Chris Floyd and the Black Milk Blues

Been in somewhat of a funk lately and I can't quite put my finger on its exact cause. I have long learned to internalize the futility of working within our plutocratic political system to effect meaningful change and I had never climbed aboard the Good Ship Obama so his inevitable lurch to the right was not for me the crushing disappointment it has been for the foolish Obamabots. No, for me I suspect it's something a bit deeper, a lingering fear if you will that the current apathy and willful ignorance of many Americans concerning issues of grave importance may in fact be a permanent feature of our landscape. There are flickers of recognition here and there but on the whole I don't get the sense that people are connecting the dots fast enough or even trying to. Maybe I'm reading too much into what are my admittedly limited personal observations and casual research, but it sure seems that despite the rapidly approaching meteor on course to crater the US economy for the foreseeable future and the Bushista's mad designs on Iran, Americans remain largely oblivious. Again, perhaps it's just me.

In any event I happened upon this incredible essay from Chris Floyd the other day and, while it didn't lift my spirits entirely, it put some issues regarding human nature into context for me that were truly revelatory.

please. read. this. carefully.

Economist Michael Hudson breaks down in devastating detail the looming financial crisis facing the nation in this essay originally posted on Counterpunch.org. Ever wonder why this kind of perspective never leads on 60 Minutes or Nightline?

Killing Democracy, Peddling Hope, Kicking Strawmen

I've been watching in wonder and amazement at the level of cognitive dissonance on display among Barack Obama's remarkably resilient supporters. There's apparently no line Obama can cross or previous position on which he reverses himself that effects their unshakable faith in this agent of "change". His cave-in on FISA and its ramifications are neatly summed up by Arthur Silber here and most recently by Chris Floyd here.

What's remarkable about all of this is that the rhetoric of the Obamaniacs is virtually unchanged. No need to lose faith in the Hope Crusade for this minor deviation (in fact a brutal ass-fucking of the Fourth Amendment) is merely tactical you see, things will be put right once Obama is elected. Then the Democrats who've been working so tirelessly to reverse Team Bush's legacy since they gained the majority in November 2006 by counterintuitively supporting Bush's initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere, can go about the business of restoring our constitutional republic.

As far as Jesse Jackson's recent unguarded comments regarding Obama's nether regions at Fox studios are concerned, no one who understands the context of this issue (i.e Obama throwing black males under the bus for political expediency during his Father's Day address at the Apostolic Church of Christ in Chicago) should be surprised in the least at the reverend's anger. For some perspective on this "controversy" I highly recommend this recent essay by Kevin Grey Alexander.

George Carlin 1937-2008

Dennis Perrin sums up this loss pretty well I thought. Carlin was simply one our best social commentators period. And, like Perrin, I too would put him in a class with Richard Pryor or, as the late comedian Bill Hicks used to say of himself, Noam Chomsky but with jokes. I'll miss this kind of stuff:
Update: George Carlin's final interview.

The Internet's Uncertain Future

If we let them, the big telecommunications giants and internet service providers (along with their vassals in Congress) will irrevocably alter the internet as we now experience it. If you think the telecoms and ISPs have given up on their mission to slay net neutrality, I'd suggest that you think again. Pass this on... often.

It's About The Issues, Not The Fluff

Ralph Nader on just why it is Ralph Nader has my vote, courtesy of The Beast:

“The American people have got ask themselves a serious question: Why is it that a majority want single payer health insurance—that is government insurance, private delivery, with full, free choice of doctor and hospital—and they haven’t been able to get it since Harry Truman proposed it to congress in 1950? Every year, according to the National Academy of Science, 18,000 Americans die because they can’t afford health care...

“The American people want a change. None of the other candidates—McCain, Obama or Clinton—come close to a full government insurance, full Medicare for all system. They’ll leave in place the wasteful, inefficient, corrupt, redundant health care industry, gouged by a health care insurance system whose only energy seems to be paying its CEOs...

“The American people would never had voted to invade Iraq had there been a free flow of public information instead of Bush/Cheney’s propaganda, unrebutted by the cowardly Democratic Party...

“Bunch of gangsters hijacked our government, plunged us into a war of aggression, violated our constitution, our statutes and our international treaties. Result: tens of thousands of American soldiers disabled for life, over 4,000 have lost their lives, over a million Iraqis have lost their lives and the country’s destroyed. And we’re spending 14 million dollars an hour, 24 hours a day, on the Iraq War. Most of the American people would want their schools, clinics and drinking water systems, highways and bridges—they would want them repaired. They’d want their sewage treatment systems upgraded, they’d want the pollution controlled, but that money’s going to destroy Iraq. Or going into expensive weapons systems that were designed for the Soviet Union era of hostility, which are still in the pipeline, bleeding the American public, because Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, and others, want more sales and profits...

“And now, one half of our entire federal operating budget is going into the military budget. And that military budget is being outsourced to corporations that cost us three to five times more to perform the function than if it was performed by government employees or government soldiers... Blackwater and Halliburton...

“The American people don’t want that. They have the votes; they keep losing. The American people want accountability in government. But there’s no impeachment drive against Bush and Cheney, the most multiply impeachable presidency in history...

“Corporate cheating of Medicare, corporate cheating of defense contracts, corporate looting of our natural resources, corporate tax shelters in the Bahamas, while they get all the benefits of tax supported services here...

“The people have the votes. You think they would approve of 61% of the corporations last year paying no federal income tax? You think they would approve of corporations paying their CEOs 500 times the entry-level wage, when in 1940 it was only 12 times? People have the votes. They keep losing. How could people who have the votes keep losing in a country that thinks of itself as a democracy? It doesn’t square, does it? That’s because it’s not a democracy. In operation, it’s a plutocracy, ruled by the rich and powerful. The two parties are basically representatives, indentured servants, of the rich and powerful, the giant corporations...

“As if that isn’t enough, these corporations are violating the moral code of parents by direct commercial marketing to young children, violent programming, pornographic programming, junk food, junk drink, undermining parental authority. These corporations have become electronic child molesters. And they don’t have any sense of shame...

“The whole commercialization of our society will spell the death knell of our democracy...

“The consequences of concentrated wealth and power, where the few decide for the many, are rooted in the lessons of history. When the few decides for the many, the many lose and the few prevail. The many lose and the few prevail...

“The question the American people have to ask themselves is: Why have most of them dropped out of democracy? Why have most of them given up on themselves, and accepted the old cliché, ‘You can’t fight city hall,’ or the more modern one: ‘You can’t fight Exxon.’ That’s the question we have to ask ourselves. Watching American Idol doesn’t quite cut it. Spending your time updating your profile on Facebook doesn’t quite cut it. Endless gossiping on cell phones and messaging about the most trivial of trivial things in daily life doesn’t quite cut it.

“I want to make a contrast with Western Europe. Sixty years ago, Western Europe was rubble. Rubble. It was the end of World War II. Sixty years ago, the American people were a part of the most powerful country in the world, by every economic and military indicator. Now watch what happened. Sixty years ago, people in Western Europe demanded a living wage. And they got it. They demanded that they have universal health insurance. And they got it. They demanded that they had four to eight weeks of paid vacation, depending on the country. And they got it. They demanded to be paid for maternity leave, by law. And they got it. They demanded that they be able to easily form trade unions. And they got it...

“We didn’t get it. We didn’t get any of these things, by law. Sometimes we got the exact opposite, like the anti-union Taft-Hartley law, that is now 61 years old. It’s still on the books. The harshest anti-worker law in the western world, obstructing the formations of trade unions. All change does not start with knowledge. Knowledge is not enough. All change starts with shame or guilt. I prefer shame...

“The most deplorable phenomenon in our country today is the expressed concern the people have about where our country’s going—81% in last month’s poll say it’s going in the wrong direction—and the contrast between that expressed concern and the feeling of despair, demoralization and a general sense that nothing can be changed.

“Our collective mission has got to be to get the American people righteously angry enough to change. That doesn’t mean they go out of control. That doesn’t mean they abandon their reason—just the contrary. They fuel their reason with a level of self-confidence that they matter, they count and they’re going to change this country—in the right direction.

“The corporations will be our servants, not our masters, as they were designed to be our servants when they were chartered in the early 19th century in New England, and held on a tight leash. Corporations are not created by investors; they are funded by investors. They are created by state governments, who give them the charter to exist. They have been given far too much power over our lives. And most of the American people, in poll after poll, agree with that assertion.

“So it behooves all of us not to allow our country to continue to be run on behalf of these giant corporations, who’ve turned Washington into corporately controlled territory... not to allow a two-party elected dictatorship to propagandize us, as if we’re a functioning democracy...”

Hillary The Defiant

Many thanks to Dennis Perrin and IOZ for this.

Our Own Creed?

Well, as far as creeds go this one from Bernard Chazelle ain't bad.

I Wonder Why They Hate Us So Much

It gets tricky this business of righteous saber-rattling over weapons proliferation. What is an imperial colossus to do when one of its trusted allies goes and violates the Geneva Conventions prohibiting attacks on civilians with the weapons it has been provided? Well, the matter's forgotten of course.

Finally, Change We Can Believe In

Meet New York state's new interim (very interim) Governor Barry Crimmins.

Wow!

I hadn't planned on posting for another few days but I couldn't resist sharing this gem from Dennis Perrin wherein he wipes the floor with Marc Cooper's ass over the Samantha Power Affair. As most who have been watching the Clinton-Obama spat over Power's recent comments about the Hillerator know by now, Power stepped down from her advisory position with Obama's campaign over comments that, quite frankly, were rather tame and a no brainer when one briefly reviews Hillary's record--the bitch is a monster. So what? Anyway, I'm not sure if many people caught Perrin's piece which, for this reader, was the best response so far to all the liberal hand-wringing over Power's "banishment" to her comfortable post at Harvard.

Bullshit

Yes, you've long suspected it to be so and now it has finaly been confirmed.

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

The Final Insult

One more brick-bat is in order for the recently departed clown prince of conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr. and it's a treasure from the Way-Back Machine. The following is Robert Sherrill's review of John Judis's William F. Buckley Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives as it appeared in the Nation magazine back in 1988. This comes courtesy of Barry Crimmins who received it himself via e-mail from Dennis Perrin. Did you get all that? Enjoy.

Willam F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008

Conservatives lost their most gifted showman today when William F. Buckley Jr. was found dead in his residence by an assistant. Buckley would be the man credited with wresting conservatism from the John Birch Society fringes and bringing it to respectability on the American political scene. He did this primarily through two vehicles, the first of which were his influential essays in his magazine National Review and his television interview program "Firing Line". Let's sit back and enjoy the spectacle of Buckley getting his ass kicked on his own show back in 1969 by Noam Chomsky.

Pssst! Can you spare a dime?

Isn't it refreshing to know that the eagle eyes over at the Wall Street Journal, in fact, the US financial media in general is looking out for those of us who rely on our banking system? The collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and its attendant ill effects have negatively impacted US banks to such an extent that they were recently forced to secretly borrow money from the Fed, as much as 50 billion dollars to date. That's Fed as in taxpayer. This disturbing fact was a "secret" because it wasn't published in the US. Unless you were a subscriber to the London Financial Times you missed it.

With Choices Like These...

Howard Zinn manages, as usual, to put his finger on what ails America in this (and every) political season. An exerpt:

"Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading Presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care for all.

They offer no radical change from the status quo."

The rest.

Reflections on Terror

I'm remiss to have not formally introduced to those few who visit this space the source that first inspired my efforts and nom de plume. I speak of Coldtype.net which offers, free of charge, the writing of progressive thinkers the world over. What follows is but a sample of their outstanding offerings to those of the left persuasion, in this instance the latest from Edward S. Herman & David Peterson on America's so-called "war on terror". You'll find the link to this incredible site on my blogroll to your right ["My Inspiration"]. This Herman & Peterson essay is lengthy but I think you'll find it well worth your time. Read on.

Yes We Can!

You guessed it, the Obama faithful are at it again and they've recently released this slick video tribute to their hero. After you catch your breath, check out the proper response to this crapola over at A Tiny Revolution.

Dean Baker and Loans Made for Walking

Economist Dean Baker made some rather interesting points the other day regarding the sub-prime crisis as well as the related mess in the upscale prime market in an essay which appeared on Truth Out. No matter how hard I try, however, I can't seem to work up any tears over the looming prospect of banks left holding the bag.

John McCain and Our Likely Future

This courtesy of Barry Crimmins: