take over the Senate, but it's supposed to make Olbermann and his sidekick somehow contrite? Because, as Avlon contends, MSNBC's lefty partisanship emboldens Fox News? Sigh. Another article to throw in the "don't write like this" basket.
Clever, albeit with an over-use of both metaphors and bold print (omitted below), is Tommy Christopher's speculation that IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!!!:

Amid the white hot coverage of MSNBC’s indefinite suspension of Countdown host Keith Olbermann, speculation furious enough to shame Melle Mel’s collegial quintet has emerged. Is this Olbermann’s Waterloo? Does Keith still have the juice to weather the maelstrom? Does the whole thing scream “Comcastic?”
One wrinkle that hasn’t been explored is an intriguing notion that a colleague of mine floated to me. Could the whole thing be an ingenious part of MSNBC’s re-branding effort, a publicity stunt with the dual purpose of drawing a sharper contrast with rival Fox News? Was 11/5 an inside job?
Deliberately or not, the Olbermann suspension is accomplishing great things for MSNBC. First of all, this thing is generating enough publicity to make P.T. Barnum look like Greta Garbo. But more than that, it also appears to have cleverly enlisted its own enemies in a Tom Sawyer-esque fence-painting exercise.

The bigger story is that MSNBC is now run by Republican Overlord and Bush-buddy Steve Burke. Even the New Republic thinks that's noteworthy.

My own take: We should, if we care to, condemn the suspension of Olbermann. But we should not settle for Olbermann, let alone worship him like many lib dems do. Moreover, we should explain the context of the supension and what it reveals about the economic forces at work in even the "liberal" media.

corp + state = fascism

2010-11-07T03:22:00.000-07:00

My friend Joseph recently reminded me that Benito Mussolini allegedly said "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

In addition to the difficulty in verifying the quote (damn, there's a lot of that going around these days), there is some legitimate doubt that, when he used the word "corporatism," Mussolini meant what we mean today. Chip Berlet, however, points out that BM used the word to describe guilds, which would imply business conglomerates. Here's il duce himself saying:

It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds [corporazioni]. No matter!... I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism. (p. 24)

It doesn't ultimately matter whether BM or his ghostwriter ever said this specifically. Fascsism is an elite-driven historical act of desperation, where the freedoms, including market freedoms, associated with capitalism are sacrificed in order to save capitalism. It's capitalism's "special period." In that sense, it is a merger of the state and the corporate elite, or the intensification of that already-existing relationship.

So here's the question the quote, and discussion around it, sparked for me: Why do conservatives always conclude the solution is to eliminate state power only? Does it have anything to do with their conflation of fascism and Stalinism?
A third essential element of fascism, which evolved by necessity, but whose origins were intrinsic to the goals of fascism, is the thorough, public use of brutality to crush dissent and/or deviance. That quality is not a factor in the question, but it may be in the answer.

the rightist billionaire learning curve

2010-11-05T13:07:00.000-06:00

Concerning the role of Latino voters in preventing a GOP Senate takeover, indulge me just one prediction:

Sooner or later the right will just learn to appeal to the ruling classes of each ethnic group, and those groups will, in turn, deploy subjectivist identity politics to subdue their organic critics.

Russell Fox on the Election

2010-11-02T23:53:00.000-06:00

In Medias Res: This Ain't No 1994

isolationism as farce

2010-11-01T07:19:00.000-06:00

William Astore is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and the kind of exacting, precice critic of war and the military inpooprial complex I like to read. He's got a good new essay, The New American Isolationism: The Cost of Turning Away from War’s Horrific Realities over at TomDispatch. Although not a wholly original idea, or perhaps because it's a commonly uttered theme--we're too removed from war to mount an effective opposition to it, this summation of the argument is especially effective.

Astore writes:

When you’re kept isolated from war’s costs, it’s nearly impossible to mount an
effective opposition to them. While our elites, remembering the Vietnam years,
may have sought to remove U.S. public opinion from the enemy’s target list, they
have also worked hard to remove the public as a constraint on their war-making
powers. Recall former Vice President Dick Cheney’s dismissive “So?” when asked
about opinion polls showing declining public support for the Iraq War in 2008.
So what if the American people are uneasy? The elites can always call on a
professional, non-draft military, augmented by hordes of privatized hire-a-gun
outfits, themselves so isolated from society at large that they’ve almost become
the equivalent of foreign legionnaires. These same elites encourage us to
“support our troops,” but otherwise to look away.

on sending messages: Ilario Pantano

2010-10-26T17:47:00.000-06:00

While deployed in Iraq, Ilario Pantano, GOP and Teabag-backed congressional candidate in North Carolina, shot two unarmed Iraqis 20 times. After they were dead, he changed his clip and fired 20 more shots into them. He told the media he did it to "send a message to other Iraqis." He left a threatening note on their bullet-ridden bodies to drive the point home. The military chose not to prosecute him because the unarmed Iraqis had made threatening gestures to him.

Say one thing about the guy, he's all about going above and beyond the call of duty.

Pantano is struggling against Democratic Blue Dog hack Mike McIntyre.

What other "messages" does he want to send?

TOP TEN TEABAGGER RESPONSES TO RAND PAUL SUPPORTERS STEPPING ON FEMALE PROTESTER'S HEAD

2010-10-26T12:01:00.001-06:00

You can read about the head-stepping incident here, here, and here. You can watch the video here. MoveOn is reporting that the woman has a concussion and sprained arm. Rand Paul himself has declined to even hypothetically condemn the violence. [UPDATE: RAND PAUL CONDEMNS ATTACK AND EVEN ADMITS IT WAS PERPETRATED BY A PAUL SUPPORTER. WELL-DONE, MR. PAUL.]

My interest was a quick survey of the gut reactions of Paul supporters and apologists. So I browsed a few comments sections and this is what I came up with:

(These are all real--when quoted they are direct; otherwise they are paraphrased, and I'd be happy to track down the original should you care to context-check me)

1. MoveOn staged the whole thing--the people who attacked her were really members of MoveOn. (several righties have accused MoveOn of staging the attack)

2. "It's obvious she was unhurt and was attempting to be disruptive. Maybe she'll exercise a little common sense next time."

3. Lefty thugs exist in some other context and at some point or another hurt somebody, so this is okay/vindication/deserved.

4. It wasn't her head, it was mostly her shoulder.

5. We have no sympathy for her precisely because she's a member of MoveOn

6. She deserved it because she was wearing a wig to conceal her identity

7. If she was a victim, why did the police question her after the incident? (YEAH, COPS NEVER INTERVIEW VICTIMS)

8. Valle has been arrested in nonviolent protest actions before, so she's a fishy character.

9. This was a reasonable way of telling MoveOn members they are not welcome in Kentucky.

10. Rand Paul supporters stomped on her head because they believed scary union thugs were outside of the building.

*Honorable mention: A couple of 'baggers claimed Valle "rushed the stage," but she didn't. She walked.

"I am the very model of a modern mad conservative"

2010-10-16T17:37:00.001-06:00

(With halfhearted apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan)

I am the very model of a modern mad conservative
If you don't have the benjamins you've forfeited your right to live
I eschew any notion of social responsibility
And spend my weekends lamenting the government with bags of tea

He spends his weekends lamenting the government with bags of tea
He spends his weekends lamenting the government with bags of tea
He spends his weekends lamenting the government with bags of tea

Obama is a socialist but also he's an Islamist
That these are contradictory it doesn't matter in the least
He aims to grab America and tear it down with all his might
From years of sitting in the pews and hearing Jeremiah Wright

I will protect you from the sodomites and the pornographers
Unless the latter group sends large donations to our headquarters
And in my presence you need never fear attacks by terrorists
Except of course for those whose names are on our biggest donor lists

Except of course for those whose names are on our biggest donor lists
Except of course for those whose names are on our biggest donor lists
Except of course for those whose names are on our biggest donor lists

I will unite the Bachmannites the Palinesques and Limbaughnaughts
The Beckers and the Hannitights the Anglers and the Cheneybots
For imposition of my prejudice no reason I will give
I am the very model of a modern mad conservative

For imposition of his prejudice no reason he will give
He is the very model of a modern mad conservative

amazing interview with Neill Franklin of LEAP

2010-10-16T14:05:00.000-06:00

I've interviewed around a hundred celebs, activists, candidates and public officials over the past two years--none have affected me as profoundly as the interview I just concluded with Neill Franklin, Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. His personal journey from undercover narcotics agent to advocate for legalization is an amazing story that everyone needs to hear. And while we've all heard the statistics and stories about the way our country's misguided drug policies affect minority communities, Mr. Franklin's insights into this, as a Baltimore cop, make for essential listening for everyone concerned about drug policy, social justice, and rational lawmaking.

Three fun facts about Jan Brewer

2010-10-08T21:55:00.001-06:00

1. This week she declared a "Child Health Day" -- after cutting child health programs in Arizona.

2. Rumors are floating around Arizona that Brewer is very sick. She looks terrible in photos, she slurs her words and blanks out, like a drunk would do, and she had that mini-stroke moment in the debate, where she couldn't read the notes that were in front of her. Whatever the specifics, it's clear something ain't right up there.

Actually, the lies she's told about her father and goings-on in the Arizona desert could also be brain disease-related, although I ain't no physician, so please don't accept any advice from me on medical issues. My point is she lies and lies and lies, and there may be a medical explanation for it. That's all I'm sayin'.

3. She's got a cheatin' heart. Put another way, Arizona Democrats have filed a serious complaint that, even if she wins in November, will follow her into this office she so little understands. True to Arizona form, her defenders are aghast and circling the wagons. We already know of her ties to the private prison industry that stands to benefit from a crackdown on immigration.

Bonus fact: She's probably still gonna win the election. Double-bonus fact: This just means we'll be able to enjoy the meltdown later, when it will do more damage.

Just How Dishonest & Stupid Is Charles Krauthammer?

2010-10-08T15:12:00.000-06:00

This blast from last February at Media Matters for America, courtesy of Jamison Foser, sums it up nicely and bears re-posting as we look ahead to Krauthammer's fascist-sympathizing rhetoric between now and the mid-term elections.

Charles Krauthammer says environmentalism is "the new socialism," compares Barack Obama's 2008 campaign to China's Cultural Revolution, accuses Obama of thinking of himself "in messianic terms" and of using "Orwellian language that you expect" from Hugo Chavez and calls Chavez Obama's "new pal" and invokes the Nazis in writing about Obama's stem cell policies. He referred to Khamenei as Iran's "Supreme Leader," attacked Barack Obama for doing the same thing a few days later, then just a few days after that, again referred to Khamenei as the "Supreme Leader." Principled!

Krauthammer has called possible torture investigations "banana republic politics" and made false claims to support his case against investigations. That's unsurprising, given that Krauthammer goes back and forth on whether waterboarding is torture -- but is unwavering in his support for it. And like any good Washington Post columnist, he didn't like the Plame investigation, or feel bound by the facts when discussing it -- and even wrote that Bush should pre-emptively pardon Libby. And Krauthammer has falsely defended the Bush administration's use of Iraq intelligence. He even praised Dick Cheney for doing the "manly thing" in withholding information about his shooting of a hunting companion.

Foser roasts a few of the other Little-Streichers in the piece too. It's well worth a lookback.